“Fifty years ago, Frantz Fanon died, leaving us with his last testimony, The Wretched of the Earth. Written in the crucible of the Algerian War of Independence and the early years of Third World decolonization, this book achieved an almost biblical status”
…
“[The] Post-colonial nightmare Fanon predicted in [The]Wretched of the Earth has become our reality”
- Achille Mbembe, 2011
Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a classical text on the conditions of the colonial reality. It is one of Fanon’s widely considered books; hence it has “achieved an almost biblical status” (Mbembe, 2011). The text provides a critical analysis of an overwhelming number of issues drawing from racial formation identity, colonialism/decolonization, narratives of the liberation struggle, language, nationalism and violence and the various ways in which it shapes and it alters the relationship between colonizer and the colonized. Before I attempt to critically engage the book, it is significant for this paper to contextualize the Preface of the book by Jean Paul Sartre. In this paper I will briefly look at the chapter “On Violence”, and will look at violence as a force for change, and as a tool for social and political transformation. The critical response will focus on the chapter ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ This paper will also be relating the arguments of the chapter on contemporary times in an attempt to make them relevant and meaningful to our contemporary political reality.
It
is important to recall that Fanon wrote most parts of the book in 1960 – when
decolonization was occurring in most African countries. This suggests that,
Fanon had a direct experience of colonialism, independence and problems that
came with it. In A Dying Colonialism
I was of a view that Fanon was at times idealistic and too optimistic about the
liberation struggle. The Wretched of the Earth sustains his
passion, optimism and commitment to the ‘bottom up’ emancipatory project, but
Fanon does not blind himself to reality. He is equally critical of colonial
reality; he warns about the liberation movements, that when they have attained
independence they are capable of undermining their own democracy and liberation
through ignorance and greed. Also given the complexities of the colonial
struggle and almost a century of exploitation, newly independent countries
struggle to function independently.
It
is of paramount importance for this paper to note and clarify that The Wretched
of the Earth is not necessarily ‘for’ the colonized as Jean-Paul Sartre
suggest in the preface of the book, but it is an intensive study ‘about’ the
reality of the colonial/post-colonial world (emphasis added). I find specific
contents of Sartre’s account of The Wretched of the Earth in the preface of
the book, not only to be problematic but also Eurocentric to a certain extent. Firstly,
the preface by Sartre is problematic on grounds that it perpetuate the Manichean
thinking that Fanon thrives to transcend and problematize throughout the book,
the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’. For Sartre,
‘us’ refers to a White or European audience, and ‘them’ refers to the group
that has been subjected to wretchedness. Sartre writes that Fanon’s book “is
for his brothers; his aim is to teach them to beat us at our own game” (Sartre,
196: 10). Euro-centrism thrives on the idea of the west discovering the ‘other’.
The colonized are portrayed by Sartre through the trajectory of euro-centrism as
objects rather than subject in the story of their emancipation and liberation.
The
point I am trying to assert here is that, Sartre is wrong about the book’s intended
audience. Fanon writes The Wretched of
the Earth for a multi-racial and global audience from all walks of life.
Fanon challenges the Manichean thinking created by colonialism. Some people
might ask how does Fanon challenges this thinking, given the fact that the
colonial situation demands a clear division between colonizer and the
colonized. Fanon (1961: 138) in advanced
pages of the book asserts that “racialism and hatred and resentment - ‘a
legitimate desire for revenge’ cannot sustain a war of liberation”. Fanon does
not separate between the colonizer and colonized using fixed notion of racial
essence. But he believes lived experience of European colonialism will compel
people’s political choice, whether they identify with the colonizer or
colonized.
Perhaps
significantly in this chapter, Fanon talks about the importance of violence as
a political tool, which can not only bring about fundamental change, but which
also deconstructs the colonizer-colonized, master-slave relationship thus
bringing in a change in the social structure from the bottom up. Violence is
constructed as an empowerment tool which the colonized uses to re assert their
authority and legitimacy at the colonizer. This notion of violence, as a
function, as an instrument of change, or as being a necessary condition for
the bringing into change, a new world for the colonized subjects, which would
construct them as a people with agency, rather than passive subjects who are
the receivers of powers. This understanding is interesting, as it leads to
questions posed about the role of violence in post-Apartheid South Africa, and
its meaning in relation to the marginalized communities?
The
role of violence, especially domestic, in asking whether it could be related to
the apartheid apparatus which sought to deconstruct the black self, and
reconstruct in its place, submissive and broken individuals who resort to
violence, especially at home, as a vicious means of communication and asserting
order and discipline. And to echo Michael Neocosmos, why do events such as the
2008 xenophobic attacks took on a violent undertone, and the significance of
violence as a signifier of dispossession, disillusionment and necessity in
carrying the message home of discontentment? Thus one could postulate that if
violence could be seen as language needed by the colonized to re assert
legitimacy and right to existence to the settler, then therefore violence could
also be seeing as linguistic medium in contemporary South Africa, which needs
to be deciphered and broken down, and understood in relation to the broader
society.
