Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire defined and explained colonialism and decolonization from a political, philosophical, historical and socio-cultural perspective. Both authors wrote for the colonies, Fanon in Misero Terrae (1963) and Cesaire in Discorso de Colonialismo (1972).
Fanon and Cesaire aimed to define colonialism and its structures, the psychology of colonialism and its more subtle effects on colonialism. Both writers describe the decade, even the decay, of Western-civilization”, or the so-called European civilization. When Fanon was openly called to force, however, Cesaire did not go far, but left it to the reader’s imagination to understand what was needed.
Colonization is the creation of two conflicting societies, one colonizer and the other colonized. When Fanon and Césaire define the colonial system, the system of oppression, they speak the same language. Fanon and Césaire explain how barbarism is brought about by colonization, so that good conscience can take everything away from the colonists.
By describing the mechanisms of colonization, both men show that colonialism is its undoing. Because colonies bring oppression, exploitation, and terror, they corrupt themselves in what Cesaire refers to as the “colonial boomerang effect.” (1972, p41);
In addition, the authors explore the psychological dimensions of colonialism, how colonialism creates a racist system that convinces the colonized to be what the colonists are told. The colonist strives to be like the colonist, even to become white. “… The whole outcome of colonial rule was to wait to convince the natives that colonialism had come to illuminate their darkness,” writes Fanon (1963, p. 210-211). According to Fanon, in order to end the colony, the colonists must first see the stories set in it. Cesaire describes the system of fear of the colonists, instilled in the colonists to make them feel inferior and thus unable to defend themselves.
Both wrote to the colonies, explaining to them that this system was wrong for everyone to read. By explaining how Fanon and Cesaire’s colonial activities tended to their own destruction, by giving the colonists a sense of dignity and worth. Fanon praised the “therapeutic effect of the novel violence instilled in the mind.” Fanon investigates colonial depersonalization as a major factor in the development of mental disorders. Cesaire does not discuss this aspect of the psychology of decolonization, but Fanon’s discussion of the matter is perhaps unique in anticolonial literature.
Both writers agree that colonialism is a complete system that must involve new things to destroy the colony against the colonizer. Fanon wrote in favor of revolution, suggesting that violence was one way to begin the process of overthrowing colonial rule.
When Fanon speaks of violence in The Miserable Earth, he is speaking of revolution. But Fanon means something deeper than natural things against the colonists. In replacing the colonial system, there is a very close danger if the colonized nation begins to imitate itself, to continue the patterns of oppression.
But Fanon exclaims, decolonization must be done at every level, and thus the process is violent. Decolonization is, as he says, “the true creation of new people.” (Fanon, 1963, p. 36) While Fanon acts in this way as an instigator of violence at all levels of society, Cesaire is simpler and more direct in asking the colonized to receive what is only his right. Fanon explains at length why violence is necessary, but Cesaire does not feel the need to justify violent rebellion.
Cesaire is more concerned with defining colonialism, how it works, although while the Discourse on Colonialism he makes a precise insinuation of Fanon’s influence as well.
Colony is an economic system, according to both Fanon and Cesaire. The sole foundation of the colonies is the plundering of the money of the colonies. Colonization has robbed the colonies of their natural economies, leaving them in limbo as a society unable to peg them, since all the means of growth lie under the control of the colonists.
Both writers report the destruction of local systems, local economies, unable to defend themselves because the means of life have been taken away from them. Cesaire speaks of “societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled upon, institutions destroyed, lands plundered, religions broken, magnificent creations of the arts destroyed, extraordinary faculties destroyed.” (1972, p. 43) While the colonialists claim that they advanced technologically and economically in their colonies, both Cesaire and Fanon deny this, as it is simply stated that no one could know where these colonies would be today if they had been allowed to follow. his progress.
Fanon’s polemic against colonialism attacks African elites for their bourgeois colonial tendencies, calling on African intellectuals to sympathize with the peasants and to join them in the fight against foreign colonists. Criticizing nationalist parties such as those of urban, bourgeois intellectuals, Fanon asserts that after independence, these parties will support the colonial government.
Nationalist parties imitate the system of colonialism, the very idea of a political party, which is based on the Western idea of organization. He says that it was the rural population that held on to pre-colonial traditions, which is where the native roots for community organization and action are found.
Fanon felt that a peaceful revolution only meant a change in the power of the Negro bourgeoisie as parasitic and corrupt as that of Europe, and he predicted that the former colonial power would continue to meddle in the affairs of the former colonies after independence. Furthermore, Fanon shows how the colonists used the differences between the urban and rural classes in the colonies, setting them against each other.
