The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (Theme)

 

The Wretched of the Earth

by Frantz Fanon

(Theme) 

Fanon says, that colonialism is an unhealthy condition for the Algerian because it deprives him of not only economic and social security, education, and a chance at a better life, but also because it robs him of his basic humanity. Colonialism generates psychiatric illnesses that stem from a complete devaluation of the self, accompanied by various phobias and extreme anxiety states that grow out of violence. He presents a number of cases of mental disorder directly attributable to colonialism or to the war for independence.

In ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ colonial domination is a means to disrupt the cultural life of a conquered people. The cultural obliteration is due to negation of national existence by new legal authorities by the banishment of the natives to the outskirts.

Colonialism

Fanon believed colonialism as a complicated network of complicities and internal power imbalances between factions within the broader categories of colonizer and colonized. He questions whether the colonized world should copy the west or develop a whole new set of values and ideas. He exposes the methods of colonial domination, the white world uses to hold down the colonies.

He classifies whites and native intellectual who have adopted western values and tactics as enemies.

Decolonization

Fanon believed that decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It is a means of the veritable creation of new men. The agents of colonizers speak the language of pure force and do not seek to hide the domination. They are the medium of sparking the flames of violence into the minds of the natives. The exploited natives see that liberation implies the use of force and violence.

Fanon felt the idea of compromise was a very important in the phenomenon of decolonization, for it compresses negotiations between the colonizers and the young nationalist bourgeoisie. The partisans of the colonial system know the natives can blow up bridges, ravage farms and even disrupt the economy if they do not compromise with the nationalist bourgeoise. The native bourgeoise are in turn afraid as Fanon stated of the uncertainty of the result of the masses revolt.

Call for Fight for Freedom

The natives who are anxious for the culture of their country and who wish to give to it a universal dimension ought not therefore to place their confidence in the single principle of inevitable, undifferentiated independence written into the consciousness of the people in order to achieve their task. The liberation of the nation is one thing; the methods and popular content of the fight are another.

If man is known by his acts, then we will say that the most urgent thing today for the intellectual is to build up his nation. If this building up is true, that is to say if it interprets the manifest will of the people and reveals the eager African peoples, then the building of a nation is of necessity accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalizing values. Far from keeping aloof from other nations, therefore, it is national liberation which leads the nation to play its part on the stage of history. It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows. And this two-fold emerging is ultimately the source of all culture.

National Consciousness

Although the concept of “nation” unfairly characterizes colonized subjects as historically unified in their primitiveness or exoticness, the term’s promise of solidarity and unity often proves helpful nonetheless in their attempts at political amelioration. Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of the nation that is based not so much on collective cultural traditions or ancestor-worship as political agency and the collective attempt to dismantle the economic foundations of colonial rule. Colonialism, as Fanon argues not only physically disarms the colonized subjects but robs her of a “precolonial” cultural heritage. And yet, if colonialism in this sense galvanizes the native intellectual to “renew contact once more with the oldest and most pre-colonial spring, of life of their people,” Fanon is careful to point out that these attempts at recovering national continuity throughout history are often contrived and ultimately self-defeating.

Fanon explains that “national identity” only carries meaning insofar as it reflects the combined revolutionary efforts of an oppressed people aiming at collective liberation. A national culture is not a folklore, not an abstract populism that believes it can discover the people’s true nature. It is not made up of the actions which are less and less attached to the ever-present reality of the people. A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence. It is only from that moment that we can speak of a national literature. Here there is, at the level of literary creation, the taking up and clarification of themes which are typically nationalist. This may be properly called a literature of combat, in the sense that it calls on the whole people to fight for their existence as a nation. It is a literature of combat, because it molds the national consciousness, giving it form and contours and flinging open before it new and boundless horizons; it is a literature of combat because it assumes responsibility, and because it is the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space.

The contact of the people with the new movement gives rise to a new rhythm of life and to forgotten muscular tensions, and develops the imagination. Every time the storyteller relates a fresh episode to his public, he presides over a real invocation. The existence of a new type of man is revealed to the public. The present is no longer turned in upon itself but spread out for all to see. The storyteller once more gives free rein to his imagination; he makes innovations and he creates a work of art. It even happens that the characters, which are barely ready for such a transformation - highway robbers or more or less antisocial vagabonds - are taken up and remodeled. The emergence of the imagination and of the creative urge in the songs and epic stories of a colonized country is worth following. The storyteller replies to the expectant people by successive approximations, and makes his way, apparently alone but in fact helped on by his public, towards the seeking out of new patterns, that is to say national patterns. Comedy and farce disappear, or lose their attraction. As for dramatization, it is no longer placed on the plane of the troubled intellectual and his tormented conscience. By losing its characteristics of despair and revolt, the drama becomes part of the common lot of the people and forms part of an action in preparation or already in progress.

Maxims

In Frantz Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, he talks about identity, justice, and power in the context of several ideologies. These categories can be better understood in the context of two groups, the colonists and the natives. Each one has its own identity, justice and power. The identity of these two groups can be clearly seen in Fanon’s representation of the struggle. These two groups struggled with each other because the colonists are on one side, and the natives on the other. The natives see the colonists as “the others”. They are seen this way because they came over from Europe and took over the native’s land and then made them slaves in their own society. These people’s individual rights were taken away, and they were forced to live a life of oppression. The colonists took over the upper class, and pushed everyone else down because they felt that their way was better. Therefore, the upper class wrote the history of the oppressed nation, but of mother country exploiting the colonies. The only way to get the oppressed nation into history was if the individual rises up and decides to write what he has seen and heard. These natives then lie in wait to take over their rights and freedom from which they have been stolen. “The native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor”. These people want to seek justice for that which they have been dealt by the colonists. The natives are fighting for the justice of their “national culture”. They want to build a nation on that culture not on the values that somebody else says that they must abide by. Justice will never exist in their “national culture”. It will not exist because the bourgeoisie will not let it. They are greedy people who only want the colonists kicked out, so they can take over. They do not care about the people; they just care about being bourgeoisie. When they kick out the colonists, they will not kick them out completely.

They will only keep them for their capitalist intentions to make them money. In so following these habits, they take over “The small people” therefore causing those of the middle class to take over the poor natives, and send them home to the jungle. So the cycle of injustice continues unless a change is made to stop the greedy bourgeoisie from further wrecking the spirits of the people. The people will not stand for this and therefore, they will rise up and defend themselves against those that do not believe in a government for the people. “The national government, if it chooses to be national, ought to govern by the people, by the outcastes and for the outcaste.” This is the only way to break the cycle of injustice done in third world countries.

Whether power causes injustice or injustice causes power it does not matter, power needs to be in the hands of the correct people. It is not in the case of the colonists or the bourgeoisie. The colonists are never to remind the native who is in power. He reminds the native that “there he alone is master.” The colonist puts up a force against the native and somehow expects that the native will never respond. The native in complete contrast to the colonist’s beliefs is always ready and waiting for the day that he can strike. Those of the bourgeoisie really the masses in order to kick out the colonists. Then they so happen to forget that they made these promises because they do not want a “mass mobilization”. If they cannot control the masses then they do not have power over them. That is an issue they would like to avoid. Words like “mouthwash, word spinning, blather, and fruitless agitation” will be used to describe what were formerly promises to the native. If people by change do not agree with what the dominant party agrees with then they are kicked out, persecuted, and harassed. The masses have to run and hide for fear of upsetting the bourgeoisie. According to the bourgeoisie, they have no power and no authority to do anything, but the natives want the power to be free and to express themselves in a powerful way.