Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire both defined and explained colonialism and decolonization from a political, philosophical, historical, and socio-cultural perspective. Both authors wrote for the colonized, Fanon in Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Cesaire in Discourse on Colonialism (1972).
Fanon and Cesaire aimed to define colonialism and its constructs, the psychology of colonialism and its subtle effects on the colonized. Both writers point to the decadence, even rottenness, of so-called Western civilization, or European civilization. While Fanon openly called for violence, however, Cesaire did not go as far but left it to the reader’s imagination to understand what actions would be necessary.
Colonization is a creation of two conflicting societies, the one of the colonizer and the one of the colonized. When Fanon and Cesaire define the system of colonization, a system of oppression, they speak the same language. Fanon and Cesaire explain how colonization barbarizes the colonized so that the colonizer can, in good conscience, take everything from the oppressed.
By describing the mechanisms of colonization, both men point out that colonialism is its own destruction. Because colonialists inflict oppression, exploitation, and terror, they corrupt themselves in what Cesaire refers to as the “boomerang effect of colonization.” (1972, p41)
Furthermore, both authors explore the psychological dimensions of colonialism, how colonization creates a racist system that can go as far as convincing the colonized that they are what the colonists tell them they are. The colonized strive to be like the colonizer, to become him, to be white even. “…The total result looked for by colonial domination was indeed to convince the natives that colonialism came to lighten their darkness,” writes Fanon (1963, p 210-211). According to Fanon, in order to end colonization, first the colonized must see the myth that has been placed on him. Cesaire describes colonization as a system of fear, instilled in the colonized to that they would feel inferior and thus incapable of defending themselves.
Both men wrote to the colonized, explaining to them that this system as laid out for all to read is wrong. By explaining how colonization works, Fanon and Cesaire aimed for its destruction by giving back a sense of self-worth and dignity to the colonized. Using his own experiences as a psychiatrist treating mental patients, Fanon “lauded the therapeutic effect of revolutionary violence on the brainwashed minds of the colonized.” Fanon explores the dimension of depersonalization of the colonized as the major factor in the development of mental disorders. Cesaire does not discuss this aspect of the psychology of decolonization, but then Fanon’s discussion of the subject is perhaps unique among anticolonial literature.
Both writers concede that colonialism is a complete system, that in order for it to be destroyed it must involve a revolution by the colonized against the colonizer. Fanon wrote in favor of a revolution, indicating that violence was the only way to begin the process of dismantling colonial domination.
When Fanon speaks of violence in Wretched of the Earth, he is speaking of revolution. Aside from the physical revolution against the colonists, however, Fanon means something deeper. In replacing the colonialist system, there is a close danger for the colonized to imitate it as they start up their own nation, to continue the patterns of oppression.
Instead, Fanon exclaims, decolonization has to happen on every level, and thus it is a violent process. Decolonization is, as he puts it, “the veritable creation of new men.” (Fanon, 1963, p. 36) While Fanon acts in this sense as an instigator of violence through all levels of society, Cesaire is more simple and direct in asking the colonized to take back what is only rightfully theirs. Fanon in great length explains why violence is necessary, but Cesaire does not feel the need to justify a violent revolt.
Cesaire is more concerned with defining colonialism, explaining how it works, although while Discourse on Colonialism does precisely that the underlying insinuation is also that of Fanon’s violence.
Colonization is a system of economic domination, according to both Fanon and Cesaire. The sole basis of colonization is that of money, of robbing the wealth of the colonies. Colonization has robbed the colonized of their natural economies, pegging them into a state of stagnation as their society cannot advance when all the instruments of advancement lie under the control of the colonists.
Both writers denounce the destruction of local systems, local economies, leading to the inability of the colonized to fend for themselves because their tools of life were taken from them. Cesaire speaks of “societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.” (1972, p. 43) While colonialists claim that they brought technological and economic advancement to their colonies, both Cesaire and Fanon deny this, with the simple statement that no one can know where these colonies would be today if they had been allowed to follow their own course of development.
Fanon’s polemic against colonialism attacks the African elites for their colonialist bourgeois tendencies, calling on African intellectuals to sympathize with the peasants and to join them in the fight against foreign colonialists. Criticizing the nationalist parties as those of the urban, bourgeois intellectuals, Fanon claims that after independence, these parties will keep up the colonialist regime.
