VIOLENCE AND LIBERATION - FANON'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANIZATION IN THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM A Dissertation by Simon John Makuru PDF

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Boston College
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VIOLENCE AND LIBERATION: FANONS POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANIZATION IN THE HISTORICAL
CONTEXT OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM
a dissertation
by
Simon John Makuru
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
May, 2005
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Makuru, Simon John
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300 North Zeeb Road
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
Copyright by SIMON JOHN MAKURU

2005
B o s to n C o l l e g e
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES
The thesis o f:
e n title d :
MMQtL.JQBN MAKURU
v io le n c e and
l ib e r a t io n
FANOUT'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANIZATION IN THE

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM
submitted to the Department of:
p h il o s o p h y
________________
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of:

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has been read and
approved by the Committee:
Chair:
Member:
Membej
Member:
Date:
:D ,:'
ABSTRACT
Violence and Liberation: Fanons Political Philosophy of

Humanization in the Historical Context of Racism and
Colonialism,
By: Simon J. Makuru
Director: Professor Olive Blanchette
This dissertation aims to demonstrate that for Fanon, in spite of his evocation of
violence as a necessary ingredient in the search for a humanized world, it is not violence
that would establish a world free of exploitation. Violence dehumanizes and it
detoxifies the oppressed. Fanons life was characterized by violent acts and hence his
writings were a direct response to this situation of violence especially as experienced by
black people. This situation involved the challenges presented by a number of major
problems: economic, social, cultural and political. These challenges manifested
themselves in the corrosive influence of colonial racism and also in the contradictory
needs o f the blacks to accept the benefits of European civilization and yet at the same
t im e
retain a sense of personal and cultural identity and a sense of self-worth. Proper
investment in an Africanized education is a key to a way towards humanization.

Professor Ki-Zerbo, the African intellectual and educator will lead us.
The strength of this work will be on the analysis of how dialoguing with Fanon
opens up different philosophical discussions. I hear him telling us that knowledge of
history, its terrible and obdurate effects, above all, the experience of crisis of which the
African condition is abounding, is and ought to be the occasion of language and thought
regarding what Fanon called human things. Indeed as the Akan elders would say:
Crisis is the occasion of the proverb. This is then a refusal to accept that the history
of Africa is the history of its invaders. What matters here is how the oppressed people
took and still do take action to humanize a dehumanizing situation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter I : Fanons Life and W ork-The Price of Commitment
18
A.
Introduction
18
B.
Martinique Stage
19
C.
What is Negritude?
26
D.
World War II
38
i.
The Blockade and Overt Racism
39
ii.
Soldier Fanon
43
E.
French Stage
51
F.
Algeria and Beyond
58
G.
i.
Introduction
58
ii.
Hospital Work: Dr. Fanon
60
Revolutionary Years
Chapter II: The Problem of Alienation
68
78
A.
Introduction
78
B.
Fanons Historical Anthropology
86
C.
Marx on Historical Alienation
107
D.
Fanons Understanding of Alienation
133
i.
The Idea
133
ii.
Colonialism
139
a. How language becomes an Instrument o f alienation 165
b. Education as Alienating
179
c. Cultural Estrangement
188
d. The need for Decolonization
201
Chapter III: Paths to Freedom for the Colonized
206
A.
Introduction
206
B.
The Mechanism of Avoidance
210
C.
Negritude as a Humanizing Method
215
D.
i. Introduction
215
ii. The core of Negritude - Blyden as a Model
216
iii. The Subjective Necessity of Negritude
223
iv. The Objective Failings of Negritude
230
Violence
244
i. Introduction
244
ii.What it means to take up action against colonial violence250

a. Behind the Veil
252
b. Technology: The Radio
256
iii. Positive outcome to this Action Taking
272
iv. The New Nation
279
v. Marxism and African National Building
309
iii
C h ap ter IV: From Violence to Freedom - The Invention of a

Post-Im perialist State
317
Introduction
317
A. Human Development
321
B. In Search of a Post-Imperialist Society
332
i. Introduction
332
ii. The African Situation
334
iii. Globalization as Neo-Colonialism
343
C. In Search of an Africanized System of Education
367
D. The Importance o f Reparations for a Humanized World
383
Conclusion
394
Bibliography
400
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe special gratitude to Professor Oliva Blanchette who has

guided, with art and great care, this project. His helpful remarks and sharp
insights were o f great assistance in shaping my reading o f Fanons works.
Professor Blanchettes love for liberation philosophy opened up avenues
for the appreciation of the same. Truly he has proven to be a friend, a father
and a grand father. God bless you professor.
I am also grateful to Professor Cobb-Stevens whose generosity and
availability made it possible for this work to see its fruits. Thanks you
professor and may God bless you.
Further, I am also grateful to Professor Francis R. Herrmann without
whose patience and understanding this adventure could have turned out to
be an ambiguous one. He too proved to be a friend, a father and a
companion. My heart goes out to him in my gratitude.
Lastly but not the least, I am grateful to the library staff especially to
Dr Kwasi whose assistance in finding rare documents can never be over
estimated. He proved to be a real brother from the continent. God bless you
Kwasi.
This list o f those people who took part in the composition of this
work will not be complete without mentioning Professor Ron Anderson, a
friend and a companion who was a man behind the scene. Thanks for the
insights and very helpful pointers in the form o f articles and suggestions.
God bless you. Fr. Jack Izzos correction o f my English was a very
valuable tool. Thanks Jack. God bless you too.
ABRIVIATIONS
BSWM
Black Skin, White Masks
TAR
Towards African Revolution
WE
The Wretched of the Earth
Introduction:
This dissertation aims to demonstrate that for Fanon, in spite of
his evocation of violence as a necessary ingredient in the search for a
humanized world, it is not violence that would establish a world free
of exploitation. Fanon, in his analysis of the dialectic of violence, tries
to show what might be called its creative necessity for colonized
peoples. It will be argued in this dissertation that for Fanon after the
liberation has been achieved, violence has to be discarded for
violence dehumanizes. But this dehumanizing effect of violence goes
hand in hand with the fact that violence detoxifies the oppressed. The
more pervasive and ongoing violence instilled in the colonized
populace has a dehumanizing effects on both the colonizer as well as
on the colonized. For Fanon, this dehumanizing violence can only be
corrected by a counter force which will firstly bring dignity to the
colonized and eventually re-humanize the colonizer. The question
then becomes: How can a dehumanizing action bring a humanizing
reality? Can violent actions be a good way of achieving a humane
society? As it will be seen, it is not through fear that this humanism
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can be established but only through the knowledge that it is only

through the creation of a just society that this one can be done.
The strength of this work will be on the analysis of how Fanon,
though he never elaborated them, opened up different philosophical
discussions. I hear him as telling us that knowledge of history, its
terrible and obdurate effects, above all, the experience of crisis which
is its hallmark and of which the African condition is replete, is and
ought to be the occasion of language and thought regarding what
Fanon called human things.1 In other words, I see Fanon agreeing
with the African elders who would say, Crisis is the occasion of the
proverb. The proverb understood not as a received precept, still less
as dogma but as the work of thought and language aroused by
enigma. In this way, then, we are able to laugh at the conviction that
the history of Africa is the history of its invaders; that the burden of
history, imperial history, trumps all internal stories of historical
existence, and that it radically frames all there is to be, all there is to
be done and all there is to be known.2 1 say with Stathis Kouvelakis
that the effects of that history impose limits on being, action and
1 The Wretched o f the Earth, p.205
2 Cf. Ato Sekyi-Otu. Fanon and the Possibility o f Postcolonial critical Imagination, Accra, University of
Ghana, September 2003, p.3
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knowledge but yet by the virtue of that limitation we are signaled to

the human refusal of abject captivity to their domination. In other
words, the history of non-freedom leads us to wonder at the
possibility of freedom, to wonder at what the world and the drama of
human life would look like were they ever unshackled from the
constraints of a particular time and place, a particular historical
circumstance. Thus, concerning Violence, the opening chapter of
The Wretched o f the Earth places the existential phenomenon
present in Black Skin White Masks in a more explicit determinate
historical circumstance, the colonial context, and in so doing gives it
a political charge. Thus, this dissertation is not a work of a critical
historicism but a work of a critical examination of a proposed line of
action: violence. So the above mentioned question is very relevant to
this work: can violence be an instrument to building a truly humane
society?
In my search to answer this question I will try to look at the
dehum anizing acts with th e ir origin. Here then slavery and
colonialism will be examined in light of their dehumanizing effects.
The importance of looking at slavery and colonialism is put into us
through the belief that these are neglected points in our search for a
humanizing action. For example, in the United Sates of America
February is a black month. During this month, there are a lot of
programs and discussions which take place concerning all walks of
black life: slavery, segregation, lynching, and all other forms of evils
that were directed towards the blacks. What I found missing in all
these programs and discussions were the reasons behind such
dehumanizing actions towards the blacks. In this dissertation, then, I
will attempt to discuss such reasons with the hope of making this side
of the discussion available. Thus, I take Fanon as inviting us to attend
to words and things beyond what is ordained by their immediate
occasion and most impelling necessities they address or appear to
address. In this way I hope to reveal Fanon not as the notorious
advocate of revolutionary, even nihilistic, violence, as some earlier
and now post-9/11 assessments would have it, but as a figure of the
immanent criticism of the ends, outcome and self-understanding of
the African revolution . This will be another strength of this
dissertation.
W here did Africa go wrong in her search for a humanized

continent will be another point that I will treat in this dissertation.
Fanons recommendation of a total victory, decolonization as a total
rupture rather than a re-formation of the colonial past, was never
followed to the letter and as a result there is no way of knowing its
material effects on the communities involved. For decolonization has
not afforded us to resume our interrupted dramas or as Ato Sekyi-Otu
puts it our dialogue with one another, with ourselves.3 Fanon
envisioned a new humanism, one prefigured in the ends and means
of the national liberation struggle. Thus, the importance of Fanon for
this work is mostly because I consider him to be a path finder in that
conversation of the discovery of the new humanism in which each
persons inviolability is recognized to be founded on justice that even
the welfare of society as a whole should never override.
Fanon is considered by some people as a philosopher, while
others look at him as a psychoanalyst and still others consider him to
be a revolutionary and a writer. All this comes from Frantz Fanons
relatively short life and yet a rich and a complex life (1925 - 1961)
3 Sekyi-Otu, 2003, p i 1
which yielded two powerful and influential statements of anti-colonial

revolutionary thought, Black Skin, White Mas/cs( 1952) and The
W retched o f the Earth( 1961), works which have made Fanon a
prominent contributor to post-colonial studies. Through his writings,
he challenges us today, and provides resources for re-examining our
concepts of liberty, selfhood, humanity, equality, and nationalism.
What was Fanons motivation and aim for doing what he did?
Fanons experience among the oppressed Martinicans and his
experience among the oppressed Algerians both in Algeria and
especially in France gave him the motivation to write the type of
things which he wrote in his books. Fanons thought can be
summarized in the following principle stages: 1. His search for a black
identity as presented in his Black Skin, White Masks a work
dedicated to a diagnosis of racism that Fanon wrote while he was
studying medicine and psychoanalysis; 2. His take on the struggle
against colonialism as explained in A Dying Colonialism and Toward
the African Revolution, essays Fanon produced when he was actively
engaged in Algerias war of independence; 3. Fanons discussion
about the process of decolonization as analyzed in The Wretched of
the Earth, the book that extended insights gained in Algeria to Africa
and the world.
Fanons writings, then, were a direct response to the situation
of the blacks. This situation involved the challenge presented by a
number of major problems. These included Europes economic,
political and technological superiority, the effects of the Diaspora
which had, for the West Indian, severed all substantive links with
Africa; the corrosive influence of colonial racism; and finally the
contradictory needs of the blacks to accept the benefits of the
European civilization and yet at the same time retain a sense of
personal and cultural identity and a sense of self-worth. These
problems were felt by the West Indians and later on by Westerneducated Africans of the West African coast.
There are several interpretations as to what Fanon was trying
to do in his works. Commenting on Fanons The Wretched o f the
Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre, who composed its preface, wrote that the
book is not written for us 4 To Sartre, us refers to a white,
European audience, the group that has imposed wretchedness upon
the majority of the worlds inhabitants. Nonetheless, Sartre exhorts

us to have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will
make you ashamed.5
In one sense, Sartre is wrong about the books intended
readership. Fanon intended to write to a global, multi-racial audience
because he saw the ethical fate of the world and perhaps its physical
fate as well, hinging on how the process of decolonization unfolded.
Westerners may feel shame upon encountering Fanons discussion
of colonialism, but what was more important for Fanon was the
westerners growth of understanding for what colonialism really does
to all people, not only for the colonized but for the colonizers as well.
For Fanon, revolutionary struggle was ultimately a humanistic project
encompassing all people: This huge task which consists of
reintroducing mankind into the world, the whole of mankind, will be
carried out with the indispensable help of the European people.6 In
another sense, Sartre was right about the audience of Fanons books,
but for the wrong reasons. Sartre saw Fanons books as an extended
5 ibid. p.14
6 ibid. p. 106
historical explanation, written to educate his brothers7 about the

background of their revolutionary struggles.
Although The Wretched o f the Earth is extremely informative in
this regard, Fanon had focused on present problems and future
developm ents more than on past events, warning that newly
independent countries can undermine their own liberation through
ignorance, fear, and greed. In his visionary realist passage entitled
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness (the second chapter of The
Wretched o f the Earth), Fanon detects in the preparation for
independence the seedlings of a new form of inequality, a national
system of exploitation. In other ways, this book can be looked upon
as a laudation to the inevitable failure of the African revolution. Fanon
sought, in this sense then, to address a rather select non-European
audience of leaders, educators, and policy makers - those in a
position to learn from his critiques and forge a future guaranteeing
human dignity and social justice. In describing the condition of being
colonized he provided a psycho-pathology of colonial domination8
7 ibid. p. 10
8 Cf. chapter II of this work.
10
that is both unique and compelling. His work is then a work about
the wretched of the earth, not fo r them, as Sartre seems to suggest.
Fanons travels from Martinique to France to Algeria, and his
eventual abandonm ent of his French citizenship are a direct
testimony to his commitment to human freedom. Edouard Glissant in
talking about Fanon says:
It is difficult for a French Caribbean individual to be the
brother, the friend, or simply the associate or fellow
countrym an of Fanon. Because of all the French
Caribbean intellectuals, he is the only one to have acted
on his words... to take full responsibility for a com plete
b re a k9
Another important point to consider in Fanons studies is the fact that
there is no doubt that psychoanalysis is an important element of
Fanons work, but rather than taking it at face value, Fanon
recommends us to understand its significance in recognizing its
limitations. For Fanon only a psychoanalytical interpretation of the
black problem can lay bare the anom alies of affect that are
responsible for the structure of the complex. But he adds further that
the effective disalienation of the black man entails an immediate
9 Glissant, E. Caribbean Discourse, trans. J.M. Dash, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989
11
recognition of social and economic realities.10 In the same spirit,

Fanon insists that a preoccupation with individual neurosis is no
substitute for an analysis of the social situation. In his reference to
Lacan, Fanon notes that with the addition of race at the mirror
stage,11 historical and economic realities come into picture.12 After
citing four dream sequences analyzed by Mannoni, Fanon suggests
that the dreams had nothing to do with the dependency complex: the
discoveries of Freud are of no use to us here. What must be done is
to restore this dream to its proper time, and this time is the period
during which eighty thousand natives were killed [in Madagascar
where Mannoni was studying].13 So, for Fanon as Sekyi-Otu puts it,
the very primacy of the psychic and the psychological are put into
question in light of the Socio-political...lived experience of the
blacks.14 The fact that Fanon put into action what he preached and
the fact that for him the social is the key to understanding the
10 Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. C. L. Markmann, New York: Grove, 1967, p.10-11
1! The mirror stage occurs when a child sees his image in a mirror and begins to conceive o f himself as an
autonomous individual. It is necessary to pass through the mirror stage in order to move from the realm of
the imaginary(where the mother/object o f desire is undifferentiated from the self) to the realm of the
symbolic(where language and the authority o f others, most notably the father, cast the self into social
roles).
12 Ibid. p.161
13 Ibid. p. 104
14 Cf. Sekyi-Otu, A. Franz Fanon's Dialectic o f Experience, Cambridge, M A: Harvard University Press,
1996, p.7-8
12
sufferings of a people are the motivating factors behind this work.

Africa is in need of committed proponents of liberty that goes beyond
individual interests.
The world today is marked by progress in all sectors of life.
People live longer, on the average, than ever before. More and more
regions of the world are experiencing freedom from the tyrants. Yet,
when we look at the continent of Africa what is apparent is that the
continent is in absolute want, it is experiencing absolute poverty. Yes,
Africa is experiencing rem arkable deprivation, destitution and
oppression. There are many problems among whose we find
widespread violation of elementary political freedoms as well as basic
liberties. Our interest in Fanon here is based on the fact that Fanons
world was marked by violence and he tries to suggest ways to
overcoming such violence and he also gives us ways for building a
truly humanized community.
For Fanon, then, there is an urgent need of committed
individuals to fight against the dehumanizing situations on the African
continent. One of the main dehumanizing actions was the existence
of racism. For him, racism could be corrected because racism is not a
psychological law. For Fanon, the psychology of racism is caused by

Negroes being exploited, enslaved, and despised by colonialist
capitalist society. That is only accidentally white.15 For Fanon, as
Sekyi-Otu puts it very well, racism is a refusal of universals;
contempt for the principle of connectedness, above all an inability or
unwillingness to discern the human commonalities that, for better or
for worse, reside in the discrete histories and cultures of diverse and
divided communities, commonalities that precede and survive the
brute and odious facts of social and political separations.16 It is what
Wole Soyinka would call a narrowness of vision. My interest in
Fanon is then in the fact that I hope he will be able to lead us from
hate to love.
Fanon is the only major writer who has attempted to approach
the problems of national liberation and social revolution from the
vantage point of psychopathology. This serves to distinguish him from
other contemporary political theorists; it also creates substantial
difficulties in the interpretation of his work. This leads to the
15 Black Skin, White Masks, p.202

16 Sekyi-Otu, 2003, p.7
14
complexity of his work which is also indicated by the number of

genealogies with which his theory may be linked.
For example, as a psycho-philosophical analysis of the relation
between individual ills and the social, political, and cultural orders,
Fanons work may be likened to that of Geza Roheim, Erich Fromm,
Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud. This resemblance to
these authors can be illustrated by Fanons phrases like when he
says in Black Skin, White Masks, Not only must the black man be
black; he must be black in relation to the white man.17 Derived from
this point is the concept that blackness is a mockery which results
from the inability to conceptualize identity outside colonial framework.
Conversely, Fanons West Indian origins place him in the company of
E. W. Blyden, Marcuse Garvey, Aime Cesaire and George Padmore.
In terms of this genealogy, Fanons work is an attempt to resolve the
problems of personal identity created by the strained relationship
between African, European and the New World cultures.
Alternatively, Fanon may be likened to Marx, Lenin, Debray,
Guevara and Mao, as a theorist advocating revolutionary change to
17 cf. Black Skin White Masks, p.l 10
oppressive and redundant social systems. It is also feasible to

compare Fanons psychology of colonialism with that school of ethnopsychiatry represented by Porot, Carothers and Mannoni. In this
context Black Skin White Masks and The Wretched o f the Earth are
critical works designed to attack the idea of the underdevelopment of
the African personality. Fanons writings also place him in the
company of those such as Nyerere, Nkrumah, Cabral, Kaunda, and
Toure all of whom fought for an independent Africa. Finally, Fanon
can be seen as a member of a broad contemporary European
philosophical tradition; like Nietzsche, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty,
Sartre, and Jaspers his work is a quest for personal authenticity and
meaning in a post-Christian world of moral uncertainties.
The intellectual and political figures mentioned here above are
variously people with whom Fanon shared a common project
(Fromm, Blyden), individuals from whom Fanon drew inspiration
(Nietzsche, Sartre, Cesaire, Lacan) or opponents whose presence is
felt in Fanons work in the form of a continuing dialogue, however
disguised (Lenin, Mannoni). This diversity has encouraged the
practice of approaching Fanon in terms of a search for sources of
16
influences. Since influences are so great in number it is not surprising

that this practice has often succeeded in losing Fanon in the process.
To avoid this problem we will try first to expiate Fanons dominant
intellectual preoccupations (Liberation and humanization) and then to
explore the manner of their resolution in the course of his intellectual
development. There are three main paradigms around which Fanon
worked.
The three main paradigms around which Fanons work is
woven are negritude, ethno-psychiatry and African socialism. It is of
no more than passing interest that these three paradigms also reflect
aspects of Fanons personality: negritude - his quest for personal
identity, African Socialism - his desire to return to Africa and ethnopsychiatry - his professional training and occupation. Most of the
elements of Fanons theory of colonialism can be seen reflected in his
own lifes experience. In his life as in his writings we find the themes
of dispossession, enforced subordination before fools, and rage
against injustice. This is the reason why our examination will begin
with Fanons biography for the sake of understanding Fanons unique
and representation of a generation.
Fanon was a man of thought, but also a man of action who

committed himself to the course of human freedom. Where does the
story of this man who is considered to be the voice of the Third world,
the one who is well known for putting his life on line for his beliefs, the
black doctor from Martinique who resigned from his post at a
psychiatric hospital in colonial Algeria to join the front and who
preached a gospel of violent revolution, really begin? The answer to
this question will be the bulk of our discussion in the first chapter.
What will be apparent in this chapter is the fact that Fanon was a man
consumed with anger at injustices. Now the question becomes what
were these injustices at which Fanon showed such repulsion? The
answer to this question will be found in the second chapter of this
work. But the answer to this question inevitably demands that a way
out to such injustices to be proposed and this will be the work of the
third chapter. Whether Fanons answer to the problem of exploitation
is satisfactory or not will be the huge part of my conversation in the
fourth chapter. My conclusion is an attempt to revisit the main and
what I consider the most important themes of Fanons work.
18
Chapter 1
Fanons Life and Work - The price of

commitment
The middle class in the Antilles never speak Creole except to their
servants. (Fanon, BSWM, p.20)
A:
Introduction:
This life story is given here with the hope that through it
the reader will be able to appreciate, firstly, the importance of

psychiatry for Fanon and, secondly, how Fanons writings mirror his
life and show his commitment to the situation of humanity in general
and that of the blacks in particular.
Frantz Fanons life can be divided into three main stages,
namely; 1. the Martinique stage, 2. the France stage and, 3. the
Algerian and beyond stage. Through these stages we can trace the
development of Fanons consciousness and in this way, we should be
able to come to the point of realizing why Frantz Fanon became what
he was: A man consumed with anger at injustices. 18
18 cf. Patrick Ehlen, Frantz Fanon: A Spiritual Biography. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company,
2000 p.68.
19
B:
M artinique Stage:
Frantz Fanon was born the fifth of eight children on July
20, 1925, in Fort-de-France,19 the capital of the French Caribbean

colony of Martinique. Prior to 1939, M artinique was a poor,
underdeveloped Island, populated mainly by pre-literate peasants of
African descent, many of whom practiced Creole peasant cultures. It
was a culture dominated by movers of the spirit world whose
immediacy is understood by fear and faith.20 Fanon never had a
personal experience of this side of the Martinican life as his family
was a middle-class family which belonged to the Islands emerging
black bourgeoisie. Fanon grew up with assimilationistic values that
encouraged him to reject his African heritage.
As in other French overseas possessions, Martinican
society consisted of a pyramidal class structure. On top of the
19 For a very good description of Fanons Fort-de-France cf. J.L. Danglades, Une
Empreinte dans 1urbanisme de Fort-de-France, in Revue le Rebelle . 3, Septembre 1995
pp. 59 - 70.
20 cf. Affergan, Francis, Anthropoloaie a la Martinique. Paris, Presse de la Fondation Nationaie

des Sciences Politiques, 1983.
pyramid was a small group of whites, called creoles or bekes. The

whites formed a status group consisting of native whites and whites
from metropolitan France. However, small in number though they
were, some gradations could be discerned among them. Edith Kovatz
has identified three main subgroups: gros bekes, the bekes moyens
and the petit Blancs.21 Below the latter white group was a small but
prosperous bourgeoisie of non whites consisting of mulattoes and the
blacks proper. The Fanons belonged to this group.
Frantzs father22, Casimir Fanon, a survivor of the Mont
Pelee volcanic eruption of 190223, was a customs official, and his
mother, Eleonore Medelice, a mulatto whose fam ily came from
Alsace in the then disputed part of France, was a shopkeeper, who
prepared fast foods which she sold to passers by. In this way
therefore, Frantz Fanon belonged to the Islands relatively prosperous
21. cf. Edith Kovatz, Mariaae et Cohesion sociale chez les blancs creoles de la Martinique. [MA
Thesis] Montreal: Universite de Montreal, 1969.

22, The accounts o f Frantzs early family life are derived from Joby Fanons Pour Frantz, Pour
Notre mere published in Sans Frontiere. pp. 5 - 1 1 cf. also Hussein Abdilahi Bulhans Frantz
Fanon and the Psychology o f Oppression, pp. 19 and 20.
23 The account o f St. Pierre and the eruption o f Mt. Pelee can be found extensively described by
Michel Tauriac in La Catastrophef 1982) especially pp. 402 - 424.
21
and often raciaily mixed24 (sang melee) urban middle class. While
Frantzs siblings were comparably fair in complexion and their
appearance reflected the French heritage of their mother, Frantz
resembled his father more than he did with his mother, with distinctly
dark skin and strong African features.
The Fanons were, then a m iddle-class fam ily who
belonged to the islands emerging black bourgeoisie and thus made it
possible for Frantz to be relatively insulated from the grimmest
aspects of the black Martinican reality, though he was clearly aware
of this grimy existence.25 Because of this insulation from this adverse
side of life, the Fanon children were among the very small percentage
of blacks who were able to be educated at the lycee Schoechler,
where the famous Aime Cesaire was teaching. Aime Cesaire was a
mayor, depute, poet of negritude, former communist, and founder in
1956 of the Parti Populaire Martiniquais. For Aime Cesaire, as quoted
by Blerald,
M artinique was a colony, p olitically dom inated,
24 For a very good novel describing a dominating image o f Fanons childhood time see:
Joseph Zobels La Rue des Cases-neare (Sugar-cane Alley). See also Aime Cesaires
Cahier dun retour au pays natal in La Poesie. Paris, Seuil, 1994, p.10.
25 Cf. Victor Curidon, Mon Pavs. Mon Pavs : Martinique. Martinique. Paris, Editions de
Paris, 1937.
22
econom ically exploited, culturally im poverished and m ilitarily

occupied.26
The Fanons promoted the French language and culture to
the detriment of the Creole culture, in Martinique, as indeed in all
colonial countries, the colonizers language is associated with a high
social class.27 In keeping with their desire to rise higher in the social
order, the Fanons discouraged their children from speaking Creole or
participating in African-based folk traditions.28 In this way the first
chapter of Black Skin, White Masks, a chapter entitled the Negro and
Language, can easily be seen as an auto-biography. When Frantz
or the other children slipped into slang they could expect to be
chastised by Madame Fanon, who would drop her voice in
disapproval and say, Dont behave like a nigger.29 Young Frantz
Fanon, then, was trained to adopt the values of the descendants of
26 cf. Alain-Philippe Blerald, La question nationale en Guadeloupe et en Martinique: essai sur

Ihistoire politique. Paris: LHarmattan, 1988, p. 177. My translation. Especially in 1940 when
Martinique was blockaded.
27 [For a very good discussion about this point I refer the reader to Pierre Van den Berghes
article, European Language and Black Mandarins", in Transition 7. December - January, 1968:
19 - 23]. See also my discussion of language in chapter II of this work.
28 cf. Patrick Ehlen, p. 28
29 Ibid.
23
white slaveholders (beke) and the metropolitan French rather than to

identify with the noirs (descendants of African Slaves).30 In this way,
then, the system taught Fanon to distinguish himself essentially from
the Africans. According to this system, the African was believed to be
the savage, the cannibal, the primordial evil, whom the Antillean was
to avoid like the plague. The Antillean considered him self a
European; in soul and complexion, he thought of himself as a
rehabilitated black man, almost a different species than unassimilated
African natives.
The influences on Fanon of these early years of course
left deep scars on his psyche. Despite his awakening later on, in his
20s, Fanon would insist on a personal identification with the French:
I am a Frenchman. I am interested in French culture, French
civilization, and the French people. ...what have I to do with a black
empire?31 This shows that the remnants of the alienation and
depersonalization long suffered remained deep within him. Fanon
himself admitted this with characteristic candor: I am a white man.
30 ibid.
31 BSWM p.203
24
For unconsciously I distrust what is black in me, that is, the whole of
my being.32
This assimilationistic culture was also reinforced in Fanon
by the type of education that he received at school. According to
Patrick Ehlen, the first words that little Frantz learned to write in
school were Je suis Frangais. He learned about Bordeaux and the
Savoie and learned about the economy of the wine harvest, but
learned next to nothing about the Caribbean islands or the brutal
history of the slave trade or the sugar fields.33 Fanon himself later
wrote in a sarcastic way: The black schoolboy in the Antilles, who in
his lessons is forever talking about our ancestors, the G auls,
identifies himself with the explorer, the bringer of civilization, the white
man who carries truth to savages, an all white truth.34 Indeed, Frantz
considered himself French like any other French person but, as we
will see, many of his fellow French nationals saw him as simply one
32 BSWMp.191
33 cf. Ehlen, 2000, p.27.

34 Fanon, 1967:147.
25
more negre: a discovery of catastrophic proportion for his spirit.35 In

this way then, as said above, Fanon grew up with assimilationist
values that encouraged him to reject his black heritage in preference
to his mothers French heritage.
This assimilationistic way of life was countered by one of
Fanons high school teachers, Aime Cesaire, who introduced Fanon
to the philosophy of Negritude and taught him to embrace the aspects
of self that the colonizer had previously forced him to reject. Cesaire
was known for his vigorous attacks on Western civilization in general
and French culture in particular. Cesaire had declared in La Revue
Tropique that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which
justifies colonization - and therefore force - is already a sick
civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased.36 In this way Aime
Cesaire was challenging the ideas that Fanon had grown up with to
the effect that only French is good. The periodical, La revue tropique,
in which Cesaire wrote, was crucial in raising the consciousness of
the young Martiniqueans and in instilling a sense of black identity. It
35 Cf. Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi. Frantz Fanon and the psychology of oppression. Pp. 23 - 35.
36Cf. also Cesaire, Notebook o f a Return to the Native Land. P.18
26
was through this periodical and the speeches that he was giving that
Cesaire offered what Manville calls the Ideological food for the
young Antilleans. Cesaire repudiated assimilation into the French
culture and at the same time asserted his African heritage: Paint the
trunk white as you will, the roots will remain black.37 The encounter
with Cesaire, then, proved to be a turning point in Fanons intellectual
development. In Fanons Black skin, White Masks, Fanon invoked the
teacher nearly 20 times, imitated his style, and added: I wish that
many black intellectuals would turn to him for their inspiration.38
What is this philosophy of Negritude that produced a metanoia in
Fanons heart and mind?
C:
What is Negritude?:
The Tiger does not proclaim his tigritude." Soyinka
Here Negritude movement is introduced with the hope of

showing how Aime Cesaire influenced the young Frantz Fanon.
Negritude as a movement in its comprehensive aspect will be dealt
37 Quoted by Fanon in his Towards African Revolution, p. 27.

38 Towards African Revolution, p.187.
27
with
later on in this w ork as we discuss the problem
of
decolonization.39
Following Nick Nesbitts article Negritude, we see that
the concept of Negritude represents a historic development in the
formulation of African diasporic identity and culture in the twentieth
century.40 Negritude was a direct response to the colonial intent to
destroy indigenous culture since as a movement it was motivated by
ideals of cultural renaissance. Commenting on this colonial project
Fanon says: By a kind of perverted logic, it (colonialism) turns to the
past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it
(the culture of the colonized people).41
The word, negritude, derives from negre, and its coinage
involves some sophisticated political semantics. Depending on the
context and the speaker, Negre can mean both negro and nigger;
used as an adjective it had been popularized and given certain
respectability by expressions such as Tart N egre and La Revue
negre. The pejorative connotations of the noun, on the other hand,
39 See chapter I I I of this work p. 202

40 Cf. Nick Nesbitt. Negritude. On the web: African Writers Index
41 The Wretched o f the Earth, p. 169
28
were so strong by the 1930s that it began to be replaced by the

periphrastic expression homme de couleur or by simply noir.
We cannot describe this movement better than Leon-Gontras
Damas, one of the founding fathers of the movement. He presents
the origin of the word negritude in the following way:
The word negritude...had a very precise meaning in the
years 1934 - 1935, namely the fact that the black man
was seeking to know himself, that he wanted to become a
historical actor and a cultural actor, and not just an object
of dom ination or a consumer of culture...T he word
negritude was coined in the most racist moment of
history, and we accepted the word negre as a
challenge.42
Cesaire then was by no means the sole exponent of Negritude
but yet still, the word is now inseparable from his name. It is through
his association with this concept that is partially responsible for
Cesaire's prominent position in the Third World.
Historically the word was coined by Cesaire with his friends
Leon-Gontran Damas and Leopold Senghor while editing their
newspaper, L Etudiant noir, in Paris in the mid-1930s. The word
seems to have been used first by Aime Cesaire in his 1939 poem
42 Leon-Gontras Damas, Naissance et vie de la negritude" in Daniel Racine, Leon-Gontras

Damas: L'Homme et Iouvre. Paris and Dakar: Presence Africaine, 1993, p. 189. My translation.
29
Cahier d un retour au pays natal, a poem that he composed in Paris

just after leaving the Ecole Normale Superieure and was about to
return to his native Martinique. For Cesaire and his friends, the word,
Negritude, was a response to the denial of blacks in history and this
concept was an implicit calling upon blacks to reject assimilation as it
was practiced in the French colonies and also a call to cultivate a
consciousness of their own racial qualities and heritage. It was good
to be black and to posses a black culture.
To Cesaire, identity in suffering, not genetic material, as
expounded by Doctor J. J. Virey and the biologist Georges Cuvier, or
presumed by Hegel in his Philosophy o f History to some extent,
determined the bond among black people of different origins.43 Thus,
for Cesaire, Negritude starts from a collective experience of
subjugation. In the words of Cesaire, Negritude, not a cephalic index,
or a plasma, or a soma, but measured by the compass of suffering. It
was through a concerted action of racial affirmation, then, that both
Negritude and the literary and cultural movements that followed it
found the possible negation of that subjugation. The Haitian
43 Cf. Nick Nesbitts article Negritude on the website: African Writers Series for a very good discussion
about Hegel, Virey and Cuvier on their genetic theories. Most o f this discussion is inspired by the Nesbitts
article.
30
Revolution (1791 - 1804) had become the prototype for this negation
of the subjugation: Haiti where negritude rose for the first time.44
In addition to its historical importance, Cesaires coinage of the
term N egritude possesses a philosophical dim ension later
developed, as we will see, in the work of Fanon Peau Noire, Masques
B/ar?c(1952). Cesaires concept of negritude objectifies the self
alienation of colonized black subjects through an act of creation. In
Cesaires usage, an alienated black identity is forced to confront itself
as a reified object:
My Negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against
the clamor of the day. My Negritude is not a leukoma of
dead liquid over the earths dead eye. My Negritude is
neither tower nor cathedral. It takes root in the red flesh of
the soil, it takes root in the ardent flesh of the sky, it
breaks through opaque prostration with its upright
patience 45
In this way negritude in C esaires poem expresses a
decidedly objective status and affirm s his refusal to affirm the
essential unity of black identity. This gesture initiates a movement in
Cesaires poem toward a self-consciousness that breaks the bonds of
44 Cesaire, Notebook o f a Return to the Native Land, p.15

45 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, p.35
31
subjugation through a grappling with negativity in the form of self

alienation.46
One of the great achievements of Cesaires epic poem is the
re-appropriation of a negative term and giving to it a positive sense.
Fanon wrote later about the tremendous impact this epic had on his
fellow Martinicans:
For the first time a Lycee teacher and therefore an
apparently respectable man was seen to announce quite
simply to Antillean society that it is fine and good to be a
Negro. To be sure, this created a scandal. It was said at
the time that he was a little mad...neither the Mulattoes
nor the Negroes understood this delirium.47
It was a rare voice that dared to say this in late 1939, and attempts
were made to still it through censorship 48 Although Fanon later
disagreed with many assumptions behind Cesaires philosophy of
Negritude,49 C esaires work opened up space for a profound
reassessment of his racial identity. It was during this time that Fanon
46 I refuse to pass off my puffiness for authentic glory'. Cesaire, p27
47AR, p.21-22. cf. also Gordon et al, Fanon: A Critical Reader. P.5.
48 For a more detailed description of the Martinican system o f education, an education that is also alienating
cf. La Rue des Cases-negre.
49 BSWM, p225 Like it or not, the past can in no way guide me in the present moment. I will talk
about Fanons misgivings with Negritude in the first chapter of the section entitled Ways for
liberation.
32
developed a racial consciousness quite different from that taught by

his parents. But, yet, French colonial education continued to affect
him deeply.
Aime Cesaire described his own experience of Martinican
education as one which associated in our minds the word France
and the word liberty, and that bound us to France by every fiber of
our hearts and every power of our minds.50 In this way then, one
sees how in the true spirit of French colonialism, Martinique was
dominated culturally as much as it was economically, burying local
history and culture beneath the values of the French mainland,
consistent with Frances
assim ilationist policy towards its
colonies.51
Fanon was also aware of other forms of conceiving Negritude,
as it will be seen in chapter 111 of this work. In succeeding decades,
however, after Cesaires poem of 1939, the term Negritude became a
focus for ideological disputes among the black intelligentsia of the
mainly Francophone world in the process of decolonization, and
50 Quoted in Hail 1995:10 (Negotiating Caribbean Identities in New Left Review
209:3-14.)
51 cf. Alain-Philippe Blerald, p. 177.
33
writers such as Leopold Sedar Senghor, and the Anglophone Wole

Soyinka each weighed in with their own reformulations and critiques
of Cesaires concept. Reading the literatures on Negritude that came
after the founding fathers of this movement, we see that Negritude as
a concept generated a diverse field of debate that has extended the
use of the term and at times even contradicting Cesaires original
intervention.
As a historical movement, N egritude received two
competing interpretations.52 Cesaires original conception sees the
specificity and unity of black existence as a historically developing
phenomenon that arose through the highly contingent events of the
African slave trade and New World plantation system .53 Unlike
Cesaire, Senghor introduced an e ssentialist interpretation of
Negritude and in that way arguing for an unchanging core or essence
of black existence. Senghor, the Senegalese poet and statesman,
commenting on this term of Negritude says: negritude defines the
collective negro-African
personality, and that personality is
characterized by its sense of rhythm and its capacity to be

52 See Nick Nesbitt, Negritude op.cit.
53 Ibid.
34
emotionally moved.54 I see in this a reproduction of European and

Eurocentric stereotypes. This can be attested to by a modern
summary of the positivist philosopher Auguste Comtes views on
these matters. As Tzvetan Todorov notes: Com te posits the
existence of three great human facilities, intelligence, action and
feeling, and he declares that each of the three great races, white,
yellow and black, has uncontested superiority in one of these
faculties. Whites are most intelligent, yellows work hardest, and
blacks are the champions o f feeling."55
As this later formulation gained prevalence, it was widely
attacked, all the more so as Senghor, then president of independent
Senegal came to use the term ideologically to justify his own political
agenda. One of the critics of this position was the Nigerian Wole
Soyinka as can be seen especially in his work, The Burden o f
Memory and the Muse o f Forgiveness, in which he sees Negritude as
54 Leopold Sedar Senghor, Liberte I. Negritude et Humanisme. Paris: Seul, 1964. pp.7, 37, 70.
55 See Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism. Racism and Exoticism in French
Thought. Translated by Catherine Porter, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. p. 31.
My italics. I will come back to this point in Chapter III when the critique of Negritude is discussed.
35
belonging to colonial ideology, conveying a defensive character

against any African idea.
Wole Soyinka makes precisely the point that Negritude,
especially as presented by Senghor, is an endorsement of the
colonial ideology. In his Myth, Literature and the African World, Wole
Soyinka analyzing Negritude writes:
Negritude, having laid its cornerstone on a European
intellectual tradition, however bravely it tried to reverse its
concepts (leaving its tenets untouched), was a foundling
deserving to be drawn into, nay, even considered a case
for benign adoption by European ideological interests.56
Soyinka perceives this situation to be inevitable given that Negritude
embraces the essential binary nature of the western philosophical
tradition. But as seen here above, this was not the Negritude of
Cesaire but that which has come to us through Senghor. Soyinka
continues his critique of Senghors Negritude thus:
Sartre...classified this colonial movement [the western
philosophical tradition] as springing from the intellectual
conditioning of the mother culture; he rightly assumes that
any movement founded on an antithesis which responded
to the Cartesian I think, therefore I am must be subject to
a dialectical determinism which made all those who are
obedient to Saws formulated on the European historical
56 Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World, p.134.
36
experience. How was he to know, if the proponents of the

universal vision of Negritude did not, that the African
world did not and need not share the history of civilization
trapped in political Manicheans.57
For Soyinka, we need to take into account the imperfections of
the past, which we should accept as inherent to the human condition
and which we should take as an invitation to question the present. In
this way, Soyinka provides something important to the idea of
Africanism that he finds missing from Senghors Negritude. In the
colonial period, the innocence of Africa had to be stressed, but the
new generation of African writers and intellectuals has been freed
from colonial restraints and they should express African reality very
differently. For Wole Soyinka, the Tiger does not proclaim his
tigritude.58 Senghors Negritude, nonetheless, did serve to reverse
the system of values that had informed Western perception of blacks
since the earliest voyages of the discovery of Africa. The blacks
could
say,
Yes
I am
d iffe re n t and
yet e q u a l . C esa ire s
developmental model (classify) of Negritude, on the other hand,
57 ibid. ppl35-136.
58Wole Soyinka, The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness, p.141
37
continues to offer a model for the ongoing project of black liberation in

all its fullness, at once spiritual and political.
Fanons conception echoes Cesaires model when Fanon says,
It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who
creates negritude.59 Fanon insists, however, in B la c k Skin, White
Masks that the category w hite depends for its stability on its
negation, black. Neither exists without the other, and both came into
being at the moment of imperial conquest. Thus, Fanon locates the
historical point at which certain psychological formations became
possible, and he provides an important analysis of how historicallybound cultural systems, such as the Orientalist discourse Edward
Said describes, can perpetuate themselves as psychology. This point
is developed further in the second chapter of this work as we try to
look at colonialism as the premiere source of alienation.
Sartres position on Negritude as found in his Orphee noir was
a timely reminder, though Fanon became enraged by it, that post
colonial theory should be careful not to become a colonizer in its turn.
The post-colonial theory should balance its rejection of monolithic
59See Socioloqie dune revolution. Paris: Maspero, 1966, p.29 for a longer description of this thesis
38
cultural models against the need to be conscious always of the very

distinctive features of climate, history, society, economics and race
which its discourse must acknowledge.60 It must not confuse the
cross-cultural and comparative with a new abstract international
universalism.
Fanons proper critique of Negritude will be discussed in
chapter three of this work. What is important to note here is the
development of Fanons consciousness of who he really was. It was a
truly painful journey as will be shown here below.
D:
World War II:

My final prayer: O my body, make of me always a man who questions. Fanon
A nother experience that left Fanon with a lasting

impression was his experience during the Second World War. The
reasons for joining the free France m ovem ent are particularly
interesting here. But before we enter into the discussion of his time as
a soldier in the free France Movement it is important to look at the
changes that occurred in Martinique just before he joined the
movement.
60 See Sartres Orphee Noir
39
I.
The Blockade and O vert Racism:

It was in 1940 during the Second World War that an event
occurred that profoundly affected Fanon and other assimilated

Martinicans in their French identity - the German defeat of France61
When this German defeat of France occurred Martinique became
subject to collaborationist Vichy rule. As a result, the Allies blockaded
the Island and a good part of the French Atlantic fleet that had
harbored there. The Island found itself flooded with 5,000 French
sailors,62 increasing the white population by five hundred percent and
bringing overt racism to Martinique. Martinique was ill-equipped to
deal with the strain on its resources that accompanied these
additional mouths to feed and bodies to house, especially after British
blockades cut off trade with Europe.63 In normal years, the crew of
visiting naval ships had only a weeks shore leave, but now they were
61 Cf. DavidMacey, Au Tan Robe p p .7 2 - 111.

62 Cf. Bulham, p.27.
63 cf. Marcel Manvilles Antilles, pp.27-36 and GeismaTs Fanon. pp. 26 - 28.
40
permanently on shore with little to do. They could now take off their
masks and behave as authentic racists.64
Fort-de-Frances landscape was transformed overnight.
The military used its authority to requisition everything from hotels to
every public facility which then turned into segregated areas that
became inhospitable to its former patrons. Racist slurs and violent
threats multiplied with each day. A Whip was being wielded against
the blacks.65 It was during this time that Fanon saw something in the
eyes of the Martinicans which he had thought impossible in these
people - a defiance towards France. His fellow islanders had
assimilated the France of the sailors to the bad France, and the
Marseillaise those men (sailors) respected was not theirs.66
Before
the
Second
W orld
War,
M artinicans
had
considered themselves French. Officially, the Martinicans became

French when slavery was abolished on the Island. The freed slaves
64 Fanon, Antillais et Africains p.27 For a complete description o f this time cf.
Edouard Glissant, Le Ouatrieme siecle- Paris: Gallimard, Collection L Imaginaire, 1990
and also his Les lies, trans. Dominique O Neill, Toronto: Gref, 1992, bilingual edition.
65 Cf. Quatrieme Siecle, p. 266.
66 Cf. Antillais et Afficain, p27 - 28. see also Chauvet, Camille, La Martinique au temps de I'Amiral
Robert (1939-1943) in Historial Antillais Fort-de-France : Societe Daiani. 1985, vol. 5.
41
were made French citizens and thus given the right to vote, but not
necessarily the ability to exercise that right. The freed slaves had no
ability to exercise their rights due to the economic insecurity which
made them vulnerable to pressure. Thus, before the blockade, the
Martinicans never considered race to be an essential category
neither did they consider it to be a hardened position. The main
reason for this was the fact that the vast majority of Martinicans have
African ancestors. For the Martinicans, then, much more important
than skin color were economic status and social class. But this
changed, as we have seen here above, with the invasion of the 5,000
French sailors on the Island in 1940.
These French sailors saw the islanders through the lens
of
racial
prejudice.
To
them ,
M artinicans
w ere
Negroes,
indistinguishable from Africans, undifferentiated among themselves,

at best second-class citizens and at worst savages and ju s t freed
slaves. This is the reason why towards the end of Black Skin White
Masks, Fanon defiantly states I am not the slave of the slavery that
dehumanized my ancestors.67 Here, he was not asking the white
67 Black Skin White Masks, p.230.
42
world to feel guilty about the past of my race,68 but he was refusing
to be defined by that past. In fact, Black Skin, White Masks does not
end with a plea for racial equality but with a Sartrean bid for total
freedom as a radicalized consciousness leaps into a future that
escapes all ethnic determinations.69
Fanon called this confrontation with institutionalized
racism the Martinicans first metaphysical experience. The West
Indian, in the presence of those men, who despised him, began to
have misgivings as to his values. The West Indian underwent his first
metaphysical experience.70 Through this institutionalized racism,
then, the Martinicans came to question the values of assimilation and
Fanon would write: My final prayer: O my body, make of me always
a man who questions!71 And, inspired by Cesaire, the Martinicans
began to reverse these values so as to experience freedom freely.
Unlike the freedom conceived by Sartre, Fanons freedom here is a
68cf. ibid, p.230.

