![]() Ignoring Fanon’s socialist commitments is also evident in Edward Said’s reading of him in Culture and Imperialism, which is historically sparked by the First Intifada and Said’s critical disenchantment with Palestinian elite nationalism. This begins with Bhabha himself, whose intellectual project is premised on undermining class solidarity and socialism as subaltern political traditions. It is hardly surprising that, in order to turn Fanon into a poet of violence, postcolonial theorists have had to deny his socialist politics. Many of Fanon’s recent academic critics, and even some of his sympathizers, continued to distort and misconstrue The Wretched of the Earth. It also skirts far too close to associating Fanon’s contributions with terrorism - a bizarre interpretation for Bhabha to advance in the age of America’s “war on terror.” Rather than emancipation, it is terror, Bhabha posits, that marks out Fanon’s life project. He concludes that “Fanon, the phantom of terror, might be only the most intimate, if intimidating, poet of the vicissitudes of violence.” This flawed interpretation eviscerates Fanon as a political intellectual of the first order. Bhabha, for example, has turned Fanon’s work into a site of “deep psychic uncertainty of the colonial relation” that “speaks most effectively from the uncertain interstices of historical change.” In his recent preface to Wretched, Bhabha reads colonial violence as a manifestation of the colonized’s subjective crisis of psychic identification “where rejected guilt begins to feel like shame.” Colonial oppression generates “psycho-affective” guilt at being colonized, and Bhabha’s Fanon becomes an unashamed creature of violence and poet of terror. ![]() Indeed, postcolonial theory has come to posit violence as the theoretical core of Wretched. Nowhere is this truer than in recent postcolonial theory. And they underplayed Fanon’s socialist commitment and class analysis of capitalism, which are two essential components of his anti-imperialist arsenal. They inflated the significance of one element in the book over all others: violence. By identifying the racism and structural subordination of the colonial predicament, as well as charting a humanist route out of it, Fanon defined a politics of liberation whose terms and aims remain relevant today.īut many of Fanon’s recent academic critics, and even some of his sympathizers, continued to distort and misconstrue Wretched. This is how it inspired a whole generation of radicals around the world to transform societies that were slowly emerging from colonial domination. As a text, it combines dynamic critique with political passion, historical probing with denunciation of injustice, reasoned argument with moral indignation against suffering. To read Wretched is to enter a world of colonial division, national conflict, and emancipatory yearning. By targeting colonialism and positing a new egalitarian society in the future, Fanon captures the voice and critical orientation of a whole generation of radical intellectuals. No other political text expresses as astutely and productively the whole conjuncture of decolonization, with its distinctive contradictions and possibilities. Nothing like it exists in the annals of anti-colonial letters. Wretched is, without a doubt, Fanon’s most important book. In addition to Wretched, he wrote Black Skin, White Masks (1952), A Dying Colonialism (1959), and Toward the African Revolution (1964). Fanon died as he was waiting for treatment for leukemia in the United States, having just completed his political testament The Wretched of the Earth (1961), which was famously prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre.įanon’s writings on colonialism, racism, and anti-imperialism have had a massive impact around the world, especially in the Global South. He also participated in editing its French-language publication El Moudjahid, where his own work appeared. Fanon formally joined the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in exile in Tunis and represented the movement on the international stage. After qualifying as a psychiatrist in Lyon in 1951, he ended up in French Algeria and practiced at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital until he was deported in 1957 for his political sympathies toward the Algerian national struggle. ![]() Born in Martinique under French colonial rule, Fanon joined the anti-Vichy Free French Forces in World War II and served in North Africa and France. Right now, you can subscribe to the print edition of Catalyst for just $20.įrantz Fanon (1925–61) is one of the twentieth century’s most significant anti-colonial intellectuals. ![]() This article is reprinted from Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, a publication from the Jacobin Foundation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |