Assignment Paper :- 22408: Paper 203: The Postcolonial Studies
Name :- Aarti Bhupatbhai Sarvaiya
Batch :- M.A. Sem. 3 (2022-2024)
Enrollment N/o. :- 4069206420220027
Roll N/o. :- 01
Subject Code & Paper N/o. :- 22408: Paper 203: The Postcolonial Studies
Email Address :- aartisarvaiya7010@gmail.com
Submitted to :- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English – Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University – Bhavnagar – 364001
Date of Submission :- 1 December , 2023
Violence in 'The Wretched of the Earth'
Introduction :-
"The Wretched of the Earth" is a seminal work by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and revolutionary writer. Published in 1961, the book explores the psychological and social effects of colonisation on the colonised people, delving into the dehumanising impact of imperialism. Fanon analyses the dynamics of colonialism and the psychological implications for both the colonisers and the colonised. His insights on violence, decolonization, and the quest for national liberation have had a profound influence on post-colonial studies and liberation movements.
About the Writer :-
Frantz Omar Fanon was a Francophone Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, political philosopher, and Marxist from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have become influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As well as being an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, Pan-Africanist, and Marxist humanist concerned with the psychopathology of colonisation and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.
In the course of his work as a physician and psychiatrist, Fanon supported the Algerian War of independence from France and was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. Fanon has been described as "the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time". For more than five decades, the life and works of Fanon have inspired national liberation movements and other freedom and political movements in Palestine, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the United States. He formulated a model for community psychology, believing that many mental health patients would do better if they were integrated into their family and community instead of being treated with institutionalised care. He also helped found the field of institutional psychotherapy while working at Saint-Alban under Francois Tosquelles and Jean Oury.
About the Novel :-
Through critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as coloniser and colonised, to teach and psychologically mould the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution. Fanon proposes that revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to effect the expulsion of the colonists. In traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariat are the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat—especially criminals, vagrants and the unemployed—people who lack the class consciousness to participate in the socialist revolution.
Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to the colonial subjects who are not involved in industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the working class), the lumpenproletariat has sufficient intellectual independence from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class, ready to grasp that they can revolt against the colonial status quo and so decolonize their nation. One of the essays included in "The Wretched of the Earth" is "On National Culture", in which Fanon highlights the necessity for each generation to discover its mission and fight for it.
'Racism and Violence' in 'The Wretched of the Earth ' :-
In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon critiques the alienating imperialist power of colonisation and lays out the dialectical progression for the colonised to achieve liberation. The book is also Fanon's most controversial work, because in the first chapter he argues that total decolonization cannot be attained without violence . Fanon saw violence as the only language colonisers truly understand. Through violence, imperialists instilled a sense of inferiority in the colonised, and it was therefore through violence that the colonised could regain a sense of self, a sense of culture, and the physical reality of statehood. From the privilege of ethical idealism, it is easy to criticise Fanon for his support of violence, much like Malcolm X was criticised; however, violence often seems less necessary to those not subjugated by it.
In his later life, Fanon became deeply involved in the Pan-Africanist movement, eventually becoming an anti-French Algerian emissary to Ghana and other African countries. It was in Ghana that Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. He initially sought treatment in the Soviet Union and eventually the United States. In 1961, under the pseudonym "Ibrahim Fanon," Fanon passed away in Bethesda, Maryland. Shortly before his death, he dictated the last chapter of The Wretched of the Earth. His body was buried in Martyrs' Graveyard in El Taref Province in northeastern Algeria.
Although it has been almost 60 years since his death, Fanon's writings remain relevant for their insight into the ontological traumas of racial discrimination and the psychiatric consequences of race-based violence.
In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon discusses the well-known crimes of European colonialism, he mentions the massacres committed by the colonial authorities: 45,000 killed at Setif in Algeria in 1945; 90,000 in Madagascar in 1947; whole villages in Algeria wiped out in response to the killing of one or two Frenchmen. This "violence in the colonies," Sartre comments, "does not only have for its aim the keeping of these enslaved men [the natives] at arm's length; it seeks to dehumanise them" (1963, 13). In order to justify their violence in the colonies, Fanon suggests that the colonial authorities depict a distorted polarised image of the colonised peoples. He goes on to say that Native society is not essentially depicted as a society lacking in values. It is not sufficient for the colonists to assert that those values have vanished from, or never existed within, the colonial world. The native is pronounced morally absent; he does not only speak of the absence of values, but also of their invalidation. He is, let us confess, the adversary of values, and in this sense he is unbridled evil. (1963, 33-34).
The values of the natives are thus degraded compared to the values of the settlers. The customs, traditions, myths, and even the religion of the colonised people are to be considered as the very sign of the poverty of spirit. Thus, "the colonial world is a Manichean world" (Fanon 1963, 33). In this world the good settler is considered to represent values, while the bad native represents the negation of values. The native is considered evil in the shape of a human being.
While colonialism establishes its powerful authority by facilitating or imposing the existence of a conflictual atmosphere among the tribes and regions, the native's violence unifies these tribes and regions to face one enemy. It thus constructs a national consciousness.Furthermore, violence during the period of resistance struggle has its own significance at the individual level. Violence is cleansing and restorative: it ends the native's inferiority complex and restores his self-respect. This is one of the reasons why, for Fanon, "decolonisation is the veritable creation of new men"
(1963, 30). Through violence, the thing that has been colonised becomes a man who can face his enemies. Thus, "to shoot down a European," Sartre comments,
"is to kill two birds with one stone" (1963, 18). Violence destroys the oppressor and at the same time the fear of the oppressed.
It is clear that Frantz Fanon has presented many justifications for the violence in the colonial context. He spotlighted the role of violence as an inevitable means of resistance in the colonial context. For him, violence is to represent a reaction to the violence of the coloniser practised in the colonised country. Moreover, it is the most effective strategy of resistance, forcing the colonial power to negotiate and giving the colonised the opportunity to speak. It is to be regarded as an outlet for the native’s anger from the unfair treatment imposed upon him by the colonial power. Then he goes further to claim that violence in the colonial context is to unify the diverse native elements of the society to resist the colonial existence, and it helps in ending the complex of the native's inadequacy as well as it reestablishes the colonised self-respect. Furthermore, it creates the conceivable results of opening transactions and negotiations that lead to freedom.
Conclusion :-
Frantz Fanon's legacy endures through his seminal work, "The Wretched of the Earth," where he controversially advocates for violence as a necessary tool in the decolonization process. He contends that violence, as a response to colonial oppression, not only serves as a means of resistance but also restores the dignity and self-respect of the colonised. Fanon's analysis of the dehumanising tactics employed by colonial powers sheds light on the ontological traumas of racial discrimination. Despite the ethical critiques of his stance on violence, Fanon's insights into the psychological consequences of colonisation and the imperative for resistance remain relevant, providing a profound understanding of the complexities inherent in the struggle for liberation.
Word Count :- 1580
Images :- 02
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