A Response
to Ato Sekyi-Otu’s Fanon’s Dialectic of
Experience:
Jonis Ghedi Alasow
Ato Sekyi-Otu’s 1996 book, Fanon’s
Dialectic of Experience, offers and interesting recovery of Frantz Fanon’s work
in the contemporary postcolonial situation. In this book, Sekyi-Otu deals with
the general failure of the post-colonies. According to Sekyi-Otu they have
quite clearly failed and as a result of this it is important to comprehend the
reasons for this failure as well as the possible remedies for the
unsatisfactory status quo. This rethinking of the post-colony and its future
is, according to Sekyi-Otu, possible by recalling and rethinking the work of
Frantz Fanon. In Fanon’s Dialectic of
Experience the author provides a clear and nuanced reading of Fanon’s work.
Sekyi-Otu clears up some of the confusions and misreadings of Fanon’s work in
order to allow the reader to rethink the content and implications of Frantz Fanon’s
work. In this response I will be discussing some of Sekyi-Otu’s ideas in an
attempt to illustrate the continued relevance of Frantz Fanon. I do not claim
to offer a comprehensive engagement with either Fanon or Sekyi-Otu, but rather
wish to mention some interesting and relevant aspects of both of their work.
The first thing that I deem important to note is the fact that
Sekyi-Otu is approaching the work of Fanon from an African perspective. He in
fact points out that too much engagement with Fanon has been from within the
framework of the African diaspora (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 3). Though he does not
explicitly deny the value to this approach he does point out that there has
been a tremendous lack in terms of engagement with Fanon’s literary canon from
the perspective of post-independence Africa. He furthermore points out the fact
that previous readings of Fanon’s work have assumed that he was providing a
“doctrinal prescription” (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 4). Thus Fanon’s work has been read
as a manual for decolonisation which gives both his detractors and his
defenders a step-by-step guide to colonialism, decolonisation and the
post-colony. Sekyi-Otu accredits much of the confusion and misinterpretations
of Fanon’s work to this assumption of Fanon as a doctrinal author. He suggests
that Fanon should rather be read as a “dramatic dialectical narrative”
(Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 5).
This means that Fanon’s texts do not provide a clear chronology
which sets out a hypothesis at the beginning and then explicitly goes about
proving or disproving this hypothesis. Fanon’s work must be considered as a
piece of theatre. Fanon therefore provides the reader with “utterances of
compelling force making claims on our allegiance” (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 35). Fanon
convincingly articulates views that are often controversial and sometimes even
contradictory. These serve the purpose of challenging the reader/audience to
give these issues some thought before the views of the author are made clear.
Thus it is dangerous to assume that any statement made by Fanon is
automatically his authorial voice. It is in light of this fact that Sekyi-Otu
discards much work that has previously been done on the work of Fanon. Many
previous scholars and critics of Fanon have narrowed in on particular
statements or sections in Fanon’s work and used those in isolation from the
rest of his work. For Sekyi-Otu it is important that Fanon’s work is studied in
its entirety. One will most certainly misinterpret Fanon if one does not
recognise the dramatic nature of his texts. One must therefore recognise the fact
that Fanon writes dialectically.
Not only are Fanon’s texts to be read as dialectic texts, but his
philosophical perspective also takes on a dialectic nature. Sekyi-Otu points
out how Fanon’s dialectic of the colonial experience is rooted in the Hegelian
dialectic. Hegel’s dialectic famously argued that the conflicting thesis and
antithesis would with time and through the conflict result in an antithesis.
Fanon in a way adopts this view. Observed superficially Fanon’s dealing with
the conflict between colonial forces and anticolonial forces can be read as a
version of the Hegelian dialectic. When observed more carefully though, Fanon differs
from Hegel on two points. Firstly, the Hegelian synthesis implies a form of
compromise. The opposition between the colonial and anticolonial forces will
result in a synthesis which supposedly ‘incorporates the best of both worlds’.
For Fanon this is out of the question. The post-colony cannot be a synthesis in
the Hegelian sense. The post-colony needs to root out the colonial system
completely if it seeks to be truly emancipated. In fact, Fanon would argue that
much of the hardships that the post-colony still faces is rooted in a form of
compromise where the post-independence state still contains elements of
colonialism. South Africa for example did not truly root out apartheid, but
rather it entered into a negotiated settlement, or negotiated settlement in the
Hegelian sense. As a result the socioeconomic disparities that were the order
of the day during the apartheid era have reproduced themselves in the post-apartheid
period. Hence, Fanon’s synthesis cannot adopt a compromise, but needs to see a
complete eradication of colonialism.
The second way in which Fanon’s work diverts from that of Hegel is
with respect to the idea of truth. Implicit in the Hegelian dialectic is an
assumption that there exists a universal and objective truth somewhere towards
which all the thesis-antithesis-synthesis relations are aspiring. Thus Hegel
does not recognise the role played by power and politics in determining the
truth (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 29). Hegel therefore assumes that truth is outside of
politics. Fanon on the other hand recognises the role of politics in shaping
what is in fact the truth. Sekyi-Otu in fact makes it clear that Fanon would
agree with Antonio Gramsci’s claim that “everything is political” (Sekyi-Otu,
1996: 31). Fanon in fact makes it clear that different Histories exist for
different people. Power shapes history and truth, history and truth shape
experiences and the narration of these experiences. As a result people do not
have inherently different ontologies, but rather different experiences and
narrations of these experiences (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 39). Truth is therefore by no
means apolitical. It is in fact that primary product of power relations.
Fanon’s ideas on truth are therefore a break from the work of Hegel and in fact
are far easier to consolidate with the ideas of Michel Foucault who also sees
knowledge, power and truth as part of the same mechanism (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 29).
The fact that Fanon does not believe in an objective and universal
truth tends to problematize his own text. If truth is the product of power,
rather than an objective universal notion, then does this make Fanon’s own work
mere propaganda rather than truth? Not at all. Fanon is not strictly
Foucaultian either and does believe that a universal humanism is the truth and
that it is also possible to achieve. Furthermore he challenges the reader to
“work out new concepts” (Fanon, 1961: 255) and thus the onus is in fact on us
to navigate towards this humanist truth.
It is for this reason that Fanon remains truly relevant today.
Throughout Fanon’s work, the reader is witness to a nuanced and accurate understanding
of the nuances of colonialism, decolonisation and the post-colony. These
insights are not offered by Fanon as part of an argument that claims to
eventually make a claim that is ‘the truth’. Rather his dramatic text
illustrates the complexities of the status quo as well as the nuances of the
history that brought this status quo about. Fanon then leaves the work to us. We
are the ones who are ultimately tasked with “set[ting] afoot a new man [sic]” (Fanon,
1961: 255).
Works cited:
·
Sekyi-Otu, A. 1996, Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience, Harvard University Press: Massachusetts.
·
Fanon, F. 1961, The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin Books: London.
