• Hamzeh A. Al-Jarrah

  Author

This article scrutinizes the drastic effects of the dehumanizing white gaze on the black
individual’s self from psycho-existential perspectives, mainly through the thoughts of the
existential philosophers and thinkers Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Lewis R. Gordon. I
argue that the white inferiorizing gaze makes the black-skinned individual estranged from his /
her authentic self and, therefore, develop a fragmented self. This leads the black individual to
internalize inferiority and to build what is called “false consciousness.” These effects are
analyzed in the African American playwright Susan-Lori Parks’ play Imperceptible Mutabilities
in the Third Kingdom (1989), specifically in the first and second parts of the play: Snails and
Third Kingdom.

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