Grant Farred Imperative of The

Grant Farred

Imperative of the Now

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. —William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

It might be said, with a measure of good reason, that on the occasion of the fiftieth anniver- sary of the publication of The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre), Frantz Fanon has not had to endure Julius Caesar’s fate. Contra Caesar, Fanon’s work has been “praised” in death more fulsomely—and engaged more extensively in the last twenty years or so—than he was in his all too brief life; dead at thirty-six from leukemia after dedicating most of his adult life to the struggle for what was then imagined as Third World libera tion, and, of course, his prescient concerns about Third World sovereignty. Such has been the impact of Fanon’s work that his political and philosophi- cal (they are not always interchangeable) good has not been, as is appropriate, interred with his revo lutionary bones. And yet, there is a lesson to be drawn from Marc Antony. It is true, of course, that Antony— Caesar’s loyal friend, himself a figure of no small

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/112/1/1/470855/SAQ1121_01Farred_Fpp.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 2 The South Atlantic Quarterly • Winter 2013

political intrigue and ambition, architect of many machinations—was a canny, shrewd political operator who by the end (perhaps even earlier, much earlier) of his famous speech has entirely outmaneuvered Brutus and the plotters. Who can forget that rhetorical masterstroke that is the finale of Antony’s speech:

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me. (act 3, scene 2, lines 103–106) At the edge of “good” there is always discernible, sometimes only in faint outline but more often it is in plain view, the determination to “bury” all that is not “good.” Or, in anti–Marc Antony–speak, sometimes there is “good” in the “evil” that has not been “buried.” (And in the “evil” that has been “buried.”) Indeed, how else could we be faithful and just to Fanon? “Imperative of the Now” writes Fanon in this latter spirit, that of intel- lectual felicity. This collection of essays takes up Fanon on his own intellec- tual terrain, among which the colonial, the postcolonial, the psychoanalytic, and his relation to other Caribbean and Third World intellectuals are pre- eminent, in order to explicate the “reason” (reasons, properly phrased) why his work obtains as urgently now as it did in the moment of its publication. Decolonization, Fanon is clear, is an “urgent matter” (2004: 59). It is an ongoing matter, invigorating Fanon yet one more time, so that Fanon becomes a mode of thinking, an efficacious approach to political work, a commitment to thinking for justice that is infinitely renewable. And necessary, it goes without saying. “Imperative of the Now” seeks to, from a range of disciplinary locales and covering a variety of political investments, “pause”—take a moment, take fifty years, take in the event of fifty years, which turns not only on decolonization—in order to, first, take stock, and then, second, think Fanon under the injunction, the “urgent” demands, of the now. The intention here is not to make Fanon “come back” to us, but to imagine—as fully and there- fore as incompletely as possible—how his work, The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks (1952) most notably, has borne itself, has carried itself to us, over half a century. And then, to apprehend what that bearing has offered us, offers us—the ideas, the bold declarations (that often detract from and interrupt his thinking as much as they galvanize struggles), the forebodings of the failed to comes. Where can we take Fanon? Toward what imperatives does Fanon propel us? What is it that he makes us look for?

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/112/1/1/470855/SAQ1121_01Farred_Fpp.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 Farred • Imperative of the Now 3

What kind of inquiries, disagreements, limitations, possibilities, and philo- sophical difficulties emerge from our engagement with him? It is this kind of “praise” that the “Imperative of the Now” strives toward. It is necessary to understand how Fanon’s bearing (what is borne in and through his work), across the decades, in spite of being celebrated (moment of publication), forgotten, and then reclaimed (republication, new foreword, new translation), continues to make the work of “judgment” imperative. In this instance, it is sufficient to put Fanon to expedient use— as long as it is, of course, for the best possible political reasons. Making decisions about Fanon’s work gives rise to the corresponding need to reflect on what is urgent, usable, and instructive about his work in the now—the reason that his work matters and is of political consequence now. How- ever, it is also, in some sense, to understand simultaneously the value of the “pause” and the imperative to write—as Fanon did for El Moudjahid (a French Algerian newspaper that initially served as the FLN’s information bulletin)—the now as it confronts us. The now must be written even as it presses in on us, especially because it presses in on us. The imperative— the determination to make the now bear the radical possibilities already present within it—is the only kind of thinking that Fanon knew. This is part of his enduring appeal. It is why ever since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth revolutionaries have turned to his work and found inspiration there; it is why those struggling against imperialisms old and new, imperialisms recast as (self-proclaimed) liberators or champions of the “war on terror” (those who come well versed in the art of terror, of terrorizing the other; “the vice president is a terrorist,” implies the “terrorist” Abu Nazir sardonically, in the television show Homeland [2011] 1 ) continue to find meaning, instruction, and solace in Fanon’s work. His ability to inspire, of course, emerges out of a commitment to undoing the old order, to forging new human possibilities, and perhaps most important, to inspiring romance— an ability shared with his contemporaries Ché and Lumumba. To make the struggle an endeavor of love, a romantic undertaking. Hyperbolic though he be, Marc Antony, a man who proved himself incredibly susceptible to love (it took him to a place—Antony and Cleopatra’s Alexandria—that turned out to be a rather tragic venue for him, and for love, rather close to Fanon’s Algeria), was well versed in the strategy of political romance: “When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept,” he tells now a decidedly uncertain crowd. What revolutionary would not follow such a man, Julius Caesar, a dissembler whose “ambitions” were dangerous to Rome’s res publica, when he is moved by the poor’s plight? Fanon’s is a far

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/112/1/1/470855/SAQ1121_01Farred_Fpp.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 4 The South Atlantic Quarterly • Winter 2013

more noble undertaking, infinitely more felicitous in its dedication to the poor. It is Antony’s proto-Machiavellian streak that should always make us wary of those who promise “common pleasures.” It is one thing to “weep” for the poor, an entirely more arduous undertaking to make that the first imperative of the revolutionary’s politics. “Imper- ative of the Now” seeks to append a contemporary meaning to Fanon’s proj- ect for revolution.

Note

1 Abu Nazir makes the comment, “And they say we’re the terrorists,” after a US drone strike on Nazir’s compound. Nazir’s son, Issa, and eighty-two other children are killed. Brody, whom Nazir has teach English to Issa, is devastated by the loss. After the strike, Abu Nazir and Brody watch a speech made by Vice President William Walden about the drone strike. An inveterate hawk, Walden claims that a missile struck Abu Nazir’s compound. Walden dismisses any images of dead children as merely fabricated by the terrorists for propaganda purposes. It is in this moment that Abu Nazir reflects on the hypocrisy of the United States, without, of course, reflecting on the violence he commissions.

References

Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. ———. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Homeland. 2011. “Crossfire,” season 1, episode 9, first broadcast November 27 on Showtime. Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff and written by Alexander Cary.

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/112/1/1/470855/SAQ1121_01Farred_Fpp.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021