Fanon in Algeria: a case of horizontal (post)-colonial encounter?

Abstract

This article will examine Frantz Fanon's involvement in the Algerian liberation struggle and the impact that this experience had on him, as reflected in his book Les damnés de la terre [The Wretched of the Earth] (1961). Above all, the aim is to demonstrate that Fanon's experience in Algeria sheds more light on the dynamics of interaction among (post)-colonial cultures themselves. By foregrounding this under-researched question of horizontal encounter between (post)-colonial cultures, the article will also look into some of the key problematic issues raised by these kinds of exchanges.

Keywords:

• national culture
• anti-colonial violence
• post-colonial subjectivity
• horizontal post-colonial encounter

Notes

1. Lewis Ricardo Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Renée T. White, eds, Fanon: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 8.

2. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), 1.

3. Renate Zahar, Colonialismo e alienação: contribuição para a teoria política de Frantz Fanon, trans. Amadeu Graça do Espírito Santo (Lisbon: Ulmeiro, 1976), 9; Gordon et al., Fanon: A Critical Reader, 3.

4. Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Franz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2004), 28.

5. Irene Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study ( London: Wildwood House, 1973), 4–5.

6. Irene Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study ( London: Wildwood House, 1973), 18.

7. Frantz Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris: Maspero, 1961), 301. For the translation see Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 251.

8. Frantz Fanon, Pour la révolution africaine: Écrits politiques (Paris: Maspero, 1961), 51. Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York : Grove Press, 1967), 53.

9. Fanon, Les Damnés, 284; The Wretched, 236.

10. Fanon, Les Damnés, 284; The Wretched, 285; 236.

11. Fanon, Les Damnés, 284; The Wretched, 293; 245.

12. Fanon, Les Damnés, 284; The Wretched, 295; 246.

13. Fanon, Les Damnés, 284; The Wretched, 281; 233.

14. The Négritude movement emerged in Paris in the early 1930s amongst African and West Indian students under the leadership of Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Aimé Césaire of Martinique and Léon Damas of French Guyana (see Pal Ahluwalia, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory: African Inflections (London: Routledge, 2001), 22).

15. See Frantz Fanon, Studies in a Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (London: Earthscan Publications, 1989), 47.

16. Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 185–86; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 229.

17. Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study, xv.

18. Fanon, Les Damnés, 66; The Wretched, 36.

19. Fanon, Les Damnés, 66; The Wretched, 92; 61.

20. Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 277.

21. Fanon, Les Damnés, 373–375; The Wretched, 313–315.

22. Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 85.

23. Gordon et al., Fanon: A Critical Reader, 5.

24. Gordon et al., Fanon: A Critical Reader, 1.

25. Bulhan, Franz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, 114.

26. Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study, i.

27. Fanon, Les Damnés, 376; The Wretched, 316.

28. This interpretation notwithstanding, I am also aware of the criticisms that have been levelled against Fanon for his use of a ‘gender-blind’ language.

29. Vijay Prashad has brilliantly dealt with the idea of history viewed from the perspective of the Third World in his book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New York: The New Press, 2007).

30. Fanon, Les Damnés, 373; The Wretched, 313.

31. Fanon, Les Damnés, 373; The Wretched, 375; 315.

32. Fanon, Les Damnés, 373; The Wretched, 374; 314.

33. Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study, 14.

34. David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Life (London: Granta Books, 2000), 91.

35. Quoted in Gordon et al., Fanon: A Critical Reader, 5, and in Zahar, Colonialismo e alienação, 23.

36. In his book Peau noire, masques blancs, Fanon says ‘Je suis français. Je suis intéressé à la culture française, à la civilisation au peuple français’ [I am a Frenchman. I am interested in French culture, French civilisation, the French people] (Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs, 164; Black Skin, White Masks, 203).

37. Zahar, Colonialismo e alienação, 15.

38. Edward Said points out that, by 1914, Europe dominated roughly 85% of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions and commonwealths (Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993 [1978]),8).

39. Michael Payne, ed, A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Terms (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 424.

40. Fanon, Les Damnés, 235; The Wretched, 193.

41. Fanon, Les Damnés, 235; The Wretched, 283; 235.

42. Fanon, Les Damnés, 235; The Wretched, 296; 247–248.

43. Fanon, Les Damnés, 235; The Wretched, 372; 312.

44. Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817’, in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 112.

45. Quoted in Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study, 19.

46. David Olsen, ‘Review of Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study by Irene L. Gendzier’, MERIP Reports, no. 26 (March 1974), 32.

47. Idem.