Sensational Flesh. Amber Jamilla Musser

hurt herself. Fanon argues that she does this by imagining herself as a Negro and endowing that imagined man with violent, carnal desires, which she then imagines being turned on herself or any other woman. Noticeably absent from Fanon’s analysis is any suggestion of homosexual desire, despite the familiar transpositions of lesbianism onto blackness and masculinity. Fanon, here and elsewhere, places the possibility of lesbianism, as Ann Pellegrini writes, “beyond all imagining.”⁵⁴

      As presented, “A Negro Is Raping Me” complicates our understanding of female masochism as described in “A Child Is Being Beaten.” The beloved father is no longer the locus of agency and desire; narratively, he has been replaced by the Negro. What does the white woman’s submission mean in this context? It is difficult to see this substitution of Negro for father as neutral. Though it is tempting to read it as a way to recuperate black agency, the narrative elides this possibility by reducing Fanon’s narrator to an always-willing, always-desiring, always-sexual body. In this situation, the Negro is equated with his penis, which looms larger than life in the racist imaginary. Fanon argues that this conflation of the black man with his penis is one of the main qualities of Negrophobia, which manifests as sexual panic that takes the form of fear and desire. The myth of the large black penis only serves to emasculate the black man.⁵⁵