69 cf. ibid, pp.223 - 232.
70 Cf. A Dying Colonialism, p.23.
71 BSW M p.232.
43
freedom which is there for the sake of building world humanism: Was
my freedom not given to me then in order to build the world of the
You?72
This is where I think Fanon is making a distinction
between injustice and the perpetrators to such injustice. The French
were busy dehumanizing the Martinicans, yet Fanon never desired to
punish the French but he desired to help them remove the reasons
behind their behavior towards the Martinicans. For this reason, Fanon
joined the free the France movement so as to liberate France with
the hope of realizing an international humanism.
II.
Soldier Fanon:
Each time freedom is under siege, no matter where, I will engage myself completely. Fanon
So in spite of the growing awareness of white French

racism, in 1943, the eighteen year-old Fanon joined the Free French
forces assembling on the neighboring island of Dominica. According
to Manville, Frantzs motivating spirit was the belief that each time
liberty is in question, we are concerned, be we white, black, or
72 BSW M p.232.
44
yellow. Fanon goes on, each time freedom is under siege, no matter
where, I will engage myself completely. He was convinced that
Freedom was indivisible.73
After the event, a disillusioned Fanon would tell his
parents that he left Fort-de-France because he still believed in the
obsolete ideal of French patriotism.74 Certainly in 1943 he clearly
believed that the cause of France was his cause. He believed, then,
that his place was not on the sidelines, but in the heart of the
struggle, in the war.75 As Manville put it to Charles Cezette, We were
twenty, and we believed in France. The decision to join the Free
French was taken suddenly, with little consultation and little
foreknowledge of its consequences. It was, for Frantz Fanon, without
compromise, as he tells his brother Joby, One must constantly, Joby,
put ones life in accord with ones ideas. No excuse is allowable, or
one becomes nothing but a worthless bastard.76 This stage of
73 cf. Marcel Manville, Temoignage dun compagnon de lutte in Elio Dacy (ed.) L Actualite de Frantz
Fanon. Paris: Karthala, 1986, p. 16.
74 Letter o f 12 April 1945 to his parents reproduced in Memorial international, p.269.

75 Peau Noire, p.168.
76 cf. Patrick Ehlen, p. 51.
45
Fanons life is very important because through it we see that behind

his youthful idealism lay the outrage of oppression, the love of justice,
and the commitment to human dignity that guided him till death. This
also shows that even as a teenager Fanon showed the readiness to
back up principles with action that became the hallmark of his adult
life.
After joining the free-Franee movement, Fanon was
attached to the 5th battalion and sent to Morocco at El Hajeb Camp
near Meknes, where he served with white Frenchmen, white North
African colonists, and other black Antilleans.77 Also stationed there
were African units like the Senegalese, who wore distinctive uniforms
and were treated as less civilized partners in the war effort. Being
able to observe how French colonialism operated in North Africa
enlarged Fanons view of racial, economic, and cultural oppression. It
also revealed some of the more absurd ambiguities of racial thinking
that were to be chronicled in his work Black Skin, White Masks. It was
becoming clear, for Fanon, that the heteroclite army which Fanon
77 Most information about Frantz's activities in the war traces to Manville. Details of their
departure, crossing the Atlantic, life at El Hajeb camp, the whitening o f the French division, and
various battles including Frantzs major injury come from Temoignage pp. 17 and 18 and from
Hommage, pp. 36 - 37 and Antilles, pp. 37 - 46.
46
and his friend Manville had hoped would free Europe and the World
from fascism and racism was in fact structured around an ethnic
hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top and North Africans at the
bottom. Black colonial troops were seen as superior to the Arabs,
while the position of West Indians was ambiguous.78
We can give here an example of the experience of Fanon
when the Moroccan based soldiers were needed in Alsace and
military commanders decided to whiten the battalion. Senegalese
troops were left in Africa with the excuse that they could not endure
the cold North European climate. However, the Antillean soldiers raised in a similar tropical climate and having the same dark skin were officially considered European. What was their reward? As
Fanon says in a sarcastic way, their reward was the privilege of
nearly freezing to death during the brutal winter campaign in Alsace.
It was during this time that Fanon became truly disillusioned with the
war, particularly with what he saw as cowardly and racial conduct by
French soldiers and civilians. A moving letter to his parents explains
why:
78 Cf. Joseph Issoufou Conombo, Souvenir de Guerre d un Tirailleur Senegalais. Paris Syros, 1993 p.29.
47
It has been one year since 1 left Fort-de-France. Why? To

defend an obsolete id e a l...1 doubt everything, even
myself. If I dont return, if you learn one day of my death
at the enemys hands, console yourself, but never say: he
died for a noble cause. Say: God called him back,
because this other false ideology, the shield of civilians
and imbecilic politicians, should not inspire us any longer.
I have fooled myself. Nothing here, nothing justifies this
sudden decision to make m yself the defender of a
farmers interests when he himself doesnt give a damn... I
leave tomorrow, having volunteered for a dangerous
mission. I know that I will not return.79
This letter of Frantz has been widely published in French
literature on France since its discovery in 1981. This letter is often
presumed to have been written on the battlefield but the date of the
letter, April 1945, places its origination at a time when the West
Indian Soldiers had already been removed from the battle and had
already returned to Toulon. Manville in his Antilles tells us that the
West Indian Soldiers were removed from the battle on March 30,
1945. According to Manville this event took place simultaneously with
the crossing of the Rhine by the French division and the date of the
crossing of the Rhine perfectly matches published historical accounts
as March 30, 1945. What is happening here? We agree here with
79 cf. Memorial International Frantz Fanon: 31 Mars - 3 Avril 1992 Paris and Dakar: Presence
Africaine, 1994, p. 269.
48
Patrick Ehiens reading of the situation. He proposes three

possibilities 1: that Frantz wrote the letter during the battle at the
Poche de Colmar80, but wrote the wrong date or recopied it in April
before sending it; 2: that Frantz was assigned to an unknown
perilous mission after the West Indian Soldiers had already left
northern France and were resting in Toulon; 3: that the letter was not
written before a perilous mission but that this claim was made for
literary effect because it best reflects Frantzs sentiments about the
war that he wished to express, however belated in actuality. The facts
in the
m atter w ill likely remain
unknown.
But,
despite his
premonitions, Fanon did survive World War II and returned to Fortde-France. He was wounded in combat, however, and received the
Croix de Guerre. The officer, who personally awarded the medal,
Raoul Salan, would lead the French offensive against the Algerian
freedom fighters a decade later, when Fanon would be fighting for the
Algerian liberation.
Back in Martinique, Frantz enrolled at the Schoechler
lycee to supplement his education. The books he read included
80 cf. Manville, Antilles, pp. 241 - 242.
49
mostly philosophy and psychology, and he developed a particular

interest in some of the existentialist philosophers including Nietzsche,
Jaspers and Sartre. He was particularly inspired by Sartres book
Anti-Semite and the Jew, which presented a brief but complete
psychological analysis of racism. Sartres words, according to Patrick
Ehlen,
p erfe ctly
described
F anons
own
experiences
and
observations as a minority in Europe. Writing of his childhood in the

black-mulatto society of Fort-de-France, Frantz remarks: I am a
negre, but naturally I dont know that because that is what I am.81 It
was mainly, then, his experience in the army and in the liberated
France that had taught him what he was in the eyes of most French
people: just another Negro, an object to be afraid of. This idea is re
enforced by the most famous passage of Black Skin, White Masks.
The incident which Frantz is reporting took place on a cold winter day
in Lyon. Frantz encountered a child and its mother. The child said to
its mother: Look, a negro and then added mum, look at the negro.
Im frightened! Frightened! Frightened!82 An entire history of racial
81 Black Skin. p. 155.

82 Peau, p. 90.
50
stereotypes and coionia! oppression reasserts itself here. The man of

color finds himself dissected by the white gaze, his body and his
individuality annihilated.
How does Fanon analyze this primal scene? For him this
experience revealed to him that, he as a black man was no more, no
less than his skin color. According to Fanon this racial epidermal
schema83 shattered him into a triple person: a body, a race, a
history. He found himself now objectified and this objectification
reinforced the brutal pain of the original trauma. In other words,
Fanon found himself reenacting his own violent social death. What
else could it be for me, Fanon asked concerning this encounter with
the white child, but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage that
spattered my whole body with black blood?84 But, according to
Fanon, a white person of good will could try to make amends by
explaining that the Martinican was indeed a civilized human being
despite his skin.85 For Fanon this explanation does not remove the
fact that in all forms, the white gaze dehumanized him, paralyzed
him, and in a way killed him. In fact such white clarifications produce
83 BSWM, p.l 12
84BSW M, p.l 12
85 Cf. Fanons ambiguous relationship with both Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
51
rage, shame, and an existential nausea. Fanon compared the

experience to that of an insect captured as a laboratory specimen:
I progress by crawling. And slowly I am being dissected
under white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed...they
objectively cut away slices of my reality, I am laid bare...86
According to Fanon, then, the trauma of blackness lies in its absolute
Otherness in relation to white men. That is, the white man makes the
black man by recognizing only his skin.
In 1946, Fanon finished his lycee examinations and was
awarded a veterans scholarship to study abroad. In 1946 he went
back to France and this time for studies first as a dentist later on as a
psychiatrist.87
E.
French Stage:
Fanons initial sojourn to France had been during the
Second World War when he joined the free France movement. This
sojourn, as seen above, ended in Frantzs disillusionment towards the
86 BSWM, p.l 16
87 cf. Geismar, p.43 - 44; Manville, Antilles, p.242. There is a controversy concerning the date of Frantzs
arrival in France. Geismar dates Frantzs arrival in France as late as January 1947, after the death of
Frantzs father, an error which is manifest from Frantzs letter from Lyon to his mother on learning the
news of his fathers death. Other accounts, such as that of Pirellis Fanon p. 122, offer the most likely date
of 1946.
French people. Yet, in 1946, Frantz went back to France. The

opening section of Black Skin, White Masks paints a composite
picture of the lived experience of the young Martinican in France. It is
a specifically male experience as can be attested from the fact that
his sisters experience was a completely opposite. In the following
pages I would like to explore this stage of Frantzs life, as a student in
France. To do this I will rely heavily on secondary materials and
amongst these I single out Geism ars F a n o n and Simone de
Beauvoirs La Force des Choses. We will also look at Frantzs own
Black Skin, White Masks, which will give us an insight into his interior
life. Macey looks at Black Skin, White Masks as an extended
exercise in bricolage, the term Levi-Strauss used to describe how
myths are assembled from the materials that are at hand.88
Some of Fanons Martinican friends attended university in
Paris, and they expected Frantz to join them. He did enroll in dental
school, but he soon declared that there were too many Negroes in
Paris, and he would go to Lyons in search of lactification.89
88 Cf. Macey, p. 162. See also V.Y.Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa, p.31 - 32 for a very good
description of Bricolage.
89 cf. Manville, Les Antilles p. 242.
53
Commenting on this incident of Fanons move from Paris to Lyons,

David Macey thinks that it was not Frantzs attitude towards his
fellow Martinicans, which was based upon a profound ambivalence
and deeply troubled sense of his identity; but it was the characteristic
combination of impulsiveness and determination that took him to
Lyon, just as it had taken the teenage dissident to Dominica in
1 9 4 3 .9o |_e a v j n g h j s
companions puzzled, Fanon enrolled in Lyons
Medical School, pursuing a course in psychiatric medicine. It was

here in Lyon that Frantz first came into contact with North Africans
whom he had been unable to meet during his brief stay in Algeria in
1944 when he was there as a soldier with the free France movement.
While working for his degree, Fanon continued to read the
thinkers whom Cesaire had introduced him to: Hegel, Marx, Lenin
and, in particular, Sartre. Fanon prefaced his 1952 thesis with an
ironic quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: I speak only old things, and I
dont represent intellectual processes. As the footnotes to Black
Skin, White Masks indicate, Fanon was reading very widely, and
these footnotes further indicate that his reading was not restricted to
90 Macey, p. 119.
medical textbooks. The overabundance of notes and quotations in

this book is an indication of a major change that had occurred when
he moved from Fort-de-France to Lyon: he had moved from bookpoor to a book-rich culture. He read quite extensively in philosophy,
showing a particular interest in the Hegelian-existentialist strand that
was so important in the immediate post-war years, and attended
lectures by Merleau-Ponty. Fanon, during this time, also began a
student journal, Tam-Tam, which attracted the attention of the editors
of Presence Africaine. It was through the connection that he had with
this journal that Fanon was able to meet Sartre, who remained his
friend for life and it was through Sartre that Fanon made
acquaintance with Simone de Beauvoir. It was also during this time
that he began writing Black Skin, White Masks published in 1952, a
work that took its inspiration from Cesaires protest poetry but brought
a psychiatrists eye to the question of the intellectual and cultural
alienation of blacks in a world dominated by whites and by white
values.
55
Black Skin, White Masks, a hymn to human freedom,91

describes the untenable position of the black bourgeoisie in
Martinique who, disdainful of their own race, realize with regret that
they cannot become white. Paint the trunk, Cesaire would remind
the Martinicans, white as you will, the roots will remain black.92 Still,
Fanon separates him self in this work from the philosophy of
Negritude by rejecting the idea of an immutable black essence and by
seeking a solution to the problems he describes in a nonracial
humanism. In the same year, 1953, as the publication of this book,
Fanon married a white Frenchwoman, Marie-Josie Duble, whom he
had met in Lyons. They had a son born to them in 1955. Josie was
known as Nadia in Algeria especially during the time when she and
Fanon were living in semi-clandestinity; she could not be known or
buried in a Muslim cemetery under her Christian name Josie. Fanon
has been criticized for marrying a white woman by those who see the
act of a black man marrying a white woman as an act of betrayal of
91 cf. David Macey, chapter 5. This is the best commentary I have so far read on Frantz Fanons Black Skin.
White Masks. Jeanson sees this work, Black Skin. White Masks as a hymn to human freedom, cf.
Reconnaissance a Fanon in Peau noire, masque blanc. Paris: Seul, 1965, pp. 21 - 22 [not reprinted in the
English translations].
92 Fanon quoting Aime Cesaire c f Towards African Revolution p.24.
his own ideals especially the way these ideas are expounded in his
Black Skin, White Masks. But as Emmanuel Hansen points out,
Fanons writings about the Manichaean world are descriptive and not
proscriptive. It is precisely this idea of the black man being sealed in
his blackness and the white man being encased in his whiteness that
he wanted to avoid. In other words, Emmanuel Hansen thinks that
Fanon married a white woman to show that he did not remain in his
seal of blackness. This idea of Emmanuel Hansen is collaborated by
Fanons work The Wretched o f the Earth. In this book Fanon
diagnoses the ills not of a race - as in Black Skin, White Masks, but
of a continent under colonial rule. In here he shows ways of
overcoming the Manichean perspective, a way which he hoped would
lead to world humanism. I will come to this point in the third chapter of
this work where I will be discussing violence and the way to world
humanism.
Fanons first professional employment took him back to
Martinique, where he found the lack of resources there and the
political climate deplorable. He returned to France and entered
residency, in 1952, at the Saint Alban-de-Lozere hospital, where he
57
trained under Francois Tosquelies, a pioneer in social psychiatry,

Geismar offers a fair summary of Fanons internship with Tosquelies,
but a far more comprehensive account is available in Macys Frantz
Fanon and also in Gendziers Fanon. He spent a year at this hospital.
After passing a demanding battery of examinations, Fanon gained the
rank of chef de service and was qualified to be director of any
French or French colonial psychiatric hospital.
His initial posting was to Normandy, but, according to
Philippe Lucas, a sociologist who knew Fanon in Algeria, referring to
a conversation he had with Josie, Fanons wife, Fanon was more
interested in working among non-white people. Especially, he wanted
to work amongst black people.93 He wrote to Senegals poet-politician
Leopard Sedar Senghor94 requesting a post in West Africa. Receiving
no reply, Fanon decided to go to Algeria, where he was appointed
medical chief of the Bilda-Joinville psychiatric hospital in 1953. In his
letter to Joby, his brother, Fanon explains his decision to go to
Algeria: Im going to Algeria. You understand: The French have
93 .cf. Philip Lucas, Socioloaie de Frantz Fanon: Contribution a une anthropoloaie de la liberation.
Algiers: SNED, 1971, p. 119.
94 A friend of Aime Cesaire and co-founder of the Negritude movement.
58
enough psychiatrists to take care of their madmen. Id rather go to a

country where they need me.95 It is this unselfish desire to help
others that sets Fanon apart from most of the liberation politicians
and philosophers. What was this country that needed him look like
and how did it contribute to the development of his consciousness, is
the focus of our next section.
F.
Algeria and Beyond:
There comes a tim e when silence becom es dishonest.[Fanon]
I. Introduction:
Before he set foot on the Algerian soil,
Fanons
knowledge of Algeria was limited to his having worked with North

African patients in Lyon and it is highly probable that Fanon may not
have been particularly well informed about the country. In spite of this
lack of good knowledge about the country Fanon seems to have had
a very definite idea of what had to be done in Algeria. In 1953 it is
95 Cited by Joby Fanon, Formons un home neuf, Antilla 23. November - December, 1982, p.23.
59
evident that he never believed that the Algerian solution resided in its
being independent from France. The Wretched o f the Earth, a work
finished in 1961, points to the fact that Fanons idea of an
independent Algeria came on later into his consciousness. Fanons
political beliefs at this time, the time he left France for Algeria,
consisted in his belief in the human solidarity as can be attested by
his work Black skin, White Masks. Further more, nothing at this time
anticipates his later theses concerning the cleansing and liberating
effects of revolutionary violence with which he would later be
associated. We can safely say, then, that it was the Algerian
experience that produced the Fanon of The Wretched o f the Earth. It
was the Algerian experience that made Fanon convinced that the
humanization of the Algerian people rested in their being independent
from the French colonialists. What was this experience which had
such a profound existential educative effect on him? The most
profound experience that he had was his encounter with the tortured
and their torturers at Blida-Joinville hospital.
60
11,
The H ospital W ork: Dr, Fanon
A Society that drives its members to desperate solutions is a non-viable society, a

society to be replaced. Fanon
The Blida-Joinville hospital was Algerias largest hospital.

It housed two thousand patients in a space designed for less than
half that number. European patients were segregated from Algerian
ones, and despite months-long waiting list for admission, French
people with relatively minor problems were taken in well before Arabs
with serious mental conditions. Only six doctors supervised the
institution, and the nursing staff was overworked and underpaid. It is
not surprising that therapy often consisted in restraining, even locking
up patients. Dr. Fanon had a lot of work to do and he learned to exist
on only four hours of sleep a night. Fanon had almost 200 patients
under his care.96
As soon as he took residence at Blida-Joinville hospital,
Fanon immediately challenged conditions in which psychiatry was
practiced in Algeria in general and at Blida-Joinville hospital in
96 cf. David Macey, p.227
61
particular. Believing that one cannot regain mental health and

emotional strength in a sick and threatening social context, Fanon
initiated a number of changes in the management of patients in the
hospital.
Interviewed by an Algerian journalist in 1987, a surviving
witness who once worked in Blida-Joinville as a ward orderly recalled
that, before Fanons arrival, doctors would make ward rounds at set
times but were more interested in checking that the beds had been
properly made than in actually treating their patients, who were left
largely to their own devices. Post admission follow-ups were a matter
of surveillance rather than therapy. Fanon, in contrast, would visit the
wards at any hour of the day or night to ensure that the nursing staff
had carried out his instructions.97 He began work early and was
always in the ward before his interns.
Fanon saw the asylum as a community rather than as a prison.
Therefore, he removed straitjackets and chains. Irene Gendzier
describes how Fanon walked through the hospital wards unchaining
97 cf. Ghania Hammadou, Fanon - Blida, Blida - Fanon; in Revolution Africaine 11, December 1987.
men and women98: he opened previously closed wards; he organized

group projects to serve patients daily needs. In this way, great
im portance was placed upon occupational therapy. Knitting,
embroidery and dress making were strongly encouraged for the
female patients. As the collective life of the ward became richer and
more fulfilling, the rate of discharges began to rise. Fanon also
introduced an important cultural change: he replaced the murals of
the Virgin Mary and of the history of French colonization in the
hospital because they seemed a perverse, racist decoration for an
institution sheltering Moslem Arabs. The questions that Fanon was
really struggling with during this time were the problems of how a
people can be healed when society is insane. For Fanon it was the
question of the relationship between an individual and the society in
which this one lived. This questioning experience shows Fanons
encounter with Eurocentric psychology as practiced in the colonies
and his rejection of its normative and insensitive assumptions.
98 Irene Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study. London: Wildwood House, 1973, p.76 cf also
Geronimis Portrait de Fanon.
63
Once the Algerian war of Liberation began in November,

1954, revolutionaries sought help from the young psychiatrist. For
over two years, Fanon secretly provided medical supplies to the
National Liberation Front, one of the groups waging war against the
French colonizers otherwise known as FLN, Front de Liberation
N ationale. He trained Algerian nurses to serve the revolutionary
effort. In his capacity as a doctor, he treated more and more victims
of torture as well as the French officials who had administered these
tortures. Fanon was horrified by the stories of torture his patients both French torturers and Algerian torture victims - told him. Despite
Fanons obvious political sympathy with the victims rather than the
perpetrators, he treated them all and published some of his case
notes on them in the final chapter of The Wretched o f the Earth. He
looked at both groups as being victims of the bloody, pitiless
atmosphere, the generalization of inhuman practices, of peoples
lasting impression that they are witnessing a veritable apocalypse.99
One of the cases Fanon describes involves a twenty-year-old
police officer (referred to by Fanon as !A ) who had been referred by
99 cf. The Wretched of the Earth. P.306
64
his superiors because of his behavioral problems. Fanon establishes

what he himself describes as a good rapport with his new patient,
who explained that he was having difficulty sleeping at night because
he kept hearing screams. They were the screams of the people he
had tortured. The young policeman was sick of if. If Fanon could
cure him, he would request a transfer to France; if he was refused his
transfer he would resign. Fanon put him on sick leave and then
began to treat him as a private patient.
They met in Fanons home. One day, just before one
session was due to begin; Fanon was called back to the ward by an
emergency. Josie told A that he could wait, but he replied that he
would rather go for a walk on the grounds, thinking that he would
meet Fanon on his way back from the ward. Fanon eventually found
A leaning against a tree, covered in sweat and obviously having a
panic attack. In the course of his walk, he had encountered one of the
prisoners he had tortured who had been admitted to the hospital
suffering from post-traumatic shock. Fanon treated A with sedatives
and went to the ward where the victim was being treated. The man
was nowhere to be found, but was eventually discovered hiding in a
65
toilet. He had tried to commit suicide because he had recognized TV

and was convinced that he was about to be tortured again.
A saw Fanon on a number of occasions. His condition
improved rapidly and he was eventually repatriated to France on
medical grounds. On the other side of the ledger, it took a long time,
remarks Fanon, to convince his Algerian patient that he had been
mistaken, that the police could not enter the hospital at will, that he
was tired and that he was here to be cared for.100 This experience
brought Fanon deep into the Algerian struggle. This involvement in
the Algerian struggle made it impossible for him to lead anything
resembling a doctors normal life while still at this hospital.
Fanon spoke of the terror he had experienced in Blida,
where he had divided his days and nights between dealing with real
madmen and false madmen, or in other words between those who
had been both alienated and driven mad by colonialism and fighters
who were seeking temporary refuge.101 This experience re-enforced
100 cf. The Wretched of the Earth, pp. 264 - 267. See also Bernard Sigg, Le Silence et la honte.
Messidor/Editions Sociales, Paris 1989. This is one of the very few studies to have been made of
the Algerian wars effect on French servicemen. The author, Bernard Sigg, was himself a navy
doctor who served in Morocco. When his predecessor told him that one of his tasks would be to
keep tortured suspects alive for further interrogation, he deserted.
101 Cf. Jeanson, Reconnaissance de Fanon, pp.2 13 -2 1 5.
66
Fanons conviction which was already a developing conviction in a

colonial territory like Algeria, characterized by economic oppression,
political violence, racism, torture, murder, and inhuman degradation,
that the psychiatric disorders from which the people suffered were the
direct result of the social situation; it was, therefore, according to
Fanon, futile to treat a patient and send him back to the same
environment. What had to be changed were not the people but the
social and p olitical conditions prevailing in Algeria 2 Fanons
strategy would soon change. He would move from going to where he
was needed [the psychiatric hospital in Algeria] to where he thought it
was necessary to be [at the heart of the revolution]. In this way, the
Algerian w ar changed Fanon com pletely, turning him into a
revolutionary activist but also exposing him to immense danger and
risks103 and thus consolidating Fanons alienation from the French
imperial viewpoint.
102 Black psychiatrists in the United States are increasingly coming to this view . Leading
exponents of this position are: Alvin Poussaint, Whv Blacks Kill Blacks (New York: Emerson Hall
Publishers, 1972); William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs, Black Rage (New York: Bantam Books,
1969).
103cf. Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger, Society in Zimbabwes Liberation War. UZ
publications, Harare 1996.
67
in Algeria, Fanon saw a confirmation of the thesis he had

developed earlier as a result of his observations in Martinique,
namely, that for the colonized the most serious problem standing in
the way of self-realization and freedom was alienation. This alienation
could only be cured by the destruction of the colonial system.
When the hospital administration decided to punish all
Moslem employees after a violent general strike, Fanon himself
resigned. This was in 1956. He explained his reasons for this
resignation in a letter to Robert Lacoste, the French minister who
spearheaded the reign of terror against Algerians:
If psychiatry is the medical technique that aims to enable
man no longer to be a stranger to his environment, I owe
it to myself to affirm that the Arab, permanently an alien in
his own country, lives in a sta te of absolute
depersonalization... the events in Algeria are the logical
consequence of an abortive attempt to decerebralize a
people...A society that drives its members to desperate
solutions is a non-viable society, a society to be
replaced.104
And to underline his own commitment to praxis, he adds: There
comes a time when silence becomes dishonest.105
104 A R pp.53-54
105 AR p.54
68
These words sum up Fanons theory of the psychology of

colonial dom ination, and pronounce the colonial mission as
incompatible with ethical psychiatric practice. With these words,
Fanon declared himself against France. As a result, Fanon was
officially expelled from Algeria. From this point on, Fanon dedicated
the remaining years of his life to replacing a sick, colonial society
with a healthy, free society.
G.
The Revolutionary Years:

Each time freedom is under siege, no matter where, I will engage myself
completely. [Fanon]
After being expelled from Algeria, in January, 1957, Fanon went

to France. He stayed for a short time in Lyon with Josies family for
Paris, where he would have loved to stay, was too dangerous for him
as he was on the wanted list of the French secret police.106 After
Lyon, Fanon returned to Tunis, North Africa, against the advice of his
106cf. Peter Geismar, Frantz Fanon NY. Dial Press, 1971, p.99.
69
friend Manville,107 as a full-fledged member of the FLN. While he

continued to practice psychiatry in Tunis, the FLN capital in exile, he
also lectured in this same practice and wrote for the FLNs paper El
Moudjahid, meaning the warrior. He became one of the international
spokespersons for the Algerian exploited people. He wrote fiery
editorials and articles lashing out at French colonial practices and he
provided an explanation for the goals and the tactics of the FLN. He
tried to put to shame the ineffective French intellectuals. For example
for Fanon the French intellectuals and Leftists presented a different
problem.
Although the French intellectuals politics put them in the
category of friends of the Algerian people, they either demonstrated
what Fanon called pseudo-solidarity108 or had abandoned the cause
completely. Militant FLN tactics seemed to have thrown them into a
panic and they usually condemned the terrorist acts perpetrated by
the FLN. According to Fanon, by condemning a terrorist act, the
intelligentsia lost sight of the reasons why violence was necessary to
overturn colonial rule. We will come back to this point later on in this
107cf. Marcel Manville, Les Antilles sans fard. Paris: Lharmattan, 1992, p.244
108 AR, p.77
70
work. In some of his articles Fanon called for the liberation of the
entire African continent. In short, during this time he became the
voice of the oppressed. Many of the essays he wrote during this time
were collected after Fanons death in the volume entitled Towards the
African Revolution, published in 1964.
During his time in T u n is ia , Fanon published L An V de la
re v o lu tio n
A lg erien n e, a sociological study of the effects of
revolutionary war on the Algerian population. The English translation

is entitled A Dying Colonialism. This title is very misleading, as it
suggests both that the study will focus on the 150-year-long French
occupation of Algeria and that colonization will expire of natural
causes. To the contrary, the book centers on the Algerian Revolution
itself, on the vital work of the Algerian people in combating the French
presence, reclaiming their country, and transforming their society.
Whereas Black Skin, White Masks addresses racial identity, A Dying
Colonialism is concerned with national identity, a national identity
forged in the fight against colonial oppression. The books second
French title -
Socioiogie d une Revolution (The S o c io lo g y o f
R evolution) -
more accurately describes Fanons em phases
71
whereas its original French title - L An Cinq de la Revolution

Algerianne (Year Five o f the A lg erian R evolution) - captures its
imaginative nature. Year Five implies that conventional time has
stopped and a different historical order has begun. For Fanon in this
book, Algeria was born in the Year One of the Revolution (1954).
Fanon writes of the brave new world after a colonized nation
declares war on its colonizers. And he writes while the war is being
waged, before the outcome can be known. Thus A Dying Colonialism
both describes the Revolution and predicts what the new society will
be like. It is not a clear-cut partisan argument. Instead, it is an
imaginative, radical political vision: a manifesto or as he calls it in
other places, an apocalypse.
Manifestos are blueprints for revolutionary socio-political
systems. The obvious example, and one crucial to Fanons thought,
is Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto. Central to the dynamics
of a manifesto is that the desired change has not yet occurred. The
document acts as a catalyst as well as a prophecy. An apocalypse is
more of a revolutionary vision than a catalyst. Its meaning in the
original Greek, unveiling or uncovering, suggests the disclosure of
72
a previously concealed transcendent truth. The best known

apocalypse is the biblical Book of Revelation. Revelation imagines
the catastrophic end of the world as we know it, the returned Messiah
ushering in a new heaven, a new earth. This too is a new political
order, but an apocalypse substitutes faith for political action as the
means to achieve profound change.
By drawing upon these types of writing, apocalyptic and
manifestos, Fanon enriches and expands his insiders analysis of a
specific political event. Writing an apocalyptic manifesto allows him to
unite the particular and the general, the past and the future, to
describe the Algerian Revolution and foresee its results so powerfully
that people will be inspired to work so as to achieve them. When we
read the book, decades after Algeria won its independence from
France; we know things that Fanon could not have known.
Like every other country in the world, Algeria did not turn into a
utopian society. It remains pressured by external politics and torn by
internal divisions - most recently, the bloody strife between the
secular and the traditionalist Islamic factions.109 Nevertheless, the
109 Cf. Macey, pp. 503 - 505.
73
fact that the real world does not measure up to the wonderful visions
of Fanon, however, does not make A Dying Colonialism irrelevant
today. It is an important historical account, of course - an anatomy of
a particular revolution. The book also is intended to illuminate the
global fight against colonialism. Fanon represents the case of
Algeria as both unique to a place and a people and as a
representative of the universal movement from tyranny to freedom.
In addition, the book illuminates the political idealism
driving revolutionary action and offers an investigative method for
cultural philosophy.110 In a series of cultural critiques, Fanon subjects
ordinary objects and groups - radio, medical treatment, Algerian
Jews, to name a few -
to what can be called a dialectical
archeology111 of meaning. By digging into the history of use and

value, he argues powerfully for the ability of committed human action
to change and shape our relationship to material things as well as to
people and ideas. In this way, we can substitute human realization,
110 Cf. Gibson Nigel, Fanon and the Pitfalls of cultural studies, in Frantz Fanon: Critical
Perspectives, ed. by Anthony C. Alessandrini: Rutledge, London 1999 pp. 99 - 125 and also
Fanon: An Intervention into Cultural Studies by E. San Juan, Jr. found in the same volume as
above pp. 126 - 145.
111 A word borrowed from Michel Foucaults L'archeologie du savoir.
74
or developing full human potential in place of reification5, or becoming

an object controlled by other objects or as Ferreira would call it
dehumanization.
Fanons FLN activities were not confined to words. Fanon
also began to serve as a diplomat for the FLN and was appointed
representative of the Algerian Provisional Government in Accra,
Ghana, in 1960. It was during this time that he helped to establish
supply lines through the Sahara and to negotiate with other African
leaders, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana for example, for the help the FLN
needed for its struggle against the French colonialism in Algeria. He
also did scouting work for the FLN and during one such mission in
1959, his jeep hit a landmine and he suffered severe injuries.112 He
sought treatment in Rome. While there, Fanon noticed a newspaper
item mentioning his presence in the hospital, so he prudently
changed rooms. That night, assassins shot up the bed he had
vacated. Later, the car that was to take him to the Rome airport was
sabotaged, exploding prematurely before Fanon had entered it but
killing two children in the process.
112 cf. Frantz Fanon, Notre Frere, El Moudjahid, 21 December 1961.
75
As fate would have it, Fanon came down with leukemia

and began to grow weaker and weaker. His sense of urgency,
however, increased; as he told an Antillean friend, It was necessary
that 1 hurry to say and do the maximum.113 He wrote his powerful
analysis of world-wide decolonization, The Wretched o f the Earth, at
the waiting door of this fatal illness. He received the page proofs of
the book just days before he died.
Although Fanon believed the United States of America to
be a loathsomely racist society, he traveled to Washington D.C. as a
last resort, on the advice of Soviet doctors who found his illness too
advanced for treatment in the USSR. Persistent rumors hold that the
CIA, which apparently helped his transfer to the U.S., arranged for
him to be isolated in a hotel room without any sort of medical
treatment for eight days, thus hastening his death. When he finally
entered the National Institute of Health facility outside Washington
D.C., he underwent massive blood transfusions, yet he contracted
double pneumonia in December, 1961. On the morning of the 6th of
December 1961 he awoke and said, Last night they put me in the
113 QTD. Caute, 69.
76
washing machine. He died that day at the age of thirty six, his wife
and six year old son at his side. Thus, nature accomplished what
French spies could not.
Fanons body was taken to Tunisia, and then smuggled
across the border to Algeria, where he was buried in an FLN
cemetery on 12 December 1961. Speaking in Arabic, a National
Liberation Alliance (here after abbreviated to ALN) commandant
pronounced a final farewell to Frantz Fanon, who was known to
everyone present:
Our late lamented brother Fanon was a sincere militant
who rebelled against colonialism and racism; as early as
1952, he was taking an active role in the activities of
liberal movements while he was pursuing his studies in
France. Of course this is not accurate, since by 1952 he
had already finished his studies and was already in
Algeria at the Blida-Joinville hospital. A t the very
beginning of the revolution, he joined the ranks of the
Front de Liberation Nationale and was a living model of
discipline and respect for its principles during all the time
that he had to carry out the tasks with which he was
entrusted by the Algerian Revolution... Realizing that his
health was obviously deteriorating, the higher authorities
advised him on several occasions to cease his activities
and to devote him self to treating his illness. He [sic]
answer was always the same: 1 will not cease my
activities while Algeria still continues the struggle and I
77
will go on with my task until my dying day.5 And that

indeed is what he did.114
Three months after Fanons death, Algeria became an independent
nation.
114 Frantz Fanon, Notre frere, El Moudjahid, 21 December 1961.
78
Chapter II
The Problem of Alienation:
No attempt must be made to encase man, for it is his destiny to be set free.
Fanon (BSWM 230)
A:
Introduction:
The aim of this part of the dissertation is to show firstly
what Fanon thought about the causes and the sources of alienation
to be and secondly to show why this work was necessary for his
project. This is, then, an attempt to define alienation as Fanon saw it,
in its historical context.
The term alienation is a word which is used expansively
in most of the human sciences. The historical examination of its use
reveals objective trends of its European development, from slavery to
the age of the transition from Feudalism to democratic governments
as well as socialist ones. Because of its varied use, this term takes on
various meanings which contribute to the transformations of social
structures and as such it requires a brief explanation here.
The concept of alienation is among a few concepts that are
readily invoked in common parlance and serious works. The concept
79
alienation refers to various conditions, processes and experiences.

Various disciplines - philosophical, sociological and political, for
instance - have appropriated the concept for their own ends, defined
it according to their specialized language and its disciplinary contexts
and in this way acquiring a multifaceted character. This multifaceted
character of the concept of alienation imposes a problem on the
writer who attempts to analyze the phenomenological conditions of
alienation, since to engage in such an analysis presupposes a clear
settled idea of the linguistic usage.115 The concept of alienation has
thus acquired so many definitions that some authors have suggested
discarding it altogether.116 There are tons of works produced on this
topic of alienation.
Geyer in his
Bibliography of alienation
presents more than
1800 books, articles and dissertations. There is a reason, however, to

believe that this bibliography, which covers only works written prior to
1974, is nowhere exhaustive even for the years it covers. In addition,
a great deal more has been written on the topic of alienation since
115 For a good look at the uses of the word alienation see Martin Bronfenbrenners work A
Harder Look at Alienation found in Ethics 83; July 1973, p.267 - 282.
116 Cf. Melvin Seema, On the Meaning o f Alienation in American Sociological Review. 24, 1959 pp.783791. And also, Alienation Studies in Annual review of Sociology 1, 1975. pp. 91-123.
80
1974. What comes out of this literature is the fact that alienation is
w ell
suited
to
describe
the
situation
of the
oppressed
powerlessness. There is hardly a concept as pertinent to the situation

of oppression as alienation. Its power rests in its synthesizing ability.
This concept does not only relate experiences to social conditions, it
also entails a critique and the critique also implies a solution. So,
what does the term alienation mean?
Etymologically the term alienation derives from the Latin verb
alien a re" which literally means to make something anothers, to take
away. In the legal sphere it refers to the transfer of title of property.
Used with reference to states of consciousness, it indicates a frame
of mind in which a person loses his or her reason or senses, is
estranged, does not feel at home with himself or herself, and feels
some discordance.117
It is important to note that among philosophers the most
outstanding expounders of the concept of alienation are most notably
Rousseau, Hegel and Marx. . Fanons application of the concept had
a Marxian influence, even though he chose to emphasize some
117 See Richard C. Onwuanibe, A Critique o f Revolutionary Humanism: Frantz Fanon. P.36
81
aspects [i.e. psychological and cultural] that Marx did not, more than
others [i.e. economic and class] that Marx used. In this way we can
readily see how important Marxs conception of alienation will be in
this dissertation.
My interest in Fanons conception of alienation lies in the fact
that Fanons conception of alienation is developed in concrete
historical terms, captured powerfully by the phrase The Wretched of
the Earth and proposes an historical way of coming out of such
alienation, which all too often is taken to be insurmountable by those
most deeply affected by it.
It is a fact that alienation has an essential historical context. If
one is alienated, one must be alienated from something or from
someone, as a result of certain causes the interplay of events and
circumstances in relation to one as the subject of this alienation
which manifest themselves in a historical framework. Similarly, the
overcoming of alienation is an inherently historical endeavor which
depends on a successful accomplishment of a process leading to a
qualitatively different state of affairs for all those affected by the state
of alienation.
82
Yet inspite of this historical component of the concept of

alienation, no guarantee whatsoever is given that the intellectual
undertakings which make use of this concept are historical. Often, as
a matter of fact, mystifications set in at one stage or another of the
analysis. Indeed, it is one of the arguments of this dissertation that, if
the concept of alienation is abstracted from the concrete socioeconom ical process, a mere semblance of historicity may be
substituted for a genuine understanding of the complex factors
involved in the historical process. An example of an author who took
a genuinely historical category and replaced it with a sheer
mystification is Aristotle. For example, in A ristotles thought the
concrete historical insights were embedded in a thoroughly ahistorical
general conception. The main reason for this was an overridding
ideological need which prevented Aristotle from applying a historical
principle to the analysis of society as a whole118. This can be seen
clearly with how he viewed the institutions of slavery and free
citizens. Indeed, since slavery, according to Aristotle, must be fixed
eternally - a need reflected in the concept of slavery as a natural
118 Cf. Istvan Meszaros, p. 6
83
state - there can be no question of a genuine historical conception.

Here the principle of historicity is thus inevitably degraded into
pseudo-historicity. The model of a repetitive cycle is projected upon
society as a whole: no matter what happens, the fundamental
structural relations determined by nature between masters and
slaves are therefore said to be always reproduced, not as first a
matter of empirical fact, but as part of an a priori necessity. Thus,
Aristotles postulate of a natural duality - slavery by nature and
freedom by nature - is directly rooted in the ideological need for
turning partiality [contingency] into universality [necessity] and makes
it impossible for him to perceive the varieties of social phenomena as
specific manifestations of an inherently interconnected, dynamically
changing socio-historical totality.119 Within this way of thinking, which
is manichean in a way, one can see the origins of western thought in
defence of colonialism. This is what colonialism is all about: a
postulate of a natural duality. For example, Boers of South Africa
justified and some of them still justify apartheid and the subjugation of
blacks in that land as derivative of an earlier historical event [it is
119 See Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade, Simon & Schuster, New York: 1997, pp 25 - 31
84
believed that the blacks are descendants of Ham, the son that Noah
cursed120] so that apartheid is being made into an a -h is to ric a l
condition without end. Is it possible to overcome this curse? The
hardened boars and racists would say no. We will deal with this
point later on in this work.
Fanon believes that his main interest is not only to defend the
political ideals he thinks humanity should strive toward but also to
bring them into being. Like Marx, Fanon believes that interpreting the
world is only useful to the extent that it leads to changing the world.
Fanon writes in Black Skin, White Masks, referring back to Marxs
famous saying:
When one has taken cognizance of this situation, when
one has understood it, one considers the job completed.
How can one then be deaf to that voice rolling down the
stages of history: What matters is not to know the world
but to change it.121
So, for Fanon, a historical analysis has to be followed by a genuine
work of humanization. In this way, following Fanon and Marx, our
120 Genesis 10.20-27 The lowest of slaves he be to his brothers.
121 BSWM, p.17 The voice rolling down the stages of history is that of Marx, and the quotation,
which Fanon most probably produced from memory, is: The philosophers have only interpreted
the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change i f (Karl Marx, Theses on
Feuerbach, in Lewis Feuer, ed., Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959], p. 245).
85
analysis of the conditions of alienation should lead us to propose

means for a genuinely humanizing action, an action which is aimed at
uplifting the wretched of the earth from their condition of alienation.
But how are we to understand what Fanon thought alienation to be?
Both the awareness of the concept alienation and its
conception are both rooted in a certain understanding of what it
means to be human. The question here is then: what is in agreement
with human nature and what constitutes an alienation from that
human essence? Such a question cannot be answered a-historically
without being turned into an absurdity of some kind. In this way, then,
the kind of world view that a particular individual holds depends on
ones philosophical anthropology. Fanon is no exception. Fanons
world view is based on some notion of what it means to be human,
and Fanons discussion of this notion of what it means to be human
can be found in his B la c k Skin, White Masks. Therefore, before we
examine the problem of alienation according to Fanon it is necessary
to look at his conception of what constitutes a human being and from
this it will be easier to see how a human being can be alienated from
such a conception.
86
B:
Parson's Historical Anthropology
Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns
immediately into a condition of their existence. Hannah Arendt
As we discuss Fanons anthropology, the point of central

importance which we should always keep in mind is whether or not
the question of human nature is assessed within an implicitly or
explicitly equal fram ework of explanation. If the fundamental
equality of all humans is not recognized, for any reason, that will lead
to a negation of history as evidenced by Aristotles natural duality
and as seen above this denial of human equality would lead to a
reliance on the much misused word nature or for that matter on the
religious conceptions of divine order in our endeavor to make sense
of these established inequalities. This issue of the equality or
inequality of humans, as it will be seen later, is quite distinct from the
question of the ideological justification of existing inequalities. The
ideological justification of existing inequalities is essential for
explaining the socio-historical determ inants of our system as
87
philosophers but quite irrelevant to the logical consistency of a set of

concepts of a particular system. In particular systems we deal with
the structural relations of concepts which prevail within the general
framework of a system already in existence. This is the reason why
instead of dealing first with the general anthropology of colonialism I
have chosen here to deal with F a n o n s historical conception of
human beings in action.
By examining Fanons anthropology I hope to show what is in
agreem ent with human nature and what, according to him,
constitutes an alienation from the human essence. In this way, I
will be able to converse with history rather than looking at merely the
justifications of an ideology as colonialism does. The specific
approach to the problem of equality, the particular limitations and
shortcomings of the concept of human nature , determines the
strength of an historical conception as well as the nature of the insight
into the real nature of alienation.
In this sense, then, it is safe to say that an Anthropological
orientation without genuine historicity amounts to nothing more than
mystification, w hatever socio-historical determ inants might have
88
brought it into existence. The organic conception of society, for

example, according to which every element of the social complex
must fulfill its proper function, i.e. a function predetermined by
nature or by divine providence in accordance with some rigid
hierarchical pattern is thought to be totally ahistorical. It is one of the
argum ents of this dissertation that a great deal of modern
functionalism is an attempt at undermining the very sense of
historicity in human initiatives. But we will not enter the discussion of
this point at this juncture. What is important to note here is that in the
development of modern thought the concept of alienation acquired an
increasing importance parallel to the rise of a genuine, historically
founded philosophical anthropology as evidenced in Fanons work as
well as that of others similarly historically minded. On the one hand
this trend represented a radical opposition to the mystifications of
medieval pseudo-anthropology which was carried over and imposed
on the colonies, and on the other hand it provided the positive
organizing focus of an incomparably more dynamic understanding of
the social processes than had been possible before. A good
89
representative here is Karl Marx. We will return to him shortly but let
us look at what makes humans, humans according to Fanon.
In his Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon wrote: I believe that the
individual should tend to take on the universality inherent in the
human condition.122 This implies that, for Fanon, humans have an
essential nature. What is this essential nature? Unlike Hobbes or
Rousseau, Fanon does not say! One can, however, build an
inferential picture of what he might have had in mind from his
writings. What is obvious is the fact that for Fanon, this essential
nature is supposed to be the same in all human beings irrespective of
race, color, ethnic group, nationality, sex, or social class. In this
sense then, Fanons anthropology is rooted in the general affirmation
of the equality of all humans. That all humans are equal is an abstract
concept that makes it possible for one to recognize this human as
human while at the same time recognizing th a t human as also
human. And, for Fanon, the recognition of this abstract equality leads
to a genuine respect and a good rapport among all humans.
122BSWM, p. 12.
90
In addition to this essential nature, there is also the existential

condition of man . This existential condition could be, for instance,
the fact of ones color or culture or nationality. The e x is te n tia l
conditions are the individuating circumstances that identify a human
being as this human being. A human beings individuality, thus, is a
com bination of the universality of his essential self and the
particularity of his existential condition. When there is, in human
being, a tension or a separation or a disharm onic relationship
between the essential self in this human being and the existential
condition in her, then we have alienation: that is, this particular
human being is not what she is supposed to be as this human being.
This is in the sense of alienation that the French have in mind when
they call mental hospitals maisons des alienes, i.e. people who are
not themselves as human beings or people who are not properly in
their own nature.123
Fanon thinks that in pre-colonial times, the indigenous people
enjoyed harmony between their essential nature and their existential
situation and this enjoyment was also extended to their being and
I2j An idea brought to our attention by Professor Blanchette.
91
their environment. For Fanon, in pre-colonial times there was a

harmony between people and their environment, but with the coming
of colonialism, people became alienated. In pre-colonial times the
indigenous peoples were able to make their own decisions on matters
that affected their lives. The colonialist took away not only the
ownership of the indigenous means of production but more
importantly he took away the indigenous ownership of the decision
making process. In this way, the colonizer alienated the colonized
from their land and from their own selves, since my projects shape
what I become. This is one of the reasons why Fanon came to focus
on negritude as an important, though not sufficient, condition for the
liberation of the black colonized peoples.
There are some people who would object and say that the pre
colonial man was as alienated, if not more so, as the colonial man.
These people would cite the presence of tribal wars and the problems
created by tribalism as a sign of the presence of alienation in these
societies. What these objectors fail to realize is the fact that tribalism,
as I wish to argue, at least in the sub-Saharan African continent, as
we know it now, is a post-transatlantic slave trade phenomenon.
92
True, there have always been tribes in Africa and there has always
been slavery in Africa but the tribes looked at each other not as rivals
but as complimenting each other.
I wish to expound this point by giving a very powerful example
and this example will help us later especially when I will be examining
the place of violence in humanization. The colonial time was a violent
one and it contributed to the violence of the native under the colonial
regime. This example will prove that tribalism as we know it now is a
colonial creation and further it will pave way to what we will be talking
about in the third chapter of this work as to the solution of the
problem of alienation.
The example I want to explore is the coming to be of the
present sad relationship between the Hutus and the Tutsis of Rwanda
and those of the neighboring Burundi. These two tribes were able to
work and live together peacefully and in their dealings with each other
they took each other as equals rather than as inferior or superior. The
Hutus were agriculturalists while the Tutsis were pastoralists. The
Tutsis would trade cattle in exchange for food from the Hutus.
Another point to be stressed is the fact that these tribes were not
93
closed, one could move from one tribe and become a member of
another tribe and, while there, be recognized as an equal among
equals. But all this changed with the 1933 census where upon each
individual was termed as either a Hutu or a Tutsi with no possibility of
a crossing over. In order to understand the present day antagonism,
then, that led to the 1994 genocide, one needs to look at the history
and the method of the German administration of Rwanda and later
on, after the first world war, the method of the Belgian colonial tactics
in the Rwandan rule. In this way one will see how colonialism
contributed to the present sense of alienation: an alienation from
ones neighbor and from ones own sense of self-worth. I argue that
the Rwandan genocide needs to be thought through within the
perspective of colonialism.
At the Berlin conference of 1885, the European super-powers
had divided the African continent and given Rwanda to Germany. It
was only on May 4 1894 that Rwanda was officially inducted into the
German East Africa. Germany kept only twenty-four military officers
and six administrators in Rwanda.
94
There are three social groups in Rwanda, the Hutu, the Tutsi
and the Twa. These groups were not tribes, for the people shared the
same religion, told the same ancestral stories, and spoke the same
language, Kinyarwanda. There is no consensus among historians or
anthropologists on the origins of this threefold division so crucial to
Rwandas history. In fact, many anthropologists contest the notion
that Hutu and Tutsi are distinct groups and maintain that the
distinction is more one of class or caste.124
Whatever the origin of these distinctions, what is known is that
the idea that Hutu and Tutsi were distinct ethnic groups appears to
have originated with the English colonial agent and explorer John
Hanning Speke, who discovered and named Lake Victoria in 1859.
For this reason, when one evokes the terms Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa,
one certainly gives them a meaning they did not have in pre-colonial
Rwanda. Speke visited the states of Karangwe and Buganda and
thought that there was a natural explanation for the divisions in the
society that he observed. Speke theorized that in this part of central
Africa there was a superior race, quite different from the common
124 See Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in
Rwanda, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001 pp.19 - 102
95
order of natives.125 The Tutsi ruling classes were thought to have

come from further north, perhaps Ethiopia, and hence more closely
related to the noble Europeans.126 They were superior and too fine
to be common negroes. Some missionaries thought that the Tutsi
were descendants of ancient Egyptians: their...delicate appearance,
their love of money, their capacity to adapt to any situation seems to
indicate a Semitic origin.127 This Hamitic hypothesis was not
articulated with Rwanda only. In fact it claimed to explain all signs of
civilization in Bantu Africa. Not only the Tutsi were considered
Hamitic but also the Bahima and the ruling stratum in Buganda
[Uganda], were considered as Hamitic as well. But it was only in
Rwanda and Burundi that the Hamitic hypothesis became the basis of
a series of institutional changes that fixed the Tutsi as a race unto
itself in their relationship to the colonial state.
The Germans ruled through the existing power structure at the
time the Tutsis had assumed the role of aristocratic warrior class
who offered protection to their subjects from raids by rival Tutsi and
125 Cf. Antoine Lema, Africa Divided: The creation o f 'Ethnic Groups Sweden: Lund University Press,
1993, p. 43.
126 See Josias Semujanga, Origins o f Rwandan Genocide, New York: Humanity Books, p.l 10 - 130 (The
Tutsi-Hamite, or the myth of Ham upside down)
127 Cf. J. B. Piollet, Les Missions Catholiques Frangaises auXIXe Siecle, Les Missions dAfrique, 1902.
96
Hutu clans. In this way, class distinction between cattle owning ruler
and land cultivating subject became even more sharply defined. The
monarchy in Rwanda was Tutsi and the kings army was mostly Tutsi,
and Tutsis were favored for political offices. Count Von Gotzen, the
German administrator in Rwanda, believed that German policy should
be to support the chiefs in such a manner that they would be
convinced that their own salvation and that of their subordinates
depended on their faithfulness to the Germans. The Germans then
used the Tutsi aristocracy to enforce their rule and collect
government taxes. But the Germans also favored expansion and in
1912 helped the Tutsi monarchy to subjugate the areas to the north.
In spite of being incorporated into the Rwandan state, the northern
Hutu formed a distinct Hutu culture, representing an independent
Hutu tradition. There was considerable bitterness towards both the
Tutsi and the southern Hutu as a result of this subjugation.128 It was
in the north that Hutu power and the racist anti-Tutsi ideology
underpinning the genocide was conceived.
128 Cf. Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi, p.106.
97
After the defeat of Germany in the First World War, the Western
provinces of German East Africa, Rwanda and Burundi were given to
Belgium to administer as a single Ruanda-Urundi territory under a
League of Nations mandate.129 The covenant stipulated that the
tutelage of the peoples in the colonies should be entrusted to
advanced nations who, by reason of their resources, their experience
or the geographical position, could best undertake this responsibility.
The character of the mandate would differ according to the stage of
the development of the people. Ruanda-Urundi was placed under a
category reserved for those countries for which self-determination
was considered unfeasible. Belgium was pledged to the League to
assure administration and promote development, free speech and
freedom of religion.130
In a report written in 1920, the Belgian minister of colonies
outlined the Belgian policy towards Rwanda. The European, he
wrote, must be the guide and teacher. We have a certain
responsibility to the W aHutu, the report disclosed. We have to
protect them against the injustices they often face...but we will go no
129 Cf. Article 22 of The Covenant of the League o f Nations.
130 Article 22.
98
further. We find the Watutzi established since ancient time, intelligent

and capable. We will respect that situation A priest who arrived in
Rwanda in 1907 Wonsignor Leon Classe wrote in 1930: The biggest
mistake the government could make would be to do away with Tutsi
caste. This would lead the country to anarchy and communism, and
to be viciously anti-European.132
What in fact happened was that a policy of indirect rule under
the Germans was gradually changed by the Belgians to one of direct
rule, and in the years to come the power of the king was eroded by
Belgian representatives. In 1933 the Belgian administration organized
a census and teams of Belgian bureaucrats classified the whole
population as either Hutu or Tutsi or Twa. Every Rwandan was
counted and measured: the height, the length of their noses, and the
shape of their eyes. Every Rwandan was classified and given an
identity card. This was at the pinnacle of the Belgian colonial reform.
This reform also assured that Hutus would not be ruled by their own
chiefs, but by Tutsi chiefs. The same reforms constructed the Tutsi
131 Lema, Africa Divided, p.59 He sourced this to a confidential memorandum o f the ministere des colonies,
dated 15 June 1920 from Archives Africaines, A E /II no. 1849 (3288). M y italics.
132 Belgian Senate, Commission d enquete parlementaire concernant les evenements du Rwanda, Raport, 6
Dec. 1997, p. 107.
99
into a different race, namely, the Hamitic race, and thus a bipolar
racial identity was created. In this way the Rwandan colonized
population was split into a native majority opposed to several non
native minorities, that is Hutu against Tutsi as well as the Belgian
power. Indeed, if anything, the revolutionaries of 1959 confirmed the
Tutsi minority as aliens and the Hutu m ajorities as natives in
accordance with the well known expression Rwanda nyaminshi [the
owners of Rwanda], finally and rightfully come to power. In the case
of Rwanda then, Hutu and Tutsi were transform ed as political
identities along with the state that enforced these identities. There
cannot therefore be a single answer to pin Hutu and Tutsi down to
some trans-historical identity.
Belgium also interfered in local administration as could be seen
by the Second World War as Rwanda was divided into chiefdoms
with Belgian administrators involved at every level of society. Money
was introduced and so was education, although the latter was
reserved for the sons of chiefs.133 In this way, the Belgian
administration created an African civil service within the Rwandan
133 Cf. Rene Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi, London: Pall Mall, 1970, p.73.
100
bureaucracy composed of the members of the Tutsi oligarchy. The

