Wretched Of The Earth By Frantz Fanon: An Analysis

After World War Two many colonized countries formed nationalist movements that advocated for decolonization, which called for the withdraw of colonial powers from their country, so they could have an independent nation governed by their own self-autonomy. Nationalist movements used non violent tactics to spur decolonization like boycotting the colonialist’s products or refusing to work for the colonialists, but when these peaceful protests were ineffective, nationalists turned to violence in order to gain independence from imperial powers. Frantz Fanon who was a psychiatrist during the Algerian war wrote about the effects of decolonization in one of his most famous books called The Wretched of the earth, where he defends the use of violence

Double consciousness is the idea of looking at oneself through the eyes and values of another person and explains that African’s feel this way because they were dominated by European colonists and made to feel inferior where they dream of becoming the persecutor like the colonizer. Fanon believed that a violent decolonization process allowed man to free himself from the double consciousness and create a new man. Fanon was a Marxist thinker, but his theory of a violent decolonization creating a new man differed from traditional Marxist thought like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel that believed man was a product of his thought and Karl Marx that believed man was a product of his labour he produced. The reason that Fanon differs from traditional Marxist thinkers like Hegel and Marx is because he believed that the colonial world is separated by race, whereby he said “You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich”, which explains that Fanon believed the colonial relationship was dominated by the superior white authority over the inferior African Americans. Fanon explains the colonial relationship of constant violence and discrimination that the colonist used led to the dehumanization of the colonial subject where they are reduced to the state of an animal

Fanon argues that during the period of liberation of the colonized countries that the colonizers sought out contact with the colonized elite and educated and cultured them in Western schools, so that after decolonization they would remain loyal to colonialist bourgeoisie. Fanon argues that non-violence to achieve decolonization was set up by the colonialist bourgeoisie whereby they worked with the colonized intellectuals to maintain the colonial relationship. Fanon is against the use of non violence in decolonization because he believes non-violence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around the negotiating table before bloodshed is committed and compromise the act of decolonization by still allowing Western influence in the new nation. Robert Young who is the author of Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, argues that Fanon was weary of non violent revolutions because he believed that colonized intellectuals worked with bourgeoisie nationalists to maintain a relationship in the postcolonial world in word to securer their prosperity in society. This idea of a relationship between the colonized intellectual and the bourgeoisie European nationalist in the post-colonial period is known as neo-colonialism because the European power is still