Serialization in Sartre’s sense is absolutely relevant here. In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre talks about serialized groups as people thrown together by circumstance, not by shared purpose or active solidarity. They’re like passengers at a bus stop—physically close, but existentially miles apart. What unites them isn't connection; it's inertia, scarcity, and forced coexistence. So yes, cities are full of that—densely populated zones of profound detachment.

Now, Fanon cranks that up with colonial heat. In Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, he takes serialization and shows how racialization forces people into categories and roles that strip them of subjectivity. You're not with people; you're seen by them, labeled, managed. You become a symbol or a threat or a service worker—but not a person. And so, you start serializing yourself, breaking your being down into digestible parts to avoid punishment or erasure.

Put simply: you exist as data in someone else's narrative. Not a being, but a statistic, a case, a walking stereotype. That’s the kind of distance that thrives within closeness.

And the real kicker? Even inside that crushing proximity—on the train, in the office, in the housing complex—you remain alone. Together, but divided. Present, but categorized. That’s serialization: the illusion of the collective without the substance of solidarity.