Hutus found themselves left out and to add insult on insult, the chiefs
on each hill, who were all Tutsi, were used by the colonial
administration to requisition forced labor from the Hutu masses,
particularly for road building.
The above historical facts form the context of what I am arguing
here. The clue to the heightened Hutu/Tutsi violence in recent times
lies in two rather contemporary facts. The first fact is connected to
how Hutu and Tutsi were constructed as political identities by colonial
state: Hutu as indigenous and Tutsi as alien. The second reason
resides in the fact that the violence between Hutu and Tutsi is
connected with the failure of Rwanda and Burundi nationalisms to
transcend the colonial construction of Hutu and Tutsi as native and
alien.134 I argue then here that the solution to this enmity is the
revisitation of the empirical historicity of this conflict and the ability to
recognize the fact that the division Hutu/Tutsi as native/alien was a
colonial construct to more easily exploit the colony.
134 C f also Josias Semujangas discussion o f this point in his Origins o f Rwanda Genocide especially the
chapter entitled Propagandist Discourse, or the art of Manipulating Myths pp. 135 - 165
101
Another reason for the entrenchment of tribalism, as we know it

now, is the scramble for Africa.135 The rivalries among the European
nations could undermine the profit driven economy, whence the
importance of the Berlin conference for the partition of Africa in 1884
- 1885. To this conference came fourteen states - roughly all the
states of Europe except Switzerland. Members at this conference
were concerned with defining spheres of influence. It was agreed
that in future any power that effectively occupied African territory and
duly notified the other powers could thereby establish possession of
it. The treaty was, in short, a contract among the powers to pursue
the further partition of Africa as amicably as possible; and an attempt
to keep colonial competition separate from intra-European rivalries.
This gave the signal for the rapid partition of Africa among all the
colonial powers, and inaugurated the new era of colonialism. As seen
above, the colonialists exploited the tribal differences to their
advantage as they pursued the divide and rule policy. In this way the
British could easily use their famous indirect rule method and through
this they were able to create a privileged class within the colonized
135 Cf. Shillington, pp.302 - 317
102
peoples. The British created triba! chiefs among the people who had
never seen the office of chieftaincy before and wherever this office
was the norm they took advantage of it to impose their rule on all
subordinates. The seeds of dictatorship, in this way, were sown. The
chief was usually under a group headman who in turn was under the
authority of a Native authority whose authority was second to the
District Commissioner [or governor] who was always a colonialist.
The chiefs, the group headmen and the District Commissioners were
compensated both in monetary form as well as in other forms of
privileges. I will come back to this point when I will be discussing the
problem of land alienation. Here it suffices to note that those who
believe that the problem of tribalism was a source of alienation in precolonial Sub-Saharan Africa miss the point. The form of tribalism as
we know it now is as a result of the transatlantic slave trade that was
organized by the Europeans and the colonial methods of divide and
rule.
That there have always been slaves in Africa is true but the
slavery of pre-transatlantic slave trade had a retributive type of justice
attached to it. No group raided another group solely for the sake of
103
securing slaves. One became a slave for a reason, either to pay back
debt or to replace a triba! kin who had been wrongly killed by another
tribe. These slaves had a way of gaining back their freedom.
Records show that hundreds of thousands of Africans

enslaved by their fellow Africans over the centuries of
European slave trade were able to buy their way out of
slavery and smoothly integrate into their former slaving
society. It typically took West African enslaved farmers
about five years of hard work and good harvesting to buy
out of slavery.136
In fact some of these freed slaves became influential members of
their adoptive homes. The story of Ikemefuna in Chinua Achebes
Things Fall Apart is one but a powerful exam ple of this point.
Ikemefuna came to live with Okonkwos family as a peace offering
from Ikemefunas home tribe to the Ibo for the killing of an Umuofia
daughter. From the beginning, Ikemefuna began to fill the void in
Okonkwos life that Okonkwos son, Nwoye, could not fill. Ikemefuna
adjusted quickly to his new fam ily and tribe and energetically
participated in activities. He earned everyones love and respect
because he was so lively and talented. Only two years older than
136 Cf. S. E. Anderson, The Black Holocaust fo r Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers pub. Company,
1995, p. 46.
104
Nwoye, Ikemefuna already knew much about the world and could do
almost anything. He was able to identify birds, trap rodents, and
make flutes. He knew which trees made the best bows and was able
to tell delightful folk stories. Okonkwo appreciated for the example he
set for Nwoye and took him as his real son as Nwoye took him as his
real brother. Here we see an example of a boy given as a slave being
taken into a family and appreciated as a family member.
Unlike this pre-transatlantic slave trade, the transatlantic slave
trade took a different form. Because of material and power gains,
some tribal leaders with the aid of the Arabs and some European
powers [Spanish power and Portuguese power for example] began to
organize raid parties in surrounding tribal areas for the sole purpose
of capturing slaves for the sake of selling them. This business of raids
produced basic enmities and mistrust among the different tribes. The
seeds of tribalism as we know it today were sown.
The abolition of transatlantic slave trade did not help things
either. Contrary to the beliefs of European philanthropies, it is the
thesis of this work that slavery was not abolished for humanitarian
reasons but for economic ones. Africans became more profitable for
105
Europeans at home than away. The European Industries needed

cheap raw materials and an already available market. Africa gave the
answer to both of these needs.
In Malawi, for example, The African Lakes Company, a British
trading company supplied cotton doth and other British manufactured
goods in an attempt to undercut the Arab, Swahili and Yao slavers
who were still active in the area. The company hoped to make a
handsome profit from the large-scale export of locally-hunted ivory.
The slave-traders of eastern Africa, however, were well armed and
firmly established. The African Lakes company was unable to break
the slavers control of the ivory trade. In the early 1880s the company
appealed for British protection to help suppress the slave trade. But
the British government did not act decisively until the late 1880s.
Then, they were mainly concerned to prevent the Portuguese of the
lower Zambezi valley from restricting British trading access to the
Shire highland region. Nevertheless it was the trading interests that
helped promote and justify the British declaration of a protectorate
over the Shire highlands in 1889. Consequently, the abolition of slave
106
trade led to the so called legitimate trade which was the prelude to
the colonization of the African continent.
This brings us to a crucial question: What is there in colonialism
that has people alienated? Before we answer this question, let us first
analyze the origin of Fanons understanding of the term alienation.
It was by studying Hegel and Marx that Fanon came across the
systematic concept of alienation. To be sure, the idea of alienation
was already introduced to the young Frantz Fanon in the concept of
Negritude,137 the movement he had come into contact with through
his teacher Aime Cesaire. But we are concerned here with much
more than simple intellectual influence. Fanons conception of
alienation was far more practical than theoretical as described by
Aime Cesaire. In this way Fanon tried to do what Marx had earlier
tried to do in his analysis and appropriation of the concept of
alienation. M arxs analysis of alienation constitutes a critical
framework for Fanons analysis of the term alienation. For these
reasons it is appropriate to discuss Marxs analysis of historical
alienation in order to see how Fanon adapts this Marxian use.
b7 To be discussed later in this chapter.
107
C:
M arx on H istorical A lie n a tio n 138

Alles vereinzelte is! verw erflich. Goethe.
Marx thinks of alienation in socio-economic terms. His outlook

on the world was really formed between the period of March 1843
and August 1844. It was during this time that he made the transition
from idealism to materialism and from the standpoint of revolutionary
democracy to that of communism.
By late 1843 and early 1844 Marx was not only an opponent of
the existing political systems of feudal absolutism and bourgeois
monarchy, but also of any kind of social system resting on private
property and exploitation of the working people. It was at this time
that Marx made his first contacts with the working class. He saw in
the emancipation movement of the working class the only way to free
humanity from social inequality and oppression.
138 For the construction o f this section, I have heavily relied on the following commentaries on top of the
primary literature of Marx: Marshall Bermans 1963 work, Freedom and Fetishism; Istvan Meszaros 1970
work, M arxs Theory o f Alienation; George Brenkerts 1983 work, M arxs ethic o f Freedom; and Cyril
Smiths 1998 work, The Standpoint o f Socialist Humanity.
108
After moving to Paris in October 1843 Marx found himself in an

atmosphere of intense socialist agitation and activity among the
workers groups and secret societies. Marx at this time dedicated his
efforts tow ards w orking
out the scien tific
basis of a new,
revolutionary-proletarian world outlook. He tried to do this by studying

a broad spectrum of philosophical, historical, economic and political
problems.
Marx was engaged then in a number of theoretical projects: he

began writing a work on Hegels philosophy o f law. He intended to
write a history of the Convention, and was also planning works
devoted to the criticism of politics and political economy. At this time
Marx also began to realize the necessity of dissociating himself from
the current economic, philosophical and sociological doctrines. He
considered the criticism of the contemporary world outlook essential
for theoretical principles of a new world outlook to be arrived at. As it
can be seen from his essay on H egels philosophy o f law, it is clear
that Marx understood the inconsistencies of Hegels idealism, the
narrow -m indedness
of the
bourgeois
econom ists,
and
the
weaknesses of the Utopian Socialists. But at the same time it is also
109
clear that he tried to make use of all that he took to be rational in the
views of his predecessors. He was deeply impressed by Feuerbachs
materialism, but had already gone far beyond Feuerbach in his
approach to theoretical and practical problems, particularly in
interpreting the life of society.
One of the works written during this time is Marxs extensive

though incomplete manuscript, Contribution to the Critique o f Hegels
Philosophy o f Law. The object of this study was not only Hegels
philosophy. Marx had studied a broad range of problems in the
history and theory of the state and law, world history, the history of
separate countries, the English Revolution of the seventeenth
century, and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth
century. All this study is reflected in this manuscript, Contribution to
the Critique o f Hegels Philosophy o f Law. Contrary to expectations,
Marx approached the criticism of Hegel through an investigation of
social relations as one would expect him to have approached this
criticism of Hegel through an analysis of religion as Feuerbach had
done especially
given that Marx was
highly
influenced
by
Feuerbachs materialism. From this we can rightly conclude that what
110
interested Marx most in Hegel was Hegels teaching on the state and
society. In the process of criticising Hegels philosophy of law, Marx
was led to the conclusion that the state is determined by civil society
and not the civil society by the state, as Hegel had asserted.
Marx wished to define the concept of civil society in concrete

terms, to bring out the essential features of its historical evolution,
and in particular to analyze the stage at which bourgeois private
property began to play the dominant role in the field of material
relationships. Giving a m aterialist explanation of the mutual
connection between the state in his tim e and the bourgeois
ownership, Marx wrote that the existing political constitution in the
developed countries was the constitution of Private Property.139
Later, in 1859, in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of

Political Economy, Marx recalled the important part his work on the
critique of Hegels philosophy of law had played in the formation of
his materialist views:
139Cf. Marx-Engels Collected works Volume 3. p.98
Ill
My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal

relations nor political forms could be comprehended either
by themselves or on the basis of a so-called genera!
development of the human mind, but that on the contrary
they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality
of which Hegel, following the example of English and
French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces
within the term civil society'; that the anatomy of this civil
society, however, has to be sought in political economy.
As will become apparent, the key to understanding the concept of
alienation according to Marx is the understanding of economic
undertakings.
Feuerbach, Hegel, and the English Political Economy, then,

exercised the most direct influence on the formation of Marxs theory
of alienation. Hegels philosophy is both the fundamental source of
Marxs own analyses of alienation and (along with Feuerbachs) a
central polemical target that Marx uses to formulate his own distinct
position.
Marx had of course a specific understanding of the very sharp

experience of alienation. For him this experience is mostly manifested
in modern bourgeois society. For Marx, a bourgeois society is the
social form ation in which the relation of buying and selling
112
[commodity relation] has spread into every corner of life. The family
and the state still exist, but the family is successively broken down
and atom ized, more and more resem bling a relationship of
commercial contract, rather than one genuinely expressing kinship
and the care of one generation for the other. The ruling class in
bourgeois society is the bourgeoisie, who own the means of
production as private property. The producing class in bourgeois
society is the proletariat, a class of people who have no choice but to
offer their labor-power for sale to the bourgeoisie since all the other
means of production belong to the bourgeoisie. Marx developed this
understanding through his critique of Hegel. Marx writes in his
preface to the second edition of Capital in volume One:
My dialectic method is not only different from the
Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life
process of the human brain, i.e. the process of thinking
which under the name of the idea, he even transforms
into an independent subject, is the demiurge of the real
world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal
form of the idea. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is
nothing else than the material world reflected by the
human mind, and translated form s of thought...The
mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegels hands by
no means prevents him from being the first to present its
general form of w orking in a com prehensive and
conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It
113
must be turned right side up again if you would discover

the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
This text shows us that Marx did not reject the rational content
of Hegels philosophy or his dialectics. He even stressed that Hegel
had succeeded in presenting, though in an abstract, mystified form,
many of the real processes of social life. Thus, unlike Feuerbach,
Marx continued to attach great importance to Hegels dialectical
method in the analysis of social relations and made the first step
towards a materialist transformation of dialectics, towards freeing it
from its mystical shell and bringing it to bear on the real world.
However, in his work, Marx insisted that it was human labor

which created culture and history, not the other way around; in other
words, spirit was a human product, not the other way around. Marx
writes in German Ideology in the section on Historical Fundamental
Conditions:
The first premise of all human existence and therefore of
all history [is that humans] must be in a position to live in
order to be able to make history. But life involves before
everything else, eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing
and many other things. The first historical act is thus the
production of the means to satisfy these needs, the
production of material life itself. And indeed this is an
114
historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which

today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly
be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.
In this work, then, Marx's ontological starting point is the selfevident fact that man, a specific part of nature (i.e. a being with
physical needs historically prior to all others) must produce in order to
sustain himself. In the course of the satisfaction of these needs,
[eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other things,]
through his productive activity, a complex hierarchy of non-physical
needs which thus become necessary conditions for the gratification of
his original physical needs as well, appears. Human activities and
needs of a spiritual kind then have their foundation in the sphere of
material production as specific expressions of human interchange
with nature, mediated in complex ways and forms through commerce
among human beings. Productive activity is, therefore, the mediator
in the subject-object relationship between man and nature: a
mediator that enables man to lead a human mode of existence. That
man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that
nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature. Productive
activity is hence the source of consciousness. In this way, then, the
115
estrangement of this productive activity [labor] has to be conceived as

the source of all alienation.
In the Manuscripts o f 1844 labor [Arbeit] is considered both in
general as productive activity the fundam ental ontological
determination of humanness (menschliches Dasein, i.e. really
human mode of existence) and in particular in its modern
bourgeois setting, as having the form of the capitalistic division of
labor. It is in this latter form capitalistically structured activity
that labor becomes the ground of all alienation in Capitalistic
societies.
Marx used the concept of alienation for purposes of a profound

analysis of social relations. For him alienation was characteristic of
those social relations under which the conditions of peoples life and
activity, and the relations among people, appear as a force which is
alien and hostile to them. So in Marxs interpretation alienation is by
no means a supra-historical phenomenon. Marx was the first to link
116
alienation with the domination of private property and the social

system it engenders.140
This is the reason why Marxs views on alienation appeared in

a concentrated form in his treatm ent of estranged labor. The
concept of estranged labor summed up the enslaved condition of
the worker in capitalist society, his being tied down to a definite job,
his physical and moral crippling as a result of labor which is forced on
him, the loss of his s e lf.141 The concept of estranged labor in the
Econom ic and Philosophic M anuscripts o f 1844 constituted in
particular the initial expression of the future Marxist theory of the
appropriation of labor of others by capital, a preliminary approach to
the important ideas later developed especially in Capital.
Thus Marx's protest against alienation, privatization and

reification does not involve him in the contradictions of an idealization
of some kind of a natural state as conceived by Hobbes and later
bourgeois social analysts. This is where I think Fanons objections to
some of the ideas of Negritude are important in our review of Marxs
1401 owe this insight to a friend and a colleague and a teacher, the one who introduced me to Karl Marxs
philosophy, Martin Birba S.J.
141 Cf. Marx-Engels Collected works Volume 3, p.274
117
contribution to Fanons philosophy of alienation. There is no trace, in

Marxs conception of any sentimental or romantic nostalgia for some
original state of nature. Man's nature (his specific being) means
precisely distinctiveness from nature in general. The relationship of
man with nature is self-mediating in a twofold sense and this is
where the problem of alienation begins to take shape. First, nature
manifests itself as that which mediates itself with itself in man, for
man is part and parcel of nature. And secondly, because the
mediating activity itself (labor) is nothing but man's attribute, located
in a specific part of nature. Thus in productive activity [praxis], under
the first of its dual ontological aspects, nature mediates itself with
nature, and, under its second ontological aspect in virtue of the
fact that productive activity is inherently social activity man
mediates him self with man.
This second order mediation, institutionalized in the form of the

capitalistic Division of Labor Private Property Exchange, disrupts
the relationship between man and nature and between man and man
in his productive activity. Moreover, it subordinates productive activity
itself to the requirements of commodity-production relations destined
118
to ensure the reproduction of the isolated and reified individual who is

but an appendage of this system of economic determinations. In this
capitalistic system the goal in laboring is to produce not use-value,
but a commodity also; not only a use value, but value, not only value,
but at the same time surplus value.142
Human productive activity, in this sense, cannot bring human

beings fu lfillm en t because the institutionalized second order
mediations interpose themselves between humans and their activity,
between humans and nature, and between a human being and
another human being. For if human self-mediation is further mediated
by the capitalistically institutionalized form of productive activity, then
nature cannot mediate itself with nature and humans cannot mediate
them selves with other humans. On the contrary, humans are
confronted by nature in a hostile fashion, under the rule of a natural
law blindly prevailing through the m echanisms of the market
(Exchange) and, on the other hand, humans are confronted by other
humans in a hostile fashion in the antagonism between Capital and
Labor. The original interrelationship of humans with nature is
142 Capital Volume 1: Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971 p. 181
119
transformed into the relationship between Wage Labor and Capital,

and as far as the individual worker is concerned, the aim of her
activity is necessarily confined to her self-reproduction as a mere
individual, in her physical being. Thus, means become ultimate ends
while human ends are turned into mere means subordinated to the
reified ends of this institutionalized system of second order
mediations. One survives in order to produce and not the other way
round. The individual is confronted with mere objects. One has no
consciousness of ones own species being.
Marx went on to argue that the specific form of labor
characteristic of bourgeois society, wage labor, the mode of
production in which the laborer sells her capacity to work as a
commodity, constitutes the most profound form of alienation. Since
wage workers sell their labor power, the combination of those mental
and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he
exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description, to
earn a living, and since that the capitalist comes to own this labor
process, the product of the workers labor is in a very real sense alien
to the worker. It is not the laborers product but the product of the
120
capitalist. Labor becomes a mere material fact, instead of being

appreciated as the human agency of production.
And once a product enters the market, no one has any control
over it. it sets off on a course which appears to be governed by
supra-human laws. Marx writes in Capital, chapter one:
...with com m odities...it is a definite social relation
between men that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic
form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to
find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mistenveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the
productions of the human brain appear as independent
beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both
with one another and the human race. So it is in the world
of commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from
the production of com m odities. This Fetishism of
commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has
already shown, in the peculiar social character of the
labor that produces them.
Alienation and fetishism of commodity, the belief that commodities
possess human properties,143 are therefore related to the concept of
reification, the transformation of social relations into an objective
existence,144 in which social relations are conceived as relations
between things. Following this way of thinking, Marx would say that
alienation can be overcome by restoring the truly human relationship
143 Cf. Capital, section 4 o f Chapter one
144 Reification usually used derogatively consists in imagining that abstracted relations exist in nature rather
than as products o f human thought.
121
to the labor process and this can be done by people working in order
to meet peoples needs, working as an expression of their own
human nature, not just to earn a wage.
So far we have seen that the fundamental terms of reference in

Marxs theory of alienation are man, nature and productive activity.
Thus for an understanding of the natural essence of man the
concept of productive activity is of a crucial importance. We have
seen further that productive activity is the cause of the growing
complexity of human society, i.e. by creating new needs while
satisfying old ones. In this way Marx assigned an essentially positive
role to the productive activity. At the same time we can ask ourselves
how we can explain alienation as self-alienation, that is as the
alienation of labor, as the alienation of human powers from man
through this productive activity? Marx would say: Let us review the
various factors as seen in our supposition: My work would be a free
manifestation of life, hence an enjoyment of life. Presupposing private
property, my work is an alienation from life, for I work in order to
make a living, in order to obtain for myself the means of life. My work
is no longer my life. Thus labor, in its sensuous form , assumes its
122
universal significance in Marx's philosophy. It becomes not only the

key to understanding the determinations inherent in all forms of
alienation but also the centre of reference of his practical strategy
aimed at the actual supersession of capitalistic alienation. In the
Econom ic and Philosophic M anuscripts o f 1844 Marx clearly
formulated his conclusion that the system of private property can be
overthrown only as a result of the revolutionary struggle of the broad
masses. In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of
communism is quite sufficient. It takes actual communist action to
abolish actual private property.145
Activity ( Tatigkeit), division of labor (
Teilung der A rb e it),
exchange (Austausch) and private property {Privateigentum) are

the key concepts of this approach to the problematic of alienation.
The ideal of a positive transcendence of alienation is formulated as
a necessary socio-historical super-session of the 'mediations":
Private Property Exchange Division of Labor which interpose
themselves between man and his activity and prevent him from
finding fulfillm ent in his labor, in the exercise of his productive
145 Cf. Marx-Engels Collected Works vol. 3, p.313
123
(creative) abilities, and in the human appropriation of the products of

his activity.
Marx's exposition of alienation is thus formulated as a rejection
of these capitalist mediations. It is vitally important to stress in this
connection that this rejection does not imply in any way a negation of
all mediation. A total rejection of all mediation would be akin to sheer
mysticism in its glorification of the identity of Subject and Object.
What Marx opposes as alienation is not mediation in general but a set
of second order mediations (Private Property Exchange Division
of Labor), a mediation of the mediation, i.e. a historically specific
mediation of the ontologically fundamental self-mediation of man with
nature. This second order mediation can only arise on the basis of
the ontologically necessary first order mediation as the specific,
alienated form of the latter. The first order m ediation itself
productive activity as such is an absolute ontological factor of the
human predicament.
It is absolute because the human mode of
existence is inconceivable w ithout the transform ation of nature

accomplished by productive activity.
124
Thus, human alienation for Marx arises through turning

everything into salable objects. Marx writes in On the Jewish
Question:
Selling is the practice of alienation. Just as man, so long
as he is engrossed in religion, can only objectify his
essence by an alien and fantastic being; so under the
sway of egoistic need, he can only affirm himself and
produce objects in practice by subordinating his products
and his own activity to the domination of an alien entity,
and by attributing to them the significance of an alien
entity, namely money.
Reification of one's own person in a social contract and thus the
freely chosen acceptance of a new servitude in place of the old
feudal, politically established and regulated form of servitude could
advance on the basis of a civil society characterized by the rule of
money opening the floodgates for the universal servitude to egoistic
need.
Alienation is therefore characterized by the universal extension
of saleability (i.e. the transformation of everything into commodity).
It is the conversion of human beings into things so that they could
appear as commodities on the labor market (in other words: the
reification of human relations). It is the disintegration of the social
body or the species being of productive activity into isolated
125
individuals who pursue their own limited, particularistic aims in

servitude to egoistic need, making a virtue out of their selfishness in
their cult of privacy. For the social order of bourgeois civil society
couid sustain itself only on the basis of the conversion of the various
areas of human experience into salable commodities.
The universality of Marx's vision, then, became possible

because he succeeded in identifying the problematics of alienation,
from a standpoint of labor, in its complexity characterized by the
term s obje ctificatio n , alienation , and appropriation . This
conception of alienation meant a conception of the proletariat not
simply as a social force or as a productive activity entirely opposed to
the standpoint of capital but as a self-transcending historical force
which cannot help but overcome alienation in the process of realizing
its own immediate ends that happen to coincide with the reappropriation of the human essence: a humanization. Fanon will also
conceive the colonized firstly as a commodity and secondly, like
Marx, as a self-transcending historical force. At the core of this
alienation for both Marx and Fanon is the exploitation of human
beings by other human beings.
To explore adequately how exploitation takes place in Marxs

way of looking at alienation one needs to examine Marxs model of an
economical base [the material means of production, distribution, and
exchange] and of superstructure [the cultural world of ideas such as
art, religion, and law, which are determined by - not independent of the base]. In a capitalist society, the base rests on the unequal,
unstable relationship between workers [the proletariat] and bosses
[the bourgeoisie, those who control capital]. Therefore, the job of the
superstructure is to make the inequalities seem natural and good. In
Oyonos The Old Man and the Medal, Meka gives up his land to the
priests and then lives in a small wretched hut in the village which has
given its name to the mission and lay at the foot of the Christian
cemetery.146 In Mongo Betis The Poor Christ o f Bomba and King
Lazarus, father Drumont and father LeGuen respectively use
Christianity to strengthen their control over the indigenous people and
thus maintain the security of the oppressor. If the poor are taught that
poverty is blessed, for example, this teaching can make desperately
146 Oyono, p.9.
127
poor workers less likely to go on strike or burn down the factory that
pays them slave wages.
Fanon doubts that Marxs base/superstructure model applies to
the masses in colonized countries. He agrees that in capitalist
societies, the superstructure generates Expressions of respect for
the established order that serve to create around the exploited person
an atmosphere of submission and of inhibition which lightens the task
of policing considerably.147
In the colonies, however, ideological state apparatuses are
eclipsed by repressive state apparatuses. Agents of government
speak the language of pure force...(they) do not lighten the
oppression, nor seek to hide the domination, but maintain the status
quo directly by means of rifle butts and napalm.148 To Fanon,
colonial rule operates not through managing consent but through
inflicting terror and despair. In fact, Fanon believes that colonialism
causes the Marxist model of base and superstructure to collapse
altogether because economic relationships are secondary to racial
147 Wretched of the Earth, p.38.

148 ibid.
128
ones. That is, the Manichean149 thinking on which colonialism

depends blots out other distinctions, hierarchies, and logical patterns,
in the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure.
The cause is the consequence: You are rich because you are white,
you are white because you are rich.150 There is a superstructure in
colonized countries, of course, but it operates upon the colonizers,
convincing them that they are promoting universally wonderful values
of civilization, enlightenment, redemption.151 It also operates upon the
small percentage of the native population that is being assimilated
into the colonial system. In order to promote the genuine eradication
of the superstructure built by...the bourgeois colonial environment,152
Fanon turns his attention to the native intellectual and the problem of
national culture. We will deal with this aspect later on in this work.
Fanon conception of alienation is then full of content unlike that
of Marx which is based on a superficial analysis of alienation in
149 Throughout his life, Fanon would continue to interrogate Manichean thinking, extending analysis of its
consequences into the realms of history and political practice. His insight into its profound, disturbing
effects on racial and colonial relationships is one of Fanons most powerful contribution s to contemporary
social philosophy.
150 The Wretched o f the earth, p.40
151 This is what has been known as The White mans burden.
152 The Wretched o f the Earth, p.46.
129
merely relying in economic terms, where the superstructure is left

totally w ithout content in contrast to the infrastructure. With
Manicheanism, as seen above, Fanon introduced a whole new
dimension into the opposition between the colonizer and the
colonized that Marx was unable to recognize from his materialist or,
more exactly, his economist perspective, which was essentially that
of the colonizer oppressing the colonized. This is why, I think, Marx
never had any problem with colonialism, or rather thought of it as a
good thing for the colonized. He shared the Manichean view of Hegel
and other Europeans with regard to all non-Europeans. This is why
also he was able to adopt the standpoint of the oppressed
Europeanized proletariat, who, as Fanon recognized, were as much a
part of the problem for the colonized as was the bourgeoisie, whether
in Africa or Europe. Through his view of Manicheanism as applied to
the colonial situation, Fanon takes the historical revolution of the
colonized to a higher level of humanization, or re-humanization, that
neither Hegel, nor Marx, nor Sartre was able to appreciate, a
humanism that could only come from the much despised spirit of the
130
Wretched of the earth. Fanon makes a big thing of this Spirit in the
later chapter of The Wretched o f the Earth.
Fanons ideas about base and superstructure resemble those
of the French -Algerian-Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser [1918
1990]153, who refined the Marxist model of base and superstructure in
terms of power. For Althusser, ideological state apparatuses are
elem ents of the superstructure -
political parties, educational
institutions, the media, and literature - that sell us the status quo. In
the process, they mask or mystify repressive state apparatuses the police, the Law courts, and the military - that impose the status
quo by force. Fanon finds a similar distinction useful in analyzing the
colonial situation. Following this line of reasoning, he would write:
Frontiers are shown by barracks and Police stations.154
There is, of course, no doubt that Fanon was greatly influenced
by the Marxian formulation on alienation. The influence was partly
direct, since there is an indication that Fanon studied Marx, and partly
indirect, since the writers he avidly read, Cesaire and Sartre among
153 Born in Algeria, Althusser is credited with the de-Stalinization of Marxist theory. Like Fanon, he
connected Marxs theory with psychoanalysis. Unlike Fanon, he rejected the progressivist
teleology inherited from Hegel: the idea that history moves toward an ideal end point.
154Cf. The Wretched o f the earth, p.38.
131
them, were themselves influenced by Marxism. It is also important to

note that Fanon as a psychiatrist was interested in the exposition of
alienation from a psychological perspective. He was exposed to
Lacanian psychoanalysis during his training as a psychiatrist in
France. From this also we can safely conclude that he was familiar
with the fact that in French language aliene was the word that
referred to the mentally ill.155
Another setting to keep in mind as we analyze Fanons
conception of alienation is the fact that Fanon was exposed to
Merleau-Pontys156 phenomenology. The opening words of the first
chapter of B la c k Skin, White Masks come directly from the study of
Phenom enology: I attach a fundam ental im portance to the
phenomenon of language. Hence, I believe, the necessity of this
study, which should provide us with one element that will help us to
understand the for-others [pour autrui] dimension of the man of
colour.157 Fanons emphasis on language and on the relationship
with the Other suggests an affinity with revisionary psychoanalysts
1551 owe this insight to Professor Blanchette.
156Simone de Beauvoir in Force of Circumstance. Vol. II. wrote: Fanon had attended MerleauPontys philosophy classes without even speaking to him; he found him distant.
157 Peau noir, p. 13.
132
like Jacques Lacan. Indeed to support his own hypothesis of raceinfected ego-formation, Fanon uses Lacans notion of the mirror
stage.158 When one has grasped the mechanism described by
Lacan, one can have no further doubt that the real Other for the white
man is and will continue to be the black man, and conversely.159
Throughout B la c k Skin, White Masks, however, Fanon shows a
distrust of the Universalist assumptions underlying psychoanalysis as
well as other human sciences. He counters them with a radical type
of ethnopsychology that considers the cultural bases of beliefs, fears,
and desires. Just as racial attitudes are created by society, so are
attitudes about - even definitions of - mental illness.
The appeal of phenomenology, then, was that of all the
philosophical discourses available to him in the late 1940s, this was
the philosophy that could be best adapted to an analysis of his own
lived experience. As we will see, phenomenological method is much
better suited to the analysis of the lived experience of the black man
158 The Mirror stage occurs when a child sees his image in a mirror and begins to conceive of himself as
an autonomous individual. It is necessary to pass through the mirror stage in order to move from the realm
o f the imaginary [where the mother/object o f desire is undifferentiated from the self] to the real of the
Symbolic [where language and the authority o f others, most notably the father, cast the self into social
roles].
159 Black Skin, White Masks, p.161 see also the discussion o f Manicheanism here above.
133
than either Marxism or psychoanalysis. The exposition to these

trends of thinking enriched his perspective on alienation. But it is
above all his personal experiences and observations among the
oppressed, in Martinique, France and, North Africa that gave
poignancy and relevance to his exposition on alienation.
D:
FANONS UNDERSTANDING OF ALIENATION:
The subject of our study is the dupes and those who dupe them, the
alienated...I am speaking here, on the one hand, of alienated blacks and, on the
other, of no less alienated whites. Fanon in Black Skin White Masks, pp. 29 31.
I. The Idea:
Fanon does not make an extensive use of the word, alienation,

in his writings. In fact the term occurs with any degree of frequency
only in his first book, Black Skin, White Masks. The term hardly
appears in The Wretched o f the Earth. Neither does the term appear
in A Dying Colonialism while in Towards the African Revolution the
term is used sparingly. But in-spite of a sparing direct use of the term
one feels in reading his work that Fanon had this term, alienation in
134
his mind throughout his works. The most significant validation of this
point in his own words is to be found in his first book, Black Skin,
White Masks: The subject of our study is the dupes and those who
dupe them, the alienated...160 I am speaking here, on the one hand,
of alienated blacks and, on the other, of no less alienated whites.161
Thus, Fanon announces his focus, in Black Skin, White Masks, on
the examination of the alienating relation that exists between whites
and the blacks. This relationship, according to Fanon, rested upon
the prejudice of the whites and the feeling of inferiority of blacks.
According to Fanon, this inferiority complex of the colonized comes
as the result of interiorizing the economic insecurity and economic
oppression which the colonizer justifies in biological or racial terms.
According to Fanon the world is divided according to race and levels
of economic development. The economic structure in the colonies
becomes the instrument of domination and oppression. This way of
reasoning in a way anticipate Fanons critique of Octave Mannonis
work Psychologie de la Colonization, translated into English as
160 BSWM, p. 31.
161 BSWM, p.29.
135
Prospero and Caliban where Mannoni writes that the native is never
inferior, after all she is the majority vis-a-vis the colonizer, but just
feels dependent. Inferiority for Mannoni is a matter of numbers only
while for Fanon inferiority is not a matter of being a minority but a
matter of having less power and the alienation of the blacks is related
to this powerlessness. How does Fanon use the term alienation,
then?
Fanon uses the word alienation to indicate a variety of
phenomena.
What is fundamental to keep in mind as we study
Fanons use of the term is his presupposition that all men are equal,
and also his rejection of a biological interpretation of racism. Fanon
uses the term alienation to identify a psycho-existential complex162 a series of inferiority complexes that manifest themselves in the
existential condition of the individual. He also uses the word to
indicate a condition of separation or attempted separation within the
individual. A Senegalese learns Creole in order to pass as an
Antilles native: I call this alienation.163 Here Fanon is designating the
alienation of the intellectual of the colonized society. Walter Rodney,
162 BSWM, p. 14.
163 BSWM, p.38.
136
in his work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, puts this point plainly
when he writes:
...the educated Africans were the most alienated Africans
on the continent. At each further stage of education, they
were battered and succumbed to the white capitalist
system, and after being given salaries, they could then
afford to sustain a style of life imported from outside ...
That further transformed their mentality. [We take this
transformation to mean alienation]164
In addition, Fanon uses other terms to designate this condition
of alienation. To us, the man who adores the Negro is as sick as the
man who abominates him.165 We take it that the word sick here is a
reference to the state of alienation as understood by a clinician for the
mentally ill. In this way Fanon echoes what Albert Memmi describes
in his book, Le Portrait du Colonise precede d un Portrait du
Colonisateur (translated into English as The Colonizer and the
Colonized) .166 The French title of Memmis work captures two key
ideas in the conception of the work: first, the notion of the portrait of
the main actors as two actual personality types, rather than as vague
abstractions unanchored in reality; and secondly, the idea that these
164 Rodney, p.275.
165 BSWM p. 10 [my italics]

166 Published first in Paris in 1957.
137
two types, created by the necessity to sustain the colonialist

condition, are tied together in a duet of mutual need. Memmi
describes with striking imagery how the existence of one was bound
up with the other, and how their relationship had a fatality that could
be broken only by radical change.
For Fanon, the psychiatrist, alienation is always a pathological
condition and for him, assimilation, practiced in the French colonies,
is another word for alienation. This event, which is commonly
designated as alienation, is naturally very important. It is found in the
official texts under the name of assimilation.167 Assimilation is an
alienation simply because one is trying to replace ones existential
conditions with those alien to oneself. Fanon also uses the term
alienation to describe a denial or a suppression of the individuality in
the M arxian168 understanding
of the term . The condition of
hopelessness or the meaninglessness of life that sociologists tend to

associate with the condition of alienation will be for Fanon an outward
manifestation of the separation of the individual from his individuality,
167 TAR p.38.
168 cf. Istvan Meszaros, Marxs Theory of Alienation (New York, 1972). See also my commentary
on Marx here above.
138
his culture, or his existential condition. Fanon also uses the term
alienation to cover cases of neurotic conditions. We refer the reader
to Fanons Le Syndrome Nord-Africain found in the February 1952
edition of Esprit where he describes this condition of hopelessness,
which he associates with the condition of alienation, in the Algerian
people. The condition of being colonized is a condition of alienation.
In this way then, we can safely say that Fanon treats the alienation of
the colonized on two levels: at the intellectual level of self and cultural
identity and affirmation and at the socio-economic level which has
psychological effects.169 The alienation of the colonized reaches its
climax in the deprivation and exploitation of the colonized in the
colonial system. What was it in colonialism that Fanon considered
alienating?
169 See Richard C. Onwuanibe, p.41
139
IS. C olonialism :
Humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves Aristotle,
Politics.
Colonialism is usually understood as the forceful occupation of

another peoples land in order to extract material benefits. Thus it
means compelling the colonized to work for the colonizers economic
interests. It is then a divided world, that of the native and that of the
colonizer. It is a world in which the native is regarded as simply a
thing to provide the colonizers benefit through his or her labor. If
there are not enough suitable native workers, more can be imported.
During the colonial period in South Africa there was a flux of Indian
workers imported from India to work for the British and later on during
the apartheid era, there were a lot of immigrant workers whose life
style was barely higher than that of dogs. For Europe enslavement
and slave trade became the means for accumulating w ealth.170
Enslaved peoples were not paid for their labor, they w ere simply
labor, and these slaves were a form of capital investment to generate
more wealth. It was as laborers that Africans were first brought to the
170 Cf. Hugh Thomas, The slave trade: The Story o f the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440 - 1870, pp,182ff.
140
Americas, the Arabian Peninsula, and Europe. In the new worlds

the land was exploited for its natural resources and profit was made
thanks to the availability of the said unpaid labor. First and foremost
the resources went always to and for the benefit of the mother
country.
Modern European colonialism began with Columbus. Voyages
of discovery involved claiming new land for European powers. The
discovery of new lands necessitated in turn the trafficking in African
human beings as slaves to work in the New W orld. It is an
indisputable historical truth that the wealth created by that
enslavement fueled the Industrial Revolution.171
The slave trade was the first step in the development of
capitalism throughout Europe and the colonized Americas. For
example: Between 1500 and 1750 the Slave Trade was the largest
employer in Holland and Portugal. Barclays Bank has its financial
foundation set deep in the heart of the slave trade: its founders, David
and Alexander Barclay, established the bank in 1756 with the profits
made in their slaving business. Lloyds of London, originally a coffee
171 Cf. Hugh Thomas, The Slave trade: The Story o f the Atlantic Slave trade: 1440 - 1870. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1997. Especially chapter 30: Only the Poor speak ill of the Slave Trade.
141
house, could not have become one of the biggest finance capital
forces in the world without its legacy of dabbling in and insuring
British slave ships and their cargo. The founders of Brown University,
Nicholas and Joseph Brown of Newport, Rhode island, got their
wealth by manufacturing and selling slave ships as well as investing
in the Slave Trade. The Browns also received support from another
merchant prince profiting heavily from the slave trade, Aaron Lopez, a
Jew of Portuguese descent, who like the Brown family, owned Slave
ships and had business directly related to the maintenance and
development of the Slavery business.172 Wall Street in New York City
became a vital capitalist financial center because it was the first big
slave trade center in the colonies and later became the new nations
principal slave trading port, where the business of slavery was
transacted until 1862.
Moreover, it is no secret the slave trade and slavery were the
economic basis of the French Revolution: T h e fortunes created at
Bordeaux, at Nantes, by the slave trade, gave the bourgeoisie that
pride which needed liberty and contributed to human emancipation.
172 Cf. Ronald Bailey, Agricultural History, and also New York Review of Books, Dec. 22, 1994.
142
Nantes was the center of the French slave trade. As early as 1666,
108 ships went to the coast of Guinea and took on board 37,430
slaves, for a total value of more than 37 million, giving the Nantes
bourgeoisie 15-20% on their money...Nearly all the industries which
developed in France during the 18th Century had their origins in
goods or commodities destined for the coast of Guinea or for
America. The capital from the slave trade subsidized them; though
the bourgeoisie traded in other things than slaves, upon the success
or failure of the slave traffic everything else depended.173
Contrary to the beliefs of European philanthropists, it is one of
the tenets of this study that slavery was not abolished for
humanitarian but for economic reasons. Africans were seen to be
more profitable at home than away. The European Industries built up
through profits from the slave trade needed more cheap raw
materials and more markets for their products. Africa gave the
answer to both these needs. The rivalries between the European
nations were in danger of undermining the profit driven economy,
whence the importance of the Berlin conference for the partition of
173See CLR James: The Black Jacobins, 1963, p. 120.
143
Africa in 1884 - 1885. To this conference came fourteen states roughly all the states of Europe except Switzerland. Members at this
conference were concerned with defining spheres of influence. The
growth of consumer capitalism, then, mandated the growth of
colonialism and vice versa. In this way the exploitation of the colonies
had the sole purpose of producing wealth for Europeans and
extracting marketable commodities. Caribbean plantation colonies
are prime examples of the slave phenomenon and so was Algeria for
the French.
Fanon believed that colonialism depended on racism. Enslaving
or oppressing another group of people is easier if they look different
than you do and you conceive them to be inferior to you. In the
colonial era, many Europeans thought that the white race was
superior to all other races and they considered these other races as
savages, particularly dark-skinned people whose very skin color
indicated something evil and irrationality. Kant wrote, This man was
black from head to toe, a clear proof that what he said was stupid.174
174 Quoted by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze in African Philosophy: An Anthology, Malden, M A: Blackwell
Publishers Ltd. 1998 p.2!5. The most extensive discussion of the role the idea o f race plays in Kants
thought is probably Ezes essay, The Color o f Reason: The Idea o f Race in Kants Anthropology, in
144
This was the justifying reason for the treatment of the blacks in an
inhuman way. Thus Hegel would write in his Philosophy o f Right,
The civilized nation [Europe] is conscious that the rights of the
barbarians [Africans, for example] are unequal to its own and treats
their autonomy as only a formality.175 How does this bring out the
concept of alienation?
According to Fanon, the mere fact of being black created fear in
the Black man especially in the presence of the White man, because,
as said above, it was viewed as a sign of evil and a sign of bad
character. Fanon devotes two chapters of his Black Skin, White
Masks to the problem of color prejudice. In these chapters he
describes the agonizing experiences of Black women who tried to
ape [and thus became alienated from themselves] the White woman
and wanted to marry White men in an effort to escape from the dark
night of blackness.176 He also describes the experiences of Black
men who wanted to embrace the White civilization by marrying White
Anthropology and the German Enlightenment, ed.. Katherine Faull (London: Bucknell and Associated
University Presses, 1994) pp. 201 -241.
175 Knox translation, par. 351, p. 219.
176 Black Skin, White Masks, pp.41 ff
145
women, and thus acquire recognition.177 Fanon describes Mayotte

