Double consciousness is the dual self-perception experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society. The term and the idea were first published in W. E. B. Du Bois's autoethnographic work, The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, in which he described the African American experience of double consciousness, including his own.
Originally, double consciousness was specifically the psychological challenge African Americans experienced of "always looking at one's self through the eyes" of a racist white society and "measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looked back in contempt". The term also referred to Du Bois's experiences of reconciling his African heritage with an upbringing in a European-dominated society.
The idea of double consciousness is important because it illuminates the experiences of black people living in post-slavery America, and also because it sets a framework for understanding the position of oppressed people in an oppressive world. As a result, it became used to explain the dynamics of gender, colonialism, xenophobia and more alongside race. This theory laid a strong foundation for other critical theorists to expand upon.
Origin
The term was introduced by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1842 essay "The Transcendentalist". Du Bois first used the term in an article titled "Strivings of the Negro People", published in the August 1897 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It was later republished and slightly edited under the title "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" in his book, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois describes double consciousness as follows:
Gilroy and the "Black Atlantic" Paul Gilroy applied theories of culture and race to the study and construction of African American intellectual history. He is known especially for marking a turning point in the study of the African diasporas. His book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) introduces the "Black Atlantic" as a source for cultural construction. Gilroy pioneers a shift in contemporary black studies by arguing for a rejection of the notion of a homogeneous nation-state based nationality in favor of analyzing "the Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis in their discussions of the modern world and use it to produce an explicitly transnational and intercultural perspective". He based this on the Atlantic slave trade and marked it as the foundation for the diaspora. He recognized the significance of European and African transnational travel as a foundation for double consciousness. Gilroy used Du Bois's theory of double consciousness to suggest there exists an internal struggle to reconcile being both European and Black, which was his main focus in his book. He even characterized the Black Atlantic by the influence of slave trade "routes" on black identity. He aimed to unify black culture with the connection to the homeland as well as the cultural exchanges that occurred afterward. Gilroy's work became popular with the Black diaspora in Europe, and his theories became the foundation for several black power movements throughout the continent.
Gilroy argues that occupying the space between these two dialectal subjectivities is "viewed as a provocative and even oppositional act of political insubordination". This means that for black people across diaspora, thinking of the duality in their identity as one is almost paradoxical, and conceptualizing and actualizing this is a move of symbolic resistance in modernity.
Frantz Fanon
Very similarly to Du Bois, Frantz Fanon touched upon the term of double consciousness in his life. In his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, where he expressed his hopelessness at being neither white nor black. Fanon identifies the double consciousness that African Americans face and its source; he claimed the cultural and social confusions of African Americans were caused by European culture. He gave examples of things that he has encountered that demonstrate the double consciousness. He talks about people who preach about completely conforming to being white and says that they are wrong. He also says that the people who believe that complete rejection of whites are also wrong.
He then proceeds to talk about why black people adopt cultures that are so strange to him. He talks about how when a Black Caribbean leaves for Europe, they come back speaking a language different from their own. He also talks about how Africans, mostly the wealthiest, tend to have insecurities of not being European enough because they are African. This manifests in buying European furniture and buying European clothes.