The Wretched of the Earth

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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 (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), show more 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

Well, I pity the poor revolutionaries who try to use this as a "handbook." It's not What is to be Done, or Kwame Nkrumah, or even Steal This Book. It's sort of J'Accuse, I guess, if we must compare it to a Western analogue (if I was less ignorant I'd probably be able to come up with something more appropriate), but what it is mostly is an unfocused and inspired multi-part essay that ranges over as much ground as the author needs not to prove the truth of an argument but to light you up, to drum up some fucking energy and point you in a direction. It's not what Sartre called it in the controversial introduction, a hymn to violence--the first section does insist, aggressively, on the need for violence in decolonization struggle--and given show more the experience Fanon had in Algeria, who can blame him--but he's not just pumping up the crowd, he has many real ideas, if broad and sweeping ones.

First deserving mention is the extended discussion of the peasantry and the intellectual returning to the hills, the rejection not only of the status of second-rate Western humans accorded Africans under Cold War postcolonization but also of the first countervanguard that came with Negritude, which is sort of eulogized as a beautiful rallying cry but one inadequate to the spirit of the times, incapable of making room in its subaltern and undifferentiated approach to blackness for the real particularity of national experience. From a twenty-first century perspective, when we're all hopefully getting a more sophisticated sense of how progressive movements everywhere need to reflect the tribal (conceived broadly and absolutely not excluding former colonizing societies) and the local, this seems important and true. But in Fanon, it descends ever so quickly into Pure Land proto-fascist stuff, and even if you understand how that comes to be and recognize that Black Star Africa was always a mirage, it doesn't seem clear if Fanon realizes that what he's talking about is precluding not only the good outcome but also the moderate one--that he's plumping for a Cultural Revolution at best and a Tutsi genocide at worst.

Part of that is maybe that he doesn't understand the important difference between the repression-for-profit that goes on while the Europeans are there and the repression-for-power-for-power's sake on the part of the homegrown elites that goes on after the Europeans go home. Fanon basically says that it's all the same repressive structures in place and a piratical colon class in a classic colonial arrangement or a frothy scum of local sociopaths in a neocolonial configuration with the former colonial power are six-one/half-dozen-the-other. And you can see how it would seem that way in the midst of the Algerian conflict. But the fact is the Europeans did cut and run when it got expensive enough, in blood and treasure but also in their precious precious humanistic image of themselves, and it just took them some years and way too much killing to get it through their heads. They do not deserve credit for this, but it is a fact. Whereas, as we've seen a lot of this year in the "Arab Spring," your Qaddafis, your Mugabes, your Amins, either hang on till the bitterest end or leave only when it's their ass on the line. When Tripoli is home, you stay in Tripoli and fight, even, or maybe especially, if you're the worst guy.

These blind spots are perhaps a bit more suprising because Fanon's general class analysis is so good--the difference between the genuine national bourgeoisie fulfilling its historic mission with an excelsior-sense of great works and uncharted horizons, and a colonial pseudo-bourgeoisie that make s its money off transactions, finance; conversely, the difference between a genuine national working class that in developed countries has fought for certain rights and won with bravery and action the reapportionment of some of the misappropriated wealth of the colonies, and a colonial situation in which the working class is functionally a technocratic class with its factory jobs and its lathe skills or whatever, and the abused lumpenpeasantry are left excluded, without recourse except to be exploited or, perhaps, awakened. Which awakening is a huge concern for Fanon, as noted above.

Without trying to make any of the ridiculous comparisons that this analogy might otherwise be mistaken to imply: a bloodsucking upper class that doesn't even produce anything anymore; a middle class selling out the dispossessed in the effort to protect its own small privilege; a great mass of dislocated people with no prospects and no protection, who hate those above them but have to struggle even to put themselves in the headspace to understand the true struggle; what does that sound like to you? To me it sounds like North America and the global society, circa 2011. We're obviously much better off materially, much less subject to arbitrary detention or torture or fear; but in the total breakdown of the social compact and the total lack even of class solidarity within the oppressed class, because everybody's looking out for themselves, it's right on. It terrifies me to think that the difference between Algiers in 1958 and Vancouver in 2011 might just be that we can hide from the reality of the matter better longer because of the prosperity that keeps the food in our belly and the jackboot away from our door (impossible to say how much of said prosperity stolen from the African?).

