Assignment 3 : Colonial Tinge in Frantz Fanon's 'The Wretched of the Earth' : 22408 Paper 203 : Post-Colonial Studies

• Name : Nirav Lalitbhai Amreliya

• Batch : M.A. Sem. 3 (2021-2023)

• Enrollment N/o. : 4069206420210002

• Roll N/o. : 18

• Subject Code & Paper N/o. : 22408 – Paper 203 : The Post-Colonial Studies

• Email Address : niramreliyaunofficial@gmail.com

• Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English – Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University – Bhavnagar – 364001

• Date of Submission : 7th November, 2022

Colonial Tinge in Frantz Fanon's 'The Wretched of the Earth'

Introduction : The very fact that Imperialism as along with Colonialism have their impact on the literary dynamics, especially on the colonized cultures and nations have widely encountered certain writers who stood at shoulders with their suffering fellows during the colonial period in their respective nations. Here in this assignment, the prime focus is laid upon the treatment of post-colonial identity by Frantz Fanon in his ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. The very text is the post-colonial response through the lens of psychological studies of the oppressed ones under colonial effects. The title is elliptic in nature as the reader will be able to apply the title to the colonized as the pitiful subject and the colonizer as the foulest on the earth. Colonialism was there everywhere and struggle of getting away from the clutches of colonizers was the key plot-subject for the writers who wrote during this period when Orientalism was being introduced to the world that the understanding of the colonized countries can be developed and then be prepared for freedom, by means of truth and non-violence as Indian freedom-fighter Mahatma Gandhi pursued or by violent means to apprehend the colonizers and reclaim the taken freedom as Franz Fanon has provided.

Colonial Tinge in the Book : The very work has become synonymous to post-colonial response to the colonial empires. Its novelty lies in its use of psycho-analytical studies on the colonized people and its dire effects on their lives. Here I have taken several research articles concerning the colonialism in ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ :

Disability Studies : In the book, the disability studies covers up a good part. Sharon Batcher has words of justification in respect to disability studies :

“By reprising Franz Fanon's (1963) parody of western colonial salvation rhetoric (his early text of decolonization entitled The Wretched of the Earth), I extend my range of concern to address how the modern template of normalcy and its contrary, degeneracy, have been deployed as maps of western Christianity's social mission. As a disabled person comes in the eyes of a normate (a person who aspires to the ideology of normalcy) to be recognized by what s/he lacks, so Fanon observed that amidst colonialism "the native"--"declared insensible to ethics," considered "the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near"--was treated as "the deforming element, disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality." (Betcher)

In his argument presented in the essay, Betcher rightly says that the normalcy of theism and religions has descended down to the lives of people so deeply that they have locked up in the shackles and for them it is difficult to escape. Here again the religion takes with it its own morality which may or may not be well-palated by the ones upon whom this ‘new morality’ -  which is completely foreign to them and their culture – is imposed. With reference to the book by Fanon, Algerian natives were colonized by France from 1830 to the independence in 1962, and thus Fanon sought to study the impact of language and its use on the colonized by the colonizers is what holds all the beads together in a thread.

Left Disenchantment in France : In their collaborative work ‘From the wretched of the Earth to the Defence of the West : An Essay on Left Disenchantment in France’, Jean-Pierre Garnier and Roland Lew have pointed out the impact of French Left :

“Just over a decade ago, the French Left was full of enthusiasm about the Third World. Progressive intellectuals believed that the Third World's struggle against imperialism and neo-colonialism was a world-wide struggle and that its liberation would signal the world revolution....An incandescently lyrical and militant literature set alight the imagination of French academics and journalists and artists of the French Left. The writings of Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara and Mao Tse Tung were sparks starting prairie fires in the small world of Parisian publishing and journalism; Sartre's preface to The Wretched of the Earth is a typical example.” (Garnier)

This shows that Fanon had staunch perseverance along with other revolutionaries into liberation activities, and that is why he shines out as an author at the hour of need.

Livestreaming ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ : In his research article titled as ‘Livestreaming the ‘wretched of the Earth’: The Christchurch massacre and the ‘death-bound subject’, Yasmin Ibrahim highlights the violent patch proposed by Fanon to reclaim freedom from the hands of the colonizers :

“Frantz Fanon configures the ‘wretched of the Earth’ as the colonial subject imbricated in violence in order to break the very cycle of violence imposed by colonisation. For Fanon, ‘The violence of the colonial regime and the counterviolence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity’ (Fanon, 2008: 50). Today the wretched of the Earth have morphed into a category where their suffering and their performance of death do not relinquish them from this violence but solidify it by elongating it through a screen culture of consumption and sharing. The wretched are not only a site of violation but one that performs its death for the screen where it enters a second life of virality through the sharing economy of digital capitalism.” (Ibrahim)

In aforementioned paragraph, Ibrahim gives a good insight into looking at Fanon’s violent approach in reclaiming the freedom which may seem going opposite to that of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent approach which followed the path of truth, non-violence, and non-cooperation movement.

