porthotel.blogg.se - On violence franz fanon summary

Educated within the colonial system, they seek assimilation.

In fact, even the way that Fanon chooses to articulate this very point is in the style of that great German Idealist.įanon says that there are roughly three stages for the development of a colonized intellectual. What is obvious by this point in the book though, to anyone with the right background, is that Fanon has already been engaged in a struggle against his own European intellectual, Hegel. Secondly, that it must first and foremost come through real practice and struggle in the movement and not merely through intellectual games. Firstly, the revolutionary consciousness of the national liberation movement can only be discovered in the active struggle with and through the consciousness of the colonizers. On page 160 of my copy, which I believe is the popular version ( downloadable here), Fanon says, “Seeking to stick to tradition or reviving neglected traditions is not only going against history, but against one’s people.” This is in a section about the intellectuals within the movement for national liberation, which we can no doubt assume Fanon considers himself to be. Once this break has happened, there is no “going back.”

The culture of the nation is brought to a screeching halt and forced sideways off into paths it would have never seen with its own eyes. There is, so to speak, a death which occurs once the colonists have taken over. A point emphasized throughout, but perhaps formulated most clearly in chapter 4, “On National Culture,” is that post-colonial civilization is not the same as pre-colonial civilization.

In many ways, the general project of “Wretched” seems to be to establish the foundations for a post-colonization “Man” (in the sense of Humanity) and, more than anything, to trace the steps that consciousness (both individual and collective) takes along its path towards that goal. In place of that, I offer a loose collection of thoughts about the work. To do that would require probably a short book in itself (one I’m sure some other author has already brought into existence), but things are far too lively in the world to dedicate myself to such a task. Or, at the very least, I have not seen it analyzed accurately or in any of the ways I think do justice to the work. And yet, despite its ubiquity, I have not seen it really talked about. His analysis is at that perfect intersection between general and comprehensive so as to remain applicable at almost all times. Fanon writes so clearly and with such style that it is hard not to be drawn in. Reading it for the first time, it was clear why. Frantz Fanon’s 1961 masterpiece has remained central to conversations about race, revolution, and national liberation even up to the modern day. Few works are as widely celebrated and recommended within decolonial circles as The Wretched of the Earth.