From psychiatry to the political struggle to confront colonialism, and from the upbringing of France overseas to the resistance in the ranks of the Algerian Liberation Front;
This is the journey of Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), who was born in Martinique (the French Caribbean colony) to parents of African and Alsatian descent (eastern France).
In his youth France fell to the Nazis in 1940, and the forces of the French Vichy government (pro-Nazis) besieged the island of Martinique, and mistreated the local population, which reinforced the feelings of alienation in the boy, who resented early "colonial racism" and fled at the age of 17 to Dominica to join the forces Free French Anti-Vichy.
Journey between continents
Fanon joined the Free France Army, joined the Allied campaign that reached Casablanca, and was later transferred to an army base in Bejaia on the Algerian Kabylie coast. Fanon left Algeria from Oran and served in France, especially in the battles of Alsace, and when the Nazis were defeated and crossed The Allied forces crossed the Rhine to Germany, and felt a disdain for the contribution of non-white fighters, particularly Afro-Caribbean soldiers, who had been transported to Normandy to await repatriation.
After the war ended in 1945, Fanon returned to the Martinique Islands, became involved in the communist controversy, and then returned to France again to study psychiatry in Lyon, where he also learned about literature, drama and philosophy, and during that era wrote literary plays and obtained the status of a psychiatrist who stimulated His reflection on the role of culture in psychopathology.
While living in France, Fanon published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial oppression on blacks.
It was a response to the racism that Fanon had suffered while studying psychiatry at the University of Lyon.
Fanon believed that although they could speak French, they could not fully integrate into their white environment.
Fanon then traveled to Algeria, where his therapeutic experience in psychiatry expanded in parallel with the crystallization of his ideas, especially through the development of social therapy to communicate with the cultural backgrounds of his patients who were on both sides of the conflict. After the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined The National Liberation Front was moved by his solidarity with the victims of torture, and by the summer of 1956 he realized that he could no longer continue working for the French government, even indirectly through his work in the hospital.
He presented his "resignation letter" that later became an important text in anti-colonial circles by emphasizing that silence is a deception of honesty.
Drawing by Frantz Fanon (Shutterstock)
Fanon went to Tunisia to work with the Liberation Front, and in addition to his work as a doctor, he worked as an editor in the newspaper "Al-Mujahid", the party's mouthpiece, and participated in organizational, diplomatic and even military tasks, as he saw that resistance to colonialism was not suitable without force, and he worked as an ambassador to Ghana for the Algerian government. The pro-revolutionary temporary, and moved between many African cities and capitals, before he contracted leukemia and went to the Soviet Union for treatment.
When he returned to Tunisia again, he dictated his famous book "The Wretched of the Earth", and gave lectures to the officers of the National Liberation Army in Gardimao (Ghar et al-Damaa) on the Algerian-Tunisian border, and traveled to Rome to meet the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), who was influenced by him and wrote Introduction to his famous book.
critique of imperialism
Through an analysis and critique of nationalism and imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal and societal mental health, and discusses how the use of language (vocabularies) is applied to establishing imperial identities such as colonizer and colonized, and psychological stereotyping.
Fanon suggests that revolutionaries should use the scattered proletariat (the lower class in the Marxist tradition), especially the peasantry, to provide the force needed to be able to drive out the colonists, noting that they are intellectually independent enough from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class, and the task is to convince them that they can to rebel against the colonial status quo and thus decolonize their nation.
Fanon hypothesized that colonialism was an outright violence machine that “gives up only when faced with greater violence.” This quote was popularized by Nelson Mandela (Gandhi’s pupil) after the African National Congress went to “armed struggle” in response to the massacre of blacks in South Africa, according to a magazine presentation The New Yorker, USA.
In Fanon's view, the Western bourgeoisie was "essentially racist", and its "bourgeois ideology of equality and dignity was merely a cover for imperialist capitalist greed", noting that the "material and ideological foundations of the West lay in white supremacy", and accused European imperialists of "acting like war criminals." real people in the underdeveloped world” through the policies of “deportation, massacres, forced labor and servitude” to accumulate wealth.
Among their "most heinous crimes" are tearing apart the black man's identity, destroying his culture and society, and poisoning his inner life with his sense of inferiority.
Fanon wrote that European thought was marked by "a constant dialogue with itself, and an increasingly repugnant narcissism".
At the same time, Fanon urged the colonists to "stop accusing" their white masters, and to do what the latter had clearly failed to do;
The initiation of a "new history of man" reinforces "universal values".
In his view, anti-colonial nationalism was just the first step towards a new radical humanism "for Europe, for ourselves and for humanity".
He has already distanced himself from claims to a racially defined identity and culture, writing that the "great white mistake" of racial arrogance should not be replaced by the "great black mirage", warning the "dispossessed" not to repeat mistakes.
When Western imperialists ended their long occupations of Asia and Africa, Fanon became obsessed with the "curse of independence", fearful of new states turning into an "empty shell" and a vessel for ethnic, tribal, ultra-nationalist, chauvinistic, and racist animosities. The unjust international system that made it rich and powerful, and how the new ruling classes in post-colonial states would fail to invent a viable system of their own.
Despite his distinguished analysis of the political gap between urban prosperity and rural poverty, the dire consequences of unjust development, and his experience as a psychiatrist that made him interested in the effects of psychological power and its implications for the images that enslaved people impose on the enslaved, many of the criticisms leveled against him indicated his weak experience with the local communities in which he lived. In which.
Frantz Fanon was interested in the struggle against colonialism and adopted humanistic Marxism and African liberation ideas (communication sites)
"Wretched Earth"
In the report published by the Australian website "The Conversation", Nigel C. Gibson touched on some important quotes from the book "The Wretched of the Earth", given that he was writing at a time when more than half of Africa's countries gained independence, his criticism of class The centrist and nationalist parties were read like a scenario that was repeated over and over again.
Of the emerging independent states, he says in a pessimistic tone: “Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs… Today the vultures are so many and so greedy in proportion to the meager spoils of the national wealth. The party is a real instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, strengthening the work of the machine and ensuring the encirclement and immobilization of the people.”
And about his thinking about a new humanism, he says in the conclusion of his book, "Then, comrades, how can we not understand that we have better to do than follow Europe."
Fully aware of the fact that neo-colonialism can be black or Arab, Fanon criticized the newly independent African states for doing little more than following a European model even as they used the language of socialism, and their aspiration to control the colonial tool - their states and institutions - to serve their own interests.
Fanon considered this a product of the crisis of thought and the absence of a philosophy of liberation.
"In Europe itself, where they have never finished talking to humanity, they have never stopped proclaiming that they were only concerned with the well-being of humanity. Today we know what human suffering has paid for every victory of reason."
Rejecting the professed humanism of Europe based on colonialism, exploitation, slavery and violence, Fanon said that "we must find something different" and that "if working conditions are not modified, centuries of work will be needed to humanize this world forced by imperialist powers to Get down to the animal level.