Capecias autobiographical novel Je Suis Martinique as an example
and a symbol of the womens alienation. From childhood she had
dreamed of marrying a White man, but unfortunately she enters into a
relationship with Andre, a White man, in which an authentic love
could not be born because of color prejudice. Fanon tells us:
I should have liked to be married, but to a white man. But
a woman of color is never altogether respected in a white
mans eyes. Even if he loves her. I knew that.178
Mayotte, being a victim of unconscious conflicts of color prejudice,
Fanon points out, she could not enjoy authentic love, which unites
the permanent values of human reality - entails the mobilization of
psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts.179 Thus the
color prejudice drives the Black person into alienation from what
he/she is supposed to be as a human being.
Colonialism also means imposing the cultural values of the
colonizing nation upon the colonized people. This is called the
177 Black Skin, white Masks, p. 63

178 Quoted from Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks,p. 42
146
civilizing mission or the white mans burden.180 Such phrases mask

and justify the massive theft that drove the colonial project, in
exchange for what was promoted as the wonders of Christianity, the
colonized need only surrender their lands, their resources, their labor
and their right to self-determination. Those who would not concede to
the advantages of Christianity were to be convinced by steel and
gunpowder. Ngugi WA Thiongo, the Kenyan writer, citing Amilcar
Cabral, on the subject of the rule of the colonizer over the colonized
explains: Colonial rule cannot be sustained except by permanent
and organized repression of the cultural life of the people in question.
It can only firmly entrench itself if it physically destroys a significant
part of the dominated people.
The re-education of the native was one of the repressive
strategies used by the colonizers in their search for a complete
alienation of the native from their cultures. Though the colonizing
empire may indeed entrench itself in the land which it means to take,
the empire must also entrench itself in the minds of the people whom
it means to rule. During re-education, natives are inundated with
180 Cf. The White man's Burden: an Anthology o f British poetry o f the Empire. Ed. By. Chris Brooks and
Peter Faulkner, Exeter, Devon UK: University o f Exeter Press, 1996.
147
negative images of themselves and their culture, as well as idyllic,

seemingly perfect images of the colonizer. We will deal with this point
later on in this chapter when we will be discussing the problem of
colonial education.
Settler movements had, on top of the purpose of exploitation of
the wealth of the land, an additional purpose of moving large groups
of people from the colonizing nation to the colony. The United States
began as a settler colony, as did Australia and Algeria.
Indigenous peoples stood in the way of the colonizers. To
combat this problem, there were a range of solutions. One of the
solutions was a forcible displacement and another was genocide.
These ways offered a way to eliminate the truly indigenous where
they proved unwilling or unfit to provide a sufficient profit for their
colonial masters. By the 19th Century, two thirds of the world was
colonized by European nations. According to Fanon, the global
movement to throw off this colonial yoke is the defining event of the
second half of the 20th Century.
Fanons best known example of the work of colonialism is the
French colonialism in Algeria. Our examination of the political and
148
social background behind the making of Algeria will pave the way for
looking at the possibility of humanizing project.
French colonialism began in the Caribbean. The Haitian
Revolution (1798 - 1802) dealt a severe blow to the French economy
and prestige that the French were unable to reverse. North Africa
beckoned. The excuse for the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 was
to bring an end to the piracy of the corsairs, privateers or pirates who
lived by the loot they gained from attacking other ships, from Algeria
who used to raid Christian trading ships in the Mediterranean sea.181
In fact corsair piracy, which had been rife in earlier centuries, was no
longer a serious threat to powerfully protected European shipping in
the Mediterranean. In reality the French invasion and occupation of
Algiers in 1830 was an attempt to raise nationalistic fervor in support
of a corrupt and unpopular French monarchy. Subsequent French
governments viewed Algeria as a potentially wealthy colony for white
settlement and as a market for the products of French factories. That
is why in 1830, the French invaded Algiers. In 1831, the French
181 Cf. Kevin Shillington, History o f Africa, New York: St. Martins Press, 1989, p. 167 - 168.
149
foreign legion was established to help pacify Algeria. In 1834,

France annexed most of Algeria as a colony.
Annexation meant seizure of Algerian land and property. In
1848, France declared Algeria to be an integral part of France. In the
wake of this conquest came white settlers, not only from France but
also from Spain and the poor rural districts of the Mediterranean
islands. Arab-Berber farmers and pastoralists were cleared from their
land and the white settlers moved in, taking over olive plantations and
vineyards along the coastal hillsides and wheat farms in the plains
around the towns. When the military government had no more land to
give out, the European immigrants bought further land for a pittance
from impoverished peasant farmers. In 1871 the European colonists
in Algeria, known as colons, numbered 130,000: by the end of the
century they had reached a million, thirteen per cent of the total
population. By the closing decades of the century, most of the
cultivable land in the country was in the hands of the Europeans, the
majority of whom were absentees, living in the towns. The land itself
was worked by the dispossessed Arab-Berber peasantry, who were
poorly paid and overtaxed. Muslim Algerians were brought under
150
strict control and their freedom of movement was restricted. To add to

the humiliation of conquest, Islamic law was overridden by French
law. In their own country Muslim Algerians were regarded by the
French colon government as alien and inferior. The arrogance of
French administrators added insult to injury. The literacy rate of the
Berbers decreased dramatically.
From the beginning, however, the French faced the formidable
opposition of the Arab-Berber Muslims of the interior. Early Algerian
resistance was organized and led by Abd al-Qadir a gifted and
energetic young marabou (holy man) from western Algeria. He
overcame the problems of local rivalries by dividing the country into a
number of adm inistrative districts and holding each district chief
responsible for his own defense. The fight was fierce but at the end
the French, who used scorched-earth tactics, destroying animals and
crops and massacring villagers, prevailed, only at the cost of tens of
thousands of French lives and possibly hundreds of thousands of
Algerian ones. Though the French prevailed in the war they never
overcame the sullen resentment which their occupation engendered.
151
During World War II, the Algerian Muslim population was fired
with a new sense of nationalism. They supported the Allied invasion
of the German occupied North Africa, hoping that this invasion would
lead to their own independence. After the liberation from the German
forces, increasing numbers of Algerians became committed to the
need for an all out war of liberation. The slow pace of reform
increased civil unrest. Colon extremists clamped down on Algerian
Muslims. In Algeria the French were determined not to grant
independence to the native Algerians. It was Frances principal
colony of white settlement.182 On November 1, 1954, the Front de
Liberation Nation ale (the FLN) launched guerrilla attacks throughout
Algeria. The War of Independence had begun. It was the emergence
of many factors that encouraged the Algerian revolt. Here below, I will
try to explain these factors.
After WWII, the European colonial system had begun falling
apart, sometimes through negotiations, sometimes through armed
resistance. The gigantic British Empire, for instance, lost its crown
jewel when India became independent in 1948. French interests in
182 Cf. Kevin Shiliington, p.382.
152
Asia took a huge blow with the 1954 Vietnam defeat of France at
Dien Bien Phu and the loss of French Indochina. Since virtually all
of Africa was colonized by European nations, the entire continent
shook with anti-colonial protest. The French lost Tunisia and
Morocco in the early 50s; Ghana became independent from Britain in
1957. By the 1960s, most of Africa and the Caribbean, and the
colonized lands in Asia and the Pacific had achieved independence.
Thats about half of the worlds population. It is interesting to see how
all this happened.
World W ar II involved every continent and it had revealed
European weaknesses. The allied victory over Germany and her
allies which were looked upon as tyrannical, naturally gave colonized
people ideas about the possibility of their own freedom. Nazi
Germany exposed the evils of colonialism in extremis. The heavy
costs of WWIS left the major colonial powers unable to wage multi
front fights to keep their empires intact. The Cold War between the
US and the USSR - including its nuclear threat and the space race shifted the worlds balance of power. And maybe, as Fanon claims,
the process of liberation of colonial peoples is indeed inevitable. But
153
Fanon asks us to remember that: this liberation had to be the work of

the oppressed people, not a gift from the colonizers. To be free
mentally as well as physically, according to Fanon, one must take an
active role in achieving ones freedom. Thus, Fanon believes that
colonialism will not die by itself. Rather, as he strikingly says, it must
be killed before freedom can be born. The question arises then, was
colonialism all that bad? There are two positions to answering this
question according to Fanon.
For example, classical Marxism holds that colonization is for the
colonized nation, an accelerated, if brutal, form of modernization.
Marx applies this argument to the British rule in India.183 Engels uses
the same argument with respect to Algeria and describes the
conquest as an important fact and favorable to the progress of
civilization. The Bedouins were, he claims, no more than thieves,
adding that the modern bourgeois is preferable to the barbaric
conditions of the society to which they belonged.184 In this way, both
Marx and Engels attributed positive outcom e to the colonial
phenomenon. Fanon was not, it seems, acquainted with either of
18j Macy, p.583 no. 108
184 Cited by Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism. Revolution and the Turn to Islam.
Berkely, Los Angeles & London: University o f California Press, 1966, p.25.
154
these texts of Engels and Marx, but they underline his insistence that
Marxism needs to be stretched somehow. Aime Cesaire, however,
viewed such ways of justifying colonialism as those of Engels and
Marx as dishonest. He writes, I maintain that colonialist Europe is
dishonest in trying to justify its colonizing activity a posteriori by the
obvious material progress that has been achieved in certain fields
under the colonial regime.185
Walter Rodney, in his How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,
describes colonialism as a one-armed bandit.186 He claims that
colonialism , more than anything else, underdeveloped Africa.
According to him, colonialism laid the roots of neocolonialism in Africa
by creating A fricas econom ic dependency on the international
capitalist system. The introduction of capitalist relations of production
and distribution, ~ for instance, the International Trade Commodity
[ITC] exchange systems and values - created such dependency.
Rodney asserts that before both tran s-A tla ntic slavery and
colonialism were imposed on Africa, Africa was econom ically
developing in a positive way. However, this developm ent was
185 Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism. P.24.
186 cf. pp. 1 49 -2 0 1 .
155
blunted, halved and turned back187 with the imposition of both transA tlantic slavery and Colonialism , w ithout offering anything of
compensatory value. The Mono-culture introduced by colonialism
and still being probated worldwide made the African producer
helpless in the face of capitalist maneuvers.
In 1950 a book was published that interested Fanon a great
deal. Octave Mannoni, who had been a psychiatrist in the French
colony of Madagascar and had observed the bloody rebellion of 1947
and 1948, wrote an analysis of Malagasy people and of colon group
personalities. This book, Psychologie de la colonization (translated
into English as Prospero and Caliban) challenged Fanons own
analysis of colonialist Manichean thinking.
Fanon endorsed two of Mannonis guiding premises; first that
the confrontation of civilized and primitive men creates a special
situation - the colonial situation - that changes human attitudes and
thus demands psychological analysis; secondly, that understanding
the primitive mind means understanding a persons cultural beliefs
187 Rodney, p. 244.
156
and practices. He violently disagrees, however, with two other

premises fundamental to Mannonis work.
The first of Mannonis faulty premises, according to Fanon is:
European civilization and its best representatives are not responsible
for colonial racialism 188 or,
put
another,
w ay
France
is
unquestionably one of the least racialist minded countries in the

world.189 Fanon finds these statements both false and outrageous.
Colonial racism is no different from any other racism, he declares.
All forms of exploitation are identical because all of them are applied
to the same object: M an.190 Further, French colonization of
Madagascar inflicted injury without measure.191 The French people
as a whole - including its best representatives - were implicated,
Fanon believes, because, for Fanon, citizens of a nation are
responsible for acts committed in the name of that nation.
Fanon draws support from Aime C esaires Discourse on
Colonialism. In this work, Cesaire accuses not only the German
people specifically but also European civilization in general of aiding
188 Mannoni, p.24.

189 ibid. p.110
190 BSW M p. 88.
191 BSWM p. 97.
157
and abetting Nazism. According to Aime Cesaire, European coloniai

history prepared the way for the Third Reich. He claims that ...that it
is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its
accomplices.192 Thus, for Aime Cesaire, savage exploitation, even
extermination of peoples in distant lands inevitably led to oppression
and mass murder in Europe itself. Further, for Aime Cesaire, Nazism
continued to exist even after Hitlers death in the form of officially
sanctioned racist practices throughout the world. Fanon agreed with
Cesaire that the heart of Western political and intellectual society
beats to the interlocked rhythms of racism, colonialism, greed,
fascism, and war.
Fanon also accused the colonial medical establishment of
siding heavily with the colonial establishment in their oppressive
agenda.
Doctors like Mannoni, who worked fo r the French
government, engaged in ethno-psychology not merely out of a desire

for knowledge but also to further colonial interests by learning how to
deal with subject peoples. This was to be the main reason why
Fanon resigned from his post in Blida: he came to realize that he
192 Discourse on the Method, p. 14.
158
could no longer be an accomplice in the project of colonizing minds of

the Algerians.
Further, classical psychoanalysis can blind people to the harsh
material reality of colonialism. To demonstrate this critique, Fanon
analyses Mannonis analysis of dreams experienced by Malagasies
during the rebellion. If a patient dreamed of a weapon or being
chased by a black bull, for instance, Mannoni - according to standard
Freudian practices - interpreted these images as phallic symbols.
Nonsense , Fanon retorted. These patients were trying to live
through a horrible war, when Malagasy people were hunted down,
tortured, and killed by French and Senegalese troops. For Fanon, not
only are Freuds discoveries of no use here,193 but according to
Fanon these discoveries end up masking the recognition of the
terrible hardships endured by people in a particular place and time,
hardships that are translated directly into dream imagery.
One of the reasons for this confusion comes from the fact that
orthodox Freudians understand behavior within the context of the
family, but they ignore the historical particulars that make the average
193 BSWM, p. 104
159
European family very different from, say, the average African family.
For Europeans, the family is the miniature of the nation,194 Fanon
claims; correlatively, the characteristics of the family are projected
onto the social environment. In Europe, for instance, family and
nation privilege centralized masculine authority, so the Oedipal
struggle allows the (male) child to gain selfhood by challenging his
father, prepares him for the competitive, aggressive demands of life
as an adult citizen, yet instills in him a respect for lawful authority.
There is no disharmony between childhood socialization and the
expectations of adulthood. In contrast, Fanon claims that the Oedipus
complex is virtually nonexistent in the French Antilles. Because a
black colonized family does not mirror the colonizing nation, neuroses
arise not from within the kinship group but from contact with the
(white) outside world.
The empirical data gotten through Fanons clinical work in North
Africa confirmed the above mentioned critique of psychoanalysis and
European
psychology.
For
exam ple,
when
M uslim s
w ith
psychological disorders were tested and diagnosed according to
360
W estern Clinical standards and techniques, Fanon perceived a

cultural discontinuity which induced personality death. Clinical data
for these conclusions came, for example, from his use of the
Thematic Apperception Test195 applied to Algerian women with
emotional disorders at the Blida-Joenville hospital.196 These women
would be able on one hand to say what there is, but on the other
hand would not be able to say (as was required in the tests) what is
happening. Why? This was due to the fact that for them, only God
knows what is happening.197 The subjects were unable to interpret
action in this sense, as this knowledge, according to them, was
known only to God. In the face of this cultural confusion Fanon came
to the conclusion that there is no homogeneity between what we are
presenting to the sick person and what she knows: the world that
we present to her is unknown, strange and anonymous. In this way,
as he discusses it at length in his la socialtherapie dans un service
195 According to the Encarta Dictionary: English (North America) this test is a test for exploring aspects of
personality in which somebody is shown pictures of people in various situations and asked to describe what
is happening.
196 Cf. Franz Fanon & J. C. Geronimi, 'La TAT chez la femme Musulmane. Sociologie de la
perception et de Iimagination, in Conares des medicins alienistes et neuroloaues de France et

des pavs de langue Francaise . LIV Session, Bordeaux (30 aout - 4 sept. 1956) pp. 364 - 386.
197 Ibid. My translation.
161
d homme musuimans: difficulties methodologiques, he acknowledges

the cultural limits of western techniques to diagnose and treat mental
disorders, especially in Eastern and African subjects.

This psychoanalytic critique leads us to M annonis second
faulty premise, according to Fanon, namely that: Colonizers suffer
from an overcompensated inferiority complex198 or, seen from the
reverse direction, not all peoples can be colonized; only those who
experience this need (for dependency).199 Fanon vehemently attacks
the first part of this second premise of Mannoni. He calls it a massive
psychoanalytic generalization about the colonizers and the colonized.
Although he subscribes to accounting for colonial action in part
through the mechanisms of overcompensation, Fanon flatly rejects
the idea that colonial man feels inferior. Quite the contrary: common
sense alone shows that vastly outnumbered white colonials rely on
feelings of absolute superiority in order to sustain their precarious
position of control.
Fanon here disagrees with Mannoni over the proper
understanding of the inferiority complex, as outlined by Alfred Adler,
198 Mannoni, p.67
199 Mannoni, p.85
162
one of Freuds early colleagues. Mannoni used the inferiority complex

theory to explain the colonizing drive, and he maintained that the
Malagasy people could not have felt inferior because they are not a
minority in their country. Instead they feel dependent. Fanon
concludes rather that colonialism itself, in all its modes, makes the
colonized feel inferior. Referring to his home island, Fanon notes that
Antilleans constantly measure themselves against the ego-ideal of
the other, that is, of the colonizing Frenchman. So, it is safe to
conclude that for Fanon, the colonized peoples are alienated and in
their alienation they feel inferior to the White people. In the following
pages I would like to examine the c u ltu ra l fa c to rs that lead to this
alienation.
The most important cultural factors that lead to alienation,
according to Fanon, are the language o f the colonizer and the
education provided by the colonizer for the colonized or, as David
Cannadine calls it, the miss-education of the colonized. Fanon calls
these factors, the language of the colonizer and the re-education of
the native, the most potent instruments for the systematic alienation
of the native. In the colonial territory the colonizer first imposes his
163
language on the colonized. Language becomes the medium through

which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated and [the
desired] reality becomes established. 200 It is usually those who have
adopted the colonizers values through education that also adapt
the colonizers language. This is the reason why Fanon writes, The
jungle savage is not what I have in mind. That is because for him
certain factors have not yet acquired importance.201 One of these
certain factors is the colonizers language. For Fanon then, in the
colonized society some natives are more alienated than others
depending on the kind of place and the relationship they occupy in
the colonial system. In this system Fanon regards the native elite as
the most alienated of them all. The native bourgeoisie, which has
adopted unreservedly and with enthusiasm the ways of thinking
characteristic of the mother country, which has become wonderfully
detached from its own thought and has based its consciousness upon
foundations which are typically foreign...202 He again says:
2 c j j j e mpii-e writes back, p.7. This topic touches on deep themes o f psycho-analysis o f Lacans use
of language that await further analysis.
201 BSWM, p. 14.

202 The WE, p. 143.
164
The educated Negro, slave of the spontaneous and

cosmic Negro myth, feels at a given stage that his race no
longer understands him. Or that he no longer understands
it. Then he congratulates himself on this, and enlarging
the difference, the incomprehensible, the disharmony, he
finds in them the meaning of his real humanity.203
In this way then, the African or colonized intellectuals are alienated
from themselves, from their culture and from their societies. The
uneducated colonized peoples, who mostly are peasants, however
remain closer to their own culture, and have a greater degree of
confidence in themselves. They have not accepted the legitimacy of
the colonial regime. How does this take place? As said above the
language of the colonizer is one of the important components for the
alienation of the educated black. I now venture into the analysis of
how language can be a tool of alienation and then I will try to look at
some of the authors who proposed ways through which the colonized
may come out of such alienation.
203 BSWM, p.16.
165
a. How language becomes an Instrument o f alienation:

To speak...m eans above ali to assume a culture, to support the weight o f a civilization. Fanon in
BSWM. Language is power.
Language is often a central question in postcolonial studies.

During colonization, colonizers usually imposed their language onto
the peoples they colonized.
In some cases the colonizers
systematically prohibited native languages. Edward Said, in his article

No Reconciliation,204 recounts his experience as a student at
Victoria College in Cairo, Egypt, one of the schools designed by the
British to bring up a generation of Arabs with natural ties to Britain.
According to him the schools first rule, emblazoned on the opening
page of the handbook read: English is the language of the school;
students caught speaking any other language will be punished. Yet
there were no native English-speakers among the students. Whereas
the masters were all British, we were a motley crew of Arabs of
various kinds...each of whom had a native language that the school
had explicitly outlawed.205
204 Cf. Andre Aciman (editor), Letters o f Transit: Reflection on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss. New
York: New York Public Library, 1999 pp.91 -114
205 Edward Said, No Reconciliation allowed in Letters o f Transition p.95
166
The fact of having to speak nothing but the others language

when this other was the conqueror, ruler, and oppressor was at once
an affirmation of this conqueror, his worldview, and his values, a
concession to the conquerors framework, and an alienation from
ones own history, values and outlook. Many writers educated under
colonization, like Edward Said, recount how students were demoted,
humiliated, or even beaten for speaking their native language in
colonial schools.
In response to the systematic imposition of colonial languages,
some postcolonial writers and activists advocate a complete return to
the use of indigenous languages. An example among these is Ngugi
WA Thiongo, a Gikuyu w riter from Kenya. He began a very
successful career writing in English with such successful books as
The River Between", Weep not Child" and A Grain o f Wheat" but
eventually he turned to work almost entirely in his native Gikuyu. In
his 1986 Decolonizing the Mind, Ngugi describes language as a way
people have not only of describing the world, but of understanding
themselves. For him, English in Africa is a cultural bomb that
continues a process of erasing memories of pre-colonial cultures and
167
history and as a way of installing the dominance of new forms of

colonialism. Ngugi is not concerned primarily with universality but with
preserving the specificity of individual groups. For Ngugi then,
language and culture are inseparable, and the loss of the former
results in the loss of the latter.
In response to the colonial systematic imposition of colonial
languages, other authors, unlike Ngugi, see the language of the
colonizer as a more practical alternative. For these authors using the
colonial language enhances inter-nation communication, For example
people living in Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Haiti,
Cambodia, and France can ail speak to one another in French. In
addition colonial language can be seen as a tool to counter a colonial
past through deforming a standard European tongue and reforming
it in new literary forms. An example here is Salman Rushdie. In his
essay Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie comments on how working in
new Englishes can be a therapeutic act of resistance, remaking a
colonial language to reflect the postcolonial experience. He further
notes that, far from being something that can simply be ignored or
disposed of, the English language is the place where writers can and
168
must work out the problems that confront emerging independent

colonies, to conquer English may be to complete the process of
making ourselves free.206 I think this is very beneficial, provided that
the adapter of the English does not neglect and does not despise her
own mother tongue.
An important debate about language is addressed in detail in
The Empire Writes Back (1989). In this work, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths and Helen Tiffin explore the ways in which writers encounter
a dominant, colonial language. They describe a two part process
through which writers in the post-colonial world displace a standard
language and replace it with a local variant that does not have the
perceived stain of being somehow sub-standard, but rather reflects a
distinct cultural outlook through local usage. A brogate and
appropriation are the terms they use to describe these two
processes. Abrogation is described as a refusal of the categories of
the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory standard of normative or
correct usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning
206 Imaginary Homeland, p. 17
inscribed in the works.207 Appropriation is described as the

process by which the language is made to bear the burden of ones
own cultural experience... Language is adopted as a tool and utilized
to express widely differing cultural experience.208 Rao puts it well
when he writes that appropriation is to convey in a language that is
not ones own the spirit that is ones own.209 This way of looking at a
colonial language is therefore always full of tension, the tension
between the abrogation of the received English, for example, which
speaks from the center, and the act of appropriation which brings this
language under the influence of a vernacular tongue.210
In The Alchemy of English Braj Kachru, an Indian writer gives
an example of how English can be used to unify expositors of the
postcolonial experience. Kachru holds up the exam ple of the
neighboring and often competing language cultures of India. Hindi,
Persian, Hindustanic, and Sanskrit, he calls these the native codes
207
The Empire Writes Back, p. 37
208 ibid, pp. 38-39.

209 Rao, Raja. Kanthapara. New York: New Directions, 1938 p .V III
210 cf. New, W. H., New Language, new world in Narasimhaiah, C. D. (ed.) Awakened Conscience. New
Delhi: Sterling, 1978.
170
and says that all these competing languages carry markers. That is,
they are functionally marked as representative of cultural groupings
in terms of religion, caste, or region. Therefore, despite the accuracy
of these cultural connotations, English stands as the neutralizing
alternative for the Indian writer. Kachru concludes that Indian
English Literature...has provided a new perspective in India through
an alien language.211 Kachru does not ignore the limitations of
English. He admits that it is associated with a small and elite group.
If this is true, can the bilingual intelligentsia writing in the postcolonial
period claim to represent the experience of their respective native
people groups? Bill Ashcrofts work Constitutive Graphonomy tries
to answer this question. He writes that no writer or subject can claim
ownership of meaning. Based on this theory of Ashcroft, can we not
say then that any postcolonial discourse, in fact any discourse for that
matter, de-marginaiizes its subject simply by its very existence?
One way of generating this demarginalizing discourse of which
A shcroft w rites is by a strategy which Chantal Zabal calls
relexification, a term first used by Loreto Todd. For example, in the
211 Kachru, p.293.
171
case of postcolonial English Literature, relexification would mean

writing by using English vocabulary but using indigenous structures
and rhythms. In this process, the expressions of the postcolonial
authors function as an inter-language in mimicking neither the
European target language nor the indigenous source language.212 A
press report from the Markere writers convention of 1962 suggests
that what is taking place in much of African postcolonial writing is that
writers are thinking and feeling in their own languages and writing in
another.213
The above discussion can be illustrated by turning to Fanons
writings on the subject. Fanon began his B la c k Skin, White Masks
with the them e of cultural alienation exem plified by the above
mentioned imposition of European language on blacks in the
Diaspora. So, for Fanon, one of the major aspects of alienation is
cultural imposition in the form of language because for him language
incarnates and expresses the culture of a people and in this way
becomes a distinctively human quality. As a distinctively human
quality, then, the deprivation of ones own language amounts to a
212 Zabal, p.315
213 Kachru, 316 this could mean English, French, or Portuguese in the Sub-Saharan Africa.
172
deprivation of one of the qualities of a persons humanity: a

dehumanization.
As is well known, incorrect use of language leads to confusion
and eventually to lack of sociality. Fanon reminds us in this first
chapter of B la c k Skin, White M asks entitled The Negro and
language that language is not only the standard of judging a person
or culture, but also a means of assuming a culture, and of supporting
a civilization.214 For Fanon, both in the colonies (like Algeria) as well
as in the Diaspora (like Martinique), the language of the colonizer
becomes the official language, the language of commerce and
business. In this way, then, the language of the colonizer is not only
the medium of communication but also the language of civilization, a
social artifact. For it is implicit that to speak is to exist absolutely for
the other.215 This dimension of language situates the colonized in a
world in which he never finds himself in his individual identity but
always in a conflict-ridden relationship with others, or the other.
Fanon continues, The Negro...will be proportionately whiter, that is,
he will come closer to being a real human being - in direct ratio to his
214 See Black Skin, White Masks, pp.17-18
2,5 BSWM, p17
173
mastery of the French language...Yes, I must take great pains with

my speech because I shall be more or less judged by it.216 From this,
one sees that in the colony the colonialists were the real people,
and hence, their language was the real human language. For the
colonized, then, part of the journey towards being human involved
mastering the colonial language, the language imposed by the
colonial master.
In the case of Martinique, the culture and language imposed
were French. In this situation the Creole of Martinique was regarded
as a symbol of inferiority, and a lack of civilization. Hence the
Martiniquean wanted to get away from this Creole, and his/her dream
was to embrace the French of Paris, the French of France, the
Frenchmans French, French French,217 all the while avoiding Creole
except to give orders to servants.218 The black man becomes whiter
as he renounces his blackness (language) and his culture. A black
216 BSWM, p. 18, 20.

217 Fanon quoting Leon-G, Damas poem of. BSWM p. 20.
218 BSWM, p.20.
174
mans mastery of the colonizers language may increase his being

accepted by whites, but it alienates him from his own culture.
In the French colonial army, and particularly in the
Senegalese regiments, the black officers serve first of all
as interpreters. They are used to convey the m asters
orders to their fellows, and they enjoy a certain position of
honor.219
In the Antilles so much importance was attached to the
language of the colonizer that the blacks who returned from France
pretended to be no longer able to speak Creole. But the illusion is
fragile, and a single slip exposes the man as an imposter to his fellow
Martinicans. There is no forgiveness when one who claims a
superiority falls below the standard,220 Fanon remarks. If he shows
that he has not really mastered all aspects of French culture, and that
he is pretending to a knowledge he has not attained, he is done for.
Only one choice remains to him; throw off his Parisianisms or die of
ridicule.221 Fanon claims that every language is a way of thinking,
and the fact that the newly returned blacks adopted a language
219 BSWM, pp. 18 - 19.
220 BS, 23.

221 BS 24-25.
175
different from that of the group into which they were born is indicative
of a dislocation, a separation and above all, alienation 222 We may
call this a form of intellectual alienation.
But does learning anothers language necessarily lead to
alienation? One could argue that if this were so, then everyone who
learns a foreign language should expect to be alienated. For Fanon,
learning someone elses language does not necessarily mean that
the learner is alienated. The Frenchman who learns English adapts to
some extent to the way of thinking of the English when he expresses
himself in that language, but the English accept that the Frenchman
has a language of his own more or less equal to English by means of
which important ideas can be expressed. For the Frenchman, then,
the acceptance of English is not a denial of his own language; it is
merely another tool of communication among equals. But in the case
of the black man, Fanon reminds us, it is not only a question of
accepting a language but also of accepting a culture and a way of
thinking to replace ones own.223 It is an endeavor to resemble the
222 BSWM, p.25.

223 Cf. BSWM, chapter 6, pp. 141 - 2 0 9 ( The Negro and Psychopathology).
176
colonizer in the frank hope that the colonizer may cease to consider
the colonized as being different from and unequal to him.
Continuing the above idea, Fanon says in Black Skin, White
Masks that being colonized by a language has larger implications for
ones consciousness. To speak...m eans above all to assume a
culture, to support the weight of a civilization.224 Speaking French
means that one accepts or is coerced into accepting the collective
consciousness of the French, which identifies blackness as evil and
sin. In an attempt to escape the association of blackness with evil, the
black man dons a white mask, or thinks of the self as a universal
subject equally participating in a society that recognizes an equality
supposedly abstracted from personal appearance. The black West
Indian will become all the whiter, or in other words come closer to
being a true man, to the extent that he makes the French language
his own.225 Under these conditions, says Fanon, the black man is
necessarily alienated from himself. In Martinique this drama played
itself out in the relationship between Creole and French.
224
BSWM, pp. 1 7 -1 8 .
225 BSWM (F) p. 12
177
How does one come out of this linguistic colonialism according

to Fanon? Fanons own attitude towards Creole was ambivalent. In
1952, he agreed with Michel Leiris that Creole would gradually die out
or be reduced to a residual status by the spreading of (French)
education.226 Six years later he argues that Creole was an
expression of the Antillean consciousness and that it might even
provide the linguistic basis for a West Indian federation to which
Martinique could belong.227 This seeming contradiction between the
Fanon of 1952 and the one of 1958 shows the growth of Fanons
consciousness in realizing the importance of indigenous languages
psychologically, socially, and politically.
The question of language goes to the root of the struggle for
decolonizing itself, a struggle that has not come to an end. Here we
come to one of the rich philosophical dimension of Fanons thought.
Language is power. The extent to which cultures all over the world
have been devalued throughout the movement of social history is
reflected in the fact of language repression and the world-wide
dominance of English. Why did the French support the Hutu
226
cf. aux Antilles, naissance dune nation? in El Moudiahidin
16 January, 1958.
227 BSWM, p. 15(F)
extremists in Rwanda? Rwanda was part of a francophone family; a

group of states linked to maintain the promotion and the protection of
the French language. When the Tutsi rebels were approaching
Rwanda, the rebels who were coming from the neighboring Uganda
and Tanzania, both anglophone countries, fear struck France of an
Anglophone encroachment in Africa, especially since Rwanda is
located on a political fault line between francophone and anglophone
east Africa.228 It is strongly believed then that it was for the sake of
preserving the use of French language in the region, which was
threatened by the English speaking Tutsis, that France backed the
Hutus.
For Fanon then, language difference in the African colonies
marks both peoples inferiority complex vis-a-vis whites and the
colonized peoples dislocation from the black community. For this
reason education becomes a very important factor in a peoples
fulfillment or loss of it.
228 Cf. Linda R. Melvem, A People Betrayed: The Role o f the West in Rwanda '$ Genocide, New York: St.
Martins Press, 1988 pp. 24 - 29.
179
The words of Richard Shaull will act as an introduction to this

section on education. Shaull commenting on the work of Paulo Freire
wrote:
There is no such a thing as a neutral educational process.
Education either functions as an instrument that is used to
facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the
logic of the present system and bring about conformity to
it, o r it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by
which men and women deal critically and creatively with
reality and d isco ve r how to p a rticip a te in the
transformation of their world. The development of an
educational methodology that facilitates this process will
inevitably lead to tension and conflict within our society.
But it could also contribute to the formation of a new man
and mark the beginning of a new era in W estern
history.229
With these words in mind let us turn to Fanon and examine how
these words apply o Fanons reasoning on Education especially as it
applies to the oppressed, the wretched of the earth.
b. Education as Alienating:
The advantage of power is that it enables one to define the reality of the
powerless. Lewes in Nudes from Nowhere,
The colonial system of formal education was, according to

Fanon, another source of alienation. To ensure econom ic and
229 Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy o f the Oppressed, p.16
180
political control, the colonizing power tries to control the cultural

environment of the colonized, what Marx calls the superstructure of
education, religion, language, literature, songs, forms of dances,
every form of expression making sure in this way to control a peoples
values and ultimately their world outlook, their image and definition of
the self.
Fanon intimated that the exercise of formal education was to
raise the culture of the colonizer and to denigrate the culture of the
colonized. In so doing the colons were trying to bring up a generation
of natives with conscious ties to the mother country of the colonizers.
In effect these schools produced those ruling-class natives who took
over after the colons left. In this way then, the schools were not
created for the sake of intellectual liberation of the native but for the
security of the colonizers. How was this done?
From the earliest age, for example, the black child in Martinique
is taught to sing songs of praise about our ancestors, the Gauls. At
home and at school, he is taught to scorn Creole and the values it
represents. How he talks, dresses, eats and lives has to conform to
the rules laid down by the colonizer. Thus, black children who grew
181
up in a healthy family environment sooner or later came up against

massive social forces that undermined and sometimes overwhelmed
their development. They had to identify with the alienating values of
the colonizer. The message that resonates in the Black mans
encounter with a White man is the idea that white Euro-American
culture is both normative and superior. The school, the history books,
the comic strips, the theater halls, all these enforced cognitive
dissonance and even self-hate among the natives. The collective
unconscious
of
black
people,
then,
w as
program m ed
for
disappointm ent, alienation, and psychic traum a because the

imaginative self-image that white-dominated culture offered was
doomed to be exposed as false for blacks.
David Cannadine in his Ornamentalism230 refers to this as the
re-education of the native. For Cannadine, the aim of this endeavor,
re-education, is the presentation of a model of reality which is
seemingly absolute and flawless as a replacement for what comes to
be considered the old, savagely im perfect modes of thought
subscribed to by the natives. According to Cannadine, through re~
230 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire. Oxford; New York: Oxford
University Press, C2001.
182
education, natives are inundated with negative images of themselves

and their culture, as well as idyllic, nearly perfect images of the
colonizer:
The negative image of the people subjugated by Western
colonial powers, which dominated the colonial ideology,
was drawn on the basis of cursory observations,
so m e tim e s w ith strong b u ilt-in p re ju d ic e s , or
misunderstandings and faulty methodologies. The general
negative image was not the result of scholarship. Those
who proclaimed the people of the area indolent, dull,
treacherous, and childish, were generally not scholars.
For one to understand more fully the significance of native re
education, one must look closely at the mentality of the educator. An
example of the deification of the image of the colonizer (the educator)
is found in the history of the English colonization of India.
In this
case, the English colonizers presented the image of the ideal

Englishman to the Indians. This ideal was conveyed for the most part
through literature, for the actual Englishmen who were in India,
especially those involved with the West India Trading Company, did
not represent the near godly perfection which the English assumed
as a basis for their right to re-educate the inferior Indians.
Psychic suffocation increased with each progressive step in
colonial education. The closer the schoolboy got to the social circle of
the oppressor, the more he learned to disparage what he was by birth

and race. On the one hand, he was assimilated into the dominant
culture, and on the other, he was made to break away from his own
culture. As he moved through various stages of colonial education, he
progressively reduced his contact with his relatives and the
indigenous culture. Eventually, he had to face the stage when he had
to choose either his own group and culture or the ruling group and its
alien outlook. This dilemma is expressed very well in Ferdinand
Oyonos novel Houseboy. Toundi, the hero of the novel, realizes in
the end, after working and living with whites, that he belongs neither
to the world of the village nor to the one of the whites, but is caught in
the ground swell of those Africans whose fate became inextricably
tied to that of the colonialists and the changing world, torn away from
their own culture. Toundi inquires on his deathbed: Brothers, what
are we? What are we blackmen who are called French?
From this it becomes plain that the re-education is really here
another name for assimilation. Through this process of assimilation,
the oppressors won an auxiliary, an indigenous defector made to
think that he had arrived. The oppressed community lost a member,
184
suffered brain-drain, and experienced betrayal by one of its own.

Fanon illustrated this by recounting the artificial amnesia and
pretended mutation of the young Martiniquean returning to his village
after a few months in France. No sooner did he arrive home than he
proceeded to act as if he were a European tourist - and a foolish one
at that. Pretending that he knew nothing about farm implements, he
turned to his father and asked, Tell me, what does one call that
apparatus?231 Fanon informs us that the father responded by
dropping the tool on the boys feet. The amnesia suddenly lifted.
The education was arranged in such a way that the sort of
books and stories which were given and recounted to children were
the ones designed by white people for white children in a European
context. These books were meant specifically for the white children to
create an opportunity for their catharsis. When the white children read
these books, they naturally identified themselves with the victors or
good guys and since the bad guys are those who are perceived to
be different from them, these books have a psychological value
reinforcement for these children. The result of using the same books
231 BSWM, p. 23-24.
for the black children, who gain access to these materials, is to have
them also identify with the victors or good guys with whom they do
not identify in racial, ethnic, or class terms. The end result of all this is
that these black children tend to hate and despise those who are not
of the same ethnic, racial or class groups as the ones presented to
them as ideals, namely, the blacks, or the non whites. But then they
realize that they are blacks, or at least non white. Hence they are
educated to hate themselves. Fanon talks about how black children in
Antilles talked of our ancestors, the Gauls.232 Education, then, was
presented in such a way as to make the colonized black identify
them selves with the explorer, the missionary, the bringer of
civilization, the white man who carries truth to the savage - an all
white truth.233
In this way then, Education instead of being a work of liberation
was a work of alienation. In line with this, blacks dreamed of climbing
up into white society, and as they dreamed in this way, they rejected
their own social and cultural roots. In addition, white culture was
232 BSWM p. 147.

233 BSWM, p.147.
186
given a high prestigious value. Everything white was good, and all
good things were related to the white and its economic structure. In
the colonies, the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The
Cause is the consequence: You are rich because you are white. You
are white because you are rich.234 If you are rich and white, you are
also good!
W alter Rodney, in his study How Europe Underdeveloped
Africa, discusses at length the role of education in bringing Africans to
serve the colonial system and subscribe to its values. He notes that
class stratification, which leads to neo-colonialism, begins with the
linking of colonial education to material gain. Rodney points out that
Education is crucial in any type of society for the
preservation of the lives of its m em bers and the
maintenance of the social structure...The most crucial
aspect of pre-colonial Africa education was its relevance
to Africans in sharp contrast with that which was later
introduced (that is, under colonialism)...The main purpose
of colonial school system was to train Africans to
participate in the domination and exploitation of the
continent as a whole...Colonial education was education
for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental
confusion and the development of underdevelopment.235
234 WE, p.40.

235 Rodney, p.263.
187
This strategy is well illustrated in Mongo Betis Mission to Kaia

where Medzas colonial education makes him a privileged political
and economic functionary in a colonial system that militates against
the interests of his own people. Colonial education, therefore, creates
a black elite to succeed it and perpetuate its political and economic
interests in the post-independence period. In Decolonizing the Mind,
Ngugi observes that the lack of congruency between colonial
education and Africas reality created people abstracted from their
reality. Little wonder, therefore, that the negritude poets try to achieve
disalienation through identification with Africa, African values and
African origins. Leon Dumas writes that the whites have stolen the
space that was mine. Tchicaya UTamsi laments that the whites
have left the blacks in a dark corner som ewhere...gone are the
forests where sung and danced the inspired priestess...the great
Western world holds me in fee...Something in me is lost forever.
The colonial education drastically reduced the necessity for
physical violence on the part of the colonizer, for the educated native
[ideally] is submissive rather than rebellious. Ngugi WA Thiongo
describes the ideal function of education:
188
The colonizer would like to have a slave who not only

accepts that he is a slave, but that he is a slave because
he is fated to be nothing else but a slave. Hence he must
love and be grateful to the master for his magnanimity in
enslaving him to higher, nobler civilization.
Colonial education, then, for Fanon as well as for many
Africanists,236 did more than corrupt the thinking and sensibility of the
African, it filled them with abnormal complexes which de-Africanized
and alienated them from their native cultural environment. Colonial
education, in this way then, dispossessed and took out of the control
of the African intellectual the necessary forces for directing the life
and development of their own society.
C. Cultural Estrangement:
In addition to the power of language and the system of formal

education to alienate, there were other ways by which the colonial
regime tried to ensure the estrangement of the native.
Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people
in its grip and emptying the natives brain of all form and
content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of
the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and
236 Researchers on African cultures
189
destroys it...When we consider the efforts made to carry

out the cultural estrangement so characteristic of the
colonial epoch, we realize that nothing has been left to
chance and that the total result looked for by colonial
domination was indeed to convince the natives that
colonialism came to lighten their darkness. The effect
consciously sought by colonialism was to drive into the
natives heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave,
they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation,
and bestiality.237
The Christian Church as the moral arm of the colonial state

also had its share in the alienation of the native. In Hom ecom ing,
Ngugi writes that to gain acceptability and perpetuation, the
colonialists enlist the services of Christianity and Christian oriented
education...To capture the soul and m in d ... In this way then
Christianity is being accused of helping to make the colonized man a
docile and submissive individual. The values emphasized by the
Church were those of forgiveness, obedience, humility, and
subservience, the qualities necessary for subjugation. Fanon writes:
All those saints who have turned the other cheek, who
have forgiven trespasses against them, and who have
been spat on and insulted without shrinking are studied
and held upon as examples.238
237 WE, p.169.
238 WE, p52.
190
Fanon argues that these Christian qualities were often attributed to

the whites, and the blacks were enjoined to follow their noble
examples. Even though in the relations of whites with blacks these
qualities were absent, the Church insisted on this fiction to such an
extent that the whites appeared in the eyes of the blacks as objects of
moral purity, so that blacks began to develop guilt feelings about
them selves.
In Ferdinand
O yonos novel H ouseboy,
Toundi
renounces his natural father in favor of Father Gilbert, the head of the
colonial church. In Mongo Betis The Poor Christ o f Bomba and King
Lazarus, father Drumont and father Le Guen respectively use
Christianity to consolidate their control over the indigenous people
and thus maintain the security of the oppressor. Gicaamba in Ngugis
I will Marry When I Want notes that:
Religion is not the same thing as God. When the British
imperialists came here in 1895, all the missionaries of all
the churches held the Bible in the left hand, and the gun
in the right hand. The white man wanted us to be drunk
with religion while he, in meantime, was mapping and
grabbing our land and starting factories and businesses
oon
on our sweat.
239 Ngugi, I Will Mary When I Want. Harare: ZPH, 1982. p.56 - 57.
191
The colonizer tried to dehumanize the native further by creating

a stereotype of him and imposing this stereotype on him. The
colonizer created the stereotype of the native as a childlike creature;
a submissive, smiling servant. And in the colonies whites adopted the
attitude towards the black man that they adopted toward children;
they treated him paternalistically. Fanon discusses how white
peoples language stereotypes and belittles the black man. Talking
down to black people as well as casting racial insults make the black
man the eternal victim of an essence, of an appearance for which he
is not responsible.240 Fanon here then rewrites Sartres existential
philosophy in terms of race and the language that encodes it. For
Fanon, like Sartre then, essence does not precede existence, so we
are free to reject the categories through which others seek to
imprison us.
Another image created to subjugate the black man is the belief
that he is in s tin c tiv e ly sexual. For the majority of white men, says
Fanon, the Negro represents the sexual instin ct.241 Fanon
approaches the question of inter-racial sexuality when he discusses
240 BSWM, p. 35
241
BSWM, p. 177 for further reading of this point see Cornel Wests Race Matters.
192
Negrophobia - the alleged irrational fear and loathing white people

can have of black people. A phobic object is endowed with evil
power and thus arouses terror; this terror in the case of the black man
for Fanon is tinged with sexual revulsion, which accounts for the
phobic object also being an object of desire. The black man,
according to Fanon, is regarded as the incarnation of genital potency
beyond all prohibitions. Fanon further writes that white women have a
tendency to view the black man as the keeper of the intangible gate
that opens into the realm of orgies, of bacchanals, of delirious sexual
sensations.242 Because the white European collective cultural
unconscious has made the black man both the symbol of sexual
potency and the symbol of evil, Fanon believes, the black man
becomes the phobic object par excellence. Or at least part of him
does. Drawing on Sartres Anti-Semite and Jew, Fanon proposes that
white Western culture has projected its own mind-body opposition
onto its other: the Jew represents the [danger of the] intellectual and
the Black represents the [danger of the] biological. These spheres
must remain separate at all costs. It is impossible, Fanon remarks
242 BSWM, p. 177.
193
sarcastically, to envision Rodins The Thinker with an erection. The

extreme Negrophobe, then, is no longer aware of the Negro but only
of a penis; the Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis. He is a
Penis.243
In addition to this sexual image of the black man fostered by
white society, the black man is also painted as a symbol of evil. As
Fanon puts it, both of us (black and Jew) stand for evil. The black
man more so, for the good reason that he is black. Is not whiteness in
sym bols alw ays ascribed
in French to Justice,
Truth,
and
Virginity?244 And commenting on this belief, Fanon writes:

A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of non-existence. Sin
is Negro as virtue is white. All those white men in a group,
guns in their hands, cannot be wrong. I am guilty. I do not
know of what, but I know that I am no good.245
Fanon here then intimates that the black man begins to develop guilty
feelings that he is not only inferior, but also evil, that, after all, the
white man is right. There must be something wrong with him,
something he does not know quite clearly, but he at least knows that
243 Black skin, White masks, p.170

244 BSWM, p. 180.
245
BSWM, p. 139.
194
there is something evil about him. As Fanon puts it, a black man is
not simply a man but a black man, a man was expected to behave
like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man - or at least
like a nigger.246 Fanon observed that the black man has two
dimensions. One with his fellow, the other with the white man. A
Negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro.
That this self-division is a direct result of colonial subjugation is
beyond question...247 The relationship, says Fanon, between whites
and blacks is based on super-ordination and sub-ordination. This
domination of one group over another is peculiar simply because it is
based on color and nothing else. One is inferior just because one is
black and one is superior just because one is white.
How does Fanon analyze this? For Fanon, the black man
becomes no more, no less than his skin color and further this racial
epidermal schema248 shatters him into a triple person: a body, a
race, and a history. The man then ends up by objectifying himself,
reinforcing the brutal pain of the original trauma. In other words, he
246 BSWM, p. 114

247 BSWM, p.17
248 BSWM, p.l 12
195
reenacts his own violent social death. What else could it be for me,
asks Fanon, but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage that
spattered my whole body with black blood?249 It is a fact, Fanon
writes, that white men consider them selves superior to black
men.250 Fanon remarks, as said above, that in other types of
domination making the dominated inferior has not been the case:
Under the German occupation the French remained men; under the
French occupation, the Germans remained men.251 As recounted by
Fanon, the trauma of blackness lies in its absolute Otherness in
relation to white men. That is, the white man belittles the black man
by recognizing only his skin. On the other side of the same way of
reasoning Fanon writes that the black man is overdetermined from
without. He is the victim not only of what others think of him but also
of his appearance. In this way Fanon, as a man of color, finds himself
dissected by the white gaze, his body and his individuality
annihilated.252
249 BSWM, p.112

250 BSWM, p.10
251 WE, p.201
252 BSWM, pp. 113 - 114
196
Fanon thinks that even liberal whites are not very different in
the way they conceive of the black man. To Fanon, the white liberals
concede, at least, that the black man is a human being, that he is a
human being in the biological sense of the word, but that is all.
As can be seen from the above discussion, Fanon tends to
universalize and essentialize certain categories especially the
threatening categories.
In addition to the above ways of how the native found himself
alienated, Fanon believes that the native also assisted in his own
humiliation and dehumanization through his belief in fatality; this
removed all the blame from the oppressors; the cause for his
misfortunes and poverty was attributed to God. It was his fate as
ordained by God. In this way, says Fanon, the individual accepts
the disintegration ordained by God, bows down before the settler and
his lot, and by a kind of interior re-stabilization acquires a stony
calm.253
What can we conclude from the above discussion concerning
alienation?
253 WE, p.42
197
First, we can conclude that for Fanon alienation may involve

either the individual or a group. We may conclude further that in the
case of the natives of the colonized society, that for Fanon it is the
alienation of the group that shapes the alienation of the black man. It
will be seen that the black m ans alienation is not an individual
question and its causes are socially determined.254 The argument
here is that since the entire group of the natives of the colonized
society is subject to the domination of the colonizers, the whole group
is alienated.
A nother conclusion that can be drawn from the above
discussion is that the native is not the only one who is alienated; his
white oppressor is no less alienated than he is. We shall go very
slowly, writes Fanon, for there are two camps: the white and the
black.255 The alienation of the white oppressor is caused by the kind
of social relations that colonial rule engenders. His attitude of
superiority complex towards the natives detracts him from any
authenticity of his own. Fanons position, however, is not so much to
254 BSWM, p. 13
255 BSWM, p. 10.
198
seek to change the white oppressor, but to teach the black person not
to be a slave to the stereotypes that the whites try to impose upon
him. What is important is not to educate them {the alienated whites},
but to teach the Negro not to be the slave of their archetypes.256 Ali
the forms of alienation are seen as ways in which the black man has
been violated. As seen above these instruments of colonial alienation
were: physical violence, political oppression, economic deprivation,
and social and cultural degradation. In Fanons eyes all colonialism is
a gigantic act of violence on the part of the colonizer, acts of physical
and psychological injury, or force and coercion. He argued that
violence is an essential part of the colonial situation.
The oppressor, in his own sphere starts the process, a
process of domination, of exploitation and of pillage, and
in the other sphere the coiled, plundered creature, which
is the native, provides fodder for the process as best he
can, the process which moves uninterruptedly from the
banks of the colonial territory to the palaces and the
docks of the mother country.257
For Fanon, not only was the initial settlement of colonial rule
achieved through violence and force, but the whole colonial
256 BSWM p.35.