Fanon
argues that the colonized world is a world divided into compartments, divided
into two, to cater for two different species (Fanon, 2001: 30). One could argue
that this special divide, which seeks to establish boundaries and pursuit
discrimination of the space, ensured that locations and boundaries were set up
in which the colonized was localized and positioned, and essentially made to
perform the role of a foreigner, in his or her own country. Fanon (1961: 187)
is of a view that a compartmentalized colonial city perpetuates itself even
after a successful independence. This transpires only if the capital city,
which Fanon regards as “a commercial notion inherited from the colonial period”,
becomes even more important and central to the economy of the new country
(Fanon, 1961: 187).
Furthermore,
Fanon’s post-colonial nightmare has become our reality in South Africa. Johannesburg
is without doubt one of many cities in post-colonial Africa that is “a
commercial notion inherited from the colonial [and apartheid] periods” and
continues to perpetuate a compartmentalized space. Johannesburg is a highly
contested space, it is a center of power and an economic hub. The problem, Fanon
argue is when the new ruling elites move to the capital city and occupy
colonial governing institutions. What happens is that the new democratic
government duplicates the structure of imperialism, rather than changing it.
Steve Biko just like Fanon, at the height of apartheid was able to predict that
a change of governors without dismantling colonial and apartheid oppressive
institutions will be an illusion (Biko, 1987: 149). Meaning if there is “a mere
change of face of those in governing positions, what is likely to happen is
that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks
filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie. Our society will be run
almost as of yesterday” (Biko, 1987: 149).In an allegedly democratic South
Africa for instance, the state openly uses violence to silence the poor from
their legitimate protest against corruption and service delivery.
Fanon
suggests a radical decentralization of power that will compel the reordering of
the colonial space. Fanon (1961: 164) correctly assert that “in a certain
number of underdeveloped countries the parliamentary game is faked from the
beginning” (Emphasis added). South African parliamentary democracy for
instance, does not represent the will of the people, on grounds that it is
inherently oligarchic, and that it subsequently leads to the technicism of
politics from the public domain into the private, which is not accessible to
the majority. Fanon argue that it cannot be ethically correct for 300 people to
decide for the greater majority, “the whole population [must] plan and decide
[together] even if it takes them twice or three times long” (Cherki, 2000:
157).
In conclusion, what I get from the Wretched of the Earth is that, humanism
is a system of thought attaching fundamental importance on human rather than
other supernatural matters. It is also equally problematic to normatively
describe humanity “as purity of thought and rationality as thinking according
to absolute rules of inference”, and then locate human existence exclusively
within Europe (Headly, 2006: 7). This however, runs a “risk of confining and
condemning non-Europeans to irrationality or cognitive underdevelopment”
(Headly, 2006: 8). We need to rethink
humanity in a critical way. Critical humanism entails the rethinking of the
problematic of being or existence outside the confines of western metaphysic of
presence. Fanon (1961: 205) believes that "Each generation must out of
relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." As a generation
of a disbanded revolution in our underdeveloped countries we need to
continuously question, challenge and resist the neo-liberal technocratic
thinking and the legacy of “colonialism and also help on the maturing of the
struggles of” our life time (Fanon, 1961: 206). For example formalized
agreements between African Union and Europe Union, are generally assumed to be
in the best interest of Africa, on grounds that the continent is impoverished,
marginal and in desperate need to achieve “what Europe has achieved in terms of
social and human development” (Zondi, 2013:10).
We need to problematize this kind of thinking by working out new concept
of being. To advance our humanity differently, we will have to invent and make
discoveries that are made with the people and driven by the people.
Bibliography
Banchetti-Robino,
M.P. and Headley, R.C., 2006. Shifting
the Geography of Reason Gender, Science and Religion, Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Press.
Biko,
S., 1987. I Write What I like,
Johannesburg: Heinemann Publishing.
Cherki,
A., 2000. Frantz Fanon: A Portrait, Cornel
University: Cornel University press.
Fanon,
F., 1961. The Wretched of the Earth,
New York: Grove Press.
Mbembe,
A., 2011. Fanon’s Nightmare, our Reality, http://mg.co.za/article/2011-12-23
date of access: 7 May 2013.
Zondi,
S., 2013. ‘Afro-centric IR Perspectives: Decolonial Epistemic Options for the
analysis of African-EU Relations’, African
Voices in the New IR Theory.
