![]() ![]() 36) -that simultaneously bound the people together in an expression of national solidarity in which all are implicated in the struggle. Individually and collectively, anticolonial violence for Fanon was an act of rebirth - “the veritable creation of new men ” (Fanon 1963, p. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect ” (Fanon 1963, p. In the movement, led by the FLN, to redirect this violence toward the colonizer, Fanon conceived of a way to construct and affirm a positive political identity infused with a national consciousness liberated from the colonized mindset: “At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. Fanon observed that Algerians were indeed violent under colonial rule, but this violence was directed toward other Algerians as an expression of self-hatred in which “black-on-black ” violence represented a futile effort to negate the dehumanized identity imposed upon them. To Fanon, this latter aim was fundamental because institutional independence from the colonizer would mean little if the people remained psychologically trapped within a self-image as colonized, dehumanized objects. True liberation could only arrive when the binary categories of white and black were destroyed, expunged from the earth.įanon believed that anticolonial violence was required in order to achieve two intimately connected objectives: the expulsion of the colonizer and the mental “decolonization ” of native Algerians. The two were as opposed as white and black in fact, they were white and black, and no middle ground or negotiated withdrawal was possible if the colonized were to ever be truly liberated. This view of colonialism reflected Fanon ’s Manichean understanding of the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized. According to Fanon, they were all complicit in some way and thus all subject to anticolonial violence. Absolute violence meant that no meaningful distinction was to be made between the French civilian settlers in Algeria and the French police and military forces. Since violence fundamentally defined the colonizing society ’s existence, only “absolute violence ” could get the colonizers ’ attention. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence ” (Fanon 1963, p. ![]() Colonialism, he explains, is “not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. In it, Fanon argues that anticolonialism must be revolutionary rather than reformist. He resigned his post at the hospital in 1957, unable to tolerate working for the colonial administration any longer.įanon ’s clearest and most thorough articulation of his views on colonialist and anticolonialist violence can be found in the chapter “Concerning Violence ” in The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, his last work before his death. His experiences treating the sufferings of Algerians and witnessing this explosion of violent anticolonialism led Fanon to join the nationalist movement and advocate for the Algerian revolution as a militant activist and writer. On November 1, 1954, leaders of the embryonic Algerian national movement, known as the Front de Lib ération Nationale (FLN), began the armed struggle for independence with violent attacks against French military and civilian targets, thereby rejecting the path of negotiation and compromise that had been followed to this point. ![]() He thus gained first-hand knowledge of the damage that colonialism inflicted on the minds and bodies of African people. Beyond the hospital walls, Fanon saw how the constant presence of French police stations and military barracks conveyed to the Algerians the clear message that they were little more than animals, to be beaten, dehumanized, and contained for the sake of colonial interests. Some of these French torturers were also his patients, and by working with them Fanon learned how the “disease ” of colonialism also infected the mind of the colonizer. Most of his psychiatric patients were native Algerians, many suffering from the mental and physical turmoil of colonial degradation, including the experience of torture at the hands of French interrogators. He was born in Martinique and trained in France, later working in a hospital in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, under the auspices of the French colonial administration. For Fanon, violence was both the poison of colonialism and its antidote.įanon arrived at this view on violence largely through his work as a psychiatrist. According to the Martinican author and political theorist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), violence fundamentally defined the meaning and practice of colonialism, and as such violence was central to the effort to resist and overthrow colonial rule.
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