For us, like for them, the trick is to keep reminding ourselves who the enemy is and grant them no quarter, no co-operation. But it's scary! And I guess that's the difference between colonialism and the downtrodden status to which we are reverting: we can buy basic safety with our acquiescence; they couldn't and can't. Fanon, who was a clinical psychologist working with revolutionary fighters suffering from post-traumatic stress, knows this very well, and one of the most fascinating sections of the book are the case studies he presents. The language of "dislocated personalities" and so on is easily translated, and we see that exploitation brutalizes everyone, even the people who stay out of the way and go about their business and feel so worthless and guilty that one day they take a knife to their neighbour for looking at their wife. The experience of oppression damages the oppressed, and so we're back to violence again--in a sick society, all violence directed against the structures of that society is self-defence whether you're immediately threatened or not, because it's official society that's damaging you. And then the violence you engages in damages you as well. The colonized is the one against whom war is by definition always being waged, and--Fanon asserts based on his clinical work--fighting back is the least bad option. That's the sick logic of empire: it always reaches the point where violence, revolutionary violence, is the best option if anyone, imperialists included, is going to avoid being broken to bits inside. show less

Pretty amazing. The final chapter, talking about his experience dealing with those traumatised in various ways by colonialism and the war as well as the bullshit given as explanations of Algerian behaviour by French psychiatrists, is horrifying and incredible. He has a great writing style which is clear and gets you caught up in his ideas of liberation - although I sometimes wish he said more on certain issues or whatever, you get a very clear picture of what he thinks. His descriptions of the problems of decolonisation ring true today. Important stuff if you're at all interested in the topic.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2441890.html

The classic anti-colonialist text, with foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre, explaining and legitimising violence against a colonial regime; the author was thinking particularly of Algeria to which he gave the last few years of his life, but also of the whole area dominated by European colonisation, particularly the rest of Africa. It's passionate and well-argued, and I can see why it has remained a key political text for the last half-century (and will endure much longer). He is particularly good on the psychological consequences of manipulation by unaccountable regimes for those governed by them.

However, I have several problems with Fanon's analysis. The biggest is that in justfying violence, he show more rather fetishises it - I've seen this with other commentators too, the assumption that a resort to violence is in itself evidence for the purity and legitimacy of its perpetrators. I'm not convinced by that. The IRA's supporters used to argue that violence was the natural outcome of the situation in Northern Ireland, and convinced a lot of people of the purity and legitimacy of their cause, before they settled for a deal which was essentially what had been on offer 25 years and hundreds of deaths earlier. Some politically motivated violence is really crime, even if perpetuated by the oppressed.

That's tactics, in a way; there's an error also of strategy, in that Fanon calls on internal differences in a country to be ironed out, or preferably just ignored, in favour of making common cause against the colonial oppressor. That's all very well; but it doesn't address the issue of sharing out power and other resources internally once the colonial oppressor has withdrawn (or even beforehand). Questions of regional autonomy, deals between ethnic and religious groups, and indeed emancipation of women, sexual minorities and other groups, can't simply be handwaved away by focussing on the national struggle. Privileging the national struggle above all else allows for discrimination against groups who are deemed insufficiently committed to the cause, and Fanon's arguments legitimise this.

He also gets wrong the economic and political trajectory of post-colonial states, though I don't think he can really be blamed for this as nobody else saw it coming either. And he rejects any connection between the Algerian war and the struggle for civil rights in the USA; which is one link that I'm quite happy to allow, given the parallels in power and wealth structures and the use of state coercion as a political tool.

Still, I'm glad I have now read it. show less