Black Skin White Masks Analysis

2701 Words11 Pages

An age old adage says "A picture is worth a thousand words" and nothing can be more eloquent than a political cartoon. A political cartoon is designed to convey a social or political message through a simple picture. The art of political cartooning emerged in Europe way back in the sixteenth century and has developed into an extremely important form of visual expression all over the world, ever since.
Political cartooning as a popular medium of expression gained roots in India as a colonial hangover. Initially, it was a political device restricted only amongst the whites. Even if Indians had any access to it, they lacked the education or exposure to grasp the cartoon’s nuances. Some Indians, in the pursuit of rising above their lot, tried to emulate this art in a conformist way (the psychoanalytic term for which is “Black Skin White …show more content…

While the political leadership managed to somehow uplift India economically in the global scheme of things, the common man found his life hardly any better, if not worse, than it was before. As the common man’s mouthpiece, Laxman set forth to expose things around him. Through his following cartoons, I would like to broadly summarize the economic history of the nation through its ups and …show more content…

It can be related to by all those who have been forced to endure western civilization. Black Skin, White Masks was the first book to probe deep into the psychological aspects of colonialism. It examines how colonialism is internalized by the colonized subject, how an inferiority complex is inculcated, and how, through the mechanism of racism, black people end up emulating their oppressors. The context has been shifted to the Indian scenario in this

Open Document