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Frantz Fanon: a Dying Colonialism

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Frantz Fanon: a Dying Colonialism Also Published by Grove Press Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White Masks Toward the African Revolution A DYING COLONIALISM The Wretched ofthe Earth Translated from the French by Haakon Chevalier With an Introduction by Adolfo Gilly ~.• GROVE PRESS New York Contents Introduction 1 English translation copyright © 1965 by Monthly Review Press Preface 2~ I. Algeria Unveiled ~5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in Appendix 64 any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval 2. This is the Voice of Algeria 69 systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, 3. The Algerian Family 99 except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members ofeducational institutions wishing to 4. Medicine and Colonialism 121 photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or 5. Algeria's European Minority 147 publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the 16~ work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Appendix I Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Appendix II 176 Conclusion 179 First published as Studies in a Dying Colonialism Originally published in France as L 'An Cinq, de la Revolution Algerienne © 1959 by Francois Maspero Publ~hedsimuhaneousrym Canada Printed in the United States ofAmerica ISBN-10: 0-8021-5027-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-5027-1 Grove Press an imprint of Q~ve/Atlantic, Inc. 841 Broadway New York, NY 10003 Distributed by Publishers Group West www.groveatlantic.com 07 08 09 10 11 12 26 2 WI"il\illilmlilllll~~i11i1rnlllllr~iies 8227990 Introduction Revolution is mankind's way of life today. This is the age of revolution; the "age of indifference" is gone forever. But the latter age paved the way for today; for the great masses of man­ kind, while still suffering the greatest oppression and the great­ est affronts to their dignity as human beings. never ceased to resist, to fight as well as they could, to live in combat. The combatant dignity of humanity was maintained in an unbreak­ able though not always visible line, in the depths of the life of the masses and in the uninterrupted fight-slandered, attacked, but alive in the very center of history-of little revolutionary vanguards bound to this profound human reality and to its socialist future, and not to the apparent omnipotence of great systems. Today the great systems have died or are living in a state of crisis. And it is no longer the age of little vanguards. The whole of humanity has erupted violently, tumultuously onto the stage of history, taking its own destiny in its hands. Capitalism is under siege. surrounded by a global tide of revolution. And this revolution, still without a center, without a precise form, has its own laws, its own life and a depth of unity-accorded it by the same masses who create it, who live it, who inspire each other from across boundaries, give each other spirit and encourage­ ment, and learn from their collective experiences. This revolution is changing humanity. In the revolutionary struggle, the immense, oppressed masses of the colonies and semi-colonies feel that they are a part of life for the first time. Life acquires a sense, a transcendence, an object: to end exploi­ tation, to govern themselves by and for themselves, to construct a way of life. The armed struggle breaks up the old routine life of the countryside and villages, excites, exalts, and opens wide 1 --- 2 A DYING COLONIALISM INTRODUCTION 11 the doors of the future. Liberation does not come as a gift from revolution and counter-revolution in Spain, or in his moving anybody; it is seized by the masses with their own hands. And pages on the centuries-old struggle of the Sicilian people, a by seizing it they themselves are transformed; confidence in struggle which has forged the character, the pride, and the si­ their own strength soars, and they turn their energy and their lence of Sicily and which is at the root of its present and its experience to the tasks of building, governing, and deciding future. their own lives for themselves. The masses resist and fight in a thousand ways, not only with This is the climate in which the immense majority of man­ arms in hand. These means include violence because in a world kind lives today in one way or another. Algeria has been, and where oppression is maintained by violence from above, it is continues to be, one of the great landmarks in this global battle. only possible to liquidate it with violence from below. Ulti­ And Frantz Fanon's book bears witness to Algeria's role. mately, once the struggle reaches a certain point, arms in hand The book continues to have for the reader years afterwards are indispensable. the same freshness it had at the time it was written, because On November I, 1954, a small group of Algerian leaders Fanon's main preoccupation was not to document the facts of launched an armed struggle, breaking with a whole pattern of exploitation, nor the sufferings of the people, nor the brutality negotiation and procrastination established by the old leaders. of the imperialist oppressor. All this is demonstrated in passing. In a very short time, they had the entire population behind But his main interest has been to go to the essentials: the spirit them. The decision to take arms did not spring full-blown from of struggle, of opposition, of initiative of the Algerian masses; the heads of this handful of leaders. They simply interpreted their infinite, multiform, interminable resistance; their daily what was already there in the population as a whole. And the heroism; their capacity to learn in weeks, in days, in minutes, people, in turn, were influenced by revolutions in the rest of the all that was necessary for the struggle for liberation; their capac­ world. In 1949 China tipped decisively and definitively the bal­ ity and decision to make all the sacrifices and all the efforts, ance of world power in favor of revolution. In 1951 she risked among which the greatest was not giving one's life in combat, her own existence to send hundreds of thousands of volunteers perhaps, but changing one's daily life, one's routines, preju­ to support the Korean revolution. In 1954, Dien Bien Phu was dices, and immemorial customs insofar as these were a hin­ a culminating disaster, marking the end of French domination drance to the revolutionary struggle. in Indo-China. This was the signal for Algeria to launch her Frantz Fanon died at 37, in December of 1961, days before struggle. And in 1960-1961, the defeat of French imperialism in the appearance of the first edition of Les Damnes de la Terre:v Algeria unleashed the great tide of African revolution. He was not a Marxist. But he was approaching Marxism The revolutionaries of Zanzibar took advantage of this unin­ through the same essential door which for many "Marxist" offi­ terrupted chain of revolutionary sn uggles to realize one of the cials and diplomats is closed with seven keys: his concern with greatest deeds of the epoch: storming the center of power with a what the masses do and say and think, and his belief that it is small nucleus, they expelled imperialism from a backward coun­ the masses, and not leaders nor systems, who in the final analysis try with only 300,000 inhabitants. They took the road of social­ make and determine history. This is the dominant line of all of ist revolution, arms in hand, with no other support than the Marx's analyses of historical events, whether in his articles on determination of the masses of Zanzibar-barefoot, poor, illiter­ ate, armed as well as they could manage-and their own revolu­ 1 Published in English under the title The Wretched of the Earth, New York, 1965. tionary courage. ,.......­ 4 A DYING COLONIALISM INTRODUCTION 5 Algeria was prepared by the incessant waves of revolution tariat, as reflected, for example, in the film The Salt of the that inundated the world from 1943 onwards, and in its turn Earth. opened the gates to Zanzibar, to the Congo, Mali, Portuguese It is in this kind of struggle that the woman stands firm in her Guinea. The Algerian revolution shares with the revolutions own strength, throws all the energy she has accumulated during that preceded it and with those that are continuing it, certain centuries of oppression, her infinite capacity to resist, her cour­ essential features which can be summed up in the words "mass age. It is in this kind of struggle that family relations change participation." and the woman prepares for her role in the society that is being The women, the family, the children, the aged-everybody built. She also prepares for it in battle. This is what Fanon participates. The double oppression, social and sexual, of the describes, and what he describes is no different from what the woman cracks and is finally shattered; and its essential nature as Chinese and the Cuban women did. The Algerian woman who the social oppression of the family as a whole is revealed. It is carries arms or who participates directly in combat is like the simply that its weakest parts-the children, the elderly, the wife of the Bolivian miner who takes up arms to defend the women-must bear the most exaggerated forms of oppression. occupied mines or who keeps watch, gun in hand and dynamite But in the revolutionary struggle, the relative weakness, the at her waist, over the hostages taken by the miners to be ex­ apparent defenselessness of these groups disappear.
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