Cesaire similarly points out that “Europe had indeed acquired the best with all the local feudal lords who consented to serve, criminally complicit with them, and rendered their tyranny more effective” (1972, p. 45) and by doing so. the community between the tenant and the local “lord” kept the rural population in a backward state, removed from the advantages of modern society.
Using these old inequalities, the colonists can better control the colony and Cesaire and Fanon. Thus the people of the countryside are divided among themselves because Fanon resists a small percentage of urban workers with a large part of rural farmers.
The split will then be exacerbated in the process of independence, as political parties distance themselves from the rural defections. Thus, when the colony obtains its independence, the new factions that have obtained possessions have never united with the majority of the population, and these have fought in a similar manner to him.
Fanon continues to describe in more detail the process that ultimately creates a national culture, while Cesaire does not go so far as to discuss post-colonialism issues. According to Fanon, an independent colony almost inevitably descends into neo-colonialism. The old colonial power is increasing demands on what it still considers its territory, the former colonists are now visiting the former colony as traders and tourists.
Freedom found the middle classes unprepared to run the youth nation, as Fanon argued. No economic power, no base power, the middle classes will provide aid to the former colonist. Fanon warns against this danger and urges them with financial or intellectual resources to join the masses and work outside of this danger.
It means that the economy of a newly independent nation remains the same as it was when it was colonized, with the same crops and factories located. Instead of aiming at building and transforming the nation, Fanon writes that a new independent middle class, formerly colonized by the bourgeois – wanted to take over the peasantry, accepting its old businesses and practices for the sake of making money.
By calling for this simple replacement of the foreign settler with a class of Negro or Arab to rule, Fanon claims that this will lead to an increase in the definition of race – and thus, racism. The majority of the population will only continue to fall back into the old conflicts and will not benefit from the new freedom. The new ruling elite adopts the costumes of the colonists and imposes the same mythical image on the poorer masses that the colonists had used.
Fanon especially rejects the racial system created by colonialism, stating that after independence the lack of a national body in favor of a racial body (replacing black and white), although “historical necessity” wants to “lead them blind”. (Fanon, 1963, p. 214)
Until the new ruling elite, bourgeois and intellectuals, finally take it upon themselves to examine their traditions and cultures, which begins the road to true independence. The freedom revolution is just the beginning, as Fanon and Cesaire have witnessed. The cultural revolution French colonialism then it is much more difficult to shake off British colonialism. The British did not try to assimilate – and thus destroy – the local cultures (for that they were slaughtered anyway, but that’s a different story).
Fanon is more concerned with innovation than Cesaire, perhaps in part because of the circumstances of his life that brought him to Algeria. Algeria, where Fanon first came, tried new things. Not only was this the case, but the Algerian war of independence was a very horrific war in which Fanon came into direct contact, through a place in a mental hospital, with victims and tortured perpetrators. While Fanon, on some levels, significantly criticizes his stance on women, the subtlety of the Wretched of the Earth and his arguments about the violence in the Algerian revolution cannot be ignored.
But Cesaire lived most of his life in Martinique, where he was mayor of the city. Fort-de-France for almost fifty years. Cesaire can also be one of the voluntary bourgeois, Fanon argues, a man who speaks the right words, but is lazy after the people’s desire for freedom, who does not cry out for his power, when the people are expected, ready to follow, because it is his own. the place must be endangered if the colony system has been constructed.
While Cesaire touches on the necessity of failure, not with the strategy that Fanon uses. Cesaire is not talking about violence and revolution. Fanon criticizes the colonial understanding for its lack of consideration of what must happen after independence – and Cesaire does not consider the issues the young postcolonial state faces.
Colonization ultimately defeats itself, according to both Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, through the very definition of its existence – the oppression of a culture that is bound to rebel. Césaire and Fanon wrote not only of their colonial experiences, and not only of French colonies, but of colonies everywhere. It was intended to describe how colonialism provides, creates and perpetuates colonial mythology. Essentially, colonialist mythology is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The colonist claims the privilege of being brought into the colony by funding and feels the need to justify this privilege by creating a myth of himself and the colony. The colonist becomes a good and humane man, whose superior abilities and industry make him worthy of an easy place. He justifies his easy work and great pay by describing the natives as his inferiors. His presence in the colonist soil was ignored, but not forgotten – making the colonists more and more eager to defend their position.
