NAME : Mahida Bhumika Prakashbhai
M A Sem - 3
ROLL NUMBER : 4
ENROLLMENT NUMBER :3069206420200021
SUBJECT : Paper 203 The Postcolonial Studies
ASSIGNMENT TOPIC :The wretched of the earth as psychological novel
Introduction:
Frantz Omar Fanon, also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique. His works have become influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism.Frantz Fanon, in full Frantz Omar Fanon,West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher known for his theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation of colonial peoples. His critiques influenced subsequent generations of thinkers and activists.
The Wretched of the earth
The Wretched of the Earth is Frantz Fanon’s seminal discussion of decolonization in Africa, especially Algeria. Over the course of five chapters, Fanon covers a wide range of topics, including patterns in how the colonized overthrow the colonist, how newly independent countries form national and cultural consciousness, and the overall effect of colonialism on the psychology of men and women in colonized countries. Fanon’s discussion is both theoretical and journalistic. That is, he both reports on events in the recent history of decolonization, and theorizes what these events mean or could mean philosophically.
In Chapter 1, “On Violence,” Fanon introduces the colonial world as one that is divided into the colonist and the colonized. These identities are created by the colonist in order to assert his own superiority. The colonist maintains this hierarchy through violence by police and soldiers, and in turn, it is only through violence that the colonized can re-assert their own humanity. Decolonization is a violent process not only of overthrowing a colonial government, but of freeing the colonized from the mindset imposed upon them. At first, this anticolonial violence is sporadic, usually irrupting spontaneously in the rural areas of a colonized country. But in time, as violence awakens the masses to the injustices of colonialism, more and more fight back and soon the colonized people as a whole begin to fight colonialism.
During this stage of decolonization, as Fanon discusses in Chapter 2, the colonized may form a number of political organizations. The colonized elites in urban areas—intellectuals and owners of businesses—may form political parties, but these tend to ignore the needs and desires of the colonized in rural areas, where the majority of the colonized population actually lives. Similarly, the colonized workers in cities may unionize and stage strikes in order to improve their working conditions, but this, too, is limited and does not include the rural masses. The true revolution is eventually led by the masses who have discovered that, through violence, they can liberate their souls at the same time that they fight colonial oppression.
In Chapter 3, Fanon discusses how these different groups—the urban elite, urban workers, and rural fighters—get together to form a nation after independence from the colonists. Unfortunately, the nation does not just automatically cohere after independence. In fact, businessmen and landowners often try to grab for more power after independence, seeking to overtake the positions previously held by the colonists instead of eliminating such hierarchical positions of power altogether. They re-create colonial situations in the decolonized nation. Protesting against this pattern, Fanon calls for the education of people across the entire nation so that they may come together for rational discussion and debate about the future of the nation.
After this largely narrative discussion in chapters 1–3, which goes from life under colonialism to the fight against colonialism to establishing a nation after colonialism, Fanon approaches things more thematically in Chapters 4–5. Chapter 4 is about national “culture,” and how intellectuals relate to culture under colonialism and while fighting colonialism. Fanon tracks a trajectory among intellectuals, who move from wanting to mimic European culture, to claiming the superiority of African culture, to, finally, contributing to the national fight against colonization. For Fanon, culture must be a part of the fight for nationalism.
In Chapter 5, Fanon draws upon his research as a psychiatrist in Algeria in the 1950s to describe the psychological disorders colonialism produces in both the colonist and the colonized. Because colonialism teaches the colonized that they are evil and even subhuman, the colonized are always questioning reality, leading to a number of psychoses including depression and anxiety disorders. At the same time, because the colonial world is a violent world, people living in it may have post-traumatic disorders in which they develop homicidal tendencies or are predisposed to psychotic breaks. Refugees, those who have been sent to internment camps, and those who have been tortured also exhibit a number of psychological symptoms. Fanon concludes by arguing that getting rid of colonialism will get rid of the source of these neuroses and pathologies, and therefore will liberate the “personality” of man in addition to his nation.
