THE SPECIFICITY OF THE LITERARY AND ITS UNIVERSALIZING FUNCTION IN FRANTZ FANON’S “ON NATIONAL CULTURE”

Abstract

This essay considers Frantz Fanon’s chapter “On National Culture” (chapter four of The Wretched of the Earth) in relation to the specificity of literary form and Fanon’s understanding of the universal. Reversing the order in which the essay’s two sections are usually read (and therefore beginning with the second section), the essay traces the evolution of Fanon’s thinking on questions of culture and universalism in relation to the discourse of black cultural movements (principally Négritude) in the late 1950s, particularly as exemplified in the proceedings of the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists in 1959, at which Fanon delivered a speech. After establishing the nature of Fanon’s universalism and its relation to questions of culture, it is argued that Fanon’s reading of Fodéba Keïta’s poem “Aube africaine” in the first section of “On National Culture” reveals an understanding of literature’s relation to the universal.

• Frantz Fanon
• Fodéba Keïta
• Keïta Fodéba
• Literature
• Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists
• Universal

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Philip Kaisary and Benita Parry for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Notes

1 I adopt the convention of referring to the poet as Fodéba Keïta – as do Gikandi (2001) and others – instead of the Europeanized version of his name, Keïta Fodéba, which appears in Fanon and Said’s texts. For citational purposes, however, I have used the surname Fodéba, as it is the most common bibliographic entry for the author.

2 For a nuanced account of Fanon’s treatment of Césaire in Black Skin, White Masks, see Bernasconi (2002).

3 There was a wide range of contrasting political and aesthetic ideas within Négritude. For critical perspectives on Négritudian universalisms, see Garraway (2010), who makes clear the idiosyncrasy of Césaire’s understanding of the universal. For a discussion of what the author reads as Alioune Diop’s “metaphorical critique of the very universalism within which he appears to be trapped”, see Miller (1992, 427–34).

4 It is worth noting that Bernasconi sees Fanon’s identification as a critic of Négritude as “at best the result of an oversimplication of his rich and complex argument” (2002, 79). Importantly, however, Bernasconi notes “there is an ambivalence in Fanon’s relation toward Aimé Césaire, on the grounds that he was an inspiration for a possible future, even if at times he remained locked in the past” (79). A recent biography of Fanon notes a “critical departure from Césaire” in Black Skin, White Masks (Lee 2015, 93).

5 The discussion of Fanon undertaken in this essay also complements recent attempts by scholars such as Chibber (2013) to rescue the recognition of capitalism’s universality from postmodernist critique.

6 In what follows, I have quoted from the English translation of the conference proceedings, but have also quoted from the French version where the translation appears to differ substantially from the original.

7 This sentence does not appear in the English translation and so I have provided my own.

8 The critique of certain forms of Négritude and of the universalism and the Second Congress should not be understood as a critique of all forms of Pan-Africanism. Indeed, Mellino notes: “Fanon was convinced that the Algerian war would liberate all its emancipatory power only in the context of a larger Pan-African revolution” (2011, 64). While Fanon is certainly positioning himself against what Mellino calls “that racial or cultural ‘Pan-Africanism of the mind’ that … was at that time being appropriated and disseminated through the social fabric by nationalist African bourgeoisies” (64), his articulation of a materially grounded universalism is, to some extent, consonant with less purely culturalist Pan-Africanisms such as that of Kwame Nkrumah.

9 For ease of reference and because of the greater reliability of the translation, I quote from the version of Fanon’s speech published in Richard Philcox’s translation of The Wretched of the Earth ([1961] 2005).

10 It is important to note that Fanon is opposed to any kind of cultural isolationism here. Quite the opposite is true, for he writes: “It is also the national character that makes culture permeable to other cultures and enables it to influence and penetrate them” (2015, 177).

11 After an early successful career in African ballet during which time he founded the successful Guinean company Les Ballets africains, Keïta became minister for defence and security of independent Guinea in 1961. He was imprisoned and later executed by President Sékou Touré for alleged involvement in the Labé Plot in 1969. His poem “Aube africaine” (“African Dawn”) was performed as a ballet: see Conteh-Morgan (2004, 102–4).

12 For an extended reading of “Aube Africaine” outside of the context of Fanon’s chapter, see Parent (2014, 49–55).

13 For a lengthy and nuanced rebuttal of Miller’s argument that is sensitive to Fanon’s shortcomings, see Lazarus (1999). Other responses can be found in Gikandi (2001, 9), Mudimbe (1991), and Sekyi-Otu (1997, 32–46).

14 Issue 12 is one of the seven issues of Présence Africaine listed in Fanon, Écrits sur l’aliénation (2015, 651). “Aube africaine” was also published in issue 351 of the Senegal-based newspaper Réveil in 1949 (Fodéba 1949). However, this version is also without the final line “Au village, la nouvelle de cette subite morte se … ” and bears a closer resemblance to that found in Poèmes africains than to the one in issue 12 of Présence Africaine and The Wretched of the Earth.

15 It is worth noting that in the Rome speech Fanon writes that narrative literature constitutes a later stage of cultural development: “Mainly consumer during the period of oppression, the intelligentsia turns productive. This literature is at first confined to the genre of poetry and tragedy. Then novels, short stories, and essays are tackled” (2005, 173). Although he does not explain here why narrative genres should accompany the clarification of the aims of the struggle, it does appear that they possess their own specificity within Fanon’s overall schema.