Life Finds a Way: Fanon, Merleau-Ponty, and Ontological Resistance

This paper examines the humanistic influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Frantz Fanon in Black Skin White Masks , particularly in relation to corporeality, ontology, and the gaze, through an exploration of the mirror stage and the development of a body schema under colonization. I turn to Gayle Salamon’s article “The Place Where Life Hides Away: Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, and the location of bodily being” as a hinge to explore Fanon’s notion of the zone of nonbeing (i.e., “veritable hell”) and ontological resistance for the Black man, asking “What does Fanon mean when he says that ‘The Black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man?’” While influenced by Merleau-Ponty, Fanon’s phenomenological investigation into the lived experience of the Black man questions the ontological assumptions of phenomenology by addressing avenues of resistance, or lack thereof, in a colonized world in which ontology is a fantasy weaponized by colonizers to sustain colonial social, political, and economic conditions. I argue that if the Black man does not have ontological resistance to colonial oppression, he can, and must, confront the colonial gaze through political and social resistance and action.