Kyla Hazell
The Wretched of the
Earth raises the question of how a revolutionary
moment can be sustained in order to bring about true decolonisation. A theme of
Fanon’s throughout the three works we have studied is the change that
emancipatory action renders in a human soul, but this final book seems to
introduce the issue of how to sustain that transformation beyond the moment in
which the flag of independence is raised. In this text, Fanon speaks to his
concerns about the years which follow liberation. He describes post-colonial
societies which remain subject to the former colonial powers’ economic
interests (aligned with the interests of the national bourgeoisie), while their
people are rapidly depoliticised and see little concrete change (Fanon, 1961:
65). This demobilisation can be seen as a massive part of the failure to
continue transformative projects beyond the revolutionary moment because motion
and action are fundamental for Fanon. In describing the Manichean world of
colonial society, Fanon (1961: 51) explicitly uses the descriptors “motionless”
and “static” to denote how a frozen social space is one which stagnates. In
contrast, it is always the movement towards ideals and the active struggle that
contains creative potential and brings about individual and collective change. This
essay will read Wretched as a warning
against the stagnation of society after liberation and argue that one of the messages
Fanon is attempting to convey is that forward-motion after emancipation needs
to take the form of innovative, critical thought to reconstruct the very values
of society in an inclusive manner. In order to do this, political education and
mobilisation must continue and people must be brought in to the political
project of nation building as thinking contributors.
Fanon (1961: 48) discusses how colonialism creates the idea
that the West is the home of Universal values, cultures and ideas. The aim is for
the oppressed to adopt these values as their ideals and voluntarily submit to
their own subordination in accordance with them. This is something which comes
to be challenged during the struggle. The people acquire a new self-respect and
a sense of ownership which drives them to desire engagement with political decision-making
and what Fanon (1961: 95) calls a ‘taste for the concrete’. He believes that
this makes it difficult for any opportunists to take advantage of the people
after liberation, but experience seems to dictate otherwise due to many
post-colonial countries dealing with issues of equal citizenship, vast economic
inequality, and representation. If we accept Fanon’s argument that it is the
action of struggle which makes people demand concrete democratic control, then
one explanation for this would be that the people are demobilised after
liberation and so disconnected from the kind of politics that made “the attempt
at mystification...practically impossible” (Fanon, 1961: 95). Fanon (1961: 147)
says that the “new facts which the native will now come to know exist only in
action. They are the essence of the fight which explodes the old colonial
truths and reveals unexpected facets, which brings out new meanings and
pinpoints the contradictions camouflaged by these facts.” He describes the
education people acquire through this active process as being the key to
understanding social truths and acquiring true freedom. In its absence, the
result will be “nothing save a minimum of readaptation, a few reforms at the
top, a flag waving: and down there at the bottom an undivided mass, still living
in the middle ages, endlessly marking time.” (Fanon, 1961: 147)
Though the struggle calls the colonial prescriptions in to
question, certain values may remain unchallenged after liberation (Fanon, 1961:
49). These provide a justification for the retention of colonial structures
which are seen as models of the way things naturally should be. Because these
structures are built on inequality, segregation, and exploitation (Fanon, 1965:
94), the majority of people remain without redress while a few elite leaders
benefit from the new dispensation of equal political rights (Fanon, 1961: 55).
As a strong example of a structure remaining unchanged, Fanon refers to the
continuation of an economy in which Africans extract resources for export to
European nations without developing local industries able to refine and utilise
these resources according to our own designs. Fanon says that the sheer effort
of the liberated people cannot be sustained for any significant period at the
level required to catch up in a competitive capitalist economy in which they
are already without resources, infrastructure, and skills (Fanon, 1961: 98). He
argues that what is needed rather is a rethinking
of systems: what we export, how we use our resources, where we draw our energy
from, and which industries we prioritise, for example (Fanon, 1961: 100).
