Writing post-colonial spatial subjects: reading Gorée Island through Frantz Fanon

Abstract

In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon interrogates the role of language in forming the colonial subject, noting that while ‘there is an extraordinary power in the possession of a language,’ there are also potentially dire side effects, in that a ‘man who possesses a language possesses as an indirect consequence the world expressed and implied by this language’ (Fanon 2008: 2). This paper assumes that as for the human subject, so too for the spatial subject, as the language used to ‘express and imply’ the architecture of a place both affects and is affected by colonized subjecthoods and spatial hegemonies. A central aspect of Fanon’s project is decolonization of the subject, partly through resistance to the instrumentalization of history, but also through his method of writing, which marshals an interdisciplinarily powerful poetic voice. This essay explores the issue of Fanonian subjectivation as applied to architecture by examining as case study Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal. Mirroring its turbulent history as a trade hub, competing narratives struggle to take hold of the island. Some such narratives considered here are driven by concern for the island’s development (Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, UNESCO), historical past (Philip Curtin, Mark Hinchman), or its symbolic importance (Dionne Brand). Fanon helps to trace a route through these narratives of Gorée, asking what kinds of writing might perpetuate or resist the colonization of a place, its architecture, and its history.