257 WE, p.39.
199
relationship was maintained in the same manner. It is the oppressor

who puts violence into the head of the native, and violence
dehumanizes. The settler or, specifically, his intermediaries introduce
violence into the relationship of the native and the settler.
The colonizer controls the political destiny of the colonized, who
are not allowed to participate in the political process that affects them.
They are made to feel alien in their own land.
For example in traditional African society, the smallest unit with
respect to land was the village. One of the duties of the village
headman was to allocate land to his subjects and to settle land
disputes. The headman was not the owner of the land, but merely
the warden. Land was managed and used under a system of rights
and obligations. The recipient had the right to cultivate the land and
enjoy its fruits, in return for which he paid tribute in material goods, in
services, and in his loyalty to the chief. The chief had the obligation to
arrange for the peace, prosperity and abundance of his subjects.
People then had guardianship of the land rather than ownership of it.
From the time Europeans entered, for example in Malawi in 1875,
whether to do missionary work or to trade, the whole business of land
200
guardianship and occupation was altered by the introduction of an

irreconcilable conflict of cultures.
M issionaries, traders and
companies competed with one another for pieces of the traditional

land. Various means and reasons were given for appropriating the
land.
When trade goods passed hands between the traditional chiefs
and the Europeans, the chiefs believed the Europeans were just
recognising the place of the chief rather than buying the land,
whereas the Europeans construed the transaction around the land
issue as an authentic sale and believed it brought about private
ownership of the land. With this in mind the European land laws
started slowly to get hold of the land. Traditional practices had to
accommodate western ideas. And indeed by 1891, Sir Harry
Johnston had managed to convince most of the chiefs in Malawi to
cede their land to the British Protectorate. Since the powers of the
traditional leaders had rested on the guardianship of the land, they
became powerless. Now the Africans who lived on the land that
belonged to white farmers were condemned either to compulsory
labor service or to heavy taxation on the huts in which they lived.
201
Such
conditions
led them
to feel
hum iliated,
inferior and
powerless.258!n this way the Africans found themselves alienated

from their environment and thus, as said above no longer free.
In the specific case of the Algeria; it was in 1848 that France
declared Algeria to be an integral part of France. New colons poured
in, so more land was confiscated. By the 20th century, colons made
up one third of the Algerian people. They ran the economy. Algerian
Muslims were subject to discriminatory laws and taxation. Their
literacy rate decreased dramatically.259 Did this mean that the black
man is permantly lost?
E: THE NEED FOR DECOLONIZATION:
The only solution to these forms of alienation and violence for

Fanon is decolonization. If colonialism, which is responsible for all the
types of alienation as discussed here above, is of a violent nature,
Fanon concludes that only counter violence can eradicate it. For the
258 For a very comprehensive description of the history of land loss in Malawi cf. Pachai, Bridglal,
Malawi: The History of the Nation. Aylesbury-Great Britain: Compton Printing Ltd., 1973.
259 Cf. A Dvina Colonialism
202
colonized, life can arise only from the decomposing cadaver of the
colonizer.260 However for Fanon there can be a false decolonization
and real decolonization. By real as opposed to false decolonization
Fanon meant the freeing of a territory from external control together
with the destruction of the social and political institutions of the former
colonial power building new institutions and relationships to reflect the
reality of the new nation. It is as Emmanuel Hansen puts it, a
fundamental change in the consciousness of the people of the
country.261 This can only take place when both the state and the
individual are free. Real decolonization is then a change of
the
entirety of the human being. In Fanons own words: decolonization is

quite simply the replacement of a certain species of men by another
species of men. Without any period of transition, there is a total,
complete and absolute substitution.262 Here the change involves the
change of men as well as of institutions. It is the creation of a new
species of men, not men of a different color or a different social class,
but men with a different consciousness of their own, in short, with a
non-alienated consciousness. Stressing this theme Fanon writes:
260 WE, p.70
261 Cf. Franz Fanon, p.l 19
262w r c
n n
203
Decolonization...influences individuals and modifies them

fundamentally...It brings a natural rhythm into existence,
introduced by new man and with it a new language and a
new humanity. Decolonization is the veritable creation of
new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy
to any supernatural power; the thing which has been
colonized becomes man during the same process by
which it frees itself.263
Decolonization also means a change of the whole structure [of
society] from the bottom to the top. As Fanon writes, quoting Jesus,
The last shall be the first and the first last...Decolonization is the
putting
into practice of this sentence.264 Thus,
fo r Fanon,
decolonization comes as a violent revolution that not only destroys

the social and political structure of the colonial regime but also
liberates consciousness and creates new human beings. It is
necessary to destroy the colonial institutions simply because they
were set up in the first place not to free human beings but to oppress
them. In this way then, breaking the colonial social, economic and
political structure is the first step for the decolonization of a colonized
people. In the Wretched o f the Earth, Fanon insists that the people
themselves should make the decisions that affect them. Decision
263 WE, p.28

264 WE, p.28
204
shouid be made not by the leaders but by the people, all the people.
In an underdeveloped country, experience proves that the important
thing is not that three hundred people form a plan and decide upon
carrying it out, but that the whole people plan and decide even if it
takes them twice or three times as long.265 This is the ideal which
Fanon would like to see in all colonial lands. In this way then, Fanon
is advocating the necessity for the human community to be not only a
free state but also a free society for its members.
We have seen so far that for Fanon, alienation is the most
serious obstacle to the liberation of the colonized person. The
colonized is alienated from his land, from his fellow and from the
colonizer. The task is to find ways and means of overcoming this
alienation. This is what brings Fanon to the question of revolutionary
violence. Fanon argues that it is only by violence that the colonized
can begin to achieve their freedom. The task of the next part of this
work will discuss Fanons argument for the necessity of revolutionary
violence for the liberation of the colonized. But, however before we
265 BSWM, p.155-156
205
tackie this topic, let us look at some of the proposed ways for the
liberation of alienated peoples that Fanon rejected.
206
Chapter III
PATHS TO FREEDOM FOR THE COLONIZED

I, the man of color, want only this: That the tool never possess the man.
That the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by
another. That is possible for me to discover and to love man, wherever
he may be. [Fanon, BSWM, p231]
A:
Introduction:
We have so far looked at how Fanon thought of the problem of
alienation and we have seen that alienation really deals with both
physical and psychological make up of the human being. We have
also seen that this alienation is, as Paulo Freire puts it, a distortion of
the vocation of being more fully human. 266 This idea is clearly
spelled out in Fanons Black Skin, White Masks, a book Fanon calls a
sociodiagnostic - that is, a clinical study of group racial identity. Its
fundamental assumption is that the juxtaposition of the black and
white races has created a very real form of collective mental illness.
Both races are locked up within the constraints of color, but Fanons
emphasis here is on the form ation, meaning and effects of
blackness. Black identity, Fanon insists, is marked by self-division.
266Freire, p.26
207
The black man behaves and speaks with whites differently than he
behaves and speaks with blacks. Such a split, a direct result of
colonial subjugation, causes profound, pathological alienation. For
example, universal, criteria of beauty are based on white models:
black people can never conform to them fully. Black people, then,
abandon themselves individually and collectively in quest of white
acceptance. The quest is inherently and ultimately futile; it results
primarily in solidifying deep and disturbing feelings of inferiority.
For Fanon, the oppressed confront the oppressor on multiple
levels. On the situational level, an oppressed individual confronts the
oppressor with an objective limitation of humanity. It is irrelevant what
the colonized or oppressed individual may think of himself in relation
to members of the colonizing or oppressing group. Everyday he
confronts the objective reality of his lifes inequality. At times of
trouble, it is the whites who are scurried off to safety; in the midst of
thousands of colored deaths, it is the loss of an occasional white life
that rips into the consciousness of the world - the world, in this case,
usually coded as free or civilized, which means, ultimately,
European, Western, White.
208
It is a fact, Fanon writes, that, white men consider themselves

superior to black men.267 One reason for this racialized superiority
complex rests, as said above, in a pervasive way of thinking about
history. According to Hegel, the history of mankind is progressive:
civilizations succeed each other in ascending order as the spirit of
freedom works itself out dialectically into fuller and fuller realization.
Like the sun, history has moved from East to West, reaching its
apogee in modern Europe. Unfortunately, the sun never seems to
have passed over Africa. Steeped in savagery and ignorance, Africa
has no history in the eyes of people like Hegel.
This denial of African history got translated in the colonial era
into a dislocation displacement o f culture and language, producing
what Fanon calls an existential deviation. The appearance of the
settler has meant in the terms of syncretism the death of the
aboriginal society, cultural lethargy, and the petrification of
individuals.268 Because to speak means to assume a culture,269
black people deprived of their ancestral languages face an existential

269 Ibid p.17
209
dilemma as feelings of racial inferiority are reinforced through the

language of the colonizer.
Throughout the contemporary world, then, Fanon argues,
people of color are subject to discrimination, prejudice, hostility, and
injustice. Even before a black child has laid eyes on a white person,
the black one finds that he has already been bombarded with the
message that white Euro-American culture is both normative and
superior. As said above, this leads to the child trying to identify the
self with the good guys - the whites. The collective unconscious of
black people, then, is programmed for disappointment, alienation,
and psychic trauma because the imaginative self-image that whitedominated culture offers, is doomed to be exposed as false for
blacks.
Black Skin, White Masks is a critique of the psychopathological
effects of colonialism. In this work, Fanon showed how the oppressed
tended to interiorize the racist and colonial stereotypes. This is what
Fanon called the black skin, white mask syndrome. To heal from
this neurosis, Fanon reminds us, decolonization is necessary.
210
So, by analyzing and understanding this pathological alienation,

Fanon hopes to cure it - indeed, to destroy it altogether. There were
several ways that the colonized could choose to live their lives. Fanon
brings out three such ways. The first way in which the colonized could
choose to live their life was in conformity with what the colonizer
wanted them to be. This is what Fanon called the mechanism of
avoidance.
B: The Mechanism of Avoidance

For Fanon this avoidance mechanism manifests itself in three
main ways. The first way in which this avoidance mechanism
manifests itself is through dreams. Fanon interprets the dreams of the
oppressed not as Freud would interpret them but as a way of
escaping realities of colonial limits and boundaries. It is customary,
Fanon writes, in Martinique to dream of a form of salvation that
consists of being magically whitened.270 In order to cope with the
inferiority complex brought about by the simple fact of being black,
270 Black Skin, White masks, p.43
211
one accidentalizes271 ones blackness. This way of coping with the

situation Fanon characterizes as inauthentic or as the translator of
Black Skin, White Masks puts it, though I think his translation is faulty,
as artificiality. In this artificiality one is unable to accept ones
situation and in so doing one is unable to assume risks and
p o ssib ilities
inherent
in that situation.
Instead
of claim ing
responsibility for ones being in the world in pride or in humiliation and

sometimes in horror and hatred, one resorts to suppressing the
situation through dreams272 or, as we will see here below, through the
re-direction o f aggression towards fellow natives.
Fanon attributes tribal wars, quarrels and all sorts of
misunderstandings among the colonized peoples to this need to re
direct aggression towards ones fellow blacks. In this way the
colonized avoid facing the reality as it is: the colonial situation is
made dehumanizing by the aggression of the whites. The re-direction
of the aggression that should be returned against the whites only
adds to the aggression that dehumanizes whites, as if blacks were
doing the white colonizers work. One can not come out of such a
271 Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 35 - 36.
272 Cf. Sartres Reflexions sur la question juive, p. 109
212
dehumanizing situation through such avoidance mechanisms. This

mechanism may also show itself in the natives reliance in myths
such as malefic spirits, zombies and in fatalism.
The reasons why the native falls back on myths according to
Fanon are two-fold. First it allows the native to run to a non-existent
world, but one that is more terrifying than the real world of the settler.
Secondly, the use of myths gives the native some status and through
this status one is able to re-integrate himself into the traditions of his
native society. The native also loses oneself in ecstatic dance and
spirit possessions.
Fanons negative attitude towards folk tradition here shows a
certain lack of historical understanding. He claimed that African and
Afro-Caribbean belief systems actually collaborated with colonialism
by channeling violent emotions inward.
A voodoo possession
performance, for example, in which ecstatic dancers are mounted by

the gods, serves colonial interests by exorcising rightful aggression
and thus keeping colonized people calm and passive in the face of
white aggression.
213
Here, Fanon seems unaware that such folk practices have

been instrumental in Caribbean political resistance for hundreds of
years as poetry and folk songs have been in many places. Further,
African Religious practices predate colonialism, so their social
functions can not be defined solely in reference to the domination
from outside. In this way then, Fanons claim that revolution should
overthrow folk beliefs would seem farfetched as any study of African
and Caribbean religious history will demonstrate. For example Fanon
writes:
After centuries of unreality, after having wallowed in the
most outlandish phantasms, at long last the native, gun in
hand...does not hesitate to pour scorn upon the Zombies
of his ancestors, the horses with two heads, the dead who
rise again, and the djinns who rush into your body while
97^
you yawn.
Fanons reasoning here unfortunately reflects the same kind of

European enlightened attitude of condescension that he so
thoroughly condemns elsewhere. This type of reasoning also repeats
the Marxist conception of religion as the opiate of the masses, a part
of the superstructure that keeps the oppressed in check which, like so
273 WE, p.58
214
many categorical statements, can be valid in many instances but not

necessarily in all.
If racism erases the black past, devalues black thinking, denies
black individuality, and sees the black body as tainted, surely the
avoidance mechanism can not solve this state of affairs. Now with
this in mind, what should be done to really find black meaning and
worth and in so doing recover ones black identity? One solution
could be to rediscover Africas history and culture, which European
Marxists as well as bourgeois intellectuals were so ready to dismiss
and ignore and readily termed it as irrelevant. Now is the age of
science and mastery, black people are told, and past glories belong
to the worlds childhood. But the poets of negritude, whom Fanon
may not have completely understood, disagree with this assessment.
These poets see in negritude a way out of ongoing exploitations and
present degradation.
215
C: Negritude as a Humanizing Method:
I; Introduction
The fourth chapter of The Wretched o f the Earth contains a
detailed critique of negritude or, as Fanon prefers to term it in his last
work, negroism. This term appears in the chapter On National
Culture which was first presented as a paper at the second
Congress o f Black Artists and Writers in Rome in 1959. As this
congress was sponsored by the Presence Africaine group, Fanons
hesitation in using the term negritude is understandable. We have to
ask ourselves: what is the relationship between the negritude
movement and Fanons political evolution and what is the place of
negritude in the humanizing mission?
In Black Skin, White Masks, Colonialism and The Wretched o f
the Earth, Fanon is pre-occupied with questions of identity and
personality and he is also preoccupied with the problems of relations
between social institutions and individual biography. As will be seen
later in this study, the preoccupations of Fanon in these three works
bring out the same range of problems that inspired the movement
216
towards negritude. As pointed out in the second chapter of this work,

imperial powers found strength in the devaluation of the culture, the
history and even the personality of the peoples it dominated. The
personality of the colonized people was viewed in the most
derogatory light by the colonizers. The derogatory view of both the
colonizeds personality and their culture incited the counter
movement of Negritude as an answer to the dehumanizing powers
of the colonizers.
In this section of our work we will explore the role of Negritude
in the process of liberation for the exploited. As I try to work out
certain questions, I will be in constant conversation with E. W.
Blyden, a Black Danish West Indian, who immigrated to west Africa
as a young man as part of his living out this Negritude movement.
II; The Core of Negritude - Blyden as a model

The movement of Negritude had its origins among the black
children of the Diaspora. Negritude was essentially a celebration of
black African cultural values by blacks who had little or no first hand
knowledge of Africa. In fact the recurring themes of negritude - exile,
217
alienation, racial consciousness, and the mystique of an African
cultural heritage - are expressions that came from New World blacks.
The Negritude movement was both a protest against domination and
an attempt to seek relief from the discomfort of colonial racism. The
nature of the ideology that Negritude was to put forward is best seen
in the writings of E. W. Blyden,274 a Danish West Indian.
Blydens work reveals the weaknesses common to a philosophy
of black soul, as he also called Negritude, when offered as a solution
to the problem of racial oppression. Blydens most original argument
was that all races possess s p e c ific moral and psychological
characteristics. Blyden held these characteristics as God-given and
believed that they represented the essence of a race. For him, every
race would require specific social and cultural conditions that would
allow for its natural development.275 It would follow from this that the
Negro must not attempt to imitate the European experience, since
Anglo-Saxon approaches to living are applicable only to that race.
The Negro is not a European in embryo276 and all attempts to make
274 See E. W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race and Black Spokesman: Selected Published
Writings o f E. W. Blyden.
275 Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. p.75.
276 Christianity, p.276.
218
of him a European would only lead to stunted and one-sided

development. This is exactly what was happening in the use of the
colonizers language and in the colonizers re-education or, as Carter
Godwin Woodson more rightly calls it m is-education277 of the
natives.
But, while each people must seek to advance according to the
parameters set by its own peculiar traits, the final advancement of
humanity is, according to Blyden, dependent upon the unique
contributions of all races to the universal culture or civilization. To the
technical knowledge of and material abundance of the west, the
Negro race can add the spiritual values essential for the coming world
civilization.278 The Negro is on a different plane, religiously, from the
white man. He has a more spiritual nature and may yet be the
teacher of his master in spiritual matters.279
Through this concept of complementary racial characteristics
Blyden sought to rehabilitate the African by contrasting a materialistic
and violent Europe with a spiritual awareness in Africa. The real
277 Cf. Woodson, Carter Godwin, The Mis-Education o f the Negro, Washington D. C., The Associated
Publishers, Inc. 1933
278 Christianity, p.l 10
279 Spokesman, p.2Q5
219
threat to the development of the African personality, according to

Blyden, lay with the barbarism of Europe and not with any
shortcom ings of the Negro race .280 Blyden thought that since
Negritude is a quest for individual liberty framed exclusively in terms
of an abstract universal freedom, this liberty could be achieved by the
repatriation back to Africa of all New World Blacks. Some Negritude
philosophers, Senghor and Cesaire among them, begged to disagree
with Blydens solution to the denigration of the black culture. To both
Senghor and Cesaire, freedom is envisaged as a spiritual rather than
a material return to the source in which the genius of the race can
gain expression. For Senghor, this return to the source in a spiritual
rather than material way is a rediscovery and a celebration of an
immutable racial identity and this return is accomplished through the
symbols and myths of ancient and vanished cultures.
It is believed, then, that Negroid people experience a unique
perception of the world. For Senghor, emotion is to the Negro as
reason is to the Greek. For Senghor, Negro values include anti
280 Cf. Spokesman, p.203.
220
materialism, communalism [Nyerere], mutual responsibility and

concern with the community over and above the individual.
Blydens writings were a direct response to the situation of the
Negro. This Negro situation, felt most acutely by West Indian Blacks
and middle class Africans, involved the challenge presented by a
number of major problems, which included but were not limited to
Europes economic, political and technological superiority; to the
effects of the Diaspora which had, for the West Indian, severed all
substantive links with Africa; to the corrosive influence of colonial
racism; and to the contradictory necessity of the Negro to accept the
benefits of European civilization yet retain a sense of personal
identity and self-worth.
July, in his The Origins o f Modern A frican thought: Its
development in West Africa during the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries, summarizes the dilemma of the African when he writes:
The more the African struggled to improve his lot, the more he was
engulfed; the more he turned from the old Africa the more he was
221
obliged to protest his African identity.281 The prevailing attitude

towards the West, then, both in Blyden and the poets of negritude
who followed him, is one of profound ambivalence. It is an
ambivalence which exists as a paradox in Blydens writings - Blyden
hoped to see the establishment of a cultural climate conducive to the
expression of the Negro genius which would at the same time allow
for the infusion into black culture of the best of Western civilization.
In the writings of both Senghor and Cesaire these contradictory
needs are also expressed as ambivalence. It is my belief that it was
because of these ambivalences that Frantz Fanon was not at home
with Negritude movement. The objections that he brings are very
revealing.
The problem of alienation, as seen above, is presented in the
Negritude movement as being both personal as well as cultural, but
also as essentially a racial problem emanating from the experience of
a race rather than from the experience of a class or of a nationality. In
this way then, it entailed for them having an abstract solidarity that
would join all members of the Negro race, irrespective of their social
281 July, R. W. The Origin o f Modern African thought: Its development in West Africa during the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Faber and Faber, 1968, p. 465.
222
or economic realities governing the interests of individuals. The

Negritude poets found this solidarity in Negritude. There is a tension,
then, in Negritude between individual struggle for identity and
universal solidarity of race as a presumed answer to the need for a
psychological comfort against the slights of colonial racism.
The poets of negritude, like Blyden, then, tried to understand
and to change colonial reality by explaining the colonial situation in
terms of a clash of fundamentally different cultures. Until the last
decade, almost no attempt was made to construct a political economy
of colonialism nor to understand the relationship between indigenous
culture and European trade. The proponents of Negritude hoped to
prove that, through the contribution of African civilization, European
society could be transformed and a new and emancipatory world
culture invented.
In order to understand Fanon, therefore, it is important to look
at the distinction that is made between the objective failings of the
negritude movement and its subjective necessity. In The Wretched of
the Earth, Fanon spells out this implicit distinction between the
223
objective failings of the negritude movement and its subjective

necessity.
Ill: The Subjective necessity o f Negritude
In Black Skin, White Masks Fanon could find no o bje ctive

worth in the celebration of the existence of past African civilizations;
neither would he admit that the idea of a descent into the embrace of
a black soul, found in negritude, was in any way useful. This was the
case for Fanon despite the fact that there was a considerable amount
of common ground between his conception of disalienation presented
in Black Skin, White Masks and that of both Cesaires and Senghors
poetics.
In his essay W est Indians Fanon came to accept the
possibility of negritude as a progressive force only because of its

s u b je c tiv is t project promoting em otional health among black
intellectuals. In this way he was able to admit something of his debt to
the movement.
Although negritude presented no direct challenge to colonial
domination it provided relief to the psycho-existential plight of the
224
native intellectual, and as such served a progressive role. Although

the subjectivist impact of negritude was capable of generating a
revolutionary consciousness by affording intellectuals a degree of
personal emotional stability, this path easily led to a belief in the
brotherhood of man.
Fanon goes to great length to identify the historical significance
of this movement in The Wretched o f the Earth. Negritude as a
movement was motivated by ideals of a cultural renaissance and as
such is a direct response to the colonial intent to destroy indigenous
culture. Fanon speaks of colonialism as a kind of perverted logic that
turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and
destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a
dialectical significance today.282 The aim of this work of cultural
destruction by colonialism was to legitimize the colonial project under
the guise of a civilizing mission.
The desire, then, to establish the existence of a worthwhile
national culture in the past was felt as a vital need for the few black
Western-educated intellectuals. While this search changes nothing in
282 The Wretched o f the Earth, p. 169.
225
material terms, it nevertheless represents a progressive step. Initially,

it assuages the anxiety of the evolues who feel threatened by the
overwhelming authority of European culture.283
In seeking out the contours of pre-colonial history, the
black intellectuals [the petty bourgeoisie] come up with some very
beautiful and splendid era whose existence rehabilitates us both in
regard to ourselves and in regard to others.284 This search also leads
the educated blacks to some intimate contact with their own people
from whom they have been largely estranged.285 Although Fanon
does not acknowledge the significance of social class, this renewed
contact between the native intellectual and his people presents the
possibility of an alliance between the petty bourgeoisie and the
peasantry.
As a return to the source, Negritude causes important changes
in the psycho-affective equilibrium of the petty bourgeoisie.286 If the
intellectual does not free the self from the pull of the colonialist
cultural matrix, the consequences may be tragic: This tearing away,
283 The
284 The
285 The
286 The
wretched o f the Earth, p.168.

Wretched o f the Earth, p. 169
Wretched o f the Earth, p.168
Wretched o f the Earth, p.168
226
painful and difficult though it may be, is, however, necessary. If it is

not accomplished there will be serious psycho-affective injuries and
the result will be individuals without an anchor, without a horizon,
colorless, stateless, and rootless - a race of angels.287 This return to
the source, then, is not simply an aesthetic journey but a necessary
step in the painful process of rehabilitating the colonized personality.
The parallels between this inward journey to freedom and Fanons
account, in Black Skin, White Masks, of the psyche of ascent are
obvious. In each case, the inward journey and the psyche of ascent,
a process of psychological cleansing appears as the necessary
preparation for social liberation.
In this way Jock McCulloch288 sees Fanons achievement
to be the establishm ent of a linkage between this subjective
challenge answered by negritude and an objective need for social
change that calls negritude, initially, into being. Thus the return to the
source promises to resolve a number of inter-connected problems; it
promotes the psycho-affective disalienation of the native intellectual,

288 Cf. Black soul White Artifact: Fanon's clinical Social Theory, p.49
227
while establishing some solidarity between urban and rural classes.

Fanon writes in The Wretched o f the Earth:
The claim to a national culture in the past does not only
rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the
hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho
effective equilibrium it is responsible for an important
change in the native.289
Cultural renaissance then, according to Fanon, has an
im portant anti-colonial role to play since it foreshadows the
emergence of political challenges to imperialism. Such a movement
not only changes individuals but lends support to the claims for
change in the political institutions and in the relationships that those
institutions legitimize. In a context where colonial rule derives part of
its raison d etre from cultural lethargy and social stultification the
promotion of indigenous culture involves a priori questioning of the
colonial relationship itself. Of this connection Fanon comments: In
such a situation the claims of the native intellectual are no luxury but
a necessity in any coherent program.290
In this way, then, the battle against colonialism begins in the
field of the interpretation of pre-colonial history. While on the surface
289 The Wretched o f the Earth, p. 169
290 The Wretched o f the Earth, p.170.
228
the clam oring after the recognition of the achievements of pre

colonial societies may appear to have little political significance,
Fanon argues that the reverse is actually the case. From the time of
his writing the essay, West Indians, on, Fanon accepts negritude as
a subjectively necessary counter to the psychologically damaging
influence of colonial deculturation. However he dism isses the
pretensions of the movement as a social force. For him, negritude
alone can not change the conditions of economic and political
oppression under which black people are forced to exist. Over time
Fanon grows to accept negritude as part of a larger historical
movement in which colonialism will gradually be dissolved. His final
statement on national culture and negritude admit that perhaps only
negritude could ultimately free black intellectuals from the mental
sedimentation of the colonial experience but that in itself was not
enough to free the blacks from their colonial yoke.
Still Fanon approves, as said above, the political impact of
Negritude in the Antilles. The adoption of Negritude in the Antilles led
the black Antillean toward a political radicalization which otherwise
would not have been possible. A shift occurred in the psychological
229
orientation of the West Indian over the period of the Second World
War.
Before 1939 the blacks in the Antilles identified themselves with
the European against the inferior A frica n s. They believed
themselves to be Europeans rather than Negroes in what Fanon
describes as an embrace of the white-mask psychology. For a West
Indian, to be mistaken for an African would be tantamount to a
personal disaster. But History already had, and continues to have, a
place for black women and men. In this way it is clear that the
appeal to humanism and humanization that Fanon relates is rooted in
the situation and experience of the colonized - that is, the oppressed.
During the war a large part of the French fleet was blockaded in
Fort de France in Martinique. This swelled the ranks of the European
population with a larger number of sailors who were to display a
latent racist m entality.291 Under this attack, the W est Indian
responded by reversing his approach to the world. Having clambered
after a white identity, he now adopted negritude. Fanon refers to this
axiological abrogation as the Antillean first metaphysical experience.
291 Cf. TAR, p.32
230
Once
the
black
of M artinique
system atized
th e ir
political
consciousness, they turned naturally toward a Marxist ideology.292 Of

course this was just another alienation to be overcome.
Although Fanon is now willing to admit a politically progressive
role for negritude, he remains highly critical of the movement as an
answer to the question of black identity. This is evident when he
proclaims it thus seems that the West Indian, after the great white
error, is now living in the great black mirage.293 Even if the historical
impact of the movement points in the direction of political reform, the
philosophy of negritude is still a snare and a delusion. The cultural
affiliations of the intellectuals are abstract, whereas those of the
traditionalists are substantive.
IV: The Objective Failings of Negritude:
In The W retched o f the Earth Fanon is not interested in

negritude as a code of aesthetics or as an artistic movement, despite
the references to artistic production found in the chapter On National
292 One of those people who turned to Marxism is Aime Cesaire who formed the Marxist Revolutionary
party in Martinique.
293 TAR, p.37
Culture. Having defined culture in this chapter as a political activity,

Fanon is determined to assess negritude in terms of its political
ramifications. Throughout The Wretched o f the Earth, despite certain
considered affirmations, as we have seen them above, Fanon
remains unconvinced as to the necessary political progressiveness of
cultural black renaissance movements. Often he warns that such
movements could too easily lead into a dead end, since they are
essentially subjectivist responses to colonial domination.
So, for Fanon, negritude alone is unsatisfactory as a resistance
against the assaults of colonial racism. It is not capable of furnishing
an answer to the needs of reviving or even of maintaining a black
identity. There are three reasons in Fanons work for saying that
negritude can not furnish an answer to the cultural and political needs
of black identity: 1. European culture and colonial pressure
undermine claims for the existence of a black soul. 2. There are no
black values as there is no black situation or black problem. 3.
There can not be a return to a remote past since the black peoples
future necessitates coming to terms with European civilization in the
historical present.
232
The poets of Negritude admit that Negroid people experience a

unique perception o f the world. For example Senghor believes, as we
said earlier, that emotion is to the Negro as reason is to the Greek.
This assertion of a unique biack perception can have no impact
whatsoever in changing the Manichean derogatory view in which the
European held the Negro. Fanon says: Like a magician, I robbed the
white man of a certain world forever after lost to him and his.294 This
black metaphysics merely represents, then, for Fanon, a phase of
human development through which the white race has already
passed.295 This means that the Negro is supposedly condemned to a
marginal role in world history. It thus reinforces the European view
that the Negro and his cultural achievements belong to the childhood
of the world.296
According to Senghor as well as Blyden, Negro values include
anti-materialism, communalism [cf. Nyerere], mutual responsibility
and concern with the community over and above the individual. For
Fanon, on the other hand, My black skin is not the wrapping of
294 Black skin, White Masks, p.128

295 Black Skin, White Masks, p. 129
296 Black skin, white masks, p. 132
specific values.297 Values and race do not of necessity coincide and,

when they do, the reason for this should be sought in the on-going
social and historical struggle rather than in the color of the skin. Thus,
for Fanon, the idea of common set of Negro values or qualities of
personality originates from opposition to a white racist ideology. Thus,
by reviving this component of the Negro soul, the proponents of
negritude had merely given weight to an already powerful racial
ideology. By yielding to a myth of racial purity which was merely a
restatement of the archaic stereotype of the Negro, Senghor and
Diop had invented a new burden for the Negro race. I secreted a
race. And that race staggered under the burden of a basic element.
What was it? Rhythm.298 For Fanon, then, the fact of race in itself is
irrelevant to the plight of the Negro. Fanon writes, Exactly, we will
reply, Negro experience is not a whole, for there is not merely one
Negro, there are Negroes.299 The social experience of Negroes is as
various as that of whites.
In his essay West Indians and Africans as well as in Black
Skin, White Masks, Fanon disputes the concept of the Negro
291 Black skin, White masks, p .227
234
People.300 Even to employ the term, Fanon would say, robs individual
Negroes of the possibility for individual expression and by implication
perpetuates the racist assumption that all blacks are alike. The truth
is that there is nothing, a priori to warrant the assumption that such a
thing as a Negro people exists.301 The fact is that in spite of the fact
that Negroes share common cultural influences,302 they, like all
peoples, are subject to a vast range of social, historical and
geographical experiences. The problem here then is that of the
connection between race and culture. Fanon at this stage of his
development never posed the question in these terms of a connection
between race and culture.
In Towards the African Revolution, Fanon intimated that racial
factors, at least in Martinique, were subordinated to economic
influences - A Negro worker will be on the side of the Mulatto worker
against the middle-class Negro.303 From this quotation one can
easily conclude that, for Fanon, the determining lines of political
identification are economic rather than racial. In this way, then, the
300 Towards African Revolution, p.27-28

301 TAR, p.28
302 TAR, p.27
303 TAR, p.28
235
idea of racial solidarity such as espoused by negritude would be seen

as being inevitably subordinate to the influence of class position upon
the various participants in a political conflict. Here it seems Fanon
was struggling with the problem of the relationship between race and
economic class. In Towards the African Revolution Fanon leans
towards class struggle in answering this problem of race and class
solidarity while in Black Skin, White Masks he will lean towards racial
solidarity. This idea is, then, one of the ideas that we see a historical
development in Fanons conception.
Negritude presupposed a return to the past as a precondition
for freedom from the domination of European culture. For Fanon this
backward gaze of negritude leads 1. to a concern with descending
anew into the black soul and 2. to a preoccupation with the prior
historical achievem ents of the Negro race.304 For Fanon this
represents an embrace of humanity at its lowest.305 It is highly
irrational and easily refuted by European supremacists. For Fanon
one can never achieve ones liberation this way for it is only,
304 See Cheik Anta Diops work especially The African Origin o f Civilization: Myth or Reality? where Diop
examines the origins o f Greek civilization and tries to prove that these origins are to be found in black
Africa.
305 Black skin, White masks, p.127
236
according to Fanon, through a personal catharsis that a person

comes to achieve liberation.306 Fanon writes:
There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and
arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic
upheaval can be born. In most cases, the black man lacks
the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent
into a real hell.307
The promise of this personal descent is the eradication of that racial
self-hatred which leads alternatively to a white mask neurosis on the
one hand and to negritude on the other. In a sense then, Fanon
recognizes Cesaires psyche of ascent, as said above, as possibly
representing a progressive movement for the blacks.308 He believes
that by a process of psychic re-immersion the blacks could root out
and destroy the European collective unconscious that lies at the
center of his suffering. Then, once he had laid bare the white man in
himself, he killed him.309 The donning of a white mask then becomes
unnecessary with the dissolution of the myth of the dirty nigger. But
Fanon does not make any attempt to connect this strategy with the
negritude philosophy.
306 Sartre sees Cesaires poetry as essentially this.

307 Black skins, White Masks, p.10
M Black Skin, White Mask, p.195
237
So, for Fanon, negritude changes nothing in the daily life of the
Negro.310 Pursuing the question of race is contrary to the best
interests of the black peoples. The Negro problem is one of social
and historical accident, not of race.311 He [the black] is looking for the
universal! But in June, 1950, the hotels of Paris refused to rent rooms
to Negro pilgrims.312 That disturbed the black intellectuals belief in
the brotherhood of the educated.
Fanons attack on the backward-looking trend in negritude is
because he thinks that this backward-looking trend can not become a
basis for action in the present, the historical situation corresponding
to the existing reality. The return to the past changes nothing in the
life and situation of the oppressed black. In his critique of Mannoni we
saw that Fanon argued most vigorously against any notion of a basic
Malagasy personality. Similarly, in attacking the writings of Cheikh
Anta Diop, he protests against the assumption of a basic Negro type.
Now we know that Bantu society no longer exists. And that there is
nothing ontological about segregation. Enough of this rubbish.313 The
3,0 Cf. Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 117, 184, 185, 230.
312 Black skin, White Masks, p. 186
238
Bantu peoples of Southern Africa lived under conditions of frightful

exploitation and it is this exploitation and not the remnants of some
distant ontology that determines the quality of their daily lives.314
In Black Skin, White Masks Fanon sees negritude as a barrier
to the liberation of the Negro but he still retains a place for Cesaires
psyche of ascent as a liberative instrument in so far as it furthers the
genuine assimilation of the Negro into some universal sense of
humanization such as western Culture.315 He feels that Negritude
could still be an obstacle to the integration of the West Indian into full
membership of the French Union.
Fanon likens this search for historical origins to Otto Ranks
idea of nostalgia as a wish for a return to the tranquility of the
womb.316 Negritude contributes to the continuation of the suffering of
the Negro by perpetuating a preoccupation with the past317 because it
functions purely within the confines of an abstract intellectualism;
negritude m ovem ent ignores the connection
between social
conditions and cultural affiliation. Thus, the failure o f negritude

j16 Cf. Black Skin, white masks, p.121
317 Cf. Black Skin, white Masks, p.226
239
becomes its failure to address itself to the urgent problems o f social

justice in giving preference to an esoteric preoccupation with the
p a s t318 I shall demonstrate elsewhere that what is often called the
black soul is a white mans artifact.
Fanons critical attitude towards the suffocating weight of the
past, then, applies equally to the racist collective unconscious of the
European and the archaic metaphysics of the poets of negritude. The
past in this sense, for Fanon, is analogous to the past of the neurotic
which dominates his present and thereby mortgages his future. The
white-mask psychology of the Antillean and the ideology of negritude
both relinquish the possibilities of the present under the coercion from
the past. Fanon likens the attitude of the movement to the past to that
of a dog lying on its masters grave. Those who would believe that a
dog has a soul would find proof in the sight of a dog sitting by its
masters grave until it starved to death. Fanon points out that: We
had to wait for Janet to demonstrate that the aforesaid dog, in
contrast to man, simply lacked the capacity to liquidate the past.319
Likewise the black peoples preoccupation with some vague dead
318 See Black Masks, White Masks, p.16 for his critique.
319 BSWM, p.121
240
civilization bestows no evidence of their virtue in the present but, as

for the dog, only proves their incapacity to shake free of the past as
determinant for their actions. Fanon points out that the colonizers, like
the dog, cannot obliterate the past,320 while the Negro falls into the
trap of accepting the past as definitive. In the confrontation with the
white, then, the Negro seeks revenge for past wrongs or rehabilitation
through an appeal to distant achievements while the colonizer
stumbles after expiation for the sins of his race.
Furtherm ore, there is an apparent paradox in negritude
movement. The idea of a pre-existing fundamental African mentality
is promulgated by those who, through the experience of western
education, have moved further from familiarity with such values. The
falling back upon archaic positions having no relation to technical
development is paradoxical. The institutions thus valorized no longer
correspond to the elaborate methods of action already mastered.321
There is a hiatus between the sophisticated skills and techniques that
these intellectuals have come to master and their adherence to a
doctrine which celebrates primitivism and traditionalism. Although
320 BSWM, p.122
321 BSWM, p.52
241
this falling back upon archaic positions can be readily understood as

a form of self-defense against being overwhelmed by European
culture,322 the paradox remains and prevents any truly historical
consciousness from emerging.
The final pages of Black Skin, White Masks, entitled By Way of
Conclusion, are a hymn to freedom in which Fanon rejects in very
Sartrean terms all determination. He insists that his freedom is both
absolute and self-founding to the extent that it transcends history.
Superiority? Inferiority? Why not quite simply try to touch the other,
feel the other, reveal the other to me? W asnt my freedom given to
me to build the world of the You?323 In general terms, Black Skin,
White Masks advocates a politics of solidarity that speaks on behalf
of all the wretched of the earth. But there are still moments when
Fanon has to speak as the essential black man. The white woman
whose gaze burns him to ashes has to be told Bugger you,
Madame.
The harshest criticism that Fanon makes of the movement of
negritude, particularly in his early work, concerns the prim acy o f
322 BSWM, p.52
323 BSWM, p. 188
242
political and social realities which he believes negritude tended to

ignore. The importance that Fanon attaches to such factors grows
rather than diminishes over time, and it is apparent that in Black Skin,
White Masks, he is far from certain about the direction such change
should take. Yet where Fanon is politically most confident, as in the
latter pages of The Wretched o f the Earth, he goes so far as to imply
that cultural renaissance movements are virtually pro-nationalist and
hence did not have any determination from the past. So, according to
Fanon, Negritude cannot be an answer to the problem of the black
mans suffering.
But where did Fanon find the real answer to the black mans
suffering? He found it in a willingness to respond to violence. How
so? For Fanon, the colonized person lives in an atmosphere of
violence. There are two types of violence directed towards the
colonized according to Fanon. First there is material violence which
dehumanizes, oppresses, tortures, and terrifies the native in order to
keep him in his overdetermined, subservient place within a rigid
Manichean system. You are rich because you are white and you are
white because you are rich. T he n there is Psychological violence
243
which enslaves the colonized to an inferiority complex superimposed

on the consciousness of the colonized by the colonizer and ensnares
him in the disabling network of colonial history. For Fanon, the
violence which has ruled over the ordering of the colonial world...will
be claimed and taken over by the native when he decides to
embody history in his own person324 and to fight back. What makes
the native claim the violence that surrounds him? Fanon is not clear
on this point but he thinks that colonial violence eventually becomes
so excessive that it pushes even a demoralized, terrorized people to
a breaking point in their submission. For Fanon, since colonialism
speaks through bombs, bullets, and bayonets, so the people
conclude they must communicate back in the same way.
Fanon also believes that spontaneous violence wells up first in
the peasantry. For instance, a subsistence farmer whose land is
appropriated or destroyed must either fight or die. For people in
underdeveloped countries, the most essential value, because the
most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring
244
them bread and, above all dignity.325 Thus violent reclamation of

ones land and, by extension, ones country is a matter of self
defense for the native who has been so imposed upon according to
Fanon.
So, Fanons aim was to analyze the dialectic of violence and to
show what might be called its creative necessity for colonized
peoples. To do so, he exam ines violence from a number of
perspectives.
D: Violence
I: Introduction:
For Fanon, colonialism is fundamentally a violent situation since
there exists two kinds of interests - the interest of the colonizer and
the interest of the colonized. The colonizer sees his place in the
colony as a justified one. In this way he feels to replace him is to
replace the innocent. For the colonized, his previous pre-colonial
situation in his society was not an unjust one. The fact that he has
been replaced reflects injustice. The form er faces the threat of
245
violence; the latter is already living it. In this regard, the oppressed
and the oppressor converge as sufferers during the period of
liberation.
To highlight this paradox, Fanon, in the very first sentence of
The
W retched o f the
Earth,
sets
up
his
te llin g
premise:
Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.326 Fanon means

this quite literally. The naked truth of decolonization, he writes,
evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which
emanate from it.327 Behind this assertion lies not only the violent
wars of liberation waged on the African continent during Fanons
lifetime, including the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya, the guerrilla
struggle in Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola, and of
course the Algerian Revolution, but also the prior wars of invasion
and occupation by Europeans that had made violence the order of
the day. Fanon writes, I do not carry innocence to the point of
believing that appeals to reason or to respect for human dignity can

327 Ibid. p.37
246
alter reality. For the Negro who works on a sugar plantation in Le

Robert, there is only one solution: to fight.328
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon quoting Hegel urged that it
is only by risking life that one preserves liberty...Thus human
reality...is only accomplished in conflict, and by the risking which that
implies.329 In this way, then, for Fanon, in a slave-colonial society
where whole cultures, societies, histories and races had been killed
by the colonizers absolute negation, survival meant fighting back,
even at the risk of self-annihilation and the death of the colonizer. The
act of killing is not an end in itself but rather is a means of avoiding
being killed oneself. Violence then is viewed here as a temporary
actuality in a process where resistance recurs in successive levels
and phases.
By developing the Manichean perspective only implicit in Black
Skin, White Masks330 in The Wretched o f the Earth, Fanon diagnoses
the ills not of a race - as he did in Black skin, White masks - but of a
continent denied its own history under colonial rule. To overcome the
n i Black Skin, White Masks, p.224
329BSWM, p. 179
330 See Macey, pp.447 to 492 for a very good description of this work.
247
binary system in which black is bad and white is good, Fanon argues,
an entirely new world must come into being. This utopian desire, to
create an entirely new world, requires total revolution, or some
absolute violence.331 The important issue then here becomes that of
the question of relevant action. One can not know in advance what
will be most appropriate for the achievement of a peoples goals. Like
Malcolm X, Fanon believed that struggle can take many forms, and
its scariest one - armed resistance - should never be ruled out. In
fact, it must be used for its impact of making the colonizer appreciate
the gravity of the situation.
Fanon is right here. A nonviolent transformation of power boils
down to none at all. Violence is broader than bullets, knives, and
stones. Violence is the taking of that which will not be willingly
surrendered.332 Regardless of the perceived justice or injustice of the
matter, regardless of the place of power in the matter, as long as
someone is losing something that he currently has and wants to
keep, there is violence. The violence that emerges, first in the period
331 The Wretched of the Earth, p. 37.

332 See Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis o f European Man, p.79
248
of conquering one sector of humanity, and then in the period of that

sectors efforts toward its emancipation, challenges the very core of
human potential and self recognition. Fanon draws out this dialectic
through an examination of case studies of torturers and resistancefighters. The torturers violence pushes him directly into the face of
human misery; the resistance-fighters actions push him into the
world of an irretrievable fact. The tragedy faced by anyone seriously
engaged in struggle against the institutional encouragement of
dehum anization
is
that
in stitu tio n a lize d
dehum anization
is
fundamentally a state of war.

