The Babaylan’s Gaze: Frantz Fanon, the Colonized Psyche, and the Esoteric Dialectics of Dignity in Philippine Art
The Babaylan’s Gaze: Frantz Fanon, the Colonized Psyche, and the Esoteric Dialectics of Dignity in Philippine Art Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ July 7, 2026 Frantz Fanon’s axiom — “A colonized mind will fight harder to protect the master’s image than to recover its own dignity” — cuts to the ontological core of postcolonial subjectivity. In *Black Skin, White Masks* and *The Wretched of the Earth*, Fanon diagnoses colonization as a psychic violence that fragments the native into a schizoid guardian of the colonizer’s superiority. The “master’s image” — Eurocentric beauty, rationality, and aesthetics — becomes an idol more fiercely defended than the recovery of indigenous wholeness. Philippine art serves as a privileged site for this dialectic. From colonial romanticism to contemporary resurgence, it stages the tension between alienated mimicry and decolonial becoming. At the heart of this struggle stands the archetypal figure of the **babaylan** — the indigenous shaman-healer-priestess...
