Through the Zone of Nonbeing: A Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon's Eightieth Birthday

Fanon was an ironic writer who was struggling with the complex question of paradoxical reason and paradoxical history. The modern collapse of "Reason" and "History" into all things European represented a failure of Reason and History that required self deception regarding Europe's scope. Put differently: Europe sought to become ontological; it sought to become what dialecticians call "Absolute Being." Such Being stood in the way of human being or a human way of being. It thus presented itself as a theodicy. Theodicy is the branch of inquiry that attempts to account for the compatibility of God's omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness in the face
of injustice and evil. There are several formulations of the problem: If God has the power to do something about injustice and evil, why doesn't He? If God has created everything, and God is perfect, how could God create imperfect (often evil) beings?