The Living and Being of the Streets: Fanon and the Arab Uprisings

Abstract

The North Africa and Middle East (MENA) insurrections point to the transformative potential of the convergence between massive numbers of unemployed young people and modern communication networks in response to the 2008 global financial crisis and the failed ‘War on Terror’. Yet theorists have wondered about the timing and significance of these revolutions, along with their relationship with social rebellions in other times and places. This work stages a conversation with Frantz Fanon about the spacing of temporality of revolutions, focusing on his understanding of the anti-colonial revolution and the significance of the least sovereign (and potentially most revolutionary) subjects in the decolonization and anti-slavery struggles. I then engage with the MENA revolts and uprisings arguing that they are revolutionary advances toward a socialism that is able to check the snatching of land and slaughtering of others for development.

Las insurrecciones del norte de África y el medio oriente (MENA, por sus siglas en inglés) ilustran el potencial transformador de la convergencia entre los números masivos de jóvenes desempleados y las redes de comunicación modernas en respuesta a la crisis financiera global de 2008 y la fallida ‘Guerra al Terrorismo’. Aun así, los teóricos se han preguntado sobre el momento escogido y la importancia de esas revoluciones, junto con su relación con las rebeliones sociales en otros tiempos y lugares. Este trabajo conversa con Frantz Fanon sobre el espaciamiento de las revoluciones temporales, con un enfoque en su entendimiento de la revolución anticolonial y la importancia de los últimos sujetos soberanos (y posiblemente más revolucionarios) en la descolonización y las luchas contra la esclavitud. Luego me relaciono con las revueltas de MENA y los levantamientos sosteniendo que son avances revolucionarios hacia el socialismo, que son capaces de controlar el arrebatamiento de la tierra y la matanza de otros por el desarrollo.

作为对2008年全球金融危机和“反恐战争”失败的反应，北非和中东的动乱说明了大量失业青年与现代通讯网络交汇后的变革潜力。然而，理论家们依然对这些革命的意义及发生时间，连同它们与在其他时间和地点发生的社会动乱之间的关系感到疑惑。本文与弗朗兹·法农关于革命的临时性间隔进行了对话，集中于他对反殖民主义革命的理解以及在去殖民化和反奴隶制斗争中最无主权（潜在地最具革命性）者的重要性。之后，我融入北非中东的反叛和起义并提出它们是通向社会主义的革命性进步，这种社会主义能够制止对土地的争夺和对他人发展的剥夺。

북아프리카와 중동(MENA) 봉기는 2008년 지구적 금융위기와 실패한 ‘테러와의 전쟁’에 대응하는 대량 청년실업과 현대 통신 네트워크 간의 결합이 지니는 변혁적인 잠재력을 보여준다. 그러나 이론간들은 다른 시간과 장소에의 사회적 봉기와의 관련성과 함께 이러한 혁명의 시간과 의미에 대해서 놀란다. 이 글은 반식민 혁명과 탈식민화와 반노예 투쟁에서 주권적(잠재적으로 가장 혁명적인) 주체의 의미에 초점을 맞추어 혁명의 시간성의 공간적 배치에 대한 프란츠 파농과의 대화를 다룬다. 그 다음 나는 개발을 위해서 토지를 탈취하고 다른 사람을 죽이는 것을 막을 수 있는 사회주의로의 혁명적 진전이라는 점을 주장하면서 MENA 혁명과 봉기를 다룬다.

Keywords:

• Arab uprisings
• North Africa and Middle East
• Frantz Fanon
• the wretched
• subjectivity
• insurrection
• revolution
• socialism
• anti-colonial
• critical race
• spacing of temporality

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Ruth Reitan, the two reviewers, Elizabeth Thompson, and Kostantin Kilibarda for the careful read and excellent suggestions. Special thanks also go to Kole for helping me shorten the title and to Lissa Chiu, Tamara Spira, and Heather Turcotte, Kyle D. Killian, Mikael Lawrence Killian, and Aleksi Christos Killian for the many conversations on the question of revolution.

Notes

Coombs defines revolution as the ‘announcement of affirmation of the systematic overhaul of existing socio-economic conditions, within which the popular mobilization plays an essential role even while it remains insufficient to represent the overhaul itself’ (2011: 139).

I want to thank the anonymous reviewers; their organizing suggestions have sharpened the argument.

This idea emerges out of conversations with Heather Turcotte on abolitionist histories/struggles.

For the erosion of the modern liberal state, see Jean Luc-Nancy (2005). Some have argued that the EU is engaging in ‘constitutional steering’; see Skoutaris (2012).

In Black Skin, White Masks he shows that one's experience of the body is entangled in one's reality and live experience of timing of space.

See Agathangelou (2011) for the ways Fanon understands the earth, bodies, and space.

See Anna M. Agathangelou (2011) who argues that the slave and ancestors (i.e. constituted as flesh) do not figure in terms of globality which has serious implications on the ways we theorize and understand revolution.

Fanon tells us about his experience of being called names: ‘Dirty nigger!’ or simply, ‘Look, a Negro . . . I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects’ (Fanon, 1967 [1952], p. 109).

In Fanon's words: ‘Negroes who return . . . convey the impression that they have completed a cycle . . . They return literally full of themselves’ (Fanon 1967 [1952], p. 19).

Fanon sustains the distinctions between the racial positionality of Algerians and the blacks of Martinique. I do the same here as such a material and analytical distinction has implications in the way we read the constitution and emergence of the wretched and toward revolutionary relations and practices.

For a definition of necropolitical power, see Mbembe (2003). He states: ‘Politics is therefore death that lives a human life’ (p. 15) and the figure of sovereignty is ‘the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations’ (p. 14).

See Kostantin Kilibarda (2012) for a brilliant analysis of the interventions made by the aboriginal communities in Canada in the occupy movements.

This realization was assisted by the Wikileaks publishing cables, supposedly given to them by the US soldier and intelligence officer Bradley Manning, who now faces life imprisonment, in this: see Al jazeera (2011).