Fanon and Violence

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (originally published in 1961) is an enlightening and yet deeply troubling book. In advocating for the sort of things progressive and liberal readers support – an end to colonialism, growth of authentic national culture – he also advocates for ideas and tactics that leave those readers rather queasy – violence, nationalism, and in some readings, even racial separatism. It can be tempting to cherry pick the safe ideas from Fanon and, for example, embrace his views on culture while rejecting those on violence or to dismiss him as a product of his times, whose ideas might have been new and necessary at the time but many of which are sadly outdated and dangerous in our more enlightened times. Both of these approaches do him a disservice, and a more honest reading of Fanon would attempt to at least comprehend, if not embrace the more troubling facets of his work. While many readers may choose to reject some of his views, it is possible to give them a careful consideration without relegating them to the dustbin of history.

The Wretched of the Earth was written in the midst of the last years of the Algerian War, a remarkably bloody conflict in which both sides engaged in torture and killing of civilians. Estimates vary, but most scholars agree that nearly a million people died in Algeria during eight years of fighting which was marred with terrorist violence. An additional 5,000 died on French soil, in bombings or assassinations. Throughout this period Fanon was a psychiatrist. He treated both torturers and their victims, which granted him a unique view of the events. Fanon was also a veteran of WWII, and in fact served in Algeria, though he did not actually meet any Algerians until after the war in Lyon, France. His military service allowed him a personal view of the racism of the French military, where there was not only a separation between white and black soldiers, but further between black African and Caribbean soldiers, the Caribbean soldiers being considered better than the Africans, who were not even permitted to wear the standard French uniform (Macey, 2000, 93). All this helped shape his views and is important to know when attempting to understand the views Fanon puts forth in Wretched of the Earth.

One of the core propositions in Wretched of the Earth is that there is no possibility for middle ground in a struggle against colonialism. Fanon writes, “’It’s them or us’ is not a paradox since colonialism, as we have seen, [it] is precisely the organization of a Manichean world, of a compartmentalized world” (Fanon, 2004, 43). There is no possibility, for Fanon, of a compromise to end the struggle. Algerian nationalists were attempting to create an actual country, independent from and unattached to France. As such they rejected not only full integration with France, but also the option of self-government while attached to France as proposed by De Gaulle (Fanon, 2004, 62). In this context, Fanon’s assertion that “there is no conciliation possible, one of them is superfluous” (Fanon, 2004, 4) leads directly to his views on the acceptability and utility of violence. He describes the difference between the sectors of the colonist and the colonized, with the colonists being isolated quite literally from the natural environment in a clean, paved, sector with a “belly permanently full of good things” (Fanon, 2004, 4). The colonized sector, in contrast, is disreputable, chaotic, lacking in personal space, and permanently famished. The two worlds are mutually exclusive, in the literal sense that the colonized people are only allowed into the colonized sector as low-wage, oppressed laborers, and the colonizers never venture into the colonized sector unless they are police (or, conceivably, on a charity mission). A colonized people are never permitted to lead fully human lives. Fanon describes the envy and fear that this system creates. Fear within the colonizers realizing that the natives only want to replace them and envy within the colonized whom indeed aspire to replace their colonizers with themselves.

Fanon’s views on violence are a result of the inherent opposition between the colonizer and the colonized. He says that the “government’s agents use a language of pure violence” in dealing with the colonized peoples (Fanon, 2004, 4). Because of this, violence becomes not only a sensible recourse, but also the only possible recourse in most situations. Because they inhabit such vastly different sectors, the only communication possible between the colonized and the colonizers is violence. The colonial authorities speak to the native population through violence, and should they wish to reply rather than just passively accept, the colonized people have to reply through violence of their own. In explaining why the Algerian people were not upset by the blatant violence of the FLN’s rhetoric, Fanon points back to the violence of the colonial regime, which started the dialogue of violence with the act of colonization: “It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence” (Fanon, 2004, 23). Violence is the only possible form of communication with the forces of colonialism.

Fanon’s biographer Macey points out that attempting to blame Fanon for advocating or instigating violence borders on the ridiculous because the process of colonization itself was so violent and because the FLN was already engaging in acts of violence long before Fanon wrote the section of Wretched of the Earth entitled “On Violence.” He is describing a relationship and form of communication already in motion, rather than advocating new violence. Perhaps from a conflict resolution standpoint we might chide Fanon, in his position of education, rationality and relative privilege, for not advocating less violent solutions and communication but this would equate our own privilege with his and be an obtuse reading of his project.

It is important to note that Wretched of the Earth was written not only before the recognition of Algerian independence, but while Fanon was dying of leukemia. Because of his haste to complete it before he died, portions of the work are poorly researched and much of it is recycled from other works and speeches. Because of this, Wretched of the Earth should not necessarily be seen as Fanon’s capstone work, in which he crystallizes his ideas, but the desperate efforts of a dying man to share his thoughts on the struggle for independence. Fanon’s views on many subjects evolved over the course of his life, and it is to be assumed that if he lived longer, especially in an independent Algeria, his views would have continued to evolve. Macey introduces the French term “un ecorche vif,” which means one who has been flayed alive, to characterize colonial and post-colonial individuals like Fanon (Macey, 2000, 119). Fanon was rubbed raw by his experiences as a colonial subject, a WWII veteran, and a psychiatrist struggling to treat both torturers and their victims. It is unsurprising that he presents a fiery rhetoric that alienates some readers, but this rhetoric is a reasonable reaction to the violence of colonialism. To expect calm rationality and calls for negotiation from a writer engaged in a very real struggle for identity and existence is a naive attempt to view anti-colonial struggles from a privileged position of western security.

Works Cited:

Fanon, F (2004). The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove.

Macey, D (2000). Frantz Fanon: A Biography. New York: Picador.