Postcolonialism by Frantz Fanon

 

Postcolonialism and Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)                                                         

                                                                         

Introduction

In a time of anti-colonial liberation struggle, Frantz Omar Fanon (1925–1961), who was born on the island of Martinique under French colonial control, was one of the most significant thinkers in black Atlantic theory.

His writing draws inspiration from a variety of literary genres as well as psychology, philosophy, and political theory, and it has had a significant, long-lasting impact on the global South. In his lifetime, he released The Wretched of the Earth in 1961 and Black Skin, White Masks in 1952, both of which are important original works. A Dying Colonialism (1959) and Toward the African Revolution (1964), two collections of articles released posthumously. Additionally, he was given a position in psychiatry in 1953.

One of the more intriguing topics of academic debate is Fanon's approach in Black Skin, White Masks, which is a challenging question. The text's main method is existential-phenomenological, as evidenced by the vivid, nuanced personal stories that draw on the key elements of the fictionalised incident of anti-blackness.

Language, emotion, sexuality, gender, race and racism, religion, social formation, time, and many other topics were addressed by Fanon in his writings. His involvement in the Algerian revolutionary struggle caused him to broaden his conceptions of colonialism, the anti-colonial movement, and visions of a postcolonial culture and society, which replaced his earlier theorizations of blackness.

The initial studies by Fanon take into account a variety of diseases brought on by colonial aggression. Some of them are mental disorders, which Fanon defines as generalised anxiety brought on by colonial dominance and manifested in specific facets of the personality. Others cause sexual disorders linked to colonial degradations of femininity and masculinity or bear the disorder on the body and deform the person from the inside out.

Fanon's succinct claim that "Black people are locked in blackness and white people are locked in whiteness" is summarised in the book's introduction along with other significant findings and analytical cornerstones.

Fanon connects the calculative logic of colonial rule with the existential experience of racialized subjectivity. This is crucial: colonialism is a complete project in Fanon's eyes. It is a project that touches every aspect of human being and their world.

Concept of Self and Other

The psychological implications of colonialism on both the colonizer and the colonized were examined in his key writings, The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1967). Through representation and discourse, the native, according to Fanon, develops a sense of "self" as defined by the "colonial master," but the colonizer does the opposite and feels superior. As a result, Fanon creates a psychoanalytical theory of postcolonialism in which he contends that the European "Self" grows through interaction and relation to the "Other."

The native makes an effort to be as white as possible by embracing Western ideas, religion, language, and rituals while rejecting his own culture to cope with his psychological inferiority. Fanon describes this phenomenon as people wearing white masks over black skin, creating a dualism and a schizophrenic environment. Violence, a kind of self-assertion, is a further effect of the colonized's sense of inadequacy and insecurity.

Sense of Inadequacy and Inferiority

According to Fanon, colonised people have feelings of inferiority and inadequacy that lead to violence, which the locals view as a means of expressing their own identity. When the native realises, he cannot completely become "white," violence even breaks out against other indigenous. Tribal wars, in which the natives turn against one another while tormented by a failure to turn against the colonial master, are an example of this violence, according to Fanon, which is caused by the colonial system.

National Literature and National Culture

Fanon proposed the idea of national literature and culture while acknowledging the importance of cultural nationalism as a catalyst for national consciousness. As black people had to rewrite their history and build new ones, he tried to advocate for a more important, pan-African cause. Such a national culture, according to Fanon, must draw inspiration from African mythology and cultural practices. 

Stages of National Culture

He identified three phases in the development of national culture:

1) The native attempts to imitate and absorb the colonizer's culture by letting go of his own culture (what Homi K Bhabha later calls mimicry).

2) The native recognises the stark differences and realises that he will never be truly white or white enough for the coloniser to treat him equally. He then goes back to studying his own culture romantically and joyfully.

3) The native, however, becomes genuinely anticolonial in the third stage, along with a critical examination of his own culture. 

Cultural Nationalism

Fanon also anticipated how cultural nationalism may turn into bigotry and xenophobia. He came to understand that national culture had little value beyond helping to protect native culture from the massive imperial attack. Fanon also emphasised the fact that cultural nationalism would not guarantee the relief of the working masses and the oppressed. His idea of cultural nationalism was thus both representational and materialistic and economic. He also advocated for a dynamic culture that is responsive to shifting socio-historical conditions and requires critical analysis. The power struggle between the elite of the colonised people and the rest of postcolonial society would re-emerge after political independence, according to yet another prophetic thesis, and oppression, exploitation, and corruption would persist.

Orientalism by Edward Said

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