Homage
to Frantz Fanon
Aimé
Césaire
Frantz
Fanon is dead. We expected this for many months, but against all reason,
we
were hopeful. We knew him as such a determined person, capable of
miracles,
and as such a crucial figure on the horizon of men. We must accept
the
facts: Frantz Fanon is dead at age 37. A short life, but extraordinary. Brief,
but
bright, illuminating one of the most atrocious tragedies of the 20th century
and
detailing in an exemplary manner the human condition, the condition of
modern
man. If the word “commitment” has a meaning, then it is embodied in
the
person of Frantz Fanon. He was called “an advocate of violence, a terrorist.”
And
it’s true Fanon appointed himself the theoretician of violence, the sole
weapon
of the colonized against the barbarism of colonialism.
However
odd it seems, his violence was non-violent; the violence of justice,
of
pureness, uncompromising. His revolt was ethical, his approach one of
generosity.
He
did not simply join a cause. He gave himself to it. Wholly. Without
reserve.
Without measure. With unqualified passion.
A
doctor, he knew human suffering. As a psychiatrist, he observed the impact
on
the human mind of traumatic events. Above all, as a “colonial” man
he
felt and understood what it was to be born and live in a colonial situation;
he
studied this situation scientifically, aided by introspection as much as
observation.
His
revolt was in this context. As a doctor in Algeria, he witnessed the unfolding
of
colonial atrocities, and this was what gave birth to rebellion. It wasn’t
enough
for him to argue in defense of the Algerian people. He united himself
with
the oppressed, humiliated, tortured and beaten down Algerian. He became
Algerian.
Lived, fought and died Algerian. A theoretician of violence,
doubtless,
and yet more so of action. Because he had an aversion to mere talk.
Because
he had an aversion to compromise. Because he had an aversion to cowardice.
No
one was more respectful of ideas, more responsible to his own ideals,
more
exacting of life he imagined as a practical ideal.
It
is thus that he became a combatant, and a writer, one of the most brilliant
of
his generation.
On
colonialism, the human consequences of colonization and racism, the
key text
to read is Black Skin, White Masks.
On decolonization, again by Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth.
Fanon
died and one reflects on his life; his epic side as well as his tragic side.
The
epic side is that Fanon lived to the very end his destiny of a champion of
liberty,
mastering to the heights his sense of identity with humanity and that
he
died a fighter for Internationalism.
At
the actual moment when he himself was entering the “great darkness,”
at
the brink of which he was reeling, he understands: “Come Comrades, it is
better
to change our thinking. To shake off and leave behind the great darkness
into
which we have plunged. . . . It is necessary to invent, to discover . . . for
Europe,
for ourselves, and for mankind, . . . to develop a new way of thinking,
to
try to bring forth a new humankind.”
I
don’t know of anything more moving or greater than this lesson of life
coming
from a deathbed.
Présence Africaine, no. 40 (1962); translated by Connie
Rosemont
