Dismantling the Master’s House with Enlightenment Tools

Language philosopher Bry Willis offers a critical analysis of Frantz Fanon’s seminal work, specifically focusing on the fifth chapter of Black Skin, White Masks. The author adopts an anti-Enlightenment perspective to argue that Fanon’s reliance on psychoanalysis undermines his attempt to dismantle colonial structures. By using tools derived from the very rationalist systems he seeks to oppose, Fanon inadvertently risks validating the intellectual framework of the oppressor. While the reviewer acknowledges Fanon’s brilliance in exposing how colonial reason marginalises the colonised, they ultimately find his methodological choices conceptually compromised. This reflection serves as a broader meditation on the difficulty of deconstructing a tradition from within using its own established vocabulary.