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Frantz Fanon

Anti-colonialism and the history of anti-colonial struggles are among my favorite subjects. I am very uncompromising when it comes to the duty of remembrance. Therefore, I wanted to dedicate this post to Frantz Fanon, a key figure in anti-colonialism :)

As a future history-geography teacher, please don't hold it against me if I publish articles in the form of a lecture course. I have no doubt that many users already know him well, but I like to let off steam on this platform by retracing the journey of characters for whom I have a lot of sympathy :)

A little information, before getting to the heart of the matter: In June 2024, Norman Ajari (whom I consider as a friend), philosopher and member of the Frantz Fanon Foundation, published the Afro-Decolonial Manifesto. I can only recommend that you read this book !

Who is Frantz Fanon? Rebel psychiatrist, activist for Algerian independence, anti-colonial intellectual, fervent supporter of a revolution against the colonial system...

Frantz Fanon was a cult author of Third World thought. Of course, he is the author of The Wretched of the Earth (published in 1961), which is, incontestably, the "bible" of anti-colonialist activists of the 1960s. His work puts forward a subjective, but also "psychiatric" approach to colonialism. This subversive theory had until then been the preserve of European or Asian ideologues. In the veins of Frantz Fanon, the "mulatto" of Martinique, flows the blood of the Antilles and Césaire's negritude.

Quick context: In Algeria, the French army tortured to preserve its colonial status, the people being reduced to second-class citizens (in the legal sense of the term, so it's an understatement!). In Egypt, the British and French attacked Nasser, guilty of having nationalized the Suez Canal. In addition, the Bandung Conference revealed the idea of a third world, an Africa, an Asia, an America, in struggle.

Let's retrace Frantz Fanon's youth... Frantz Fanon was born in 1925, in Fort-de-France (Martinique). He studied at the Victor Shoelcher high school, where Aimé Césaire taught. In 1943, aged eighteen, he joined the French Army of Liberation, in the Antillais battalion, a battalion that was going to join North Africa. In July 1944, alongside his friends and comrades Marcel Manville and Mauzole (his former high school classmates, who followed Aimé Césaire's classes), he landed in Casablanca; these three young West Indians then arrived in Algeria. At that time, he observed the pyramidal structure of colonial society.

In Alger, Frantz Fanon, Marcel Manville, Mauzole, make their observations of the terrible situation heard. A Gaullist delegate calls them "intellectuals" (for the reactionary colonialists, it is all at least a deviance, a misdemeanor, a crime, to think for oneself !). They are then sent to Béjaia, then sent to Oran where they join the 2nd armored division, which landed in Saint-Tropez and fought in the French campaign. During the French campaign, he is wounded. He writes a letter to his parents: "A year since I left Fort-de-France. Why? To defend an obsolete ideal... If you learn one day of my death in the face of the enemy, console yourself but never say: he died for a noble cause...; because this false ideology, shield of secularists and imbecile politicians, must no longer enlighten us". In 1945, he receives the war cross, and who gives him this "decoration"? Raoul Salan!!! ); they are then sent to Béjaia, then sent to Oran where they join the 2nd armored division, which landed in Saint-Tropez and fought in the French campaign. During the French campaign, he is wounded. He writes a letter to his parents: "A year since I left Fort-de-France. Why? To defend an obsolete ideal... If you learn one day of my death in the face of the enemy, console yourself but never say: he died for a noble cause...; because this false ideology, shield of secularists and imbecile politicians, must no longer enlighten us".

In 1945, he receives the war cross, and who gives him this "decoration"? Raoul Salan !

Then he returned to Martinique, in order to pass his baccalaureate. He followed Aimé Césaire's courses, and supported his candidacy during the legislative elections (for the PCF, which he would leave in 1956 – I will talk about it in another post, it's important…). Thus, he became familiar with Marxist thought.

In 1946, thanks to a scholarship, he went to study at the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon. Describing himself as a "colonized intellectual", he was editor of the magazine Tam-Tam, a magazine for students who were victims of colonial racism.