One of the most interesting lessons that I think the book is
trying to convey is that the colonial or post-colonial context is a unique one,
with distinctive problems that require tailored solutions. Fanon (1961: 40)
speaks about how Marxist analyses will never fit neatly in the colonial
context. He argues that we should not be trying to choose between capitalism
and socialism as they have been defined by other men in foreign contexts, but
rather aiming to establish our own, contextually appropriate values and
practices (Fanon, 1961: 99). In the same way that fighting against colonialism
within the nation required a violent struggle, so too fighting neo-colonialism
requires a violent challenge to the former values and systems which tie us in
to a global economic system which is designed to benefit the former colonial
powers at the expense of the underdeveloped nations. It seems necessary in
stating this to briefly consider what is meant by violence in this context.
Fanon is clearly describing physical combat in his chapters on the subject and
provides convincing arguments for the necessity of such in achieving
liberation. That said, I do not think that the kind of violence required to
tumble colonialism would necessarily suit contemporary challenges, for the
simple reason that the imposition of neo-colonial force takes place far more
insidiously and indirectly than the brute force of direct colonial rule. Much
of the control which keeps people under and allows for oppressive structures to
remain unchallenged is due to a mind-set which sees such structures as natural
or unquestionable. If this is a force which operates at the level of thought,
it is perhaps a forceful, challenging, combative and audacious thought which is
required by way of violent response from the former colonies.
Part of the problem of thinking about new solutions and
producing this challenging thought, though, relates to who is empowered and
positioned to engage in such thinking. In South Africa, many of those who
attain higher degrees and step in to the role of being society’s “thinkers”
(lawyers, journalists, engineers, scientists, and businesspersons, to name a
few) are unconcerned with radically challenging the dominant values and ideas
because the existing structures serve them (Fanon, 1961: 150). Any
nation-building which is driven from above thus risks being shallow in that it
benefits only a few. Fanon argues that the true building of a national
consciousness would “interpret the manifest will of the people and reveal the
eager African peoples” (Fanon, 1961: 247). He continues to say that a national
middle class which truly hoped to act in the national interest would have to consider
itself obliged to resist simply stepping in to the comfortable roles available
to it. The middle class would rather need “to put itself to school with the
people: in other words to put at the people's disposal the intellectual and
technical capital that it has snatched when going through the colonial
universities.” (Fanon, 1961: 152) The thinking which needs to be done cannot be
done by the University-educated middle classes alone, but the danger is that we
are failing to look further afield. Demobilisation and depoliticisation
post-democracy sees the masses sent home to await transformation solutions set
by their leaders. This is a fundamental error, because it fails to follow
Fanon’s lesson that it is active political engagement which transforms society
and generates new, more universal understandings during the struggle. There is
a lack of political education post-democracy (Fanon, 1961: 117), with very
little focus on how the millions of citizens in rural areas can contribute to
and strengthen the democratic process in a substantive sense. Fanon (1961: 117)
describes how the transformative project can be counteracted because the people
have not been involved in discussions about the nature of the problems the
former colony seeks to address and how they relate to global political and
economic structures. Sustaining the creative potential generated by the tension
of struggle needs to involve a continuous challenging of (struggling against)
dominant values when these appear to contradict present problems (the
environmental crisis in conversation with capitalism provides many of these).
And this critical thinking needs to occur broadly so that those who are not
served by the continued structures of colonialism are able to reveal the
contradictions and imperfections made plain by their experience.
Fanon
concludes The Wretched of the Earth
with a series of cases documenting the psychological damage wrought by
colonialism. This, in my mind, shows how much further the painful work of
transformation and healing will have to go beyond the moment of liberation. The
chapter thus closes the book by reminding the reader of the kind of damage that
needs to be worked through and drives home the point that simple political
freedom will not be enough to address the pain which exists in the post-colony.
Following on from his discussion of violence, the transformative potential of
struggle, the need for new ideas, and the importance of a true national
consciousness, these last cases leave the reader with the distinct impression
that much remains to be done.
Reference
Frantz
Fanon, 1961, The Wretched of the Earth
Grove Press: New York.