The arrival of the settler is the end of the history of the colony, the end of the future, as they live. in the straits placed by the colony. There is no state, no right of the state, no right to vote, it is not possible for the future of their culture, which they believe to be barbaric, to be cultivated in a frozen state.
Thus the culture of the colonist falls, and begins to atrophy. The colonial myth becomes prophetic in itself, but it also defeats itself. The colonists living under a hopeless cause resign themselves to their fate and begin to exhibit the very symptoms described by the colonist.
Colonial policies arose out of a racist, hierarchical concept of human resources. It is a racist idea that Africans are lazy and cannot think too much for themselves,” explains Daniel Sherman, a professor of French studies and history at Rice University.
The (noncompulsory) primary school system introduced by the French differed from the French system, especially in its emphasis on practical instruction over intellectual studies considered difficult for the colonized in the West. Due to the economic circumstances imposed by the French, but also in turn of the colonists, he attended a colonial school largely because of the attendance – if he even had the option, of course. Fanon and Césaire both relate to this point, because this very treatment of the colonist as an animal returns to the colonist, who himself becomes detestable.
Colonial influences remain after independence. In particular, in independent Algeria, schools were heavily influenced by the movement to replace French influence with Arabization, for example by printing school books in Arabic. “He passes from excessive submission to Europe, resulting in depersonalization, to such a violent return to himself as to be harmful,” writes Albert. “Before and during the defeat, the colonist always considers the colonist a model or antitheton. He continues to fight against him.” (Memmi, 1957, p. 140);
The result of the Arabization of Algeria was the rapid emergence of a distorted youth whose Arab education made it impossible for them to obtain work in the civilian system still using French as their first language. The colony continues to rebel against the colonists, but as long as Fanon’s bourgeois intellectuals remain in power after independence, they will perpetuate the colonial system.
In the Preface to the Discourse on Colonialism, Robin D.G. Kelly’s Prodrome of the Poetics of Anticolonialism mentions the criticism leveled at Césaire and Fanon: that while some writers claim that they have erred in the course of history, “we are hardly in the ‘postcolony'” (1972, p. 27). where the former colonial power is heavily involved in the local economy.In the Maghrib, for example, France is the primary import/export partner, and French television is the only foreign channel available.
The colonist is obliged to act as a colonist, and the impetus for self-constitution emerges. The colonized eventually resists the dominant force and begins to resist political, economic and cultural movements through the movement towards nationalism. Fanon explains well how the nationalist parties, which consist of urban workers, differ from the rebellion among the rural population.
Fanon’s view of violence becomes more difficult to apply directly, though, as several factors also determine how a nation achieves independence. The war of independence in Algeria brought the war of independence of the longest French colony in the Maghreb, another. which Gaul had become an extension of Gaul to the south.
Tunisia and Morocco easily and peacefully declared independence mainly because of the war between France. and Albania. Fanon and Cesaire wanted Martinique proper to be a part of France rather than an independent nation, with the election in 1958, perhaps too washed out, or for economic reasons, perhaps an electoral flaw. After all, each colonial group faces a unique situation, with the events in the other so-called parent colonies being coherent.
Fanon and Césaire have never perhaps been more relevant than today to understand colonial philosophy and the subtler effects it had on souls. Colonialism may have its face, its name, its power, but it has not disappeared. While the Western world has retreated from colonialism, it hasn’t retreated economically. Yesterday the colony was launched today “trade goods” and “economic cooperation”.
The world, once colonized, is still trying to throw off the burden of colonization, so that the natural resources and the efforts of the people continue to be diverted from them without just satisfaction. Fanon encourages the independent colonies to demand retribution, pointing to what happened to the Jews in the Nazi holocaust.
The effects of colonialism are effectively negated in the colonial defection after independence, when the nationalist movements force the new nation to reject colonialism. In order to witness the full treatment of the colonists, his alienation must cease completely. The hope is that the adoption process will unfold naturally. The entire outcome of colonization is to be expected – including a period of failure.
Notes:
Fanon, Franz (1963). The wretched earth.
New York: Grove Press.
Cesaire, Aime (1972). Talk about Colonialism.
New York: Monthly Review Press.
Kelley, Robin D.G. (1972) Poetics of Anticolonialism.
Talk about Colonialism. Preface, (4th ed.).
Sherman, Daniel J (2000, April). The Arts and Sciences of Colonialism.
French Historical Studies (707-729), Society for French Historical Studies.
Memmi, Albert (1957). Colonizer and the Colonized.
Boston: Orion Press.
