If you want to understand decolonization and colonial relationships, Frantz Fanon is an excellent place to start.
Born in Martinique, the afro-carribean philosopher and pshychiatrist inspired leaders such as Steve Biko, Malcom X and Che Guevara. The Wretched of the Earth is his most renowned work – and is by far the most important literary document of social consciousness.
But, it is a not an easy book to read. So I’m going to break down 10 important quotes from the book’s first essay: On Violence. Afterwards, do whatever you can to get hold of this book. Read it, read it, read it!
#1
-FranTz Fanon
Decolonization is always a violent event.
In the first essay, On violence, Fanon’s central argument is that decolonization cannot exist without violence. Why is that? Because colonization itself is violent. Violence is colonization’s mother tongue and the only way for its subjects to be heard is to respond with that same language.
To Fanon, violence is not just inevitable, it is the initiation of freedom. It is the angry bull fueled by centuries of hate ready to rise against the other bull to say: “Meet your match. Leave or we will drive you out.”
When I think of recent military coups in West Africa, Fanon would agree that this is a cleansing process. The west and its followers may view this as another “African” tantrum but this is The Wretched of The Earth unfolding before our eyes.
I want share with you a great article that outlines West Africa’s new and inspiring wave of consciousness that fall in line with Fanon’s pan-africanist vision.
#2
– FranTz Fanon
It is the colonist who fabricate and continue to fabricate the colonized subject. The colonist derives his validity, i.e-his wealth from the colonial system.
There is nothing scarier than realizing your existence has been shaped by a system that belittles you. It’s the reason that forces like The Black Consciousness Movement and Black Panther were formed. To show people that being freed on paper is not enough. Fanon believes that the way we validate ourselves, the measures we set ourselves up against whether in education, wealth or status— need to be interrogated.
Bantu education in South Africa was a system of colonial fabrication. Placing black people as society’s migrant workers was a system of colonial fabrication. Forming ghettos and townships and turning a blind eye to crumbling amenities just because they belong to blacks is a system of colonial fabrication.
This system says: we will give you only this much so you remain beneath us. Fanon calls colonized societies to open their eyes to how they have been shaped and manipulated = to accept their subserviant roles.
#3
-FranTz Fanon
The gaze that the colonized subject casts on the colonist’s sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possesion…The colonized man is an envious man.
Fanon introduces the idea that envy, desire, and materialism are prevailing symptoms of the colonized subject. i believe this make sense. Imagine working your whole life in mines for gold rings you can never afford to wear. Imagine taking three taxis to work nine hour shift for a family with two cars. Think how it may feel knowing that around you there are a handful of people scattered in wide glossy landscapes while you are crouched in a one room shack.
And then it it hits you as Fanon illustrates: how can this go on in my own land? Why I am I not entitled to that luxury? As a result the colonized subject yearn for that luxury, would do anything to obtain it. Sometimes the lust and envy blinds their focus and they pursue these goods instead of pursuing true liberation.
This is a really interesting idea. All around us we see leaders who spent their youth fighting for freedom and now in they’re old age they wear desiner brands, drive fancy cars while the people beneath them — the people they fought for — starve and ask themselves what has really changed?
Fanon breaks this down psycho-analytically and makes us think: is this the consequence of being denied so much for so long? Are former colonies locked in a scarcity mindeset that consequently translates to greed? Are we even free if we are still chained by desire?
#4
-FranTz Fanon
Those (western) values which seem to ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged.
Fanon lays it bear: the societies we praise for their democracy and equality are the very custodians of oppression. They spread the seed of morality, preach it, define it and yet dehumanizing the darker races is like a second nature. The “real-life struggle” that Fanon refers to is the struggle of western hypocrisy.
If we look at what’s happening in the Sahel region — countries overthrowing puppet governments through military coups — the “real-life struggle” is one that goes against western democracy, western ideals. It is our job to educate ourselves by not pointing fingers at these countries and call them savages. No. They are fighting for their economic independence no matter what it looks like.