The oppressed,
Fanon claims,
can
only achieve their
psychological liberation, or cleansing, by violating the oppressor.333

The oppressed then become free to go on with the more organized
forms of violence, praxis, that are necessary for the building of a new,
liberated society. In this way, then, the cure for the oppressed
peoples would come by violating the oppressor: it was only through

violence, Fanon believed, that colonized peoples could come to
For a good discussion on this point, see Hansen s Frantz Fanon, chap. 5, and linadu s Fanon, chap. 4.
249
freeing themselves from both the material and the psychological

oppression of colonialism.
According to Fanon, Violence purifies and this violence purifies
simply because violence not only destroys the category of white but
also that of black. In this way, the violence of the colonizing minority
which, because linked to the innocents (the colonized), was known as
victimization becomes retributive, since linked now to the guilty (the
colonizers). For Fanon, the society that would come on the heels of
revolutionary decolonization would be one that would allow Africans
and other formerly colonized peoples to acquire what Fanon called an
authentic existence. According to the Fanon of The Wretched o f the
Earth, true revolution in Africa can only come from the peasants, or
fellaheen. In his faith in the African peasantry as well as his
emphasis on language, Fanon opened the way for the Kenyan Ngugi
WA Thiongos Decolonizing the Mind and Petals o f Blood which
points us to Ngugis belief that finds revolutionary artistic power
among the peasants. In the following pages I am going to look at
what it means to be willing to take up action in response to the
colonial violence.
250
II. What It means to take action against co lo n ia l violence:
Although Fanon uses the word, violence, quite often in his

works, he does not define it as an abstract essence. There are a lot
of theoretical works which have dealt with the issue of violence.
Prominent among these theorists is Robert Audi especially in his
article On the Meaning and Justification of violence. I will not enter
into this analysis not because it is not interesting but simply because
it is too abstract and unhistorical which is the opposite of Fanons
understanding of violence for he understood it in its historical
perspective. For him, violence is not only an ontological possibility but
it is a historical reality.334 Fanons understanding of violence is based
on his experience about what had happened to the native people of
Martinique and Algeria.
The French conquest of Algeria in 1830 was followed by
decades of pacification - here one remembers the search-anddestroy policies till 1920, the year the last desert tribes submitted to
334 This type of violence is actually what Paulo Freire in his famous and a very important book, Pedagogy
o f the oppressed calls dehumanization. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy o f the oppressed, especially the first
chapter.
251
French rule, a state of affairs that lasted till 19th March, 1962, with the
Evian cease fire. In this way, then, French violence in history
produced the Algerian resistance and its counter-violence. Paulo
Freire puts it nicely when he writes never in history has violence
been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if
they themselves are the result of violence? There would be no
oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish
their subjugation.335 The Algerian violence was a taking of action
against the French dehumanization of the native Algerians and in so
doing it tried to restore the dignity of the Algerian: redemptive
violence. It is a taking of action of ones own to come out historically
from under that problem where everything has become a matter of
doing violence.
In Algeria this taking of action against oppression took several
forms. The use of the gun was one of them. I tried to describe this
point in the first chapter where I have given Fanons background. I
would like here to discuss the other forms of the taking up of action in
333 Freire, The Pedagogy o f the Oppressed, p.37
252
Algeria, namely: the use of the veil and secondly the use of
Communication channels such as the radio and newspapers.
(a) Behind The Veil:

Fanon discusses the significance of the veil traditionally worn
by Algerian women in his work A D ying C olonialism . Clothing has a
meaning beyond its function of concealing nakedness and, often, of
protecting people from the elements. Throughout the world, clothes
signify gender, wealth,
and status; they express
individual
personality, group expectations, and social conventions. How clothes

are interpreted depends on the interpreters cultural values. Fanons
analysis of Algerian womens clothing explores its different meanings
to Algerians and to Westerners. Because these meanings conflict,
traditional womens dress - the white clothes, the facial veil, and the
large square body veil called the haik - formed a battle ground for
colonial and anti-colonial ideology in Algeria.
Fanon argues that the veil, regardless of its traditional function,
is transformed under colonialism into a mark of resistance. During the
period of revolutionary struggle, the veil went through a dialectic
253
between colonized signification, traditional Muslim signification, and

its purely functional role as an opportune mode of concealment.
For Fanon, to Europeans the veil made the Algerian woman
represent the colonial project as a whole. Because of this, Fanon
naturally became suspicious of certain colonial reforms. In the 1930s,
for instance, French authorities launched an anti-veil campaign in
order to liberate Algerian women from their traditional roles.
Believing Algerian women to be sequestered, hum iliated and
oppressed by Algerian men - and believing the veil to be the most
obvious sign of this condition - French bureaucrats and social,
workers urged women to cast off their veil and assert themselves
against tradition. Similarly, European bosses tried to re-acculturate
their male Algerian employees, demanding that they bring their wives
to company functions. Algerian men were caught in a double bind: if
they agreed, the violated cultural prohibitions against women being
on public display; if they refused, they risked losing their jobs. For
Fanon, these efforts smack of racial prejudice, violate Algerian
integrity, and attempt to further the cause of colonial exploitation.
254
The result of this campaign against the veil was the hardening
of the Algerian attitude about the veil. The veil assumed great value
in religious and nationalistic terms. Because the veil bore the charge
of anti-colonial resistance, it became central to the Revolution in
tactical and symbolic senses. Veiled women became, as we will see,
an important means of transporting weapons at one stage of the
struggle.336
Until 1955, Fanon maintains, the war was waged exclusively by
men. Long held beliefs about womens proper place and fears about
how the enemy would treat female captives made the decision to
involve women in the Revolution extremely difficult. But the cluster of
colonial presumptions about the veiled and the unveiled women could
be turned to the Algerian advantage. For example, the French
authorities thought that the unveiled women freely walking the streets
in the latest Parisian fashions had accepted Western values and thus
would not be sympathetic to the freedom fighters. Little did they know
that many Algerian women in Western clothes had only just been
trained to appear in public without the veil. For these women,
336 This idea is an expansion of Gordons analysis o f the use of the veil in his Fanon and the Crisis o f
European Man, p.64
255
assuming European dress was a personal sacrifice. It meant

abandoning the aura of protection the veil afforded. Fanon relates the
feelings of vulnerability in words that resemble his description of black
people being dissected by the white gaze. W ithout the veil [the
Algerian woman] has an impression of her body being cut up into bits,
put adrift...of being improperly dressed, even of being naked.337
Nonetheless she learned to walk confidently through Algiers or Oran,
carrying grenades and forged papers in her Western-style handbag.
Fanon thus implies here that the demands of national struggle also
transform the individual.
As soon as the French began to catch on, and catch female
freedom fighters, the FLN changed strategy. They began using the
veiled women. The physical properties of the h a ik made it easy to
conceal messages, maps, weapons, and am m unitions in the
voluminous folds. Eventually, the French discovered this tactical
change. Throughout urban Algeria, veiled women were routinely
searched by police, and the anti-veil campaign was resumed. In
response, Algerian women who had long ago dropped the veil
337 Cf. A Dying Colonialism, p.59
256
resumed it to show solidarity with the Revolution. Optimistically,

Fanon concluded that the veil was now stripped of its exclusively
traditional dimensions. To outward appearances, then, the veil
remained the same, but what it signified had changed. To Algerians,
it now would be the image of a new concept: the revolutionary
woman, emancipated not by self-interested outside pressure but by
the internal needs of the fight against colonialism.
(b) Technology: Radio

Another way the native Algerians took action against the
dehumanizing projects of the French was to be found on the
question of technology. In the colonial situation, objects and
technologies are never value-free. Moreover, their meanings change
as the relationships between colonizer and the colonized change.
Analyzing how meaning and value are constructed is central to
Fanons theories of colonialism and anti-colonial struggle. He
illustrated these dynamics, as seen above, through the use of the veil
as well as the history of Algerian radio. The radio, which represented
a French disruption of Algerian values, with its broadcasting of both
257
French secularism and Christianity, was radically politicized during

the revolutionary times in Algeria.
Before 1954, Algerians turned a deaf ear to Radio-Alger, the
official broadcasting service of French Algeria. They also didnt buy
radios. For economic as well as political reasons, French authorities
wanted to increase the radio audience dramatically. French colonists,
particularly those in rural areas, did listen to Radio-Alger; by linking
them with French and French culture, it was a daily invitation not to
go native.338 For those who were already native, the radio served no
purpose whatsoever. It was instead an alien and alienating object.
How did the French understand this lack of interest in Radio listening
among the native Algerians?
According to the French administrators, there were two reasons
for this lack of interest. The first reason, according to them, was that
the Algerian social structure and its traditions of respectability made it
impossible to listen to programs in a family setting: an entertainment
or news report proper for adult male listeners was not considered
suitable for women or children. As a solution to this problem Radio-
338 A Dying Colonialism, p.71
258
Alger tried to stagger programs by age and sex as well as increase

the Algerian content of its broadcasting. No notable increase in
listening occurred. The second reason, according to the French, for
this lack of interest in radio listening was that the Arabs were
reluctant to buy radios from European firms, who monopolized the
market. As a solution to this problem, radio dealerships were
transferred to Algerian intermediaries. The increase in sales was still
minimal.
According to the Algerian natives the real reason for this lack of
interest to listening to the Radio was that Radio-Alger was seen as
the symbol of French presence, the voice of the colonizer. Before
1954, Fanon writes, switching on the radio meant giving asylum to
the occupiers words; it meant allowing the colonizers language to
filter into the very heart of the home, the last of the supreme bastions
of the national spirit.339 For these natives, only a radical change in
the colonial situation would alter Algerian attitudes toward radio and
because of this no solution is possible that would serve French
interests.
j39 A Dying Colonialism, p.92
259
In the early 1950s, however, French interests were being

threatened throughout colonial North Africa and the Middle East. The
emergence of national radio stations in newly liberated Arab countries
- Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon - made broadcast information much
more relevant to Algerians. As Morocco and Tunisia began to fight
France for their independence, Algerians wanted to follow the news.
And when Algeria joined the Mahgreb front in 1954, the demand for
accurate news exploded. It seemed to the Algerian that whole
sections of the truth were hidden from him,340 and he needed to
oppose enemy lies with his own version of events.
Because Radio-Alger gave the French perspective on the
growing war, Algerians turned to newspapers. The country had an
established independent press, and opposition papers from France
were available. Soon, buying dem ocratic newspapers became
tantamount to admitting support for the Revolution - a dangerous
practice, considering that newspaper vendors had the reputation of
being government informers. Local papers began censoring the
news, so the FLN called for a boycott. Therefore, it was a nationalist
340A Dying Colonialism , p77
260
act n o t to buy a newspaper. And the mass of Algerian peasants

could not read anyway. The F IN did establish its own newspaper, El
fVfoudjahid, for which Fanon wrote editorials. Distribution was spotty,
and papers were frequently confiscated by the government. El
Moudjahid is today a leading paper in Algeria.
In 1956, the FLN established The Voice of Fighting Algeria to
bring the message of the Revolution to the people. It broadcasted in
Arabic and Kabyle (the main language of Algerias Berber minority)
as well as in French, sending out a message of racial solidarity along
with information about the war. This was a much better way of
delivering the FLN message to the masses for two reasons. Firstly,
most of the Algerian peasants could not read and secondly because
of the anonymity radios afforded over the publicity of newspapers
which used to be bought or delivered by revolutionaries with risk of
exposure. Literally, against the French voice was pitted a native
Algerian voice.341 From now on, Fanon explains, the radio set was
no longer part of the occupiers arsenal of cultural oppression. The
meaning of the Radio changed dialectically, according to new
341 Cf. Gordon, p.65
261
national conditions. Less than twenty days after The Voice of

Fighting Algeria began broadcasting, the countrys entire stock of
radio receivers was sold out.
But, many Algerians lived without electricity, so portable battery
operated radio receivers were in great demand. The government
prohibited the sale of batteries. It also prohibited the purchase of
radios unless one could show a military voucher. In addition the
government confiscated radios during raids. But the Algerian people
found ways to meet their new need for broadcast news. Radio repair
shops sprung up; a brisk trade in used radios and parts developed.
When the government cracked down on these initiatives, radios and
supplies were smuggled in from Tunisia and Morocco. To Fanon,
these responses followed inevitably from the dialectical progression
of Revolutionary history. For him, when the tyranny of the masters
voice is finally contested, the desire to hear the peoples voice must
be fulfilled, no matter what the obstacle might be.
The Government ultimately resorted to jamming the air waves.
Like all its plans involving radio in Algeria, this tactic backfired.
People became active listeners, communally attempting to decipher
262
the bits and pieces of the static-filled FLN broadcasts. They became
actual participants in the battle of the airwaves, waging their own
struggle against French interference.
To Fanon, this was a truly apocalyptic battle. He describes it as
a struggle for the logos. The battle was fought in the heavens and, at
the same time, in the hearts and the minds of listeners. The Voice of
Fighting Algeria spoke in many tongues, including French, and in so
doing it liberated language itself from its oppressive colonial history.
The new multi-voiced Logos guided and redeemed the people for
whom and through whom it spoke: The Nations speech, the nations
spoken words, shape the world while at the same time renewing it.
So, for Fanon, the taking up of action for the oppressed natives
against the dehumanizing projects of the colonizers involve the actual
fighting with the guns and the spilling of blood as well as the
boycotting of the colonizers projects. In this way, then, Fanon
believes that struggle can take many forms. But again, if the
oppressor or the colonizer perceives the very notion of a postcolonial
society as a violent condition - because it displaces him - then his
very call for a nonviolent solution amounts to the preservation of
263
colonialism, or at least a transformation of colonialism into a condition

that he will prefer, which amounts to a form of neocolonialism.
For Fanon, then, this taking of action is a cleansing force, for,
according to him, it frees the colonized from his feeling of inferiority
and humiliation and restores him to the fullness of himself as
human.342 It is a baptism343 in the sense that it is the beginning of a
new life, a life of being human as opposed to the life of being a mere
thing (la chose) 344 In other words, this type of violence is a
humanizing violence. For if, in fact, my life is worth as much as the
settlers, his glance no longer freezes me, and his voice no longer
turns me into stone.345 This type of violence, then, is a violence that
leads to the defeat of colonial power and thus a transcendence of the
Manicheanism. The native no longer has need to identify himself with
the colonizer for the sake of becoming human: he is human because
it is his vocation to be so.
342 Cf. WE p. 237.

343
344
Cf. BSWM p. 198; WE p. 69

Cf. WE p. 74
345 See WE p. 45
264
For the exploited a problem
rem ains of identifying or
distinguishing a friend from an enemy. It is commonsense that if you

are fighting a war, you have to know whom you are fighting against
and whom you can count on to stand at your side. You also want to
persuade uncommitted parties to support you, and perhaps to convert
some opponents to your cause. Thus, part of A Dying Colonialism and much of Fanons editorial writing for El Moudjahid - concerns
defining the enemy and identifying friends. Fanon naturally focuses
on Algeria, but his analytic frameworks are crucial for understanding
anti-colonial conflict throughout the world.
In one sense, the issue is simple. War demands a Manichean
perspective, a clear and value-laden division of good guys from bad
guys. In addition, an anti-colonial war inherits the Manichean
divisions fundamental to colonialism: colonizer versus colonized,
white versus non white, and so on. And herein lies a problem. How
can a people wage an anti-colonial struggle without reinforcing and
replicating the very categories that have organized its own
oppression? Or, put another way, how can necessarily Manichean
combat promote a post-Manichean world?
265
To answer this question, it is first necessary to see how Fanon

arranges friends and enemies in the case of the Algerian revolution.
For Fanon, friends in the case of the Algerian natives were those who
worked actively for Algerian independence: the FLN and its
supporters in Algeria itself; anti-colonial people in France; and
formerly colonized nations throughout the world. For Fanon, enemies
in the case of the Algerian Revolution were those working against
Algerian independence: The colonial government in Algeria and its
various repressive apparatuses (the military, the police, and the
bureaucracy) and its supporters; the government in Paris and its
followers; and the developed nations with vested interests in
maintaining the colonial status quo.
What is interesting here is that none of these categories is an
essential one. Fanon does not separate friends and foes according to
any fixed notions of racial or religious essence. Syria, Tunisia, or
Ghana, for example, champion the Algerian Revolution not because
of a mystical sense of Islam or pan-African brotherhood but because
they have endured
European colonialism them selves.
Lived
experience and existential history compel their political choice.
266
Fanons method of categorization, then, challenges Manichean

thinking because a person or a collectivity can choose a position.
This is a revolutionary mode of existentialism worked out in the
political arena, and it is one of Fanons most important contributions
to philosophy and to social theory.
Since Fanon believed that people could exercise free choice,
he did not write off any group completely. He explained, for example,
that many Algerian colons had assisted the FLN by providing
weapons, supplies, money, and crucial information. Some colons had
been arrested, tortured, and had even been killed for assisting the
Algerian Revolution. These European minorities had, in this way,
developed the new value of being an Algerian over being French.
Since such praxis was fundamentally premised upon emancipation of
Algerians, the Europeans - although facing the reality that the
revolution was not for them - faced what Fanon identified as
emancipation of the human being in Algeria. This usually takes place
through the recognition of a justice that is no longer for Europeans
but for those in whose way both Europe and Europeans once stood.
Certainly one of Fanons purposes was to influence other colons to
267
declare themselves Algerians rather than Frenchmen, but another

purpose was to undermine the essentialist, Manichean thinking that
shores up colonialism. French colonialism, Fanon writes, refuses to
admit that a genuine European can really fight side by side with the
Algerian people.346 For Fanon, the reason for this refusal is the
perceived absolute separation of the genuine European and the
presumed genuine Algerian. Similarly, Fanon addresses himself to
Algerian Jews, urging them to resist the religious polarization
necessary to colonialisms divide-and-conquer program. For Fanon,
a new way of seeing the world will end the false divisions and
misleading labeling that weaken national solidarity: For the FLN, in
the new society being built, there are only Algerians. From the outset,
therefore, every individual living in Algeria is an Algerian.347
Fanons text is far more complex than my brief discussion
affords, and its faults are well known. Most prominent, in my view, is
Fanons presumption that a struggle for a revolutionary Algeria would
be recognized and lived by the people as a struggle against
colonialism instead of simply a struggle against the French or, worse,
346 A Dying Colonialism, p. 160
347 A Dying colonialism, p. 152
268
all foreigners. But what is important to note here is that the dimension
of the peoples struggle against the colonizers is looked at as
representing the placement of a limit on what may be presumed
about colonized people. When such a limit is placed, there is a shift in
the ordinary world. The inhabitants of that world are no longer
known in their entirety; they become, even among themselves,
unnervingly unpredictable.
French intellectuals and leftists presented a different problem
for Fanon and the revolution. Although their politics should have put
them in the category of friends, they either demonstrated what Fanon
called pseudo-solidarity348 or abandoned the cause completely.
Militant FLN tactics threw them into a panic: by condemning a
terrorist act, the intelligentsia lost sight of the reasons why violence
is necessary to overturn colonial rule. For Fanon, this is a mistakingthe forest-and-the-trees problem based on a misguided emphasis on
the individual. In this type of thinking, a single act of brutality or
kindness eclipses the entire struggle. The famous writer, Albert
Camus (1913 - 1960), was the sort of intellectual Fanon critiqued.
348 'fowarci (fre African Revolution, p.77
269
Himself a French Algerian, Camus opposed both the methods and

the nationalist goals of the FLN. In predictable Manichean fashion,
Camus contrasted civilized, French-controlled Algeria with the
bogeyman of an Algeria tied to an Islamic empire marked by misery
and barbarism or even worse, an Algerian allied with the evil empire
of international Communism. Fanon even chastised those French
activists protesting the celebrated case of Djamila Bouhired,349 a
female freedom fighter who was tortured, driven mad, and then
sentenced to death by the colonial Algerian government. Fanon
would write concerning this protest, the characteristic of the majority
of French democrats is precisely that it experiences alarm only in
connection with individual cases that are just fit to wrench a tear or to
provoke little pangs of conscience.350
Wars of liberation produce thousands of Djamilas, Fanon
reminds us. It is this collective suffering and sacrifice that should be
commemorated; it is the entire history and institutionalization of
oppression that should be understood and resisted and not just
349 For a powerful and very Panonian view o f the Algerian Revolution that includes the story o f Djamila
Bouhired, see Gillo Pontecorvos 1966 film, The Battle o f Algiers . This movie was banned in France for
many years.
j50 Toward African Revolution, p.74
270
individual sufferings and sacrifices. The tendency to privilege

individual cases also motivated Fanons discussion of the Algerian
medical establishment.
The FLN had assassinated some French-Algerian doctors;
colons and the French public were shocked, as it is traditional
wartime etiquette to consider medical personnel non-combatants.
Fanon has a simple justification: The doctor who is killed in
Algeria...is always a war criminal.351 Having a medical degree, then,
does not certify any sort of a-political humanitarian essence. The
meaning of being a doctor depends on how and where medicine is
practiced. It also depends on who is doing the defining. Because
colonial patients regard a European doctor first and foremost as a
colonial intruder, they are extremely mistrustful of medical advice.
And when they refuse to follow doctors orders, colonial racist
attitudes are reinforced. Thus, whereas colonial medicine served as a
source of legitimation for colonialism (civilized medicine) and an
instrument of torture against the revolutionaries, revolutionary
3=1 A Dying Colonialism, p .135
271
m edicine aimed
fundam entally at em pow ering
the Algerian
revolutionaries and hence the Algerian people.

Now it should be clear that Fanons position on revolutionary
struggle cannot be that of a universal remedy for social ills. The very
appeal to social cure of any sort reeks of bad faith. What the appeal
to the everyday affords is an understanding of what is involved in
building institutions that respond to the circumstances of oppressed
people. The pressing political question that follows is what kind of
institutions encourage spaces of, and for, everyday life?
We will come back to this question in the fourth chapter of this
study. But here we can consider this: a great deal of the
contemporary world is enmeshed in a rather typical atypical condition
- Life during war time. In the midst of all this suffering, whether it be
in Haiti, Iraqi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, or inner-cities
of the United States of America, there are people who dream, as they
go through day-to-day efforts at survival, for times in which one can
settle for more than simply being alive. With this in mind I would like
to look at some positive outcomes to this seemingly negative action
272
against the dehumanizing institutions of the oppressor as discussed

above.
III. Positive outcomes to this taking of action against colonial

violence:
One positive outcome from this type of violence, as a taking of
action against the dehumanizing forces, according to Fanon, then, is
that at the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees
the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and
inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.352 In
this way then, the colonized man finds his freedom in and through
violence.353
Another advantage which comes out of this violence has to do
with the natives relationship to the local leaders. The individual who
has gained consciousness of himself as human will no longer merely
submit to native tyrants any more than to foreign tyrants. He will hold
the native leaders accountable for their actions as he does with the
foreign intruders. This violence which has brought about all these
353 Ibid p.86
positive things is, according to Fanon, different from the colonial
violence because it is pure." There is nothing, Fanon somewhat

naively believe,364 sadistic or vindictive about it. It stems from the
humanistic need for the emancipation of the human spirit, both that of
the colonizer as well as that of the colonized, rather than from
hatred.355 Before, the colonized was a thing, an object on which
others acted; now he is a human being, the one who acts. Is this the
violence that Aime Cesaire called non-violent violence356? But his
violence, and this is paradoxical, was that of the non-violent. By this I
mean the violence of justice, of purity and of intransigence. This must
be understood about him.357 For claritys sake, I do not believe that
there is such a thing as a non-violent violence. Indeed not even
Fanon conceived of such violence, though his violence was a
violence through which one achieved the aims of non-violence. It was
a violence in search of both justice and humanization. How does this
violence have purifying effect?
j54 O f course he is going to qualify it in his On National Culture where he brings the possibility o f native
leaders who end up becoming greedy.
355 In fairness to Fanon, these are features he accounts for in the third and fourth chapters of The Wretched
o f the Earth.
336 See "Homage to Franz Fanon in Presence Africaine. Vol. 12, no. 40 (1962) pp. 131-132.
357 See Homage to Franz Fanon in Presence Africaine. Vol. 12, no. 40 (1962) pp. 131-132.
The colonized have always been fed with the myth of the
superiority of the colonizer and this is a form of violence. But through

this new violence, the colonized sees the colonizer capable of fear
and fright, capable of begging for his life as the colonized has long
had to do. The colonized then comes to the realization that the
colonizer is, after all, no better than the colonized and has the same
weaknesses and fears as anyone else. It is at this point that the
colonized vomit back all the values of the colonizer. There is no
more effective way of showing that a self-proclaimed colonial god has
feet of clay than by actually breaking his legs or slitting his throat. At
this point he loses all his inferiority and regains his self-confidence
and hum an-hood.358 This
is,
then,
viole nce
th a t
changes
consciousness and personality.359 It is violence only because it

changes the existing relations.
What we see here then is that Fanon associates violence with
powers capable o f changing people and societies for better or worse.
358 The Wretched o f the Earth, p94
359 See Yoweri M useveni's essay Fanons Theory on Violence: its verification in Liberated
Mozambique, in Nathan Shamuyarira, ed. Essays on the Liberation of Southern Africa. (Dar-es-
Salaam, Tanzania Publishing House, 1971)
275
For Fanon, violence sharpens socio-political and psycho-political

insights. It detoxifies by eliminating feelings of inferiority, thereby
freeing the oppressed from their inability to take up political action.
Further, Fanon suggests that revolutionary violence brings needed
physical release to natives whose m uscular energy has been
blocked, or channeled negatively, by colonial confinement. A colonial
person, then, resembles a patient suffering from neurosis or hysteria
manifesting itself through physical symptoms. Root out the cause,
Fanon suggests, and the body as well as the mind can heal. In all his
talk about violence he only cites its impact without identifying the
process or the power behind it.360 Fanon here seems to have been
inspired by Nietzsches Twilight o f the Idols, in which the German
philosopher explained the therapeutic effect of violence.
Fanon has been accused of advocating random terror or
glorifying violence per se. This is most certainly not true. If I stab a
stranger on the streets of Boston because I am feeling sorry for
myself, I am a criminal, not a freedom fighter. If I take part in an
organized, even officially sanctioned program that violates all laws of
360 See The Wretched o f the Earth, pp.44-51.
276
humanity, i am a war criminal, not a victim of the system who is just
following orders. These distinctions are the reasons behind Fanons

devotion of an entire chapter in The Wretched o f the Earth to case
histories of Algerian patients, French as well as natives, driven insane
by violence.
He lets the grim and disturbing narratives speak for
themselves - the French soldier whose job as torturer keeps him

from sleeping and compels him to beat his wife - the remorseless
Algerian teenagers who club a friend to death, simply because he
was French. Obviously, Fanon knows that many violent acts are as
destructive to their perpetrators as to their victims. His interest lies in
explaining why certain kinds o f violence are, paradoxically, liberating.
As we have seen above, Fanon consistently maintains that
freedom cannot be granted from on high; it must be won. The
colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence,361 Fanon
writes, sharpening on the whetstone of revolutionary action Hegels
notion of how freedom is progressively worked out through history.
But because effective revolutionary action must be a group endeavor,
361 WE p.86
277
how can violence constitute a collective politics of liberation? For
Fanon:
the practice of violence binds (colonized people) together
as a whole, since each individual forms a violent link in a
great chain, a part of the great organism of violence which
has surged upward in reaction to the settlers violence in
the b e g in n in g ...(It) introduces into each m ans
consciousness the ides of a common cause, of a national
destiny, and of a collective history.362
Nationalist leaders can use violence as a slogan and as a threat. But,
according to Fanon, only leaders who understand the authentic
causes of violent resistance - deprivation of land, food, and dignity can unite spontaneous uprisings into a disciplined struggle against
colonialism. And only leaders who allow these life and death realities
to direct policy can guide a new nation successfully through the
process of decolonization. Otherwise, the new nation will be an
empty shell, a crude and fragile travesty of what it might have
been:363 the violent forces once marshaled against the colonial
enemy will turn inward, and the new country will be torn apart by
religious, tribal, and political warfare, as Fanon saw happening in
Africa to his great chagrin.
362 WE p.93
363 Ibid p.48
For Fanon, then, violence works. It works not only as individual

catharsis and as fostering group cohesion but also because the
colonial power structure cannot afford it, as Fanon remarks. Blownup bridges, ravaged farms, repressions, and fighting harshly disrupt
the economy.364 In the face of determined, violent resistance, a
colonial power will try slipping into neocolonial relationship with a
former colony - by granting it nominal independence but keeping it
in economic servitude - rather than continuing a costly armed
conflict. This is why comprom ise and accom m odation are so
dangerous to a liberation movement, and why total armed struggle
must continue until full independence is achieved. This point,
according to Fanon, is proven by exceptional cases like Algeria, over
which France fought for almost a decade despite its enormous
monetary, human and political toll. In this way Fanon criticizes the
former French sub-Saharan Africa, which in Fanons opinion were
given independence so that the French could continue economic
business as usual. Fanon despises so-called national leaders who
sell out their people for private gains, and he does not hesitate to
364 WE, p.62
279
name names - perhaps accounting for the fact that the Wretched of
the earth appears to have been more influential in the West than in
Africa. Even with a proper understanding of the redemptive value of
violence as leading to independence, we are left with the question of
how to construct a nation socially and politically healthy, supposedly
once it has reached its independence.
IV. The New Nation:

For Fanon, writing during the cold war, colonialism was not just
a matter of relations between the mother country and her current or
form er colonies. He saw it also as the enforcem ent arm for the
continuing dominance of Western capitalism over the different parts
of the globe. Therefore, according to Fanon, Frances colonial
policies comprised part of a global network of interests and he saw
them as being shaped by geopolitical considerations - specifically,
the threat of nuclear violence that structured the cold war and what
he called
the current com petition
between
capitalism
and
socialism.365 Thus, for Fanon, an emerging country that understood
365 WE p.75
280
the danger its violent struggle posed to the economic and ideological
balance of power could employ violence strategically in the service of
its emerging national autonomy.
For Fanon, autonomy demands that the whole social structure,
imposed by colonial rule, change from the bottom up.366Ultimately,
this is a metaphysical change, even a religious one. Indeed, quoting
Jesus doctrine of humility and of eschatological reversal, Fanon
writes: the last shall be first and the first last...this will only come to
pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two
protagonists.367
Fanon, then, calls for a cartography of violence that will re-map
the repressive colonial order. This is why he dedicates a significant
portion of The Wretched o f the Earth to analysis of colonial space, the
ground condition for the dialectical movement from oppression to
freedom. What was this colonial space which had to be dismantled
if there was to be a genuine humanization in the new nation,
according to Fanon?
WE p.35
367 WE p.37
281
According to Fanon the colonial world is divided into

compartments.368 On the
global
scale,
there w ere
colonial
motherlands and their colonies. In the colonized country there were

European zones and native areas.369 This Manichean geography
presents itself most dramatically in colonial cities, where clean, wellbuilt, brightly lit foreign quarters adjoin dirty, dilapidated, dark native
quarters. Manichean thinking, which mistakes existence for essence,
easily classifies people in terms of their physical environment: thus
colonists embody a secure, civilized order while the colonized
embody a threatening, primitive chaos. I beg to differ here with David
Macey, who in his work Franz Fanon writes: The description of
compartmentalized world of colonialism applies to Algeria rather
than to Martinique or to African countries that were not settler
countries with a large European population.370 It is my experience
and my thought that all colons had compartmentalized the world. One
need only read Mongo Betis book, The Boy, to see the depth of this
compartmentalization, a compartmentalization, as said above, that
led to classification of the native as uncivilized. What is interesting
368 WE p.27
369 Cf. in South Africa the so called Bantu Stands.
370 David Macey, (2000), p.471
282
here is Fanons call for the dismantling of this compartmentalization.

Why was this, a historical necessity, for Fanon?
Classification itself can act as a conceptual tool of colonialism.
Its guiding principles are division and hierarchical ranking; its goal,
the dominance over the previously unknown. For Fanon then, it is no
accident that scientists tasked with classifying plants, animals, and
hum ans often accom panied colonial adventurers tasked with
opening new territory for European economic and political use. The
purpose of the invasion was to plan new avenues of exploitation for
the industrial machine of Europe. It is in this sense that, in M ein
Kampf, Hitler can be said to have used a faulty logic - classification
by substituting effect for cause - when he used the poor living
conditions of Jews forced into overcrowded ghettoes to prove that
Jews are essentially filthy...literally a menace to (Aryan) public
health. Just as Nazi rhetoric debased Jews by calling them swine and
vermin, colonial rhetoric likened colonized peoples to apes, parasites,
and swarming insects. In Algeria, the Arab or the Berber was a raton
(a young rat) or a bicot (short for arbicot, a contemptuous term for
referring to Arabs). Bicot was said to derive from the Italian arabico,
283
but a bicot is also a young goat and there was no doubt some
semantic cross fertilization at work.371 If the colonized are not human,
it follows that the coion is the only real human. According to Fanon,
however, a divisive zoological vocabulary spells its own disaster
through its sheer, stupid falsity.
The Native...laughs to himself every time he spots an
allusion to the animal world in the others words. For he
knows that he is not an animal, and it is precisely at the
moment he realizes his humanity that he begins to
sharpen the weapons.372
A related colonial tactic is to categorize people as part of the
landscape, as something to be looked at, like palm trees and
pyramids and pachyderms.373 At best, this version of the colonial
gaze turns people into post cards. At worst, it assigns natives to the
spatial category of the bush: the uncivilized domain of hostile
nature, obstinate and fundam entally rebellious, which contains
mosquitoes, natives, and fever ...menacing pestilences that must be
expunged from occupied land.374 In this way then, the dividing line
between foreign and native zones not only had to be established
j7! For a fuller discussion o f this topic I refer the reader to David Macey, pp470 to 480
372 WE p.43
373 In discussing this topic of the native as a landscape, David Macey refers to Albert Camus unfinished
book, Le Premier homme. Cf. David Macey, 4 7 2 -4 7 3 .
374 See WE p.250
284
clearly, but also marked and strictly enforced. In colonized space,

frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations,375 points of
intersection and interdiction recognizable by the naked display of
violent power. On a small scale, stores, private homes, and
government buildings are surrounded with thick walls and security
guards...just in case a dangerous native slips through the outer
perimeter of the protective barricade. For Fanon, the fortress
mentality is paradoxically dangerous to colonists, as it keeps them
from recognizing the precariousness of their position. But for Fanon,
the newly independent nation itself has to fight against this way of
looking at itself. This is the reason why he called for the elimination of
the patently visible differences between cities and villages. This was
a project that was advanced in Fanons The Wretched o f the Earth.
That project in The Wretched o f the Earth, then, had to do with
the collective national identity, an identity that had to realize itself not
in the Freudian dreamwork of displacement but in the political action
of replacement. Anti-colonial struggle demands complete dismantling
of colonial space according to Fanon. When natives surge into the
375 WE p.38
285
forbidden quarters, Fanon explains, their objective is no less than

the abolition of one zone and the complete destruction of the
colonial world376 from the bottom up. The reason for the need for the
destruction of the colonial world, according to Fanon, is to prevent
the compartmentalized colonial space from continuing to exert its
divisive influence even after a successful war of independence. This
influence could be seen in the replication of the privileges colonialism
accorded to cities over rural areas which only deformed national
development. For instance, if the capital city, which Fanon thinks of
as a commercial notion inherited from the colonial period,377
becomes even more central to the new nation, dire consequences will
follow, as it became evident after independence in many new
liberated countries of Africa.
National leaders launched gaudy, grandiose building projects to
extend the prestige of the capital at the expense of the nations
economy. In this way, the capitals function as the center of power is
enhanced, and the dream of every citizen is to get up to the capital,
WE p.40-41
377 WE p. 187
286
and to have his share of the cake.378 The increasingly bloated

capital, unable to support its growing population, consumes more and
more of the national budget. Fanon argues that when, after
independence, the whole of the ruling class swarms into the towns
built by colonialism,379 they merely duplicate the structure of imperial
rule rather than change it. They also duplicate its practice of keeping
rural areas underdeveloped and isolated, the better to ensure citybased control of politics, people, and products. Fanon writes that
members of the national parties (town workers and intellectuals)
pass the same unfavorable judgm ent on country districts as the
settlers380 - that is, they categorize the rural peasantry as uncivilized
and backward and thus keep racist, Eurocentric ideology alive and
influential.
What was Fanons Conception of the way out of this remaining
colonial legacy? He called for decentralizing the government and
political parties, thereby radically abolishing the colonial space. The
artificial life of the capital ought to take up the least space possible in
378 WE p. 187
379 WE p.178
380 WE W p. 109
287
the life of the nation, which is sacred and fundamental."381 To do this,

however, leaders must stop clinging to European paradigms. Seeing
independence as only a new set of substations for the old capitalist
imperialism and using colonial structure to map out postcolonial
structure, can lead only to building up...yet another system of
exploitation,"382 albeit with a black or a yellow or brown face taking
the place of a white one. What is needed, according to Fanon, is a
rapid and thoughtful shift from national consciousness to political and
social consciousness.383
Thus, without violent struggle committed by the people and
organized by the leaders against the old structures of domination, the
new nation is nothing but a fancy dress parade and the blare of
trumpets...a few reforms at the top, a flag waving.384
in other words, for Fanon, decolonization does not end with
official independence. A new nation needs a coherent political
philosophy in order to serve its people. Much of The Wretched o f the
Earth attempts to articulate such a philosophy. In the process of so
381 WE p. 187
382 WE p. 145
383 WE p.203
384 WE p. 147
288
doing, Fanon criticizes African nationalists whose political thinking is

fuzzy, derivative from European structures, and divorced from actual
conditions in their countries.
The physical consequences of war - wounds, trauma, and
epidem ics -
make public health a m atter of urgent national
importance. The emerging nation shoulders the responsibility of

providing medical services: medicine no longer belongs385 to the
colonialists. Further, the material components of western medicine penicillin, sterile dressing, and anesthetics - take on a new value.
These medications, which were taken for granted before the struggle
for liberation, were transformed into weapons.386
For Fanon, instrumental to this change in medicines meaning
was the native doctor. Before the Revolution, he or she was seen as
a colonial agent; during the Revolution, the doctor is reintegrated into
',85 Remember, for Fanon, Western medicine was an integral part o f the oppressive colonial situation. Along
with other forms o f science and technology, it lends a surgical gloved hand to the iron fist of military and
economic domination. Despite its capacity to make life better, European medicine was understandably
perceived by subjected peoples as yet another form o f conquest, trickery, and dehumanization. It was
perceived as the enemy. As a doctor himself, Fanon certainly does not dismiss the potential good that can
come from Western medicine. But he believes that the colonial situation politicizes science and medicine
so that it absolutely can not benefit the people. A war o f liberation, however, radically changes the
situation. It creates a new society in the crucible o f combat; cultural practices and knowledge are
transformed as well.
386 Cf. A Dying Colonialism, p.140 -141
289
the group387 by living among the people and by purging racism and
paternalism from medical practice.
Consequently, the peoples attitude changed. The Revolution
itself had inspired them to care for themselves and follow professional
medical advice.388 Fanon even maintained that old superstitions,
like attributing illness to evil spirits and thus rejecting modern
treatment, were swept away by the action and practice initiated by
the Revolution.389
The dialectical transformation of medical practice and national
consciousness is one instance of A Dying Colonialisms apocalyptic
theme - that the old Algeria is dead and a new society has come to
birth.390 Another instance as we have seen, is the history of Algerian
radio. Because these cultural case histories are grounded in concrete
material things, like radios and bandages, we can miss the prophetic
tone of Fanons writing. As he shifts from reporting to predicting, he
assembles changes, trends, and processes into a picture of fully
387 Ibid. p. 142

388 Remember the natives looked with suspicion on the European medicine during the Revolutionary
period.
389A Dying Colonialism, p.143
390 A Dying Colonialism, p.27
290
achieved transformation. Nowhere is this technique more apparent in

Fanons work than in his discussion of the Algerian family.
This discussion grew from his analysis of the veil and its
transforming effects on Algerian women. The next stage in social
metamorphosis was controlled by the revolutionary woman who,
having
achieved
her own
liberation,
becam e
an
agent of
transformation for society as a whole. Perhaps due to his psychiatric

training, Fanon located the space of this transformation in the family
unit.
According to Fanon, traditional attitudes about gender roles
(and age-based roles) would crumble under patriotic pressure. The
father or husband would admire his revolutionary daughter or wifes
courage and independence. If he were to condemn her actions, no
matter how much they violated customary notions of propriety, he
would have undermined his own revolutionary commitment, even his
virility. According to Fanon, the war forged mutual respect and in turn
reformed marriage contracts, divorce laws, educational opportunities,
and property rights. The new revolutionary nation stood proud,
291
strong, and indivisible, freed from its traditional fetters of patriarchy

and sexism.
In stirring up these men and women, colonialism has
regrouped them beneath a single sign. Equally victims of
the same tyranny, simultaneously identifying a single
enemy, this physically dispersed people is realizing its
unity and founding in suffering a spiritual community.391
This was Fanon at the height of his optimistic, visionary fervor.
He saw the ideal future through the shimmering haze of war. In A
Dying Colonialism, war was not only necessary but also welcome. It
was seen as a holy fire that purifies individuals and national groups.
For Fanon, during this time, even war itself was to be transformed.
Fanon claimed that the Algerian Revolution - in its refusal to
compromise its manifest principles, in its unwavering dedication to
the goal of liberation - brought a vital new dimension to anti-colonial
struggle throughout the world.
Fanon was deeply idealistic, but he did not blind himself to
reality. If A Dying Colonialism ascended toward inspired magical
thinking through its mythic vision of a hypothetical new Algeria, The
Wretched o f the Earth critiques that apocalyptic vision. Fanons final
391 A Dying Colonialism, pp.119-120
292
book sustains his passionate, m ilitant com m itm ent to human

freedom, now expanded to include the entire Third World. But it did
so by taking a hard iook at the complex, difficult, uncharted paths
leading from colonialism to independence and from independence to
liberation, paths that can turn a new nation away from the promised
new heaven and new earth into the abyss of new tyrannies and
oppressions.
The w ork of liberation and nation-building needs native
intellectuals: to organize spontaneous uprisings into coherent action,
to communicate among groups, to formulate political theory and
policy, to write and teach and paint and perform and invent new
structures of coherence for the nation. In order to aid the people,
native intellectuals must - above all else - throw (themselves) body
and soul into the national struggle.392 The intellectuals need to re
educate themselves in radical ways in conjunction with the bush
natives and peasants if they are to accomplish the task of truly social
liberation.
392 WE p.233
293
Re-education requires an end to the fetishization of Western

culture. This is difficult, Fanon informs us, because Western
Humanism has a built-in self-protection mechanism. In this Western
culture, the intellectual life is considered above politics, and this
intellectual life is viewed as being based on essential qualities (that)
remain eternal...The essential qualities of the West, of course.393
Thus, intellectuals must re-learn the lesson that existence precedes
essence, that the peoples fight for liberation is what bestows
meaning and value. The key to the Western intellectual system,
according to Fanon, is individualism.
The colonialist bourgeoisie had hammered into the
natives mind the idea of a society of individuals where
each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity.394
But the revolutionary struggle exposes the falseness of this theory.
Henceforth, the interests of one will be the interests of all.395
Communal thinking resituates one within a national family of brothers
and sisters, comrades and friends, united in resistance to repressive
colonial control. Without such integration into a new social whole, the
native intellectual remains a spoilt child of yesterdays colonialism
393
W E p.46
394 W E p.47
395 Ibid p.47
294
and to da ys national governm ents,396 who either retards the

liberation effort or tries to make the new nation follow in its colonial
parents footsteps. This is where the movement of Negritude may be
seen as playing a more positive role in the revolution.
Native intellectuals, then, have a duty to educate the masses not to preach or lecture but to teach that everything depends on
them,397 so that their minds can be awakened to communal and
national responsibility. Using obscure or highly technical language is
both
counter-productive and
politically
repulsive because it
perpetuates the contempt the colonial bourgeoisie has always shown

toward the peasantry and it exhibits a virulent form of bad faith.
Everything can be explained to the people, Fanon reminds us, on
the single condition that you really want them to understand.398
Fanon implies that the native intellectuals proper place is in the
revolutionary
political
party.
On the
one hand,
raising the
consciousness of the masses strengthens national structure, which

Fanon sees as a reciprocal dialectic between the people and their
leaders. It is from the base that forces mount up which supply the
396 W E p.48
397 WE p. 197
398 WE p. 189
295
summit with its dynamic, and make it possible dialectically for it to

leap ahead.399 On the other hand, working among the masses keeps
party operatives from forgetting that the party is a tool in the hands of
the people.400
Without constant reaffirmation of this principle of a peoplebased ideology through direct action, Fanon warns us, a party can
turn into a surveillance machine that serves the selfish interests of a
new national elite. The newly established nation needs committed
native intellectuals who are constantly in contact with the people and
try to guard these people against the excesses of a party politics that,
if unchecked, can end up by supporting leaders incapable of rising
above tribal and religious fanaticism. Fanon considered such leaders
as appalling and a very real threat to newly independent countries.
According to Fanon, these heads of government are the true traitors
in Africa, for they sell their country to the most terrifying of all
enemies: stupidity.401 They are shrewd in manipulating rivalries in
their favor, but stupid with regard to what might serve the true
interests of the new community.
399 WE p. 198
400 WE p. 185
401 WE p. 183
296
For Fanon, then, it is ignorance at the top and ignorance at the

bottom of the nation that the native intellectual must combat. Fanon
understands that not all native intellectuals are suited to being
political educators. Some artists and scholars assist the decolonizing
process by helping shape national culture. Representing the past
with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and
a basis for hope402 can be a legitimate artistic goal. To do this, the
artist must evolve from a spoiled native intellectual to a free and
committed adult in the emerging community.
Fanon traces this evolution through three stages. The first
stage is what he calls the assimilation of colonial culture. At this stage
one finds oneself imitating Western style and themes with the hope
that one will be recognized as smart and as talented as European
intellectuals. The second stage is found in the glorification of ones
past. One tries to show that ones cultural treasures are just as good
as the others cultural treasures by promoting ones traditional style
and themes. The third stage is what Fanon calls the fighting phase.
At this stage art work speaks to the nation rather than to Europe. At
402 WE p.232
297
this stage, one uses art to awaken and inspire the people whose lives
and revolutionary struggles are its proper subject. When the scholar,
the artist, and the intellectual enter the fighting phase, they
understand that re-establishing national sovereignty constitutes the
most complete and obvious cultural manifestation that exists.403
Through new patterns, new rhythms, new colors, and new stories
born from combat and national building, the existence of a new type
of man is revealed to the public.404ln this way, the native intellectual
helps create a vital and inspiriting post colonial national culture.
What is clear in Fanons writings is his warning against
cowardice, greed, and selfishness. He saw anti-colonial struggle at a
crossroads: decolonization can lead to alternative forms of cultural,
political, and economic servitude or it can lead to personal, national,
and global renewal. Fanon, knowing that his own death was imminent
did not have the leisure to work out a fully developed program for
these sorts of renewal. He did, however, suggest that hope lies in
40J WE p.245
404 WEp.241
298
consolidating interests of nations comprising the Third World.405 He

further suggested that it is from the Third World that a radically new
idea of human being wili arise.
Fanon found the concept of the Third World attractive because
this concept transcends narrow nationalism and essentialized panAfricanism or pan-Arabism.
To Fanon, what unites Third World
countries is a common relationship to a colonial past and to current

neocolonial pressures, relationships that map a shared Geography
of hunger.406 Fanons emphasis on the violence of colonialism
differentiates his analysis from other formulations of what can be
called Three Worlds Theory. Three Worlds Theorists insist on non
alignment and see this stand as a way towards peace in the world
threatened by nuclear annihilation, cowering in fear before this last
invention of the colonial war machine. Fanons theory of a more
humane third world was more confrontational, calling for courage in
facing up to colonialism with whatever force one could master.
405 The Cold War produced the Third World as a political concept. Since the end of the cold war, this
concept has lost most o f its relevance and according to me the relevant division now should be poor versus
rich and these concepts are no Geographical divides.
406 WE p.96
299
Writing during the cold war era, Fanon advocated socialism

rather than capitalism as both a practical and an ethical solution for
emerging countries. For Fanon, Capitalism, the system that was built
on colonialism and slavery, is necessarily corrupt, intrinsically
com m itted to preserving and exploiting a vast underclass.
Therefore, socialism - a system in which supposedly the state
controls the production of goods and redistributes wealth among the
people - appears as an attractive alternative to capitalism, where
means of production and accumulated capital rest only in the hands
of a privileged class.
Since, according to Fanon, the true end of society is the
liberation of human beings and the expression of their authentic
existence,
true
socialism
provides the
social
and
political
arrangements by which this can be attained. But, for Frantz Fanon,

Eastern Socialism can not either deliver a society he is in search of
because of their authoritarian bureaucratic spirit. So, what type of
socialist society is Fanon looking for - a socialist society that will
provide humans with a society in which they can thrive in freedom.
300
For Fanon, to create such a society in a newly independent

country, since all her means of production, distribution, and exchange
are usually in the hands of foreigners and as a result of this all profits
accrued from such means of production, distribution, and exchange
go to the mother country, the first task is to nationalize these
means.
If the government wants to bring the country out of its
stagnation and set it well on the road tow ards
development and progress, it must first and foremost
nationalize the middlemans trading sector....In a colonial
economy the intermediary sector is by far the most
important. If you want to progress, you must decide in the
first few hours to nationalize this sector.407
The second task of the newly independent country is to build
an infrastructure for an industrial society which will allow the society
to advance from being a mere producer of raw materials to a
producer of finished goods. Thus, not only producers of tobacco but
also of tobacco products; not only producers of coffee but also of
coffee products. The aim of this is to achieve a self-sustained
diversified economic growth.
407 The Wretched o f the Earth, p. 144.
301
One of the dangers here is to substitute the foreigner with
selected natives and in this way end up with no change for the
greater part of the society. The national bourgeoisie could take hold
of the nationalization process and use it as a base to entrench itself,
and end up by exploiting the people in the same way the colonialists
did.408 For Fanon, then, nationalization does not mean native
ownership of the intermediary sector of the economy; neither does it
mean
bureaucratic control
of the
econom y,
but rather its
reorganization under the control of co-operatives.409

But it is clear that such a nationalization ought not to take
on a rigidly state-controlled aspect. It is not a question of
placing at the head of these services citizens who have
had no political education. Every time such a procedure
has been adopted it has been seen that the government
has in fact contributed to the triumph of a dictatorship of
civil servants who had been set in the mould of the former
mother country, and who quickly showed themselves
incapable of thinking in terms of the nation as a whole.
These civil servants very soon began to sabotage the
national economy and to throw its structure out of joint;
under them, corruption, prevarication, the diversion of
stocks and the black market came to stay. Nationalizing
the intermediary sector means organizing wholesale and
408 For a very good treatment of this problem see, Fitch and Oppenheimer,
Ghana: End o f an illusion pp. 66 - 80. One sees how this group hijacked the
process in Ghana.
409 This is exactly what Nyerere of Tanzania tried with his Ujamaa project.
302
retail co-operatives on a democratic basis; it also means

decentralizing these co-operatives by getting the mass of
the people interested in the ordering of public affairs 410
According to Frantz Fanon, state control is bad simply because the
civil servants lack the political education necessary to lead a people
towards self fulfillment. Their minds are still in the mold of the ideas
and organizational patterns of the colonial regime. In other words,
they are predisposed to authoritarian control, and as if all this were
not enough, the civil servants are corrupt.
For Fanon, cooperatives allow the people to decide for
themselves in what way to run the organization in order to provide
maximum benefit for the nation. Fanon bases his assumption about
the salvific power of the cooperatives on the fact that the people,
rather than the civil servants, have revolutionary consciousness. This
is due to the fact that, the people, as an expropriated peasantry,
knows what it means to lose everything. For it was after all, the
forceful expulsion of people from their land, the restraint of people
from the free use of their indigenous space, which Fanon regarded as
the definitive material feature of colonial domination, the material
410 The Wretched o f the Earth, p. 144 - 145.
303
expression of occupation, it is thus the expropriated peasants who

incarnate the most essentia! value, because the most concrete namely, the land.411 The statement that the peasants express their
demand for land in terms of national struggle would appear to be
clearly inconsistent with what Fanon has to say about the local
orientation and centrifugal tendencies of peasant radicalism. What he
seems to mean here is that, geopolitically limited or localized though
it may be, peasant radicalism is inherently more inclusive and
unyielding in its demands than the essentially individualistic,
particularistic,
and m elioristic politics of the
urban
national
bourgeoisie and the trade unionists.

