Externally educated Antilles students face a forced choice between French and dialect
Evidence
In a more limited group, when students from the Antilles meet in Paris, they have the choice of two possibilities: –either to stand with the white world (that is to say, the real world), and, since they will speak French, to be able to confront certain problems and incline to a certain degree of universality in their conclusions; –or to reject Europe, “Yo,” and cling together in their dialect, making themselves quite comfortable in what we shall call the Umwelt of Martinique; by this I mean–and this applies particularly to my brothers of the Antilles –that when one of us tries, in Paris or any other university city, to study a problem seriously, he is accused of self-aggrandizement, and the surest way of cutting him down is to remind him of the Antilles by exploding into dialect. This must be recognized as one of the reasons why so many friendships collapse after a few months of life in Europe. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 142
Categorization
- DEFINE: Fanon defines the ‘Umwelt of Martinique’ as the dialect-centered closed world that policing in-group members use to cut down aspiring serious students.
- XREF: Names both narratives available to the colonized subject, central to the reader’s two-narratives frame. — connects to: Returning Antilleans are diagnosed by their dialect choice as European or unchanged; Antillean students in Paris face a forced choice between white universality and dialect solidarity; Antillean returnees can strategically choose dialect to deny change and placate their community (+3 more)