As a psychological novel :
Fanon argued that colonized people could only be freed from their degradation by purging all aspects of European culture from their societies. ... Sartre's preface to the Wretched of the Earth constitutes an endorsement of Fanon's point of view by the most important and influential philosopher of the 20th Century.
Fanon argued that colonized people could only be freed from their degradation by purging all aspects of European culture from their societies. He advocated a “collective catharsis” driven by violence directed at European colonizers and their collaborators. Fanon argued that a nation had to achieve its own cultural, social and political maturity before achieving national liberation. He pointed to the history of the United States as an example of a failed revolution because the colonies had retained the cultural and political traditions of the British. The Wretched of the Earth captures the far-reaching ravages of colonization, from the economic, to the political, to the cultural, to the psychological and describes the rage of Third World people’s against their brutalization by European and American imperialists.
Fanon’s “Conclusion” to The Wretched of the Earth is an appeal for transformation among former colonial subjects. He advocates the rejection of European culture and politics which he argues that brought humanity to “atomic and spiritual disintegration.” Fanon looks to the victims of imperialism and colonization to restructure human relationships: “It is a question of the Third World starting a new history of Man.”He rejects European militarism and conquest saying “humanity is waiting for something from us other than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature.” Fanon presents us with a moral imperative to invent and carry out a new direction for humanity.
Sartre’s preface to the Wretched of the Earth constitutes an endorsement of Fanon’s point of view by the most important and influential philosopher of the 20th Century. Sartre’s endorsement of Fanon’s call for a violent purge of European culture from Africa was echoed by Simone de Beauvoir, without question the most important feminist philosopher of the 20th century, and Albert Camus, the great French author, playwright and philosopher. Sartre’s willingness to publicly associate himself with Fanon’s revolutionary ideology was certainly not a surprise. Sartre had publicly supported the Algerian revolution and was blamed by the French military for their defeat. The French commander in Algeria said he could have dealt with guerrillas and terrorists, but not even the French army could defeat Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s disdain for convention was illustrated by his refusal in 1964 to accept the Nobel Prize for literature.
Sartre fought in the French Army in World War II and was held for several years by the Nazis as a prisoner of war. Upon his return to France he was an active leader of the French resistance. Sartre’s philosophy stresses individual freedom, human dignity and social responsibility. Freedom, Sartre argued, is a tool for human struggle and social responsibility. People have an ethical responsibility to fight against oppression and injustice.A failure to do so strips an individual of his or her humanity and freedom and makes them nothing more than another oppressor.
The importance of Sartre and Fanon’s collaboration lies in their recognition of the enormous violence and pain inflicted by the economically and politically powerful on the less privileged and, in particular, the colonized. Sartre, Camus and De Beauvoir argued powerfully in their writings that people have a responsibility to shed their own comfort and safety and act in the interests of humanity. Of course, the classic statement by all three authors was that French citizens who chose to hide in their homes and protect their families rather than engage in violent acts of resistance toward the Nazis, were, in fact, nothing more than Nazis themselves.Sartre’s preface to The Wretched of the Earth, even though it is 50 years old, has a strong resonance in an era of globalization, and should cause the privileged of the United States and Western Europe to take careful inventory of their own humanity and morality.
Ignorance is one of the “costs” and a predictable consequence of “American privilege.” Considering the question of how much we know or do not know also leads us to reflect back on the issue of the power of the corporate media to control a great deal of what we are exposed to, that is, of “what” we see and do not see, of “how” we see it, and consequently, of what we “know.”
References
Fanon, Frantz (2004) [1961]. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Philcox, Richard. With a foreword by Bhabha, Homi K. and a preface by Sartre, Jean-Paul. New York: Grove Press.
Homi Bhabha's 2004 foreword p. xxi; Franz Fanon (2004), The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press.
Nielsen, Cynthia R. (30 July 2013). "Frantz Fanon and the Négritude Movement: How Strategic Essentialism Subverts Manichean Binaries". Callaloo. 36 (2): 342–352.
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