The Podcast for Social Research, Episode 14: Violence and Resistance – Frantz Fanon

In the fourteenth episode of the Podcast for Social Research, Anjuli, Tony, and Ajay talk through the life, work, and legacy of Frantz Fanon, the Martiniquean psychiatrist and philosopher of decolonization who was also a veteran of World War II and an adherent of the Algerian revolution. This conversation takes up major texts in Fanon’s oeuvre (Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth) as well as profound theoretical controversies that radiate from them—idiocy, the literary dimensions of Fanon’s work, his strangeness of form and methodology, the psychological inflections of his writing, the political structure of states and colonies, the best footnote in all of twentieth-century philosophy, and particularly the nature and meaning of violence as praxis, “perfect mediation,” symbol, and atmosphere—violence as reason to despair—and as reason not to.

Lumumba’s death: Could we (Africans) have acted differently?

The great success of the enemies of Africa is to have corrupted the Africans themselves.  It is true that these Africans had vested interest in the murder of Lumumba.  Heads of puppet governments, in a fake independence, faced everyday by massive opposition from their peoples, it did not take long to convince themselves that the real independence of the Congo would put them personally at risk.  And there were other Africans, a little less puppet, but who get frightened when it comes to disengaging Africa from the West.  It seems as if these African Heads of State are still afraid to face Africa.  These, also, though less actively, but consciously, contributed to the deterioration of the situation in Congo.  Little by little, we were reaching the agreement in the West that there was a need to intervene in Congo, we could not let things evolve at this pace.

Frantz Fanon en Afrique et en Asie

Samir Amin, Pambazuka

FANON, LES ANTILLES ET L'ESCLAVAGE

Fanon est né Antillais. L’histoire de son peuple, de l’esclavage, de sa relation à la métropole française, a donc été par la force des choses le point de départ de sa réflexion critique. La première et seule révolution sociale que le continent américain ait connu jusqu’aux temps récents est celle des esclaves de Saint Domingue (Haiti) ayant conquis par eux-mêmes leur liberté. La révolution de Saint Domingue coïncidait avec celle du peuple français. L’aile radicale de la révolution française sympathisait donc naturellement avec celle des esclaves ayant conquis leur liberté par eux-mêmes, devenus de ce fait d’authentiques citoyens. Mais bien entendu les colons de la place ne l’entendaient pas ainsi. Le recul de la révolution française s’est traduit dans les Antilles par le rétablissement de l’esclavage, à nouveau aboli par la Seconde République en 1848, sans que pour autant soit aboli leur statut colonial jusqu’en 1945, date à partir de laquelle s’ouvre un chapitre nouveau de leur histoire.

On National Culture: Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

Speech by Frantz Fanon at the Congress of Black African Writers, 1959, Chapter Four of The Wretched of the Earth, archived at the Marxists Internet Archive

Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.

The Fact of Blackness

by Frantz Fanon, Chapter Five of Black Skin, White Masks, archived at Chicken Bones

“Dirty nigger!” Or simply, “Look, a Negro!”

I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.

Online Texts by Frantz Fanon

Book Chapters

• North African Syndrome, Frantz Fanon, 1952

• The Negro and Language, Frantz Fanon, 1952

• The Fact of Blackness, Frantz Fanon, 1952

• Algeria Unveiled, Frantz Fanon, 1959

• Medicine and Colonialism, by Frantz Fanon, 1961

• On Violence, by Frantz Fanon, 1961

• The Pitfalls of National Consciousness, Frantz Fanon, 1961
  

The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

by Frantz Fanon, chapter three of The Wretched of the Earth, archived at the Marxists Internet Archive

HISTORY teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. For a very long time the native devotes his energies to ending certain definite abuses: forced labour, corporal punishment, inequality of salaries, limitation of political rights, etc. This fight for democracy against the oppression of mankind will slowly leave the confusion of neo-liberal universalism to emerge, sometimes laboriously, as a claim to nationhood. It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.

Fanon Reading Group Text Six: 'On Violence'

'On Violence', from The Wretched of the Earth, is online here.