In restructuring the econom ies of the
underdeveloped
countries, agrarian reforms deserve a very important consideration.

Peasants who mortgaged their land to landlords come to understand
that wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized,
protected robbery.412 In
th is
way,
Fanon
advocates
land
redistribution in such a way that the land belongs to those who till
412 Ibid., p. 154.
304
it.413 He does not talk of nationalization of land or even of agricultural

co-operatives, either for production or for marketing. For him, if
peasants feel that they are working for themselves and for the good
of the nation they will be motivated to be responsible and
conscientious in their work. He gives a concrete example:
In those districts where we have been able to carry out
successfully these interesting experiments, where we
have watched man being created by revolutionary
beginnings, the peasants have very clearly caught hold of
the idea that the more intelligence you bring to your work,
the more pleasure you will have in it. We have been able
to make the masses understand that work is not simply
the output of energy, nor the function of certain muscles,
but that people work more by using their brains and their
heart s than with only their muscles and their sweat.414
Is it possible to achieve a close identity of interests between
individuals and the nation? Does such an individual lose his
individuality, the quality so sacred to Fanon? What should be the
relationship between the co-operatives and the state and how should
they be coordinated in their activities in such a way as to run them
econom ically and efficiently? How does one fight centralized
bureaucratization in this case? It is believed that the answers to these
413 Ib id .
414 Ib id .
305
details were left open for the individuals concerned to find their own
answers as dictated by the situation in which they would find

themselves. But here the cooperation between the intellectuals and
the traditional people is crucial.
For Fanon, there is need only for a single party system in-spite
of the fact that he criticizes the way the one party system has been
functioning in Africa. This one party should be a revolutionary party,
not organized only in the big urban centers but also and indeed
mostly in the rural areas where the peasants, who are the most
revolutionary, live. At the grassroots level, an atmosphere should be
generated for discussing the real needs of the people and how best
to meet them. Thus, a fruitful give-and-take from the bottom to the
top and from the top to the bottom ...creates and guarantees
democracy in a party.415 Concentration of power and resources in
the capital should be decentralized to give life and movement to the
rural districts, thereby arresting mass movement from the countryside
to the capital. Rather than exploit the rural districts for the capital, the
party should develop them with their raw material resources by
413 WE, p. 170
306
building factories there. This will in no small measure restore the

sense of human dignity to the masses. This should be done without
destroying the traditional leaders or the traditional structures. Instead
these should be made to assume progressive roles in the new
society.
The political parties do not manage to organize the
country districts. Instead of using existing structures and
giving them a nationalist or progressive structure, they
mean to try and destroy living tradition in the colonial
fram ework. ...Thus from the capital city they will
parachute organizers into the villages who are either
unknown or too young and who, armed with instructions
from the central authority, mean to treat the douar or
village like a factory cell.
The traditional chiefs are ignored, sometimes even
persecuted. The makers of the future nations history
trample unconcernedly over small local disputes, that is to
say the only existing national events, whereas they ought
to make of village history - the history of traditional
conflicts between clans and tribes - a harmonious whole,
at one with the decisive action to which they call on the
people to contribute.
Fanon seems to think, then, that the traditional structures will
be maintained, or only slightly modified. Emmanuel Hansen,
commenting on this point, says that it would be really difficult to
imagine how this could be done within the framework of the socialist
society Frantz envisions. Most of the traditional structures in Africa
are feudal in nature and being so, one fails to see how a socialist
society, a society based on egalitarianism, such as Frantz Fanon
envisions could exist side by side with the hierarchical system of
authority and recruitment based largely on ascriptive criteria. True,
traditional institutions can be used to effect changes within the
traditional structure, but when the change desired is one of the
structure itself, then such a method is unlikely to yield a lasting result.
There are two main reasons why the structure of the traditional
institution has to be changed: the traditional structures in the colonial
society are nolonger like the ones in the pre-colonial society. They
have been adapted in such a way as to function to the advantage of a
colonial regime, so that in a way they are not different from the
colonial adm inistrative and political structure itself. For a better
understanding of this point we refer the reader to Ferdinand Oyonos
Le Vieux negre et la Medaille and also Une Vie de boy. The second
reason proceeds from the fact that the traditional rulers reaped some
of the benefits of colonial rule, which provided them with new
avenues for acquiring wealth. Their position of domination vis-a-vis
their people was considerably strengthened. A ruler could do
308
practically whatever he wanted so long as he remained in the good

graces of the colonial rulers. Traditional constraints and sanctions on
their power and authority did not have much hold. In a way, then, the
traditional rulers, like the urban petit bourgeoisie and the national
bourgeoisie, were among the privileged members of the colonial
system.
However, many nationalist parties in Africa came to understand
socialist goals in what Fanon considered a distorted way that was
anything but conducive to the good of the people as a whole. It is not
that Fanon completely disagreed with Marxs ideas when he criticized
industrial capitalism and European class structures. On the contrary,
Fanon
realized
that econom ic and
social
organizations
in
underdeveloped countries bear little resemblance to conditions in

the supposedly more highly developed ones. In Africa, as it were, the
pressures of the colonial situation must be dealt with as well. So, for
Fanon, Marxism is not the solution to the African nation building,
why?
309
V. Marxism and African National Building:

In general,
Fanon agrees with Marx that history runs
dialectically, through struggle of faction against faction. But whereas

Marx categorized factions in terms of economic class, Fanon claims
that Race is the key categorical term in colonial situations. Unlike
European class structure, which branches from a single geographical
area, colonial race structure depends on geographical difference.
The governing race is first and foremost those who come from
elsewhere, those who are unlike the original inhabitants, the
others.416 Marx did not think much of the European peasantry. He
considered it to be backward and reactionary. For him only the
proletariat had a revolutionary role to play in what was for him nothing
more than an economic sphere. Fanon, to some extent, concedes
that the African peasantry can be stubbornly traditional, but he
believes such adherence to some African tradition to be strength in
an anti-colonial resolve and a new political cohesion. Indeed, for
Fanon, the classless masses propel the revolutionary struggle with
416 WE p. 40
310
peasant revolutions motivated by one doctrine only; to act in such a

way that the nation may exist.417
For Marx, history concerns only the material relationship of
people to the means of production. His model for these relationships
was the 19th century European Industrial capitalism , in which
mechanization had already been installed between the worker and
his or her labor. Fanon believed that underdeveloped countries
occupied a much less mediated stage of production: The relations of
man with matter, with the world outside, and with history are in the
colonial period simply relations with food418 and, by extension, with
the land on which it grows. Because they are removed from an
industrial economy, most African workers are not alienated from work
through
a dehum anizing,
exploitative
factory
system.
More
immediately, they are deprived of any work whatsoever - of life itself

- by a colonial system that devours and controls their land and its
resources. Building economic strength in emerging African nations
means rethinking the entire relationship between the people and the
land, Fanon writes. Indeed, instead of trying to take over the channels
417 WEp.131
418 WE 308
of production dug for the benefit of colonial powers, the new countries
need to begin everything all over again: to change the nature of the
countrys exports, and not simply their destination, to re-examine the
soil
and
m ineral
resources,
and -
why
not? -
the suns
productivity.419 By reassessing use and exchange value from the

bottom up, Fanon believes, African peoples can reverse the historical
process whereby they must starve so Europe and America can grow
fat. Even with this reference to material conditions, however, Fanon
did not think that only material forces always control history. For
instance, he takes issue with Friedrich Engels claim that a violent
struggle is necessarily won by the side with superior technology. An
unshakable national ardor and guerrilla warfare420 can defeat even
the most advanced weaponry, the most heavily armed force.
One way guerrilla warfare does this is by restructuring colonial
space, moving in and out of enemy areas, demolishing the very idea
of strategically privileged positions: the struggle no longer concerns
the place where you are, but the place where you are going. Each
419 WE p. 100
420 WE p.64
312
fighter carries his warring country between his bare toes.421 Fanon
cites Spains resistance to Napoleon and the American colonies
resistance to England; he could also have referred to the Haitian
revolution, when virtually unarmed slaves routed both their wellarmed colonial masters and tens of thousands of Napoleons soldiers.
Fanon also distrusts any European historical narrative, even
Marxs revolutionary one. Whereas for Marx, all history is the history
of class struggle, for Fanon, the history of colonized people is the
history of resistance422 to colonial invasion and domination, which
implies a more profound conception of history as the struggle against
human oppression. Marx therefore totalizes history in economic terms
and in so doing, leaves out of consideration all other aspects of
historical narratives. Fanon realizes that Marx repeats Hegels error
of confusing the world with Europe. History (is) written by the
Westerners...to serve their purposes.423 It is up to non-Westerners to
begin making their own history.
Despite Fanons commitment to socialism, he rejected the
Soviet formulation of Third Worldism. His emphasis on neutrality
421 WEp.134-135
422W E p.69
423WEp.219
313
resem bles the Bandung conference424 position,
yet
he also
anticipated the Maoist stance that lumped together the two super
powers, the then USSR and the USA. But Fanon was a political
philosopher and not a politician. He therefore had in mind the Third
World as the emerging agent of historical justice and truly historical
change. For example, while his overall opposition to the Cold War
echoed that of the then Third World leaders, he rejected the Third
Worlds just demands for redressing historical wrongs as catalysts for
dismantling the First/Second World face off. The third World leaders
believed that if former oppressors could pay their debts to Third
World countries, they would not be able to afford the arms race; they
would have to cease doing violence to one another as well as to the
Third World and so give way to a more humane form of co-existence.
So, for these leaders the answer to the problem of the super-power
violence lied in the practice of justice. For Fanon, as seen above, the
solution was to be found in the oppressed people themselves through
424 Bandung Conference took place from April 18 to April 25, 1955. There were
29 leaders from African and Asian nations. These leaders formulated the
neutrality principle, which they called non-alignment, which was clearly a tactic
rather than a philosophy. It enabled underdeveloped countries to get assistance
from both sides of the super powers and also it acted as a political position that
ensured independence to the poor nations.
314
these peoples taking up of action against the oppressors. For Fanon,

as seen above, freedom can not be handed over. One needs to work
for it.
What sort of decisive moment does Fanon foresee if peoples
revolutions successfully challenge superpower domination from the
bottom up? For Fanon, it is nothing less than the birth of a new
human being. Expanding on the apocalyptic hopes that informed A
Dying Colonialism, Fanon - at the end of his life - saw Third World
peoples as the redeemers of history. People of color in nations
formed by the struggle against Euro-American colonialism, must
refuse the choice between socialism and capitalism as they have
been defined by men of other continents and other ages in order to
find their own particular values and methods and style which shall be
peculiar to them.425
For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades,
we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new
concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.426
425 WE p.99
426 WEp.316
315
These are Fanons last published words, his final call to action, and
his challenge to the collective conscience of humanity located in the
Third World.
By curing the oppression from colonial neurosis, action and the
liberation struggle were supposed to set afoot a new man.427 What
made Fanon believe this, were a number of phenomena he had
observed during the Algerian struggle. He had seen how armed
struggle had changed the place and the role of women and youth in
Algerian society through their involvement in struggle, or how for
example, petty crim inals transform ed them selves into genuine
freedom fighters. The struggle for liberation indeed changed the role
of women, young people and others in society for a time at least, but
the social nature of the F IN struggle did not result in those changes
lasting. For example womens place within independent Algeria has
not been the most progressive. The ongoing political violence in
Algeria can testify to the ultimate failure of the work of humanization
in Algeria. This can be seen from the fact that Algeria has failed to
enlist the peasants or traditional societies in the nation developing.
427 WE, p.242
316
With all this in mind, it seems Fanons taking of action

overestimated its progressive impact. If this is true then where should
we look to for a humanized world? This leads us into the chapter
which I call from violence to freedom. Here we are going to define
freedom as developm ent and developm ent as a process of
expanding the real freedoms that people have begun to enjoy.428 This
is seen concretely in the social and economic arrangements of
concrete social settings. This requires that major sources of un
freedom, poverty, tyranny, poor econom ic opportunities, and
systematic social deprivations be removed.
Fanon, as seen above, is in search of a non-repressive, non
elitist society, a society where, as Kant would say, people would treat
each other as ends rather than as mere means - a society where
alienation will not exist. For Fanon, such society is not only possible
but necessary for the underdeveloped countries if they are to avoid
the mistakes of western industrialized countries and attain authentic
human existence.
428 1 borrow these words from Amartya Sens Development as Freedom.
317
Chapter IV: From Violence to Freedom - The invention o f a

Post-Im perialist State.
We have seen too much trouble in Kangan since the white man left because those who make
plans make plans for themselves only and their families. Achebe in Anthills of the Savannah
p.212
These words remind us of a disturbing but true story in most of

the newly independent countries in Africa. After independence and
under the new and indigenous regime, the workers and the peasants
are still victims of exploitation by multinational business ventures
through the local elite who, in collaboration with the government and
these foreign investors, have used every institution to serve only their
own private interests.
One of the examples of this sorry story is the land question.
The land was one of the main objectives of the struggle for political
liberation, but yet this land did not return to the people after
independence.429 Instead it was appropriated by financial houses,
industries, and some land became individually-owned estates. Such
measures perpetuated structures of the colonial era and also
429 This is what is at the center o f the political and social upheavals in the present day Mugabes Zimbabwe.
318
protected colonial interests in the new regime. This transfer of land

led to the accumulation of property by a few, while the majority of the
people remained landless and poor. The distance between these two
groups, rich and poor, appears more strongly in the contrast between
urban and rural life. In the rural areas we find the existence of abject
poverty. There is lack of basic human necessities. In this way, the
reasons for taking up action against the colonizer have been
betrayed. It is unfortunately true that political freedom in poverty is
only half freedom.
Looking around in most of African states one would think that
when independence was attained the colonialists delegated the local
elite to take over their activities in the countries. This replacement of
colonialists by the local elites deluded those who fought for the land
into believing that independence had really come. It is exactly this
window dressing that we have to challenge so as to change the
societies involved for better.
Fanon anticipated all this in the second chapter of his work The
W retched o f the Earth entitled Spontaneity: Its Strength and
W eakness . A ccording
to
Fanon
even
before the founding
319
ceremonies of nationhood begin, even before the new ruling class

enshrines its predatory ownership of the spoils in despotic edicts, the
people could already sense the imminent dusk of a fleeting dawn.
They detect in the preparation for independence the seedlings of a
new form of inequity, a national system of exploitation. The
discovery that the iniquitous phenomenon of exploitation is a transracial thing precipitates a new, potentially liberating understanding of
the human condition in history. But the immediate consequence of
that discovery is utterly unsettling. The simple idyllic clarity of the
beginning, writes Fanon is followed by a penumbra that bewilders
the senses. Fanon tried to warn the new leaders of the independent
African nations not to fall into this trap. But alas...
People took up the action against the colonial situation for the
sake of creating an authentic human existence for themselves and
yet most of the people felt, after independence, that their hopes were
far from being realized. The seemingly independent nations were still
dependent on multinational and also on industrial capital assured by
the Western countries. Thus, the Anglophone countries were still in
the hands of Britain while the Francophone countries remained
320
within the grip of France and the lusophone nations still under the
Portuguese influence. The Rwandan genocide, as explained above,
can attest to this fact. This is made clear by the Tanzanian President,
Benjamin Nkapas words to the presidential assembly of the Southern
Africa Development Council (SADC) that when you are poor in
material terms, people tend to think for you, and decide for you.430
How can one be truly independent when one has no viable
independent economic source? Usually it is easy to equate spiritual
poverty with material poverty. Does this mean then that authentic
human existence is for ever lost for the African? In writing a paper like
this one in the spirit of Fanon, one presupposes that the answer to
the above question is no. There is always a realistic possibility for
human development.
We have seen in the previous chapter Fanons reasons for
choosing violence in his search for an oppressed peoples possibility
to come out from under the oppressive system. But, as suggested
above, violence tends to dehumanize. So in our search for a
humanized society, violence may initiate its possibility but violence
430 SADC, Harare, August 26,2003.
321
has to be overcome and be replaced by what Hannah Arendt would

call a positive action.
In this chapter I would like to discuss what the overcoming of
violence entails for Africa in the face of still overbearing oppression
from within as well as from outside. As we will see here below, the
key to the building of a truly humane society is the construction of an
authentic human existence which presupposes, as Am arty a Sen
would say, the existence of development as freedom. In the following
section I would like to explore the meaning of development as it
affects humans and how it can be realized in a human society
especially in Africa.
A: Human Development:
As it is, authentic human existence can only take place where
development exists and dehumanizing conditions seize to exist. This
would translate itself into having political freedom, economic facility,
social opportunities, transparency, and security. Development should
be the acquisition of integrated know-how to utilize ones raw
materials and transform them into finished products. There is no
322
development when one merely assembles other peoples products. In

other words, people should think and try to produce what they can for
themselves. The encouragement of people to think and to learn how
to do things for themselves in their own way was the answer to
Fanons quest for the way out of the wretchedness suffered by the
wretched of the earth.
An example of this could be seen in his dealings with the
patients at Blida, where he introduced self help schemes for the
patients. For Fanon, as well as for us, one cannot call oneself an
independent person if every time one falls down he has to wait for
someone else to pick him up so that he may walk. This is what seems
to be the case with African economies. If Africa has to be
independent, therefore, she would need to learn how to do things on
her own. This is the reason why we must try and make sure that the
African Union works, which will be the assurance that Africa and
Africans have an impartial big market for their goods and services.
This is what we call capability enhancement effort.
With this as a reality in the peoples lives, they will be able to
focus on the capabilities that would enable them to do and be what
they value. In this way, I agree with Sens431 argument that capability
deprivation is a better measure of poverty than low income. Capability
deprivation can capture aspects of poverty hidden by measurements
of income. In this way, then, capability-directed provisioning could be
a key to creating less distortion of development incentives. In other
words, the African countries should be able to move away from
freedom thought of in political terms to the actuality of living well and
being able to live in decency and with dignity.432 Concretely speaking
this means the ability to think for oneself and being able to fulfill ones
capabilities. In this search for self-reliance, even the government and
the state have a very big role to play, especially on social issues.
Sens best-known work on famines433 is a powerful example of
this way of looking at the place of the government and the state in
development. It is surprisingly true that famines are usually caused by
a lack of purchasing power or entitlements rather than by actual food
shortages. There will always be surplus food in the world; the only
problem that is at the heart of food shortage is the problem of
431 Cf. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1999
432 Cf. Nkapas address to the presidential assembly of SADC, Harare, August 26,2003.
433 Cf. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation and also Michael Liptons Why
Poor people stay poor: A study o f Urban Bias in World Development, London: Temple Smith, 1977.
324
unselfish distribution. For example, Malawi in 2003 was one of the

famine struck regions in the world and yet she continued to export
food to South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya. It is not uncommon, in
general, for rural people to suffer more from famines than do the
econom ically and politically more powerful urban population,434
following a typically pattern of distribution described by Fanon. This
shows that famines can easily be avoided with state employment
schemes as the straightforward approach. In this way then, we can
see easily that the destitution of poverty is not a personal tragedy, a
design of destiny, but rather a virus attack upon the integral
solidarity of the people at large. This virus needs to be scanned and
eliminated. It is a social ill that affects all peoples. We can, then,
safely say that the goal of an economic system as well as that of
development, or that of a planning process, is not primarily to
guarantee the rights of an individual and/or of ones country to
acquire and accumulate for oneself or for ones country all that the
individual personal ability and drive make possible for oneself. The
M Cf. Alex de Waal, Famine That Kill. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989 and also Patricia Webb, Famine in
Africa: Causes, Responses, Prevention. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
325
aim is to provide first and foremost for the basic needs of all of the
global human comm unity435
This is what the work of globalization promises us. But as we
will see below this work of globalization brings with it a lot of
negative effects on especially poor communities. In all, this work of
globalization has to include and presuppose the meaning o f
developm ent as freedom.436 In this way, developm ent without
freedom is a development without a truly human face. As seen
above, this freedom has to take place within the human solidarity. For
at the heart of the struggle for humanization is human solidarity.
Famines and absolute poverty, then, can be attributed to the lack of
social caring on the part of governments and foreign investors using
government powers. In fact, simply because of the solidarity of all
peoples of the world, poverty and instability in one part of the world
can spawn conflict and terrorism for the rest of the world.437
The question still remains: What exactly constitutes human
development? To ask this question, as Fanon would, is to ask the
435 As we will see later on there is a problem with this globalizing project. Globalization is a big
contributing factor to most of the present day woes in Africa.
436 This is Amartya Sens book title.
437 Especially interesting here is Adam Lusekos BBC radio report of February 27, 2003.
326
very purpose of our existence. To answer this question will require

the definition of clear goals and the definition of appropriate means by
a people in a planned humane development process. The required
end for all these activities would need to be clearly defined as well.
For example, we need to answer the question of whether the
expansion of ones choices and consumption - food, travel, wealth,
and power -
should be equated with ones personality and
developm ent today. We should
never, in our pursuit for a
comprehensive analysis of development, neglect the long-term needs

of humanity and its well-being in the biosphere.
Another point that needs being looked into is the question of
whether the scale of evaluation of development and progress also
include the standpoint of the deeper value system of aligning human
choices with that of ultimate human destiny or not. The place of
harmony between the ends of development and those of nature need
also to be spelled out.438 By answering these questions with the
interest of humanity at heart and through the proper application of
438 This is the problem of ecology.
327
these answers we hope and believe that the people concerned will be
able to progress towards an acceptable level of humanization.
The
above
move from
dehum anizing
conditions to
humanizing reality can truly be realized only in a non-authoritarian

and non-elitist system that is open and transparent 439 Lack of such
openness and transparency is one of the reasons why colonialism
and its offshoot, neo-colonialism , are evil. Living in a non
authoritarian democratic system for a form erly colonized people,
would mean, among other things, the correction of errors done during
the decolonizing period. One of these errors is the continuing
economic and political dependency on the W est and the continuing
exploitation of the majority by the few which is a form of neo
colonialism, the result of a failed decolonization.
The work of decolonization was aimed at giving the people
involved the capability to live a fully livable life. Such a life
presupposed an autonom ous future freed from
great power
interventions and full of possibilities for self-development. But this

was not to be. After independence, as Fanon saw very well, most of
439 1 found Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellinis article Is inequality Harmful to Growth? Theory and
evidence, American Economic Review 84, 1994 very helpful in my reflections on this point concerning a
non-authoritarian government.
328
the African nations continued to depend on m ultinational and

industrial capital and continued to have strong ties with the former
colonial powers. This fact maintained the integration of the country
into the international capitalist system after political independence. In
this system profits override all social initiatives. This is one of the
reasons why Fanon advocated for a complete revolution and a
complete defeat of the exploiter. Most of the colonized countries did
not follow this way but rather settled for a compromise. And as it is, in
compromise, one gives away something to get another thing.
There are fifty nation states in Africa. The circumstances for
their emergence varied but the p ro cess for their emergence was
much the same. After independence, these nation states adopted
models for governing taken from the histories of England and France.
It is a rule based on parliamentary freedoms. This way of ruling relies
on the firm foundations of Capital-Owning middle strata , thus
guaranteeing the steady progress of the colonial bourgeois
democracy and in this way, as said above, guaranteeing as well a
continuation of marginalization as the newly independent countries
are forced to enter into an economic system which has to depend on
329
external funding. The global consequence for this option is that Africa
has continued to depend quite considerably on external official
assistance for its survival with human development. The conditions
attached to such assistance run contrary to our definition of
development that is, the widening of the opportunities offered to
citizens to meet their material, political and cultural needs.440
The state, instead of protecting and liberating its citizens,
became a tool for constricting and exploiting them. As a result there
has been a lot of suffering among the people of Africa. The prime
reason for this suffering was something else that was widely agreed
upon. The reason is powerfully stated by the hero, Ikem, of the
Nigerian novelist Chinua A chebes A nthills o f the Savannah,
published in 1987 and reflecting the writers mature conviction. The
prime reason, Ikem reflects before he, too, has to meet disaster,
cant be the massive corruption, though its scale and pervasiveness
are truly intolerable; it isnt the subservience to foreign manipulation,
degrading as it is; it isnt even this second-class, hand-me-down
440 The quotations are mine but the idea come from Sen.
330
capitalism, ludicrous and doomed.441 All such miseries of malice and

incompetence or greed could be blamed for the prime failure of this
government. But they were not the cause; they were the effects. The
cause was to be found elsewhere. It lay in the failure o f our rulers to
re-establish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed o f this
country.442 It was the failure of postcolonial communities to find and
insist upon means of living together443 by strategies less primitive and
destructive than rival kinship networks, whether of ethnic clientelism
or its camouflage in no less clientelist multiparty systems described
by Fanon. In other words, to truly succeed as a humanized nation,
one condition has to be fulfilled, a condition where men and women
should rise above themselves, take inspiration from their cause, and
grow larger in companionship. In the above mentioned book, Chinua
Achebe attributes the suffering of the people on the African continent
firs tly to the insensitivity of the leaders to the sufferings of the
dispossessed of their respective communities and secondly to the
willingness of these same leaders to accept the external world to
think for them.
441 Chinua Achebe, Anthills o f the Savannah, New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1988, pp.130-131
442 Ibid (M y emphasis)
443 C f my above discussion of the causes of famines and how these can be avoided as killers
Lack of ability to care for the weak in the community and the
lack of power to think for oneself resulted firstly in the present day
political weakness of the African continent vis-a-vis the other
continents, as can be seen from the need to mimic European ways of
ruling. Secondly this weakness of the leaders resulted into economic
weakness that has reduced all of the new states into a more or less
complete submission to external controls, leaving all these states with
the so-called less-developed-countries syndrome. An example of
such false and dehumanizing development that we can give here is
the Am erican-financed bauxite smelter built in Ghana that was
unable, in practice, to smelt Ghanaian-produced bauxite.444 The
bauxite for smelting was brought in from Jamaica and the finished
goods were shipped to America with very little profit left in Ghana or
Jamaica. The only good from this, at least for the Ghanaian peoples,
was that the dam that powered the Ghanaian sm elter produced
electricity that stayed in Ghana. In all these ways the citizens were
present as existential phenomena but absent as participating actors
for they could only do what they were told to do and nothing more.
444 This example was pointed out to me by Dr. Kwasi, the Boston College Librarian.
332
Another clear example, here, is in the Mobutist paradigm of Zaire in

the 1980s. The question Fanon would ask here then is: How do we
invent a state appropriate for a post-imperialist future?
B: In Search of a Post-Imperialist Society:

I. Introduction:
The key here is to look at what the situation is like at present for
the African continent and then try to find out ways to make the
situation better. In other words, why is Africa backwards? We would
like to answer this question in the hope of finding ways to create an
Africa that is conscious of its potentials445 and determined to exploit
them in their own favor, particularly in pooling together resources; an
Africa which is critical of its own weaknesses and geared to actively
participate in global trade as an equal among equals; an Africa
determined to offer to its peoples basic goods and services at
affordable prices.446
445 That is, what is possible and attainable.

446 Cf. Strategic Plan o f the African Union Commission. African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 2004,
p l6 - 1 8
333
But how do we attain these objectives in a post-colonial way?

We can only achieve these objectives if we can fulfill the following two
important things that Fanon had in mind: Firstly we need to make
sure that education is taken seriously, for it is through this that Africa
can prepare herself and her young to possess technological know
how which is needed, if Africa has to be self-reliant and thus really
independent. We will approach this education, then, as a source of
our economic and eventually our spiritual advancement. It will be
suggested that the fact that we do not have the technical know-how
to solve our problems is one of our biggest problems. In this way, one
of our biggest problems today is not one of resources. We have
plenty of these. It is lack of appropriate technology, which is itself
caused by lack of education. Fanon had this in mind, especially when
he started and helped El M oudjahid , a newspaper aimed at
educating the locals. The second thing to be looked at is the
importance of the re g io n a l and c o n tin e n ta l co -o p e ra tio n . This
regional co-operation is to be funded by the reparations that the
continent needs to demand from the perpetrators of both colonialism
and slavery. But before I look at these components, I would like to
334
look at Africas present situation as Fanon would as a background to

my examination of the two ways which may aid us to attain real
human independence.
II. The African Situation : 447

In addition to her people, Africa is blessed with a multitude of
riches. Africa is a huge landmass (8,000 wide and 30 million km2
area) stretching deep into the southern Oceans. It is traversed by
some of the greatest rivers of the world (the Congo, Nile, and
Zambezi). With 20% of its total area made up of forests, Africa holds
the planets second lifeline with fabulous bio-diversity (flora and
fauna), but which has been subject to multiple forms of exploitation
from abroad.
Africas agricultural development was often hampered by very
fragile soils characterized by lateritization, with the exception of
volcanic and sedimentary soils found in rivers and lake basins. In the
absence of any agrarian and industrial revolution, nearly 80% of the
C ontinents labor force remains mired in manual and archaic
447 Cf. David E. Bloom and Jeffrey D. Sachs, Geography, Demography, and Economic Growth in Africa,
335
a gricultural
practices
in several
countries,
w ith
increasing
dependence on the outside world for provision of inputs and

marketing of products. Moreover, the unpredictable and seasonal
rainfall pattern has had serious negative impact on effective water
management, as proven by frequent draughts.
Livestock production is similarly hampered by two negative
zoological factors, namely; the Tsetse fly and trypanosomiasis, as
well as by the anopheles, the mosquito species responsible for
malaria, which is the critical disease in Africa. The anopheles for
instance, forced the European colonizers to abandon small-scale
farming in some African territories, who moved away to settle in
malaria-free countries which they subsequently turned into settlement
colonies.
The continent is also blessed with m ineral and energy
resources such as petroleum, gas and uranium, as well as with
hydroelectric basins. Although still under-utilized, Africas mineral
reserves account for about 30% of global mineral resources. More
specifically, 40% of the world gold and 60% of cobalt reserves are to
336
found in Africa, its petroleum reserves while currently under exploited

are equally on the increase.
In spite of these riches, the continent of Africa occupies only an
insignificant position in global production chain and finds itself on the
sidelines of the great movements that drive the new global economy
under the direction of the multi-national corporations. Africa is home
to the greatest number of least developed countries and poor
countries. According to UNDP reports, out of the 48 Less Developed
Countries, 33 are in Africa. Over 40% of the population of the subSahara Africa lives below the international poverty line of US$1 per
day per capita. With 12% of world population, Africas share in world
trade is less than 3%. There are both cold and hot wars in Africa and
because of this Africa spends billions of US dollars a year on military
defense. The global consequence is that Africa has continued to
depend quite considerably on external official assistance for its
survival and supposedly to launch its development. This is one of
the reasons why Fanon called the Africans the Wretched of the
Earth. The problem still is, why is Africa so backwards?
O f course A fric a s geographical

dem ographica!
circum stances
play
position
big
and A frica s
role
in
A fric a s
backwardness. Because of her tropical positioning, Africa is at an

extraordinarily disadvantageous position. The consequences of this
geographical positioning
include
chronically
low agricultural
productivity (especially in food production), high disease burden

(Malaria and sleeping sickness), and very low levels of international
trade, with trade concentrated in a few primary commodities (e.g. oil,
diamonds, copper, gold, coffee, tea, cocoa, palm oil, and rubber),
most of which are suffering long term declines in their international
terms of trade. Yoweri Museveni in his book, What is A frica's
Problem, commenting on this unfortunate geographical positioning of
Africa believes that the deserts and tropical forests prevented the
easy spread of ideas and commerce.448
As for Africas demographical circumstances, it is evident that
A frica has the w o rld s highest youth dependency
ratios,
consequence of its combining the worlds highest rates of fertility with

falling levels of infant and child m ortality. These high youth
448 Cf. Yoweri K. Museveni, What is Africas Problems? The University o f Minnesota, Minnesota, 2000
p.147
338
dependency ratios impose a substantial drag on African economies

by reducing their productive capacity per capita.449 Low life
expectancies and extremely youth-heavy age distributions also tend
to be associated with lower rates of savings and investment, and
therefore slower economic growth as measured by international
standards.
Thus, African economies remain characterized by very low
levels of income, high proportions of the population engaged in
agriculture, urban areas that function as political and administrative
centers
rather than
as exporting
regions,
and very limited
international trade, concentrated in a narrow range of primary

commodities. The question then becomes: given these realities and
the geographical and the demographic factors that underlie them,
what kind of growth strategies would be effective in Africa? Some
solutions have been suggested by the IMF, The World Bank and
some European countries, in their desire to continue the colonial
legacy, but these hardly meet the needs of the people who have a
stake in this development. They have suggested birth control and the
449 Cf. Bloom and Sachs, p.4 for a comprehensive analysis o f the relationship between high youth
dependency and the rise o f poverty
339
famous structural change in which Africa is called upon to try to

move away from a heavy reliance on exporting a narrow range of
primary commodities to the promotion of manufacturing or service
sector exports,450 both of which still speak only to the needs of
external relations for a national economy. All this sounds good but
what is hidden in these proposals is the continued role of intrusion by
foreign forces into the affairs of Africa and the effect that this has on
the continents own economic state of affairs.
The worst aspect of all this was, of course, is that it has been
going on for a good four hundred years. During this time, as saw
above, material wealth as well as slaves were shipped out of Africa to
the continents of Europe and America. The sad thing is that this state
of affairs is still continuing today in the name of globalization and I
believe that it is this neo-colonialism that is responsible for the
distorted African structures which both the World Bank and the IMF
propose to change while ignoring that these foundations (IMF and the
World Bank) are themselves responsible for maintaining the colonial
structures at hand. It is a fact that instead of producing wealth for
450 Cf. Bloom and Sachs, pp.32 - 36
340
Africa, African is busy producing for the benefit of Europe. Africa is

supposed to be satisfied with being exporters of raw materials and
providing a market for finished products from Europe and America.
This, I am convinced, is the main leading reason for A fricas
backwardness.
Is this one of those instances of disowning responsibility for the
catastrophes befalling Africa? It is true that there is such a danger
and, without our recognition of such dangers, all our discussions will
end up by becoming a blaming game. This is the main significance of
Fanons ideas on Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness where he
warns the leaders of the newly independent countries specifically of
the evils of continuing exploitation by foreigners.
We have seen above that, for Fanon, if the wretched are to
come out of their wretchedness, they have to take up things into their
own hands. They have to say no to the exploiter and, because the
exploiter expressed himself with violence, violence became part and
parcel of the way towards self humanization. Now experience shows
us that after independence, exploitation and dehumanizing conditions
still continue to exist in the form of abject poverty and the crushing
341
dependence on the external handouts and the ever growing debt

crisis that is affecting the African nations. What kind of taking up of
action can Africa do to come out of this second wave of
dehumanizing global conditions? We have seen above that there
have been people who have suggested the lowering of birth rates and
moving from primary commodity export to manufactured goods
exports. Is this what we need to do to get our own economy going or
do we have to go beyond this? I will argue in this work that in addition
to the suggested backward solutions we need to add a reformed
Africanized education system as a primary duty of the nations if they
have to come out of this backwardness.
It is certainly true that in our search for a way out of the African
backwardness it is important to take into consideration both the
geographical and the demographical factors. Without this, our actions
will end up by being out of touch with the existential situation and as a
consequence we will end up treating Africa as a blank slate upon
which another regions technologies and economic history may be
grafted.451 We know that good policies are only good policies
451 Ibid. p.5
342
because they are adapted to a certain reality. Perhaps the real

reason why agricultural productivity is very low in Africa is because it
is another exam ple of blindly transplanting integrated rural
development strategies from other parts of the world that are not
customized to A fricas unique conditions 452 At the very least,
intensified scientific research on tropical agriculture in Africa is
warranted, since current technologies are an insufficient basis for
dramatic improvements in agriculture.453 Indeed it is also important
to look at the possibilities for an urban-based export growth in
manufacturing and services, but without addressing the negative
effects of globalization on the African continent, all that we reflect
upon will be for nothing. This is the reason why before we go any
further I need to discuss the current globalization movement as
Fanon would have done.
In an increasingly globalized economy, Africa has fallen under
threat of marginalization.454 Why is this happening? This will be the
452 This should be one of the reasons why Africa should be very reluctant to receive the Genetically
Engineered Seeds which have proven to be very beneficial to the American economy but detrimental to
other economies.
453 Bloom and Sachs, p.5
454 Cf. African Unions Strategic Plan o f the African Union Commission, Addis Ababa, May 2004, pp.9 14.
343
topic of the following pages of this work, as I strongly believe that

globalization, at least the way it affects Africa, is a form of neo
colonialism and as such is one of the biggest contributors to the sorry
state of affairs on the African continent. I will try to tackle this
globalization project in four movements: Firstly I will look at the
concept of globalization itself and this will bring me into the second
part of my discussion, which is to look at the history and the
instruments of globalization. Following this I will look at the problems
of globalization, and lastly I will look at the consequences of
globalization for the African states. To crown it all I will look at what
Africa needs to do in order to address the dehumanizing parts of
globalization.
111.
Globalization as Neo-Colonialism:
Those who speak badly of globalization too often forget its advantages.
But those who sing its praises are even more unjust. Joseph Stiglitz
The term globalization has several meanings, is diverse and

ambiguous. Both creative and destructive of values, globalization
344
invades the domains of politics, ethics, the social and the cultural
from its mainly economic base. This variety of meanings invites us to
enquire into the significance of the expression globalization. It is a
symbol that makes us think. It calls for and provokes reflection.
The concept of globalization is widely acknowledged in the
world today. How do we define globalization? The concept is capable
of multiple and diverse definitions but what is clear is that it is a
phenomenon which has produced fundamental changes within every
society.455 For billions of the worlds people, globalization has meant
and still means the uprooting of the old ways of life and the
introduction of threatening livelihoods and cultures. Dominant
imperialist models of westernization aggressively invade the social
and cultural life of countries in the process of development. It is true
that local cultures are changing. But there are unfamiliar social forces
in the world opposed to cultural cohesion and social harmony. It is a
reality that the globalization of mass culture - books, films, television
- leads the destruction of local cultures and reinforces economic
marginalization, cultural alienation and urban violence. This is so
455 Cf. Marc Bacchetta and Marion Jansen, Adjusting to Trade Liberalization, World Trade Organization
Studies, April, 2003
345
because Globalization, the way it is, is a result of the wish of the

dominant social forces in service of their specific interests. These
same social forces, according to Madunagu, have given themselves a
new ideological name the - international community - to go with the
idea
of
g lobalization
as
em bodied
in
large
m ultinational
corporations.456 In other words, as Grieco and Holmes tell us,

globalization has really been driven by the interests and needs of the
developed world.457 The developed world has managed to
manipulate the ignorance of the African world and make it to make
decisions that are militating against their interests. So, how do we
define this globalization?
Globalization is usually defined primarily by reference to the
developments in technology, communications, information processing
and so on that have made the world smaller and more interdependent
in very many ways for large corporations. But also it has come to be
associated with a variety of specific trends and policies, including an
increasing reliance upon the free market for large corporations, a
significant growth in the influence of international financial markets
456 Madunagu, E., Globalization and its Victims in Guardians July, 26, 1999, p.53
457 Cf. Grieco and Holmes, Tele Options for Community Business: An Opportunity for Economic growth
in Africa in Africa Notes, October, 1999, pp.l - 3
346
and institutions in determining the viability of national policy priorities,

leading to a diminution in the role of the State and the size of its
budget and the privatization of various functions previously
considered to be the exclusive domain of the State, the deregulation
of a range of activities with a view to facilitating foreign investment
and rewarding individual initiative, and a corresponding increase in
the role and even the responsibilities attributed to private actors, both
in the corporate sector, in particular, to the transnational corporations,
and in civil society 458
Historically, the current accelerated process of globalization, a
sequel to earlier colonialism of European powers, started in a small
way in the nineteenth century. It was during this time that European
capital was utilized in opening up new areas in the Americas and
Australia. Most of this capital went into the building of railroad
systems and Agriculture that would be central to the expansion of
capitalism. From all this it is evident that globalization is not a new
thing. The stronger globalization tendencies, however, can be traced
to the time just before the First World War. It was during this time that
458 See Statement on Globalization by the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, May
11, 1998.
347
the World experienced a very uneven pattern of global economic

development, thus exposing the limits of global economic integration
especially in their capitalistic tendencies.
In order to be effective in this aim, the authors of globalization
had to spread also their concepts, ideas, models, designs for living,
and their practices to the world at large. This is similar to what Fanon
spoke of as the education of the colonizer. The scramble for and the
partition of Africa,459 and the attendant exploitation of these parts of
the world, aided a quick maturation of companies and developments
in the areas of banking, industrial capital and technology that
provided fuel for the acceleration of globalization tendencies. It is no
secret that these trends of development are currently being pursued
with vigor by the instruments of globalization: the reformed old
Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank), the World Trade
Organization and the G8. These instrum ents of globalization,
according to Banjo,460 are the wicked Machines of the imperialists,
which are the messengers of a Eurocentric ideological framework
459 Cf. John Iliffe, Africans: A History o f a Continent, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996
especially chapter 9 from p.202 to 242
460 Banjo, L., IM F, World Bank, WTO: The wicked Machines of the Imperialist in Sunday Tribune, 23
April, 2000,19
348
trying to advance their monopolistic view of what the world should be.
This is particularly so because;
The rules and regulations of these three agencies of
imperialism are fundamentally unfair to working and poor
people around the world. The private corporation and
other financial interest whose interests are devilish are
able to dom inate the rules of the gam e in the
international economy with adverse results on the health
and welfare of hundreds of millions of people.461
With this in mind, then, it is imperative in ones characterization
of globalization not to exclude the role of the IMF and the World Bank
and that of the G8, because in excluding these, one ends up by not
recognizing the fact that the primary goal of globalization is one of
global concentration of capital in large multinational corporations. As
for colonial governments who were responsible for globalization in the
past, today the IMF, the G8 and the World Bank are responsible for
the enthronem ent of global capital through policies such as
liberalization, privatization and deregulation. By studying these three
policies we can see clearly the weaknesses and the strengths of
globalization in enhancing human development.
461 Ibid p. 19
349
It is still colonialism that provides a legal framework for the

dependence of the African economy on the economy of Western
countries. A frica s economy is still being integrated into the
C apitalistic economy and as such forced into the globalizing
tendencies of Capitalism. But as can be seen, the African economy is
being integrated into the world economy without any regard for the
adverse consequences on Africas social and economic life. The
African economy is still producing raw materials for industries in
advanced capitalist societies and serving as ready-made markets for
the finished goods from Europe and Americas. In other words Africa
is being forced to continue in its role as exporter of primary goods
and importer of finished goods, which is still one of the reasons why
Africa is suffering economic decline today.
Globalization has turned Africa into a dumping ground where
people increasingly consume an abundance of products that have
little connection to their struggle for existence. This indeed has led to
the obliteration of African cultures leading to a Eurocentric view of the
realities and development for Africans. As it is, some Africans are
unable to understand their own history, but these same Africans are
350
able to write European history. Thus in agreement with Dr lyayi we

argue that Globalization is nothing more than the process of
expanding a certain form of capitalist economic practice and hence
culture to all corners of the globe on terms and conditions arranged
by and favorable to leading capitalist countries, organizations,
institutions and individual capitalists.462 Liberalization, privatization
and deregulation remain the three hallmarks of globalization.
What liberalization does can be seen in how firms and national
companies play crucial roles in the logic of private enterprise. It is
clear that these firms and national companies are driven by profits
and the movement of firms and capital across borders is in pursuit of
these profits. This pursuit of profits is inherent in the expansion of
firms. It is really privatization that has deepened the integration of
African countries into oppressive global systems of production and
finance. Privatization is responsible for the capital inflows and the
462 Quoted by Emmanuel Yashim in Globalization Subversion to Africas Development, in Weekly Trust,
Kaduna, Nigeria October 11, 2002 p. 2 (Dr Festus lyayi is a professor in the Department o f Business
Administration at the University of Benin and his paper is entitled Globalisation and International Labour
Standards. In this article his main thesis is that post-colonial Africa inherited weak states and
dysfunctional economies that were further aggravated by poor leadership and the inadequacies of the
policies adopted by many countries in the post-independence era.
351
takeover by foreign firms of formerly public-owned enterprises.463 The

privatization policy in the African countries has attracted capital from
the developed countries and by so doing disbursed ownership mainly
to corporations based in the developed countries and so have left dry
the residents in the developing countries in this way of transferring
wealth from the poor to the rich.
It must be clear at this point that the current globalization
project has negatively impacted all developing countries in nearly all
facets of life. It is clear then that it is important, if we are to
understand certain aspects of Africas misery, to examine the nature
and the scope of these effects and th e ir im plications and
consequences for Africa.
There are writers, among whom we find Ohiorhenum, Mowlana,
Grieco and, Holmes, who believe, rightly to a limited extend, that
globalization would lead to an improved access to technology in
Africa and the speeding up of development and the enhancement of
global harmony. IMF in its November 2001 briefing, in talking about
developing countries, argued that:
463 See Global Trade Liberalization and the Developing Countries written by IM F Staff, An IM F Issues
Brief, November 2001
352
Opening up their economies to the global economy has

been essential in enabling many developing countries to
develop competitive advantages in the manufacture of
certain products. In these countries, defined by the World
Bank as the new globalizers, the number of people in
absolute poverty declined by over 120 million (14 percent)
between 1993 and 1998.464
What most of these writers fail to mention is the fact that globalization
has negatively impacted the political, economic, social, and cultural
nerves of the weaker member states of the world.465 It is clear that
globalization is highly costly to the developing nations. Globalization
has tended to keep ethical equity and social concerns behind market
consideration and, further, it has made a farce of the autonomy of the
poor, supposedly independent states.
According to Tandon, globalization encourages decreasing
national control and increasing control over the (internal) economy (of
the state) by outside players.466 This points to the incredible reality
that globalization is nothing but a new order of marginalization of the
poor nations in general and of the African continent in particular. The
464 Cf. Global Trade Liberalization and the Developing Countries, IMF Brief, November, 2001 p.2. One
wonders where the author o f this briefing found his material from. The number of people living in absolute
poverty is not declining; in fact it is on the rise.
465 See Globalization, Its Implications and Consequences for Africa in Globalization, 2.1 (Winter 2002)
466 Tandon, Y., Globalization and African Options (Part One) in AAPS Newsletter Vol. 3, no. 1, January
-A pril 1998, African Association o f Political Science,
universalization of communication, mass production, market and

exchanges, and the distribution of goods by this globalization project,
rather than engendering new ideas and developmental orientation in
Africa,
subverts A frica s autonom y and
its
powers of self-
determination. It is rather by design, so I believe, than by accident

that poverty has become a major factor in Africa despite this
continents astounding resources. Indeed, the daunting burden of
external debt in countries that have been developed under by these
debts has escalated phenomenally from 48.3 billion dollars in 1980 to
217 billion dollars at present, a figure representing 51 percent of the
Continents GDP and 318 percent of the total value of exports for
2003.467 No meaningful and sustainable development can take place
under such burdens, which drain heavily the very resources essential
for internal investment and growth. It is also true that this debt
burden468 reduces the capacity of African countries to allocate greater
resources for social programmes. In the process, debt has enlivened
the venomous potency of mass poverty and its accompanying
467 World Bank Report 2004 See also Museveni, p.216

