“Fanonian Slips: The Rhetorical Function & Field of the White Mask” by Charles Athanasopoulos
(2022, Western Journal of Communication)

Winner of the “2023 Outstanding Article Award” from the National Communication Association Critical and Cultural Studies Division

This essay theorizes Fanonian slips as way of describing the misfires that may occur in rhetorical gestures aimed at soothing moments of racial tension. Fanonian slips further articulate how those misfires accidentally reveal broader processes by which various individuals mobilize “Black skin” and “white masks” as guiding posts for establishing order within the interpersonal, the political, and the internal. Accordingly, the essay analyzes an eclectic mix of artifacts including the rhetoric of Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, U.S. President Barack Obama, and two auto-ethnographic accounts, to demonstrate that these slips are pervasive within, and endemic to, Western communication.

background photo: "Slipping away unnoticed" by anyjazz65. License: CC BY 2.0.