Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a critical look at colonialism, the practice of taking political control of another country with the intention of establishing a settlement and exploiting the people economically. Colonialism began in Europe around the 15th century, and it is still practiced today in some parts of the world. Fanon, a French West Indian from Martinique, a French colony located in the eastern Caribbean Sea, had a personal interest in colonialism, and his book focuses on the ways colonialism historically sought to oppress and subjugate much of the Third World through blatant racism and repeated violence. At the time Fanon wrote his book in 1961, many colonized nations were struggling for independence, and the damage of hundreds of years of racism and exploitation was acutely felt by many. The Wretched of the Earth serves as a sort of guidebook for understanding the colonized and their struggle, and in it, Fanon ultimately argues that colonialism, an inherently racist and violent practice, can only be overcome by using violence in return.
Fanon maintains that colonialism divides the world into light and dark—or in this case, black and white—in a process he refers to as Manichaeanism. Manichaeanism is a Persian religious practice from the 3rd century that is based on the basic conflict of light and dark, and, Fanon claims, it serves as the basis for the racist practice of colonialism. Since “the colonial world is a Manichaean world,” Fanon says, the colonized individual is seen as the “quintessence of evil” and is considered void of any morals or ethics. Manichaeanism assumes that light—the white settler—represents good, whereas dark—the black colonized individual—represents evil. To Fanon, colonialism is rooted in this basic racist belief. Based on the same Manichaean concept, the colonial world is likewise divided into the civilized and the savage. In keeping with the themes of light and dark, the white colonist is considered civilized, and the colonized is a savage. The colonized individual is “reduced to the state of an animal” and is referred to in “zoological terms.” Under the racist practice of colonialism, the colonized individual is completely dehumanized. According to Fanon, colonial countries are further divided into two separate “sectors”: the “colonist’s sector” and the “’native’ quarters.” The colonist’s sector is clean and well maintained; but the “native” quarters, which are crowded and neglected, are “disreputable place[s] inhabited by disreputable people.” At the very foundation of colonialism, Fanon thus argues, is a basic principle that seeks to separate and oppress people based on the color of their skin.
In addition to a system of racism, Fanon argues that colonialism is also a system of violence, which seeks to control and oppress the colonized through violent means. From the beginning, Fanon claims that the colonial situation “was colored by violence and their cohabitation—or rather the exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer—continued at the point of the bayonet and under canon fire.” Colonial control was taken by violence and is maintained in much the same way. The colonized world—which again is separated into the colonizer and the colonized—is divided by military barracks and police stations. In a colonized country, Fanon says, “the spokesperson for the colonizer and regime of oppression, is the police officer or the soldier.” The mere presence of the dividing border between the worlds maintains order through intimidation and the threat of violence. Fanon argues that for the colonized, “all he has ever seen on his land is that he can be arrested, beaten, and starved with impunity.” Thus, Fanon implies, there is no end to the violence of colonialism—it doesn’t stop once power is established. Rather, violence is a constant presence that is front and center in lives of all colonized individuals.
Fanon refers to the widespread violence in colonial countries as “atmospheric violence,” which he claims is perpetually “rippling under the skin.” To Fanon, this constant violence is proof that colonialism cannot be overcome through peaceful or passive means. The colonized masses, Fanon asserts, “intuitively believe that their liberation must be achieved and can only be achieved by force.” For the colonized, “violence is a cleansing force,” and it also rids them of the “inferiority complex” forced upon them by the racist ideology of colonialism. As a practice rooted in violence, Fanon thus argues that colonialism must be answered in kind.
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Colonialism, Racism, and Violence Quotes in The Wretched of the Earth
Decolonization, therefore, implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation. Its definition can, if we want to describe it accurately, be summed up in the well-known words: “The last shall be first.” Decolonization is verification of this. At a descriptive level, therefore, any decolonization is a success.
In its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives. For the last can be the first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists. This determination to have the last move up to the front, to have them clamber up (too quickly, say some) the famous echelons of an organized society, can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course, violence.
And when we hear the head of a European nation declare with hand on heart that he must come to the aid of the unfortunate peoples of the underdeveloped world, we do not tremble with gratitude. On the contrary, we say among ourselves, “it is a just reparation we are getting.” So we will not accept aid for the underdeveloped countries as “charity.” Such aid must be considered the final stage of a dual consciousness—the consciousness of the colonized that it is their due and the consciousness of the capitalist powers that effectively they must pay up.
The struggle for national liberation is not a question of bridging the gap in one giant stride. The epic is played out on a difficult, day-to-day basis and the suffering endured far exceeds that of the colonial period.
The people who in the early days of the struggle had adopted the primitive Manichaeanism of the colonizer—Black versus White, Arab versus Infidel—realize en route that some blacks can be whiter than the whites, and that the prospect of a national flag or independence does not automatically result in certain segments of the population giving up their privileges and their interests.
Since the bourgeoisie has neither the material means nor adequate intellectual resources such as engineers and technicians, it limits its claims to the takeover of businesses and firms previously held by the colonists. The national bourgeoisie replaces the former European settlers as doctors, lawyers, tradesmen, agents, dealers, and shipping agents. For the dignity of the country and to safeguard its own interests, it considers it its duty to occupy all these positions. Henceforth it demands that every major foreign company must operate through them, if it wants to remain in the country or establish trade.
Within the political parties, or rather parallel to them, we find the cultured class of colonized intellectuals. The recognition of a national culture and its right to exist represent their favorite stamping ground. Whereas the politicians integrate their action in the present, the intellectuals place themselves in the context of history. Faced with the colonized intellectual’s debunking of the colonialist theory of a precolonial barbarism, colonialism’s response is mute.
The colonized intellectual should not be concerned with choosing how or where he decides to wage the national struggle. To fight for national culture first of all means fighting for the liberation of the nation, the tangible matrix from which culture can grow. One cannot divorce the combat for culture from the people’s struggle for liberation. For example, all the men and women fighting French colonialism in Algeria with their bare hands are no strangers to the national culture of Algeria. The Algerian national culture takes form and shape during the fight, in prison, facing the guillotine, and in the capture and destruction of the French military positions.
National culture under colonial domination is a culture under interrogation whose destruction is sought systematically. Very quickly it becomes a culture condemned to clandestinity. This notion of clandestinity can immediately be perceived in the reactions of the occupier who interprets this complacent attachment to traditions as a sign of loyalty to the national spirit and a refusal to submit. This persistence of cultural expression condemned by colonial society is already a demonstration of nationhood.
A culture is first and foremost the expression of a nation, its preferences, its taboos, and its models. Other taboos, other values, other models are formed at every level of the entire society. National culture is the sum of all these considerations, the outcome of tensions internal and external to society as a whole and its multiple layers. In the colonial context, culture, when deprived of the twin supports of the nation and the state, perishes and dies. National liberation and the resurrection of the state are the preconditions for the very existence of a culture.
Today I can tell just which stage the interrogation has reached by the sound of the screams. The guy who has been punched twice and given a blow behind the ear has a certain way of talking, screaming, and saying that he is innocent. After he has been hanging by his wrists for two hours, his voice changes. After the bathtub, a different voice. And so on. But it’s after the electricity that it becomes unbearable. You’d think he was going to die at any moment.
We must abandon our dreams and say farewell to our old beliefs and former friendships. Let us not lose time in useless laments or sickening mimicry. Let us leave this Europe which never stops talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.
Let us decide not to imitate Europe and let us tense our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us endeavor to invent a man in full, something which Europe has been incapable of achieving.
Two centuries ago, a former European colony took it into its head to catch up with Europe. It has been so successful that the United States of America has become a monster where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions.