In 1952, he published his first book: Black Skin, White Masks. Frantz Fanon obviously denounces white domination, and he analyzes, d From a psychological point of view, what colonialism has left as a legacy to humanity, starting with the relationship between black and white. Fanon includes the testimonies of Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar-Senghor, the analyses of Sartre… He defends the idea that colonization was the vector of a collective neurosis that it is high time to eradicate. The colonial situation, which creates the alienation of Blacks and refers the Black to the White superior in nature and culture, makes the condition of the colonized a pathology relating to the "mirror effect".

The thought of Frantz Fanon aims to deconstruct colonial racism, which according to him and from experience, is a "color racism". The aim is the reconstruction, after de-alienation, of a total man.

Then, Frantz Fanon wrote his article "The North African Syndrome" published in the magazine Esprit. He shared his analysis concerning Algerian workers in France by identifying them with the exiled worker; exile cuts him off from his history, from his original relationships; this alienation then makes him an "object", victim of both general contempt and medical contempt! He also published his "Essay on the Disalienation of the Black". This essay is imbued with existentialism. This time, Frantz Fanon rejected the notion of negritude expounded by Léopold Sédar-Senghor, and the culturalism which intended to show how, reciprocally, the basic personality of the colonizer and that of the colonized was constructed.

In 1953, he left for Algeria, and he was appointed to the psychiatric hospital of Blida. Inside the hospital, Frantz Fanon suffered the painful experience of colonial racism, but he did not let it happen... For him, it was about freeing himself from the old colonial medicine, from racial prejudices (manufactured by doctors who are perhaps still known – I hope not – in the medical profession, such as Victor de Rochas, Eugène Verrier, or even the German Blumenbach...). In any case, his experience at the hospital allowed him to meet Slimane Asselah, a member of the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (who would be the victim of a terrible kidnapping during the Battle of Algiers), and also activists from the Algerian Communist Party.

From the beginning of the Algerian War, Franz Fanon took charge of physically injured or traumatized resistance fighters. In 1956, after the Soummam Congress (he had not participated), he met Abane Ramdane and Benyoucef Benkhedda. In September 1956, Frantz Fanon joined the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris, alongside Aimé Césaire, James Baldwin, and Joséphine Baker. He defended the idea that the cultural racism inherent in the system of colonial oppression also stems from biological racism. This racism is shared as much by the little white man who feels superior to the racialized colonized peoples, as by the metropolis which guarantees and legitimizes colonial domination.

Back in Algeria, Frantz Fanon witnesses the violent repression led by Robert Lacoste. Two months later, he resigns from the hospital in Blida. He receives the order from Robert Lacoste to leave Algeria.

In January 1957, in Paris: Frantz Fanon bitterly notes the very weak position of the French Communist Party in relation to the anti-colonial struggle. It should be noted that the PCF explicitly opposed the workers' demonstrations against the departure of the recalled. In March 1956, the PCF voted for special powers for Guy Mollet, which opened the way to even more violence on the part of the French army and police. In addition, the PCF only talks about peace in Algeria, which according to Fanon, would serve the interests of France. The PCF is therefore far from supporting a struggle for national liberation, for emancipation of the Algerian people.

In March 1957, Frantz Fanon officially joined the FLN, and he met again the FLN leaders in Tunis. He became co-editor of Résistance algérienne then El Moudjahid. He began his articles with "We, Algerians". He was also appointed to the hospital in Tunis.

In his articles in Moudjahid, Frantz Fanon criticizes the French "intellectuals" (in the negative sense of the term) who criticized the practice of torture without reflecting on racism as the obvious cause of this inhuman practice, and who (worse!) equate the fight for the liberation of Algeria with terrorism...!

In 1958, he participated in the important Pan-African conference in Accra, as an ambassador appointed by the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic. There he met Kwane Nkrumah (father of Pan-Africanism, Ghana having obtained its independence in 1957), Patrice Lumumba, Félix Momié (Cameroonian insurgent who will be assassinated by the French services), Tom M’Boya (Kenyan trade unionist).

In 1959, he wrote an essay entitled L’An V de la Révolution Algérienne, in order to give the emancipatory meaning of national consciousness in the Algerian decolonial struggle. Note that, in this book, the question of the emancipation of women is also addressed.

At the second Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Rome (1959), he developed the idea of a dialectic between national culture and the liberation struggle.

In Morocco, he visited the health services that treated Algerian fighters and withdrawn families. He was the victim of a car accident, and it turned out that the French Services were responsible.

