Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)

It took me some while to get through 'The Wretched of the Earth', as it is a painful book to read and a period of history that I know far too little about. Fanon systematically dissects the phenomenon of colonialism, with a focus on Algeria and its attempts to break free from French rule. He explains how the native population is dehumanised by their occupiers, enslaved, exploited, killed, raped, and their land treated as a resource to be expropriated. He demonstrates the pernicious show more pseudo-scientific racist rationalisations, used to justify colonialism as protecting native populations from their own worse nature. Beyond this damning indictment, Fanon examines the problems that face a decolonised country and their possible solutions. I was also struck by the analysis of decolonised countries having no real middle class, merely a group of middlemen as a legacy of colonisation. These sections remain unsettlingly relevant today, as African countries are still faced with developed world protectionism weighting international trade against them. The world remains resolutely unequal and is only becoming more so.

Reading this book reminded me of a realisation I came to at the age of 20. Prior to that point, I had been idealistically contemplating a career in the international development, to try and alleviate the terrible poverty there. Then I begun to actually study development economics and it hit me that the interference of naive, privileged, white university graduates from the developed world is not going to solve the problems of the developing world. Rather, such interference is a major part of the problem and part of the legacy of colonialism. I came to be horrified at the sheer arrogance of much international development discourse, which carries the underlying message that, 'We in the developed world know best, just do as we say'. Fanon ends his book with a powerful entreaty that decolonised countries avoid trying to emulate Europe and America, which is just the agenda that the IMF and World Bank push. Apart from the ways in which this agenda benefits multinational companies at the expense of the developing world, it ignores the fact that Europe's present economic success is based on centuries of slavery and rapacious theft. Fanon makes a striking point about this, noting that reparations were demanded from Germany after the Second World War, but decolonised countries have never even had the chance to ask for similar compensation for the crimes against them and the resources stolen. To this day, the developed world gets far more from the developing world than it gives back. As things often do, this also reminded me of climate change, which is essentially a problem the rich world has created that disproportionately affects the poor world. (Don't get me started on the appalling arrogance of the developed world in international climate negotiations.)

Fanon doesn't just elucidate the big picture, however. The last section of 'The Wretched of the Earth' details case studies of psychological disorders he has come across during Algeria's war of independence. These reinforce the message (also put across powerfully by Vasily Grossman in a Russian context) that one who sees others as less than human loses their own humanity, and indeed their sanity. Fanon's case studies describe the mental states of both colonial torturers and their victims. It is made clear, here and throughout, that violence begets violence. The colonial authorities accuse natives of being inherently violent and criminal, without acknowledging that colonialism forces them to be so. Treat a whole race as less than human and they will have nothing to lose from resorting to violence. Fanon explains this much more eloquently, of course.

I think it's important that Fanon's 1961 book is still read as a reminder of the legacy of colonialism, both on a continental and individual scale. After all, the racism and injustice that he describes is in no way eradicated. His writing style is eloquent, clear, and articulate, despite every word resonating with anger. It's an incredibly powerful combination. show less

A psychological exploration of the oppressed and the oppressor. Analyzing the evolution of the native, he provides extraordinary insights into revolutionary change. Fanon was no champion of violence, he simply embraced the truth and portrayed the reality of a situation and the unfolding dialectic. He accurately describes the pitfalls of a postcolonial state, where the national bourgeoisie would turn into a profiteering caste, too glad to accept the dividends the formal colonial state hands show more out to it. This is very true of the Indian bourgeoisie who were very unconscious of their revolutionary role and demobilised the masses. For Fanon, only a radical democracy that involves the complete mobilisation and rising the consciousness of the masses can save a post-colonial society from the "caste of profiteers", military dictatorships and from the nation getting torn apart from tribal and religious differences. In countries where the urban proletariat were a minute faction, he was a champion of the peasant class and the lumpenproletariat as the revolutionary classes.

At the end, he provides a list of wartime psychological case studies in harrowing detail. In the powerful conclusion, his ultimate message was of humanity. His warnings against the path of aping the west, against the obsession with the notion of catching up with the west.
" European lifestyles should not tempt us to go astray. In European lifestyles and technology I see a constant denial of man, an avalanche of murders."
How accurately he describes the "United States of America where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions". This is exactly what Gandhi feared too, that India would go on a path of trying to emulate western consumerism. In a world where there are limited resources, what happens when India tries to follow the unsustainable path of emulating the western levels of accumulation and consumption? Especially considering the fact that all the riches of the west were the result of the plundering of the third world. When India decided to follow the American path, the result is exactly what we see today, one very small section of the population extremely rich and a huge section of the population extremely poor.

He wanted the third world to be the champion of new humanism. In today’s world where massive inequalities have been built up consciously, deliberately and systematically, where large sections of population live in a de-humanised condition, Fanon’s passionate message is very important to address the urgent need of radical redistribution of wealth and the means of production. show less

Beautifully concise, very approachable & coherent theory. V strong cultural analysis on the interaction between the settlor and colonised populations, the move towards revolution in a colonised state (and the issues which the revolutionaries may face in achieving this), and the birth of a "national" conscious. My major critique is the occasional deviations from orthodox Marxism, and the insistence on "The Nation", and NatLib.

Um livro justificadamente incendiário com um arco formal interessante: o capítulo de filosofia política sobre a violência e sua necessidade no caso dos negros colonizados-racializados (existem situações em que não há ação política mediadora, não há negociação possível que não seja abrir mão do que seria justo. Fanon aborda brilhantemente essa condição); segue análises da condição nacional, incluindo a irresponsabilidade oportunista predatória das burguesias nacionais show more (pós)-coloniais (que podemos reconhecer na nossa), desembocando numa discussão sobre nacionalismo e uma avaliação um pouco esperançosa demais de uma ação de desalienação e que soa em momentos ingenua (mas que assim alivia um pouco o tom), para a denuncia do que haveria ainda de verniz de civilidade falsamente universal nas tentativas das metrópoles européias de dominação. Mas eis então que, e isso é genial, são inseridos capítulos de prática psicanalítica com casos escabrosos de traumas e desequilíbrios mentais advindos da guerra de libertação nacional algeriana, descrevendo o lado visceralmente podre das forças colonizadoras, pra arrematar com um discurso incitatório bonito, que pede uma atenção maior ao humano, por quem sabe um humanismo real, que quiçá poderia uma África libertada e emancipada oferecer à humanidade. Vale a pena. (já os dois prefácios e a nota do tradutor são plenamente dispensáveis). show less