Self/ other..........Fanon

Self / Other
Fanon, Frantz. "The Negro and Recognition." chapter 7 from Black Skin White Masks. Trans.
"I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.
In the same way, the slave here is in no way identifiable with the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in his work the source of his liberation.
The Negro wants to be like the master.
Therefore he is less independent than the Hegelian slave.
In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object.
Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object."
Fanon, footnote: 220-21
I would like to take issue with Fanon's application of Hegel's master / bondsman relationship and his conclusion that it is non-representational of the master / slave relationship found in the United States in the mid- to late 1800s and early to mid- 1900s.
Fanon's first statement in deriving his conclusion is the quotation above, "For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work." Hegel's philosophy and ideas of "differentiated spirit" and "undifferentiated spirit" would suggest that for Hegel, reciprocity is not necessarily what one self (i.e., the master) gives another self (the slave); it is, rather, that the consciousness (say, of the slave, who Hegel seems to maintain would be more likely to recognize and fulfill her own self-consciousness) recognizes itself (also the slave-self) in the other (the master), and having recognized this consciousness of self in other, it must then destroy self (as slave) in order to have real self-consciousness or to experience objective truth.
Hegel seems not to identify the self with the body or with consciousness as Fanon does. Indeed, neither body nor mind, self nor consciousness seem to be exactly equal to life for Hegel, which he reminds us here, is the existent object, inasmuch as this discussion holds. Continuing this line of reasoning, I would state that, if life is object, consciousness must be subject, and self-consciousness may be viewed as one subject position (the most aware one attainable--one that sees itself in every other).
It may be helpful to examine Fanon's next points in turn: "In the same way, the slave here is in no way identifiable with the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in his work the source of his liberation." The slave has a greater risk of losing life (the object), Hegel says, and is therefore, by necessity, more concerned with it. The slave begins to identify the totality of self with life, thereby reducing consciousness to the mere fact of day-to-day survival. It is by deconstructing the self that the slave may then begin to construct, through recognition, the other and the negation of the other within himself (or the death of self in self) that precedes self-consciousness.
"The Negro wants to be like the master." There is no substantiation for this claim. I would maintain that the opposite is true, except perhaps in the sense that all life "aspires" to be at the top of the food / production chain. Again, there is self and other in every self; of course, there is a part of the slave who wants "to be like the master." I believe that Hegel would assert that there is also a part of the slave with which the master identifies: it is the fear of seeing this self in the other that necessitates sublimation, especially as it affects the ability of the master to see objective truth. It is, however, the recognition of this other in self that prompts the slave to become self-conscious in a way that the master may not. "Therefore he is less independent than the Hegelian slave." Again, the slave cannot become independent without recognizing self in the master. The slave of the early United States was no more or less independent that Hegel's bondsman.
"In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object. Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object." Again, Fanon is confusing what Hegel seems to define as the existent object in this discussion: life. I would argue that, given this definition for object rather than the one of the fetters or work that Fanon appears to be using, he would agree that the early American slaves certainly turned toward life: the objective truth for a slave is her life and her freedom to live it outside of chains. If slaves had abandoned the object as Fanon contends, there would have been a genocide by suicide or an unconditional acceptance of slavery and the agreed belief that self did not deserve to be recognized. Nowhere in our brief American history has this proven to be the case, especially with the slaves of African descent about whom Fanon is writing.
Fanon also makes a jump that the entire chain of master / slave dialectic is in the past: a dangerous assumption for anyone attempting to understand the condition of the African-American in the United States only a few over a hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The dialectic must be seen as ongoing until its resolution is complete: the recognition of self in other and the reciprocal recognition that may eventually flower into an awareness of consciousness that exceeds the boundaries of life or self.