Frantz Omar Fanon was born on July 20, 1925 on the Caribbean Island, Martinique, and died on December 6, 1961.He wrote extensively and is famously cited as an inspiration for anti-colonial movements across the globe. His books include:"The Fact of Blackness"(1952); Black Skin, White Masks (1952); A Dying Colonialism (1959); The Wretched of the Earth (1961); Toward the African Revolution(1969).
As you can see from the publication dates (some books were subsequently translated), Fanon produced an impressive body of revolutionary literature over two decades.
We will focus our attention on Wretched of The Earth (1961) which is a seminal text in the field of Postcolonial Studies.
The foreword to "Wretched" is written by Jean-Paul Sartre and is an excellent place to start your reading.
Fanon wrote "Wretched" during the Algerian struggle against French colonialism. The book is more than just an account of what happened in that colonial struggle. Instead, Fanon spends most of his time analyzing the disastrous effects of colonialism on the minds of the colonized.
His interest in this angle of revolutionary analysis stems from his training as a psychiatrist. Toward the end of "Wretched" you will find discussions of the mental illnesses he says is caused by colonialism.
In 1952 Fanon started to practice psychiatry in an Algerian hospital. In October 1952 he married a young white Frenchwoman, Marie-Josephe ("Josie") Duble.
In 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) declared was against French rule. By 1957 Fanon resigned his position as psychiatrist and joined the Algerian liberation movement.
Fanon was very active in supporting the FLN and even established what is said to be Africa's first psychiatric clinic during this time.
There were several assassination attempts on Fanon's life. By 1960 he was diagnosed with leukemia and he went to the US to seek medical treatment. He died in Washington, DC, on December 12, 1961. He was buried in Algeria. His wife, Josie Fanon, took her life in Algiers in 1989.
We are no doubt ambitious to embark on a full reading on Fanon this late in the term but I think we can draw some important cursory lessons. These will be important to understand Steve Biko's "I Write What I Like" because both analysts delve into the psychological context of oppression and liberation.
We will begin our discussion where Fanon does. He writes in the opening chapter:
National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used of the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. At whatever level we study it - relationships between individuals, new names for sports clubs, the human admixture at cocktail parties, in the police, on the directing boards of national or private banks - decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain "species" of men by another "species" of men.(Wretched, p.35)
From this opening paragraph, we can see that Fanon postures liberation as a struggle of absolutes between colonized and colonizer, a dialectic if you will.
He goes on to say:
To tell the truth, the proof of success lies in a whole social structure being changed from the bottom up.(Wretched, p.35)
There is in this opening conceptualization no middle-ground, so to speak. Comprise does not exist in the battle for absolutes (survival) between colonizer and colonized.
In a very direct sense. The consequences of the anti-colonial liberation struggle is as severe for the colonized as it is for the colonizer.
Fanon tells us that decolonization is "a program of disorder" than comes about when two forces meet(colonizer vs colonized) in a determined historical process.
Two points need to be taken in account from this position.
First, decolonization is "disorder" but it is planned (determined) by the historical forces/process.
Fanon is clearly influenced by Marxist thinking when he explains to us his version of material change.
Nothing happens by chance. The dialectic is a matter of clashing historical points that move us to a new reality (a synthesis) which posits a new historical position.
Remember his quote above that reveals decolonization as a process of disempowering the colonizer and empowering 'the new species of man', the liberated man.
It is important to note that violent struggle is the backdrop to all of his theorizing. Change does not happen without violent confrontation.
I part, a major part, Fanon believes that colonization is an absolute violence and that revolutionary struggle cannot meet and absolute without a greater violence.
Peaceful change in absolute struggles is not possible for Fanon.
Decolonization for the oppressed/colonized is also a story of re-creation but not in terms that are religious.
Fanon writes:
Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power (God/religion); the "thing" which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself.("Wretched", pp. 37-37).
Fanon position is that the very essence of colonization must be subject to question and change.
Nothing stays the same because everything about colonization is oppressive. There are no kind or progressive notions hidden underneath colonial oppression for Fanon.
His reasoning stems from the manner that he describes the colonial context.
He says the "colonial world is divided into two compartments" with "quarters for Europeans (colonizer) and Natives (colonized).
The two compartments are opposed to each other, therefore, "No conciliation is possible, ..."
The colonizer is white and rich and presses inequality on the colonized. This is a violent imposition.
Fanon tells us that Marxist thinking must be "stretched" when viewing the colonial compartments.
It is not just about class. It is also about race. 'You are rich because you are white, you are poor and oppressed because you are black'.
The anti-colonial struggle can't merely reform this absolute dichotomy. It can't just make the 'rich white compartment' more equal or non-racial.
Instead, the colonial grid and its contents must be wholly removed, even expelled.
Compromise, again, is not possible in the struggle of inequalities brought on by colonization.
I want to stop here. There is much to chew on and many questions must be addressed.
We must now ask who will lead the revolutionary anti-colonial struggle? What role do intellectuals play in this anti-colonial struggle?
What about the peasants or what Lenin called the lumpenproletariat?.
What role does the colonial church and/or religion play in the liberation struggle?
What is the language of revolution and what about white/colonial values?
We will turn to these question in our next meetings.
Study hard.
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