468 Africas debt figure represents 51% o f the Continents GDP and 318% o f its exports. See Strategic Plan
o f the African Union Commission, Addis Ababa, May 2004.
354
multidimensional depravity among the citizenry of all the vital essence

of significant living.
These factors lower the human development index in the
Continent, an index which itself is closely related to poverty for which
it is, in a final analysis, both the cause and the effect. As a result of
this massive poverty, aggravated or occasioned by an ever more
limited access to social services, the people of Africa live in difficult
conditions and, for many, at the very limit of survival.469 This clearly
raises the problem of marginalization which, according to Ake,470 is in
reality, the dynamic of under development - the development of
under development by the agents of development.
Africa was the only major region in the world to experience an
absolute decline in export earnings per person between 1980 and
2004 471 This is not only a vivid illustration of Africas marginalization
in the world economy, but also a proximate index of the sufferings of
people, since Africa has lacked the materials to invest in cultural and
social development.
469 One need only to look at the pictures coming out o f Ethiopia and the Sudan to verify the truthfulness of
this assertion.
470Cf. Ake, C., Democracy and Development in Africa. New York, Brookings Institution, 1996, p.114.
471 Cf. David E. Bloom and Jeffrey D. Sachs, Geography, Demography, and Economic Growth in Africa.
Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard University, Cambridge, M A , October 1998.
355
It is a fact that nation-states in Africa today, rarely, if at all,

define the rules and regulations of their economy, production, credits,
and exchanges of goods and services, because of the rampaging
menace of globalization. The African continents political, economic,
and socio-cultural development is not in the hands of the Africans
themselves.472 This is one of the main reasons why most of the
African governments now find it difficult, if not impossible, in most
cases to meet the genuine demands of the governed on many issues
of national urgency.
I refer the reader to the effects and demands on HIPC (Highly
Indebted Poor Countries). For example, although Zambias school
enrolment has continued to grow at an annual rate of 2.3 percent, the
rising prevalence of HIV/AIDS continues to deplete the population of
teachers at an alarming rate. Yet in spite of the shortage of teachers
there are some 9,000 newly graduated teachers who can not be
employed by the government due to World Bank and International
Monetary Fund budget conditionalities. The loss of 9,000 additional
teachers to the education system means that schools, especially in
472 Cf. ibid p.3
356
rural areas, would have to go without teaching staff, says Michael

Katowa, the Zambian education m inistrys press officer 473 If
education is truly the key to the future, what can be worse than
schools without trained teachers? This condition needs immediate
fixing; otherwise Africa will continue to be marginalized in all relevant
areas. I will come back to this point when I will discuss the
importance of educational and research centers on the Continent.
Another example to illustrate these impoverishing effects on
HIPC as a part of globalizing invasions of the African continent is that
of Nigeria and its oil problem. In June, 2000, there was a fifty percent
hike in the prices of petroleum and related products in Nigeria at a
time when Nigeria ranks eleventh in countries with the largest oil
reserves. The reality in Africa today is that globalization has made it
immensely difficult, if not impossible, for governments to provide any
sort of social insurance, a central function and one that has helped
many developed nations to maintain social cohesion and domestic
473 Cf. Government Finances leave 9,000 Teachers Stranded in Integrated Regional Information Network,
February 3, 2004
357
political support 474 Thus Madunagu, in analyzing the situation of

globalization claims that:
The result of globalization in Africa, is basically a
competition between the palatial centres (sic) [Developed
world] and the slums [Africa] of the village where a
preponderant majority of people daily sink deeper into
poverty and misery.475
G lobalization
is thus a continuous license for cultural
imperialism, the institutionalization of both political and economic

domination and exploitation of the weaker partners through internal
agents.476 As both Adebo and Akindele rightly intim ate, the
globalization process is more sym m etrical to the origin and
development of the neo-colonial states which were determined by
the nature and structures of the colonizing countries, rather than
what one would hope for in a concretely established philosophy or
self-determination to get Africa out of the lingering crises. 477
474 One can just look at the present day (2005) debate on Social Security in United States o f America to see
how important social insurance is.
473 Madunagu, E., Globalization and its victims Guardian 26 July, 1999, p.53
476 See Tandon, Y., Globalization and Africas Options [part one] in AAPS Newsletter Harare, African
Association of Political Science, Vol. 3. No. 1 January - April, 1998, p.2
477 Akindele, S. T., Colonialism and Economic Dependence: The Case o f Nigeria in Bamisaye, O. A.,
and Egbuwalo, M . O., (eds), Readings on the Political Economy o f Nigeria Since Independence, Lagos
Ventures Ltd. 1990, (Chapter One) pp. 1 - 15 and also Adebos The political Economy o f Neo-Colonial
state and under-development in Nigeria ibid. pp.47 - 69
358
In this way, then, globalization becomes a form of entrapment

for Africa. It creates a process by which the poor countries are
dominated and exploited by the rich ones.478 In this way, the African
governments find themselves in a vicious circle of vulnerability to the
maneuvering of the outside parasitic economies.479 This exploitation
has led and continues to lead to the increasing destitution of Africa.
The heavy burden of foreign debt has greatly eroded their [poor
countries] capacity to run their own affairs and to respond to the
demands of the people.480 Surely this has turned the African
continent into an Empire of chaos. Globalization, as Obadina would
say, has become a threat to the poor rather than an opportunity for
global action to eradicate poverty.481
Take again the example of Nigeria, especially as globalization
affects the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. The World Bank in 1995
publicly acknowledged that the impact of oil exploration in the Niger
Delta area by the forces of globalization (Shell, Mobil Agrip,
478 Cf. Wohlcke, M ., The Causes of Continuing Underdevelopment in Law and the State, (vol. 47)
Tubingen: Edited by the Institute for Scientific Co-operation, 1993, p.53
479 Cf. Barrett, C. B. & Carter, M . R., Directions for Development Policy to escape poverty and Relief
Traps in Africa Note, February, 2000, pp. 1 - 5
480 Cf. SAPEM, 1996, p.2
481 Obadina, T Globalization, human rights and development, in Africa today, October, 1998, p.32
359
Cheveron, Texaco and Total) has decreased agricultural productivity

and fishing in the area and has led to the prevalence of hunger and
poverty which is put way above the national average.
There is no doubt that globalization has created a vast chasm
between the North and the South482 on the global scale. This is
particularly clear from the UNDPs Human Development Report of
1996 containing the fact that:
The gap in per capita income between the industrial and
developing worlds tripled from $5,700 in 1980 to $15,400
in 1993.483
Ironically, but not surprisingly, the African Growth and Opportunity Act
(AGOA) that President Bill Clinton put before the American Senate in
1998 and signed into law in May 2000, and the M ultilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI) of the Organization for Economic
Co-Operation and Development have proven to be part and parcel of
the instruments that further deplete whatever is left of Africas
resources. Both AGOA and MIA, argued Obadina 484 have allowed
the powerful international corporations an uninhibited freedom to
482 Tandon, 1998, op. cit. p.3

483 UNDP, 1996, p.2
484 Obadina, T., Globalization, human rights and development in Africa Today, October 1998, pp.32 & 33
360
operate anywhere in the area without the least concern for the
consequences of their operations on the interests of the host nations.
The western nations pressing the poor nations to open

their doors to the free-market are advocating policies they
did not follow. The governments of virtually all developed
nations gave their agricultural and industrial producers
some level of protection at crucial stages of their
econom ic development. But today W estern leaders
conveniently forget economic history.485
This convenient forgetfulness of history has led the instruments of
globalization (IMF, WTO, the G8 and the World Bank) to ignore the
evidence of history, showing that it is the Capital-led globalization that
is at the root of Africas crisis. It keeps on suggesting instead that it is
the same capital-led globalization that is the solution to Africas
crisis.
486
It is no secret that globalization has damaged Africas natural

environment and has been a disaster for Africa in both human and
material resources as far as balance of costs and benefits are
concerned.487 Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan 2004 Nobel Peace Prize
winner, in her work, makes connections between the life of forests
and the life of humankind. She sees justice and injustice, war and
485 Ibid, p.33
486 Cf. Tandon (1998 A ) p. 5
487 Cf. Tandon, ibid.
peace as connected to the problem of environment. For her the

health of our communities is the health of the planet. In this way,
then, for her, environmental responsibility is a social responsibility.
She was one of the first global leaders to say that there is no
separation between how we treat the environment and how we treat
each other. As people suffer one storm after another, the effects
worsened by deforestation and their debt to developed countries
rises. To pay down the debt, they sell off their forests, sustaining
double loss, compounding more endless poverty.
A good exam ple for the above connection between the
environment and poverty is Haiti and the corporate rubber barons. A
BBC report in late September said that storm called Jeanne caused
a thousands deaths and left tens of thousands of Haitians without
food and water. What is behind Haitis stream of natural disasters?
Environmental destruction and lack of economic development, says
the report. Lacking peaceful, unconditional human assistance, Haiti is
exposed to repeated destruction over and over again. Where is the
justice in this? This is confirmed by the UNDPs Human Development
362
Report of 1996,488 which contains among other revelations the fact

that:
Twenty countries in Africa (today) have per capital income
lower than 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the least
developed countries are in Africa. A food-surplus
continent twenty years ago, Africa is now food-deficit.489
The ultimate irony is that Africa is the only developing region where
poverty is incre a sin g 490 African governments (now) seem to have
lost control of the policy making process, and are under pressure to
accept dictation from creditor nations and financial institutions.
African governments now tend to discuss development issues less
with their own nationals, and more with donors and creditors, about
debt repayment, debt relief and rescheduling, and paradoxically,
about more developmental assistance which, rather than develop
them, further their underdevelopment and dependence.491
W hat conclusion
can
we
draw
from
this
analysis
of
globalization? Globalization is neither good nor bad in itself. They are
the actors on globalization who have transformed it into the monster
488 Cited by Tandon, ibid

489 U N D P -H D R , 1996, p.2
490 Thorbecke, E., Whither Africa? in Africa Notes, A p ril, 1997, pp.4-6
491 See Nwaka, G. I., Higher Education, the social sciences and National Development in Nigeria in The
Nigerian Social Scientist, Asya: Social Science Academy ofN igeria, March 2000, vol. 3 no. 1, p.31
363
that it is. But since the present mode! of globalization has taken
Africas existence by storm, the latter then needs to take it up into its
own gaze and make it pay. We, on the continent, need to find ways of
making globalization to work for Africans instead of as it is now;
working against Africas interests. Globalization in this way should be
based both on the promotion of human resources, especially in
training and education, and by the transform ation of material
resources to achieve an integral and shared development for African
peoples. I share the Congolese Bishop Laurent Monsengwo who
says that the resources of Africa consist above all in African peoples
and all their physical, intellectual, spiritual and moral energies could
achieve to make the social, religious, cultural and physical
environment of Africa more human and harmonious.492
Much as globalization
may seem to be inevitable,
its
consequences for Africa are devastating. Indeed, looking at these

consequences, one can not but conclude that for Africa globalization,
as it is practiced today without the human face, is a violent act
against the poor nations in general and against the African people in
492 Bishop Laurent Monsengwo. De l Afrique des problemes celle des ressources in Zaire-Afrique, no. 10
[1996] p . ll
364
particular. This is another violence that needs to be uprooted if we

are to create a truly liberated people. We have seen above that
Fanon suggested the taking up of action against the colonial violence.

This taking up of action was with the hope of creating the ideal
conditions of existence for a human world.493 These conditions can
only be present when the old ideologies of domination are dismantled
even as we see them present in the form of globalization.
Economic dependence as reinforced by globalization means
that Africa can only enjoy secondary benefits and not a major
contribution towards an integral human development. In order to profit
from globalization, African countries should: 1. Believe and be
convinced with Joseph Ki-Zerbo that one does not develop a people
because a people develop itself, one does not globalize a people
because a people globalize itself by setting up and strengthening
economic, agricultural, technological and industrial structures. 2.
A frica
needs to equip
itse lf with
a m aterial
infrastructure,
technological modernization, and good governm ent based on a

democratic culture. In other words, the right to self-development is a
49j Cf. The W retched o f the Earth, p.231
365
priority together with policies for durable, fair and democratic growth.
In other words, globalization for Africa should take into account a
system of moral requirements for the development of the human
person and the well-being of the community. In other words, if Africa
needs to develop as desired, she needs to confront the international
exploitation.
The larger truth, then, is that in practically all cases, interactions
between Africa and the outside world have turned out to Africas
disadvantage. Instead of globalization being an instrument of global
development it has proven to be an instrument of exploitation for the
African continent. Of all the interfaces shaping A fricas future,
however, the educational sector, informal as well as formal, is what
presents the most absurd negative aspect, as Fanon recognized.
Africa seems to be the only continent without a system of self
perpetuation.494 Without a proper system of education, there is no
intellectual capacity to forge a well thought out future. We know that
educational systems have been used by the powers that be to
maintain the status quo of exploitation. Thus, if we have to go further
494 See for a further discussion on this point Educate or Perish, p !4
366
in our work of humanizing the societies we are involved in, the

analysis and the reform of the educational system becomes
imperative. So education and globalization are related and if we want
to have a humanized globalization we have to humanize our
educational system too. The discussion of this important topic of
education is the subject of the following section of this chapter.
If Africa has to get out of the dehumanizing situation brought
about by globalization, then, Africa needs to de-link its dependency
on the western powers and her system of independent states needs
to be recomposed from the inside out. One possible way out
according to Fanon as it was discussed by Tandon in his article
Globalization and Africas options is the subordination of external
relations of development to internal relations of development. This
can be concretized by having a more united and organized Africa.
Africans need to coordinate better amongst themselves. For Fanon
the solidarity of the wretched of the earth is a key to solving and
resolving their continual exploitation. Fanon lived this through his
desire for a pan-Africanism. This self reliance can only be achieved
through a good system of education. This is the reason why I now
367
need to turn to the education sector and, as 1try to do so, I will look at
the place of the African Union in this project of humanization.
C:
In Search o f an A fricanized System o f Education:

One of the ways in which Africa can prepare herself to come
out of her own backwardness is through a system of a liberating

education. In the tradition of Fanon, Paulo Freire maintains the idea
of a liberating education as a radical activity that strengthens peoples
power, especially their power for a critical consciousness while
looking for the democratic ways together toward an equal and
coexisting community in the global context. In other words, the type of
education that we are looking for here is an education that will
develop peoples capacity for social change. This is a very urgent
need especially in Africa today, where young people are living in an
educational vacuum: the traditional system has been lost without
anything taking its place. The African educational system is still
m aintaining a schooling system originally conceived
by the
colonialists for the reproduction of the colonialists civil service. This
368
leads to A fricas incapacity to build an initiatory, creative and

developing society.
We have discussed above how the indigenous African
educational system was broken up completely by the colonial
domination. The original colonialists replaced this education with an
absolutely different system designed to serve the overall aim of the
subjugation of the continent to European needs. For the indigenous
African societies, education lost its community building functional
role. Schools were no longer natural organs connected in vital ways
to African society. Instead they became artificial additions from
elsewhere. The aim of the colonial school system was complete
instrumental control over African resources. Albert Sarraut, once
Minister for Colonial Affairs in the French government, put the matter
in a nutshell: It certainly is our duty to educate the natives. But we
must, above everything, accomplish this duty in accordance with our
clearest economic, administrative, military and political interest.495
I hope the following pages will trigger off a debate on the major
attitude and orientational changes needed for a commitment to and in
493 Albert Sarraut, La mise en valeur des Colonies fran?aises, Paris, Payot 1923, p35.
369
education for all. Our aim here is to find ways of reinventing the
meaning of life and the way to establish the bases of a world worth
living in.
Pushed on, as in the other continents, in the ambiguous and
hazardous adventure of globalization, Africa in its diversity must,
using a critical approach bring its social personality into play as a
creative role in the conception of a new era. This investment of Africa
or of Africans in world history requires the rehabilitation of an African
educational process.
Education should originate from the concrete needs and
struggles of the people. In this way then research practices should be
part and parcel of our educational system. There are a lot of people
who think that the crisis in the African societies and in their economy
is first and foremost a cultural crisis. In view of this belief, Ki-Zerbo,
one of Africas greatest educationists noted that culture is not a
stagnate value. Culture evolves and through this change we witness
its perception and conception, its values and even its scientific and
technological knowledge becoming a source of further ch a n g e 496
496 Ki-Zerbo, Educate or Perish, p.8
This is the reason why Africa needs African researchers committed to

the cultural advancement of the African continent. However, the
existing educational system favors foreign consumption without
generating a culture that is both com patible with the original
civilization and truly promising for Africans. I believe that Africas
survival as Africa will depend on her ability to produce truly African
cultures appropriate for the contemporary globalized life systems. In
this way then, we agree with Frantz Fanon as interpreted in the words
of Professor Ki-Zerbo, if our continent wants to live on, it must realize
that it has to enter into the period of education.497 There is a need
for an educational system whose aims and rhythm s will be
redefined by engaging in a permanent reflection-action cycle498 fully
oriented towards the search for a better way of life for the greater
number. Thus, in the following pages I plan to show that education for
the rehabilitation and the emergence of an Africa modern by its own
standards must be the first and foremost concern of Africans.
A Societys progress is dependent on the general level of
education attained by its population. This means that a truly liberating
497 Ibid. p.8
498 This is also the project o f Freires The Pedagogy o f the Oppressed especially in chapter 4.
371
educational system should be flexible enough to have something to

offer to all: children, young people and adults, women and men. Yet
in spite of the importance of education, most of the African states are
suffering from a lack of any effective universal basic education,
considering the low school enrolment rate across the continent.
Literary instruction is still a pressing developm ent issue,
considering the state of illiteracy affecting so many adults, especially
in the countryside.499 Because of this lack of basic education for all,
people are unable to confront real issues. That is why certain groups
hijack power and misuse it. It is easy to manipulate the ignorance of
the people and make them to make decisions that will militate against
their interests. What we are faced with is a deep-seated structural
defect affecting the basic metabolism of our societies: the peoples
ability to defend themselves, to make fresh start, to identify options,
to be selective, to assimilate, in short, peoples ability to define
themselves.
So, in following the footsteps of Fanon and later on adapted by
Freire, my thesis here is that education is a key to the freeing of a
499 Cf. Freires The Pedagogy o f the Oppressed
372
people and an important tool if we have to build a humane society.

But since education has been used as a tool of oppression rather
than a tool of emancipation, especially during colonial times, the work
of education needs to undergo important necessary changes in
structure, functioning, content and aims for it to be effective and
efficient in achieving the cultural and psychological emancipation of
its beneficiaries and meet their social expectations.
It is a fact, though a sad one, that the present day educational
system is still being controlled by colonial and non-liberating projects.
The prevailing system of education, divorced from the real life of the
people, as practiced in Africa today, is a monstrosity dating back to
the colonial school system. One clear warning of this system of
schooling is the fact that in colonial times, Africans who had
completed school were exempted from the forced labor of anyone not
in school. The practical work load in the colonial school system was
minimal. Moreover, the post independence school system, lost no
time in developing this allergy to work further. The resulting system
of education without production is naturally counter-productive.
373
Thus Africa finds itself settling into underdevelopment. This is

also truer because the school system, not content with training
people to be idle, also consumes more than it produces, and teaches
its wards only to become consumers. It seems here then that the
African school system is yielding more problems than answers. The
answer to this as I will propose later on is a nature based education.
This means that schooling on its own does not meet all of a persons
educational needs, indeed far from it! It is merely one of several
opportunities: though better organized in some respects, it does not
follow that it is the best opportunity. This is especially true for Africa.
Yet still, Universities and scientific research centers are an
imperative for the African continent. W ithout these to ensure the
necessary shifts in emphasis and adjustments, basic education and
literacy instruction will reach an impasse and be discredited,
eventually causing the disaffection and turning away of learners and
their fam ilies. The African continent needs to enter into the
technological world if she is to compete on the world scene and this
can only take place through strong and well funded institutions of
higher learning. This is just to show how much I disagree with certain
374
non-African schools of thought and intellectuals who, still today,

persist in denying the urgent need for and the merits of developing an
African university education. Instead they place emphasis on basic
education
and
elem entary
te ch n ica l
e ducation
(especially
Agriculture), on the debatable pretext that Africa is too poor to sustain

universities and that it is basically agricultural.
Here the education we are looking for is an education that will
lead the Africans to be aware of their origins and an education that
would lead them to be committed to their country and people, an
education that will make them grateful for what they have received
from the continent and in so doing have courage and strength to
revolt against all injustices and fight for the humanization of the
continent, an education that will allow them to take deliberate steps to
acquire access in the scientific know-how that will help in the
transformation of our natural resources into goods ready to be used
in the African development.
Here then we are seeking not only for an educational system in
Africa, but an African school system. It is a fact that a system of basic
education can only be efficient if it can be integrated into its own
375
environment. Failure to integrate into the indigenous environment will

mean dependence and mimicking of others. Africa is in serious
trouble, not because its people have no foundations to stand on, but
because, ever since the colonial period, they have had their
foundations removed from under them. The education we are looking
for is then an education that would lead the African to understand that
the education he is receiving is not an end in itself but rather that the
knowledge he is receiving is a means of participating alongside the
African peoples in their struggle for development. Rather than this
education being a privilege, it should be looked upon as a
responsibility. Undeniably, then, from what we have just said, there is
a need for new African education. What will this education look like?
The aim of education should500 be to make people to be able to
think for themselves. This means that the educated people of Africa
should have courage to use their own understanding.501 This means
that one refuses the irresponsibility of servile submission and,
instead, assumes the responsibility of reasoning independently, finds
500 1use the word should simply because we know that people may use education for the sake of making
others think like oneself as we saw was the case during colonial period. Interesting here is The Pedagogy o f
the Oppressed by Freire
501 Cf. Kants, What is Enlightenment?
376
expression in the constant drive to seek within ones own community

and by with ones community the standard of truth and the pathways
to setting oneself free. In this way, education, instead of being an
alienating force, as it is in a colonial setting, becomes a liberating
force, a way towards humanization.
But the fact of cultivating this knowledge of looking at
development as being from the self to the self should not lock the
peoples of Africa into the so called straight-jacket of Kants logical
egoism that may blind people to everything else and isolate them
into solitary subjectivism . The current historical situation of
globalization rules out this kind of extreme. We can only come to truth
through the verification of our opinions and through the coming into
contact with other peoples views so as to be able to compare our
own views with theirs. Through this we will be able to contribute to
our own critical reflection and our own development or that of our
country. The exercise of freedom of thought, then, is indeed a
personal matter but not a private matter. It is, as Ki-Zerbo says, a
public matter.502
502 See Ki-Zerbo, J., Educate or perish. Dakar-Abidjan, UNESCQ-UNICEF, 1990
377
In this way then, the epistemoiogical benchmarks of this study

in a humanizing education are self-confidence based on selfknowledge, thinking by oneself for oneself, a sound understanding
of otherness, critical reference to the past and the irreplaceable
importance of research based on popular African wisdom. In this way,
then, it is my conviction, as it is that of Ki-Zerbo, that the key factors
of African promotion are education, training, and African unity.503
This tension between the reliance on the self and the ability to
recognize the importance of the other in the journey towards truth can
be seen above all in cultural and psychological terms. Todays African
intellectual is a person of contradiction, as Fanon pointed out, lost
between traditional roots that are slipping out of reach and a future
that is both filled with uncertainty and slow to arrive because the
present itself is a problem so impoverished by globalization.504
Two main challenges are urgently in need of being taken care
of in the field of education: the need to increase educational
503 Ki-Zerbo, I. Histoire de I A frique noire (History of Black Africa) Paris, Editions Hatier, 1978, p.632
504 Cf. M y analysis o f globalization project as an impoverishing reality on the African continent. For
example, what does it mean to be an African and a Christian? This where I find Edward Saids very import
especially as he struggle to understand his identity as an Arab Christian in a society that identifies Arab
with Islam. I believe that a comprehensive work is needed to be done to examine what the relationship
between the South and North should be like if the Southern Hemisphere people have to receive the respect
due to them.
378
provision, by building childrens school structures and by setting up

teacher training colleges,505 and secondly the improvement of the
quality and efficiency of an education system that is still too much a
mere replica of the colonial system. To break away from this model is
difficult for both objective and subjective reasons, even though such a
break is necessary. To effect this move from a colonial type
education to a more liberating education, the education sector should
never be left in the hands of politicians, but rather in the hands of
intellectuals who are more suited to build a momentum for
development.
The first thing to be done is to Africanize the curriculum and to
implement a method of teaching that will focus primarily on cultivating
a new spirit, a spirit of observation conducive to stimulating the
imagination and curiosity of the students. In this way the educational
system will regain its function as a recreator of African societies. This
method would require the introduction of African languages.506 Here I
allude to another limitation of current African education and also to
505 This is the main reason why I deploy situation such as those happening in Zambia with regards to the
educational sector.
506 On this point of Language according to the famous Bukinabe intellectual Ki-Zerbo, French should
increasingly be learned as a modem foreign language taking the substratum o f the African languages into
account. See Educate or Perish, p. 1012
379
the criticism of contemporary education in Africa, which is provided

almost exclusively in the colonial languages and which strongly
resists the use of national languages. People need to experience
their cultural lives in modern forms through their own languages. The
experience of countries like Tanzania has been most edifying in this
respect.
I am not advocating a return to pre-colonial education here any
more than Fanon did. In fact, it is now recognized that, although it
had its virtues, pre-colonial education is now inadequate to cope with
the mobility of the knowledge and reference that must be assimilated.
The oral mode of communication used in traditional education
cultivates memorization, but it is less effective than the written word in
fostering intelligence and sustained reflection. I am certainly not
advocating the museographical complex507 about the past, which
consists in physically recording the past instead of communing with it
as a source of inspiration and possibly seeing it as a problem to be
understood and solved.
507 Ibid p. 482
380
With this in mind, then, one of the components of education

should be the studying of indigenous cultures. This culture is not just
for admiration from afar but it should be thought out by the African
intellectuals, rationally analyzed and even criticized before it is made
into a generator of the new African culture. The culture which will
come out of these rational dealings with the old culture will be
neither the culture of the ancestors nor the one attempting to
impose itself on the African continent without the Africans consent
and sometimes against their will.508
So, each and every African University should have a cultural
center responsible for the research and the implementation of local
cultures. In this way then, African Universities are to play a leading
role in the way forward. Through science and technology, African
Universities must, among other things, strive to link classical
education to popular education on the basis of system atic
acknowledgement of the real needs and aspirations of the masses
and the requirements of the contemporary world. It is also, as said
above, the responsibility of intellectuals to usher in the new culture
508 See Ki-Zerbo, Other peoples mats (for an endogenous development in Africa) Proceedings of the
symposium of the Research Center for Endogenous Development (CRDE), Bamako, 1992 pp.22 - 24. In
particular p.23
381
that Africa now needs, one that demands a critical look at the past
and at our current situation of revolution.509 There is need for a
careful handling of the present which is a process of the past in its
preparation for the future. From this we may conclude that education
is a means, a working tool (both theoretical and practical), rather than
an end. Thus, education is an absolute necessity.
Equally imperative is the need for self-reliance which should
come out of the type of education advocated here. No person can be
made happy behind his back, without his participation and without
having his views listened to. In this way as Ki-Zerbo puts it, Africa
should refuse the artificial limbs that make it unnecessary for us to
use our own legs.510
The limitations of the hand-out policy and its harmfulness to
Africas development are sufficiently obvious, as we have shown in
the globalization section. For a long time and all too often, others
have thought for Africa and in its stead, confining it to a position of
being perpetually under age or infantile. Sometimes Africa has been
considered incapable of knowing what it wants. Of course I am not
509 This is one of the strong points of Ki-Zerbos work Educate or Perish.
510 Ki-Zerbo, 1992, p.iv
382
objecting to international aid and co-operation among peoples;

contemporary civilization, as said above, is also the civilization of a
world seen as a global village with its necessary and ever-growing
interdependence. But yet, as Ki-Zerbo, quoting an African proverb,
tells us: to sleep on other peoples mats is like sleeping on the
ground.511 Even if, as Saint-Exupery would say, being human entails
being proud of the victories of other people, still, one must be aware
of having taken part in the struggle. This means that everyone must
add their stone to the structure and have their say without risk of
being over-ridden and subjected to the dictates of a few elitists.512
If Africa has to contribute to the construction of humanity, this
would require her to enter seriously into research, training and
practical action. This is why education and research centers are
necessary on the African continent. According to Ki-Zerbo,513 85% of
research on Africa is conducted outside Africa. This shows that Africa
is cut off from itself and above all that it does not understand its own
grey matter. What is the cause of this tardy and flawed development
of African countries?
511 Cf. La natte des autres: Pour un development endogene en Afrique, my translation from French
512 Paraphrase of an African proverb
513 Cf. La natte des autres, p.60
383
There are three main reasons for this sorry state of education
on the African continent. The African brain-drain, the extraneousness
of research in relation to the realities and concerns of the continent,
and the small number of resources allocated to science are clearly
among the structural causes of the tardy and flawed development of
African countries. The lack of unity among the African universities, a
regrettable reflection of the lack of unity of the entire continent, further
compounds this situation. There is at least a hope since the launching
of the African Union. But, as the saying goes, the pudding will be in
the eating. In order to be effective, the African universities need to be
financially secure and, in this way, they will be able to set their own
priorities rather than following the priorities set up by the politicians
because of political expediency. This is where the theory and the
necessity of the p o litic s o f reparation comes in.
F: The Im portance o f R eparations fo r a hum anized w orld:

One last point needs to be made concerning the revival of the
African spirit. In the 1950s Frantz Fanon argued in Black Skin, White
Masks that a politics of reparation should start with a complete defeat
384
of the colonial power. For him, a new humanism signified

transcending the classification of black/white and for the black to
become a man among other men. To Fanon the past was a burden
and to be free meant first to relieve oneself of that burden. Fanon
claimed, I am not the slave of the slavery that dehumanized my
ancestors.514 Here we see that Fanon wanted to be his own
foundation, a non divided person. He suggests here that there is a
self which is not caught in the web of relations, desires and fantasies.
That Fanon tried to distance himself from the past of my ancestors.
This can only take place when one somehow breaks with the heritage
from the past. So, for Fanon, reparation would mean the reparation of
the past wrongs, that is, engaging first and foremost in the political
struggle of liberation. It is to engage in a process of repairing oneself,
a self that is burdened with an identity that has been constructed for
her. Fanon tried to do so by dis-identifying with any construct of this
sort.
Identification, we are told, is the psychological process
whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the
514 Black Skin, White Masks, p.230 and see also footnote 52 of this work
other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other
provides.515 It is about taking oneself as the other. It is an
unconscious process, which is made conscious only through disidentification. In other words, I have no way of knowing that I am
identifying with the other as long as I have not brought to
consciousness the unconscious imitation. So for Fanon the work of
dis-identification could only occur first by being conscious of the fact
that blackness (as understood by the European) was an imposition
and that his identification with blackness constituted an obstacle to
his freedom. In Fanon we find a tension between dis-identification
with a prescribed identity (slave, blackness as understood by the
white) and identification with a masculine identity expressed through
force and violence (that of a soldier). Fanons politics of reparation
never addressed the modalities of the devoir de memoire,516 of
making amends for past wrongs. The defeat of the oppressor and the
birth of a new society were the revenge for a present of denial. In the
same way Fanon identified himself with the excluded, the rejected,
the despised who is willing to die for the sake of the present and of
515 Laplanche and Pontalis 1973: 205 - 208
516 This was a title o f an interview with Primo Levi, conducted in 1989. Levi, a saved from Auschwitz,
warned us against a memory which runs adrift and reorganizes the past to fit our present.
386
the future.517 Thus for Fanon reparation means here the ability to say
no to an extrinsically constructed identity - it is a form of a psychic
repair. Freedom, for which Fanon fought at great cost, is still being
sought as a matter of the inner economy of the individual.518
As important as this way of looking at reparation is, I believe
that addressing the modalities of the devoir de memoire, of making
amends for the past wrong is an important component to the healing
of the continent both psychologically and economically. It is a way of
acknowledging that what happens to me belongs to an order of things
that have bearing on the history of humanity. So here we believe that
slavery was not an accident, the result of a moment of madness, but
a signifying act of human beings.519 Africans were not enslaved
because Europeans were mad or were the embodiment of evil.
Neither was it because Africans were said to belong to another order
of the living. For, if ontologically, the slave is made closer to the state
of animality than to the state of humanity, the ethical and theological

sis Franfoise Verges, The Politics of Reparation in Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives. Edited by
Anthony C. Alessandrini, p.270
519 Ibid. p.270
387
problems inherent to its subjugation are ignored.520 What we have

just said about slavery applies as much to colonialism, apartheid,
ethnic genocide, and tyrants, and this brings forth the difficulties of
thinking what constitutes reparation. Here the existential question
becomes: what is our debt to the past? The fundamental question
becomes: What constitutes reparation, is it a financial compensation
or a symbolic recognition?
In his search to understand the problem of reparation, Fabien
Eboussi-Boulaga proposed an ethical ide n tity w hereby the
sufferings of the ancestors are seen as being incorporated into ones
construction of identity.521 As such, whatever happened to ones
ancestors is transferred to oneself. It is not about carrying a moral
burden, making ones own the crimes and sins of the ancestors, but
of recognizing ones debts and knowing why one is where one is. For
example it is believed that one of the reasons why Africa has been by
passed over in almost everything is because of both slave trade and
colonialism. Slave trade removed the most productive people from
Africa to build the European and Am erican economies, while
520 Cf. Florence Burget, Esclave et propriete, in L Homme 145 (January - March 1998) p. 19
521 See Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga, La Crise duMuntu: Authenticite Africaine etphilosophie. Presence
Africaine, Dakar, 1977
388
colonialism drained primary products to feed the European industries.

By being removed from their history, being enslaved and brutally
exploited, Africans were limited and prevented from building their own
future and having the possibility of living a life of dignity and decency.
Compensation here tries to assert the value we place on human life
in the past, in the present and in the future as well. In other words it is
an ethical issue.
Slave trade expressed itself in three basic ways that slave trade
expresses itself, namely: the destruction of moral life, of human
culture and of human possibilities. With regard to destruction of
human life, estimates run as high as ten to a hundred million persons
killed individually and collectively in brutal and vicious ways. The
destruction of culture includes the destruction of centers, products
and producers of culture and the destruction of human possibilities for
a redefinition of African humanity to the world. It means poisoning our
minds about the past, the present and the future relations with others
who only know the Africans through this stereotyping, thus making
impossible truly human relations among peoples. This involved
tearing Africans out of their own history, making them a footnote, a
389
forgotten casualty in European history, limiting and denying their

ability to speak their own cultural truth to the world and make their
own unique contribution to the forward flow of human history.
This is the reason why reparation should be more than
receiving payment but should include the healing and repairing of
the world relations and views. In this way reparation becomes a
matter of justice and an urgent need for that matter.522 Slavery as well
as colonialism are crimes against humanity and as such need to be
repaired by those who commit these crimes. In order for this to take
place in a healing way there should be firstly a sincere admission by
those who committed the crimes and, if this is not possible as in the
case of the slave trade, by the people who have enriched themselves
as a result of these crimes against humanity. It was really refreshing
to hear the German authoritys public admission in connection with
the Jewish question. There is a relationship between the present day
condition of blacks and the historical facts that have brought them to
where they are. Slavery and colonialism debilitated a whole continent
psychologically, socially and economically. These consequences
522 See Financial Times, 3 September 2001
390
have stayed with the blacks inter-generationally through the twentieth

century.523 This needs to be understood and acknowledged by those
who have profited and continue to profit from the exploitation of the
past.
The second thing that has to take place is the public apology,
where the content of the apology is determined greatly by the victims.
Thirdly, the public must be made aware of the horrors and the
sufferings that took place during the time these evils took place. This
can be accomplished by making the topic of Slavery and colonialism
one of the topics to be taught to all students in all levels of education,
and also through concrete reminders such as monuments and public
parks dedicated to the victims of the horrors. Teaching these things to
the children will guarantee the preservation of the memory of the
horror for humanity as a whole. This will also make it possible to
cultivate a never again mentality where each and every individual
will be able, at least theoretically, to acknow ledge the mere
whitewashing of that situation. This will lead to a commitment to
continue the struggle to establish m easures to prevent the
523 See Payback time in Guardian 11 August, 2001
391
occurrence of such massive destruction of human life, culture and

human possibilities.
What we have discussed above concerning reparation will be
incom plete w ithout looking at the place and the necessity of
compensation. Compensation involves a multidimensional demand.
It is important that this demand address the problems that are facing
Africa at present. The first thing that needs to be looked at is
education. Part of compensation should be in line with the possibility
to establish schools and research centers on the African continent.
One of the ways this could be done could be through the twinning of
European Universities with some African centers of learning. But, and
a big but at that, the relationship should not be one of a patronizing
liaison.
Another area to be looked at concerns the infrastructures:
roads, railways and the whole system of transportation. The need for
better infrastructure system in Africa is for the sake of waking Africa
from its economic torpor. Taken as a whole, Africa is potentially rich.
As we have seen above, the continent has enorm ous natural
resources, and neither centuries of super exploitation by the
392
dom inant countries nor chronic domestic mismanagement have

exhausted them. Africa is rich and yet the vast majority of Africans
are poor, and an increasing number are sliding into abject poverty. It
is my belief that by improving infrastructures on the continent, we will
be able to develop towards the actualization of the African potentials.
Debt cancellation should also form part and parcel of this
compensation endeavor. These debts are the most crushing burden
to most of the least developed countries. Debt cancellation, if done in
a right way, will help to restore the health of Africas economies. The
surplus, instead of servicing the external debts, can be used to
finance development projects for the protection of the environment
and for human resource developm ent. This w ill help in the
development of natural resources as well. This should be done in this
comprehensive way simply because the compensation is not simply
for lost labor, but for the comprehensive injury: the brutal destruction
of human lives, human cultures and human possibilities. By
concentrating on education and infrastructures, we try to reverse the
happenings by helping people to create their own cultures and be
393
able to fulfill their possibilities. The only thing we can not reverse is
the fact that there was a lot lost, many lives.
So, reparations are a moral obligation of the nations that
profited from the suffering of the oppressed. These reparations make
it possible for the oppressor to make up for the particular world of
violence introduced by him and secondly it will make it possible for
him to make up for the history of Western European exploitation of
the third world. Another reason that the Western world needs to look
at for pumping material compensation into the third world economy is
the fact that, if the third world is choked and is unable to import goods
and services from the first world, eventually the international
commerce will suffer the loss of a strong overseas market.
So, here we are. We have moved from the search for liberation
to the possibility of living a fully humanized life. We have concluded
that education should be at the center of our humanizing endeavors.
394
CONCLUSION:
For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades, we must turn
over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new
man. Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth, p.316
The above quote is how Fanon ends The Wretched o f the

Earth, the people who were at the center of our study; on a salutary
note of inclusion and renewal. In his works Fanon exposes the Wests
hypocrisy or bad faith.524 He dismantles the W ests claim to universal
rights by revealing the everyday violence and injustice that the west
had to uphold in its endeavor as a colonial power. According to
Fanon, the problem of the United States of America was that she
tried to imitate and decided to catch up with Europe. As a result of
this imitation and the decision to catch up with Europe, Fanon tells
us, the United States of America has inherited the inhumanity of
Europe. The solution for Fanon is for the Third W orld to come
together and create a new man whom Europe has been incapable of
524 Leave this Europe where they are talking o f Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the
corner o f every one o f their own streets, in all the corners o f the globe. The Wretched o f the Earth, p.311
395
bringing to triumphant birth.525 This is prepared, as said above, by

the fact that colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the
question: Who am I in reality? The answer to this question has
come in a form of Fanons biography which has revealed to us the
illusions of assimilation.
For Fanon, this work of creating a new man comes via
the work of decolonization. For Fanon, decolonization works in two
directions. The colonized must be freed from the problems created by
an alien rule and at the same time the colonizers must be freed from
the consequences that the colonizing project has left on their
consciousness. With this in mind, Sartre in his preface to The
Wretched o f the Earth would write: The people of Europe are also
being decolonized...Let us look at ourselves if we have the courage,
and see what is happening to us. We must face up to that
unexpected spectacle: the striptease of our humanism.526
Today the work of colonialism can be seen in the
globalizing projects of the W estern world. For one thing, the
economic antidotes for inequality and poverty, as prescribed by the
525 ibid, p.313
526 Ibid. p.27
396
IMF and the World Bank, for example, have the feel of the colonial
ruler, in the words of Joseph Stiglitz, the World Banks former senior
vice present and chief economist.527 The granting of loans becomes
an enforcement of policy that rapidly reproduces dual, unequal
economies worldwide. But as we learn from the said Joseph Stiglitz,
a dual economy is not a developed economy. This instance of
global economic duality reminds us of Fanons celebrated description
of the manicheanized structure of colonial society. For Fanon,
d e co lo n iza tio n
can
only
be
achieved
by
destroying
this
Manicheanism. In this line, then, we can easily ask a current

question: what pressures does the Manicheanism of the war on terror
impose on the present World order?
Fanon has often been described as a preacher of the
gospel of hate and violence. He certainly had ability for hate and he
certainly advocated for a violence that may seem to others no longer
indefensible. But yet what we sense in his work and life is a great
sense of generosity. In Fanon we find, then, a generosity of spirit and
anger. This can be attested to through both his writings and his life.
527 See Homi K. Bhabha. Is Franz Fanon Still Relevant? in The Chronicle o f Higher Education, March,
2005.
397
Faithful to the existentialist movement of his day, Fanon

in his introduction to Black Skin, White Masks writes: man is a
yes.528 This universalistic look at man is really at the center of why
the yes happened to be of decisive importance to Fanon. Since
man is a yes any existential condition that inhibits him from making
this yes a reality in his life is a violent situation. So, Fanon finds
colonialism and neo-colonialism to be conditions of impossibility for
becoming human. In the final chapter of the same work Fanon picks
up the same argument: Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity.
But man is also a no. No to scorn of man. No to degradation of man.
No to the Exploitation of man. No to the butchery of what is most
human about man: freedom.529 Thus, the question that is asked
today in certain intellectual circles concerning the relevance of Fanon
is answered in these passages. Fanon is not dead. Today it is still
relevant to say yes to life and also to say no to whatever would
destroy it. Thus Fanon tells us in the opening sentence of his essay
528 Black Skin, White Masks. P.8

398
On National Culture, Each generation must out of relative obscurity

discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.530
Fanon was angry at the casual racism that still assumes that
the black is a criminal or at least very likely to be so. Fanon was
angry at the cultural alienation that still afflicts the people of Africa.
Fanon was angry that the wretched are still with us. His readers
should still be angry too. True, anger does not in itself produce
political programmes for change, but it is perhaps the most basic
political emotion. Without it, there is no hope. But yet still we need to
go beyond anger. This is one of the reasons why Fanon encouraged
his listeners to take up action against what was inhuman in peoples
relationships. The examination of these alienating conditions racism, colonialism, neocolonialism in the form of globalization - has
been the core of this dissertation.
As rational beings, we cannot evade the task of judging how
things are and what needs to be done. It is not so much a matter of
having exact rules about how precisely we ought to behave, as of
recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the
399
choices we face. This is also a question of responsibility. There is an

am biguous
relationship
between
inter-dependency and self
dependency. In my search to solve this am biguity between

interdependency and self-dependency I have argued for the need for
social support as a way of encouraging individual responsibility rather
than for hand outs which would only encourage dependence. I
believe this is what is at the center of Am artya Sens work,
D evelopm ent as Freedom. Fanons demand for an equitable
distribution of wealth and technology which should go beyond the
rhetoric of moral reparation is similar to todays calls for a right to
development.
400
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VIOLENCE AND LIBERATION - FANON'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANIZATION IN THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM A Dissertation by Simon John Makuru PDF

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VIOLENCE AND LIBERATION - FANON'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANIZATION IN THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM A Dissertation by Simon John Makuru PDF

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VIOLENCE AND LIBERATION: FANONS POLITICAL

Simon John Makuru

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

UMI N um ber: 3167363

All rights reserved.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company

Copyright by SIMON JOHN MAKURU

FANOUT'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANIZATION IN THE

submitted to the Department of:

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of:

Violence and Liberation: Fanons Political Philosophy of

investment in an Africanized education is a key to a way towards humanization.

Chapter I : Fanons Life and W ork-The Price of Commitment

The Blockade and Overt Racism

Algeria and Beyond

Hospital Work: Dr. Fanon

Chapter II: The Problem of Alienation

Fanons Historical Anthropology

Marx on Historical Alienation

Fanons Understanding of Alienation

a. How language becomes an Instrument o f alienation 165

d. The need for Decolonization

Chapter III: Paths to Freedom for the Colonized

The Mechanism of Avoidance

Negritude as a Humanizing Method

ii. The core of Negritude - Blyden as a Model

iii. The Subjective Necessity of Negritude

iv. The Objective Failings of Negritude

ii.What it means to take up action against colonial violence250

b. Technology: The Radio

iii. Positive outcome to this Action Taking

iv. The New Nation

v. Marxism and African National Building

C h ap ter IV: From Violence to Freedom - The Invention of a

B. In Search of a Post-Imperialist Society

ii. The African Situation

iii. Globalization as Neo-Colonialism

C. In Search of an Africanized System of Education

D. The Importance o f Reparations for a Humanized World

I owe special gratitude to Professor Oliva Blanchette who has

Black Skin, White Masks

Towards African Revolution

The Wretched of the Earth

can be established but only through the knowledge that it is only

permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

knowledge but yet by the virtue of that limitation we are signaled to

W here did Africa go wrong in her search for a humanized

which yielded two powerful and influential statements of anti-colonial

4 The Wretched o f the Earth, p.10

the majority of the worlds inhabitants. Nonetheless, Sartre exhorts

historical explanation, written to educate his brothers7 about the

recognition of social and economic realities.10 In the same spirit,

sufferings of a people are the motivating factors behind this work.

psychological law. For Fanon, the psychology of racism is caused by

15 Black Skin, White Masks, p.202

complexity of his work which is also indicated by the number of

17 cf. Black Skin White Masks, p.l 10

oppressive and redundant social systems. It is also feasible to

influences. Since influences are so great in number it is not surprising

Fanon was a man of thought, but also a man of action who