00293--FRANTZ OMAR FANON and his works

FRANTZ OMAR FANON

1.Black Skin, White Masks  2.Studies in a Dying Colonialism 3.The Wretched of the Earth 4.Towards the African Revolution

00183-Psychopathology of Colonialism/Frantz Fanon/Postcolonial criticism

Frantz Fanon worked for the French during the French colonial occupation in Algeria.  He first worked for the French and then joined with the freedom fighters, and thus very well knew the different perspectives of both the colonizer and the colonized.  His important works are The Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Black Skin, White Masks (1967).

Ø  According to Frantz Fanon the colonizer destroyed the very soul of the repressed and suffering native.  The psychology of colonialism is that when the colonial paints the native as evil, pagan and primitive, over a period of time the native begins to accept this prejudiced and radicalized view as true. 

Ø  The native comes to see himself as evil, pagan and primitive.  The black man loses his sense of self and identity because he can see only through the eyes of the white man.  For the native, man means white man because he doesn’t see himself as a man at all.  The term ‘culture’ for the native becomes the ‘culture’ of the white man.

Ø  For the white man, the native is always a NEGATIVE, PRIMITIVE OTHER; the very opposite to what he (white man) and his culture stands for.  Fanon here develops a psychoanalytical theory of Colonialism.  Fanon suggests that the European self develops in its relation and encounter with the ‘Other’ (the native).  Thus the Colonialism engages the white and the native in an ‘encounter/relation’ where one develops only in its contrast with the other.

Ø  For the native the only way of dealing with this psychological inadequacy is by trying to be as ‘white’ as possible.  The native takes on the western values, religion, language and practices of the white colonial and rejects his own conditions.  HERE HE PUTS ON ‘WHITE MASKS’. 

Ø  However this ‘mask’ over the black skin is not a perfect solution or fit.  Fanon argues that the native experiences a schizophrenic condition as a result of this duality.  The buildup of this sense of inadequacy and inferiority in the colonized’s psyche, argues Fanon, results in violence.   

Ø  Violence is a form of self-assertion.  When the native discovers that he cannot hope to become truly ‘white’ or expel the whites, his violence erupts against his own people.  Thus, tribal wars, for Fanon, are an instance of this; the violence generated through the colonial system where the ‘wretched’ turn upon each other, haunted by a failure to turn against the colonial master.

Ø  Fanon recognized the significance of Cultural Nationalism when he propounded the idea of a national literature (in Wretched of the Earth) leading to a national consciousness.  His deployment of the term national culture was an attempt to plead for a greater pan-African cause.  The blacks had to create their own history, and write their own stories.  And it is through this CONTROL OVER REPRESENTATION that the native can break free of the colonial shackles.

Ø  Such a national culture believed Fanon, must Return to African Myths and cultural practices. 

Ø  It is within these mythic, cultural and even mystic traditions that black identity can be resurrected.

A NATIONAL CULTURE IS FRAMED IN THREE STAGES

1.      The native intellect is under the influence of the colonizer’s culture, and seeks to emulate and assimilate it by abandoning his own.  He tries to be as white as possible. 

2.      The native discovers that he can never become truly white, or white enough for the colonial masters to treat him as equal.  Now he returns to study his own culture, and might even romanticize his traditions and past.  Here there is no critical engagement with the native culture, just a celebratory tone.

3.      In the 3^rd stage the native is truly anti-colonial.  He joins the ranks of his people and battles colonial domination.  He carefully analyses his own culture.  Such analyses help him to abandon these elements of native culture that are dated or even oppressive.  So that a new future is possible. 

WHAT HAPPENS IN A POSTCOLONIAL STATE [AFTER GETTING FREEDOM FROM THE COLONISER] OR NEO-COLONIALISM

Fanon drew unfavourable parallels between the colonial masters and the elite of the postcolonial nations.  He argued that the power struggles between the colonial master and the native subject ends with political independence.  However, ironically this soon emerges in a different form: the battle for power between the elites and the rest in the postcolonial state. 

Native elites occupy the spaces of power once occupied by the white masters, and the corruption, oppression and exploitation of the working classes continue this time at the hands of fellow natives.  This, in effect, is NEO-COLONIALISM.  The middle classes and the intellectual classes that were educated in the colonial system now acquire power and duplicate the unjust and exploitative colonial system even after political independence.