#5
-FranTz Fanon
The colonized intellectual learned from his masters that the individual must assert himself.
Individual over community. Nuclear families over atomized families. Urbanization over ruralization. These are the western principles that we have imbibed. Choose the self. It is a complex issue because we all have free-will, desires and preferences, and of course it is easier to choose what is better for own prosperity.
However, we must remember the sacrafices of people that came before us so we could be in the position we are in today. We must also not be blind and think the journey of independence is over. There still many more sacrafices to be made. The question is if we are willing to make them.
Fanon shows us that we need to be conscious of how much our desires are influenced by Western models that historically existed to break collective uprisings. I’m talking about paying black informants to betray their commerades, giving certain black leaders power to feed their egos but also keep them under the colonists’ shoe. These are all actions that assert the individual. Think of Jacob Zuma, Mabuto Sese Seko or Mohammed Bazoum. Counter-revolutionists and western puppets who for themselves before their people.
#6
-FranTz Fanon
In the colonial context there is no truthful behaviour.
None. People will ask “why are you still talking about colonization? This is a thing of the past.” Imagine pulling someone out of a well but attatched to their leg is a long and endless string of rotting cadavres.
That is what delocolization is about. It’s about understanding how far the hole goes and dealing with all the grimy things that keep emerging to the surface. As James Baldwin said: “The past will remain horrible for as long as we refuse to assesss it correctly.”
The cadavres attatched to the legs of ‘newly independent’ states represent the lies of the colonialist system. The very first lie being that there a superior race even exists.
We need to remember that lies turn into truths if we remain blind enough to believe them.
#7
-FranTz Fanon
The colonized subject will first train this aggressiveness sediment on his people. This is the period when black turns on black.
What happens when anger can’t be expressed to the face of its source? Its taken back home and unleashed among one’s own.
Forced to hide their emotion, stoically accept their injustice, the colonized subject believes that since they can’t overpower the oppressive system, they might as well overpower their own communities.
So we steal from each other, we compete with each other– we forget that this is only making the colonist’s job easier.
#8
– FranTz Fanon
The colonized subject also manages to lose sight of the colonist through religion. Fatalism relieves the oppressor of all responsibility since the cause of wrong-doing, poverty and the inevitable can be attributed to God.
Now it gets touchy. So, the topic of religion. There is surely comfort in knowing that there is something greater, something more infinite beyond our measly mortal existence. It makes all the issues here on earth trivial. However we are on earth. And there is the wretched lot of us who seek self-actualization. Therefore, Fanon asserts that religion is often used as a distraction, an anesthesia to numb what is being taken from right from you.
Understand that Fanon is not saying religion equals distraction, however he does affirm that religion and fatalist thinking has passified many colonized communities in moments when action is needed.
#9
– FranTz Fanon
Repression intensifies the progress made by the national consciousness.
Leave a lid over a boiling pot and it will spill over. The Wretched of the Earth is a reminder to all that national liberation is a ticking time bomb in a briefcase. Colonial powers who think they can toss this briefcase around are stupid.
Fanon gives a warning that desperation and anger is a powerful emotion and overtime, no amount of advanced machinery or weapondry can supress it.
Ask young Palestinian soldiers fighting against Israel’s western funded arms. That is not an easy feat but that is the power of an angry and repressed people.
#10
– FranTz Fanon
The people of the Third World are in the process of shattering their chains, and what is extroadinary is that they suceed.
The Wretched of the Earth is a book that implores us not to underestimate the developing world. The Haitians defeated the French army, the Algerians won a fierce and notoriously brutal war against the French. Gabon, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso successfully drove out their colonialists with civilian support. We are in the process of shackling our chains. And slowly, but surely — we will succeed.
I hope you’re inspired to read this book and see this complex world differently! Thanks so much for reading 🙂
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