Analysis of the Book : In his ‘An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's ‘The Wretched of the Earth’’, Riley Quinn writes :

“Although Fanon wrote the text during the Algerian War of Independence, during which the nation fought for political autonomy from colonial France, its basis was a lifetime’s experience of racial stereotyping by French colonial society. Fanon, a psychiatrist by profession, laid bare the inferiority complex that colonialism projected onto its lower orders. His answer to this, politically and psychologically, was violence. When violently occupied by a dehumanizing colonial force, Fanon insisted you had to respond in kind.” (Quinn)

Quinn - in the abovementioned lines – has also referred to the war-period when Algeria was under French Colonial rule and how Fanon proposes to oppose in a kind way means the same way they do. Quinn further observes while referring to Edmund Burke on concerned matter :

“Essentially, then, Wretched is a call to arms. Fanon argued that the aim was liberation and that it could not be achieved by the colonized middle classes, as they would simply make a pact with the colonizer and society would continue unchanged. Instead, it was the peasants, the “wretched,” who must find their own human dignity by destroying colonialism, root and branch. The book has gone on to influence numerous struggles by the dispossessed, especially those fighting racism.” (Quinn)

That the aim of liberation for Fanon cannot be achieved without having arms in the oppressed's hands and especially the peasants or worker-class people step first in this movement.

The Elephant : The reference of elephant – as Fouzi Slisli in the book is religious one as it referrers to the Islam religion. Slisli writes :

“There is an elephant in ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. It is Islam and its anti-colonial tradition in Algeria. Fanon continuously cites and exalts this tradition. It even can be argued that Fanon’s famous death sentence on colonial systems was properly minted only out of his contact with this anti-colonial tradition. But if Fanon cites this tradition everywhere, he does not reference it anywhere. He explains the acts of resistance and applauds the culture of Algeria  peasants, but he does not name them for what they were – the tradition of Islamic resistance to colonialism. Rather, he attributes the successful resistance to the famous combination of spontaneity and organization. Marxist revolutionary theory is credited for providing the organization, and impulsive, anti-colonial reactions of the Algerian peasantry are said to be the source of spontaneity. This combination has become the hallmark of Fanon’s theory of revolution and is said to be capable of breaking the back of colonial systems.” (Slisli)

The tone of dissatisfaction can be felt in Slisli’s writing as he seems to be feeling it unjust of Fanon as he credits Marxism and neglects Islam which Slisli calls ‘anti-colonial tradition in Algeria’ which can be true only at a point. This combination of theory of ‘spontaneity’ and ‘organization’ is observed in Fanon’s self, it also leads to the remarkable writing pieces produced by Fanon in this context.

Conclusion : Franz Fanon as a psychiatrist has done a great service to literature by combining his psychological knowledge to the literary writing and thus combining social life with taste of realism in literature. The way he served the holistic aspect of several different studies remains quite commendable. The style of capturing Colonialism in his works, Fanon again proves his worth as a writer of good knowledge. His experiments on the people who suffered the colonial rule and the derivations that Fanon comes up with remain intact in the history and provide better understanding as they have reality into it which adds more authenticity into it.

Thank you!

Works Cited :

 Betcher, Sharon V. “Saving the Wretched of the Earth.” Disability Studies Quarterly, 15 June 2006, https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/721. 

 Garnier, Jean Pierre, and Roland Lew. “From the Wretched of the Earth to the Defence of the West: An Essay on Left Disenchantment in France.” Socialist Register, https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5515. 

 Ibrahim, Yasmin. Livestreaming the ‘Wretched of the Earth’: The Christchurch Massacre ... 5 Oct. 2020, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1468796820926746.

 Quinn, Riley. “An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's the Wretched of the Earth: Riley Quinn.” Taylor & Francis, Taylor & Francis, 15 July 2017, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781912282623/analysis-frantz-fanon-wretched-earth-riley-quinn.

 Slisli, Fouzi. “Islam: The Elephant in Fanon's the Wretched of the Earth.” Taylor & Francis, 8 Feb. 2008, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10669920701862518.

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