In early 1960, he participated in the second Congress of African Peoples in Tunis, meeting Kwane Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Sékou Touré, Amilcar Cabral, Julius Nyéréré, Modibo Keita. Frantz Fanon did not enter into the vision of a convergence of Africa, Asia and Latin America, an idea defended by Mehdi Ben Barka (who first thought of federating the Maghreb). Frantz Fanon, having no roots in North Africa, stayed out of the discussions. Faced with the Cold War and the rivalry between the USSR and the People's Republic of China, Mehdi Ben Barka wanted to build the Tricontinental, an International of national liberation movements, taking into account the liberation of Cuba. However, Fanon is above all a pan-Africanist based on the example of the Algerian liberation struggle.

In the spring of 1960, the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic appointed him roving ambassador to Africa; he mainly went to Ghana, Guinea-Conakry, and Congo. In Mali, Frantz Fanon had a project to found a trans-Saharan military front, which would allow fighters and the International Brigades of African volunteers to cross the Sahara to provide assistance to the Algerian maquis. He describes this project in his logbook entitled For the African Revolution.

At the end of 1960, back in Tunis, it turned out that he had leukemia. This did not prevent him from continuing his activist activities.

Fanon approached the officers of the General Staff, including Houari Boumédiene, whom he considered to be guarantors of the achievement of an independence, which would escape continuities or neocolonial recuperations... The FLN having divided Algeria into five Wilayas (military regions), he found it relevant to found a Wilaya 6.

In February 1961, he published an article to pay tribute to Patrice Lumumba, entitled “The death of Lumumba: could we have done otherwise?”. He specified that the UN had never been able “to validly resolve a single one of the problems posed to the conscience of man by colonialism, and each time it intervened, it was to come concretely to the aid of the colonialist power of the oppressor country. In reality, the UN is the legal card that imperialist interests use when the card of brute force has failed.” ; "The great success of the enemies of Africa is to have compromised the Africans themselves. They were directly interested in the murder of Lumumba. Heads of puppet governments, within a puppet independence, confronted day after day with massive opposition from their people, they did not take long to convince themselves that the real independence of the Congo would put them personally in danger.

In November 1961, a few weeks before his death, he published his well-known work, The Wretched of the Earth. This work exalts Third-Worldism, and receives the approval of Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and the magazine Les Temps Modernes. In the words of Sartre, "We too, people of Europe, are desacralized: this means that the colonist in each of us is extirpated by a bloody operation", "The weapon of a fighter is his humanity. Because in the first stage of the revolt, one must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to eliminate at the same time an oppressor and an oppressed; what remains is a dead man and a free man".

Frantz Fanon explains the need to resort to violence, after describing the depersonalization and humiliation of the colonized, "treated as a subhuman", traumatized, driven to suicide or to fratricidal struggles. It is necessary to resort to violence against the colonial order and an all-powerful master, in order to break the inferiority complex. Emancipated, the colonized, by finding his identity, would find his dignity again. Revolutionary violence would transform individuals. Relations between men and women would improve. Revolutionary violence would establish new relationships marked by fraternity. "When they have participated in violence in national liberation, the masses do not allow anyone to present themselves as liberators. They show themselves jealous of the result of their action and refrain from entrusting their future, their destiny, the fate of the homeland to a living god. Totally irresponsible yesterday, they intend today to understand everything and decide everything." Frantz Fanon places his hopes in the peasantry and the shanty town people (urban spearhead of the struggle); he writes that the proletariat constitutes "one of the most spontaneously and radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people"; "The Third World does not intend to organize an immense hunger crusade against Europe."

He died on December 6, 1961, in Washington.

Some quotes:

"The European nations wallow in the most ostentatious opulence. This European opulence is literally scandalous because it was built on the backs of slaves, it was nourished by the blood of slaves, it comes directly from the soil and subsoil of this underdeveloped world. The well-being and progress of Europe were built with the sweat and corpses of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and Yellows." (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961).

“The black man who wants to whiten his race is as unhappy as the one who preaches hatred of the white man.” (Black Skin, White Masks 1952).

“Colonization is a systematic negation of the other, a frenzied decision to deny the other any attribute of humanity.” (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961).

#anti colonialism #frantz fanon #20th century #colonisation #racism #antiracism #algeria #africa #pan africanism

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