The nationalist parties copy the system of colonization, the very concept of a political party being founded on a Western ideal of organization. He states that the rural population is who has held onto precolonial traditions, in other words where the native roots for organization and communal activity can be found.
Fanon felt that a peaceful revolution only indicated a shift in power to a Negro bourgeoisie as parasitic and corrupt as the European, and he predicted that the former colonial power would continue to involve itself with the affairs of its former colonies after independence. Fanon further points out how the colonialists have used the differences between urban and rural classes in the colonies, pitting them against each other.
Cesaire similarly points out that “Europe has gotten on very well indeed with all the local feudal lords who agreed to serve, woven a villainous complicity with them, rendered their tyranny more effective” (1972, p. 45) and that by doing so this complicity between settler and local “lords” has kept the rural population in a backward state, removed from the advantages of a modern society.
Through using these old inequalities to their advantage, the colonists are better able to control the colonized according to both Cesaire and Fanon. Thus the people of the country are split between what Fanon considers a small percentage of urban workers in opposition with a large majority of rural farmers.
This split is then exacerbated in the process toward independence, as the political parties distance themselves from the rural revolt. Thus, when the colony achieves independence, the new parties in power have never joined with the majority populace, and the latter find themselves in a system similar to the one they had just fought against.
Fanon continues to describe, at great length, the process which ultimately creates a national culture, while Cesaire does not go as far as to discuss issues of post-colonialism. According to Fanon, the independent colony almost inevitably sinks into neo-colonialism. The old colonial power increases its demands on what it still considers its territory, the former colonizers now visit the former colony as businessmen and tourists.
Independence finds the middle classes unprepared to run the young nation, according to Fanon. With no economic power, no power base whatsoever, the middle classes will turn for help to the former colonizer. Fanon warns against this danger, and urges those with the economic or intellectual means to join with the masses and work beyond this danger.
He makes the point that the economy of the newly independent nation remains the same as during colonization, with the same crops and factories in place. Instead of focusing on rebuilding and transforming the nation, Fanon writes that the new independent middle class – the former colonized bourgeois – instead chose to take the place of the settler, taking over their old businesses and practices for the sake of monetary gain.
By demanding this simple replacement of the foreign settler with a Negro or Arab ruling class, Fanon claims that this will lead to increased racial definition – and thus, racism. The majority population will only continue to fall back on old conflicts, and do not benefit from their new freedom. The new ruling elite takes on the clothing of the colonized and inflicts the same mythical image onto the poorer masses that the colonized had used.
Fanon especially repudiates the racial system created by colonialism, claiming that after independence the lack of a national body in favor of a racial body (black replacing white), though “a historical necessity” will “tend to lead them up a blind alley.” (Fanon, 1963, p 214)
Until the new ruling elites, the bourgeois and intellectuals, finally take it upon themselves to examine their own traditions and culture that the path to true independence begins. The revolution for independence is only the beginning, according to Fanon, and Cesaire as well. The cultural revolution, which inevitably comes later and slower, is the true victory of the colonized.
Fanon touches on various forms of cultural expression, from literature to painting and sculpture, while exploring the path toward a national, independent culture. He identifies three stages: first, complete assimilation to the colonialist system; second, the path of self-discovery, or “immersion”; and finally, the “fighting phase” when the native becomes a national mouthpiece (Fanon, 1963, p 222-223). Fanon warns, however, against turning to past traditions without recognizing the emerging, modern culture. He claims, finally, that it is through the revolt that a new nationalist culture is found, not in folklore or poetry.
Both Fanon and Cesaire lived under the cultural colonialism inflicted by the French, more insidious perhaps than simple economic theft like that of, for example, British colonization. This cultural domination is what enabled the psychological systems of oppression both men speak of – and this is perhaps what has made French colonialism much more difficult to shake off then British colonialism. The British did not attempt to assimilate – and thus destroy – local cultures (instead they simply massacred anyone in their way, but that is a different essay).
Fanon is more concerned with revolution than Cesaire, maybe partly due to his own life circumstances which brought him to Algeria. Algeria, when Fanon first arrived, was in a state of revolution. Not only was this the case, but the Algerian war of independence was an excruciatingly horrific war during which Fanon came into direct contact, through his position at a mental hospital, with torture victims and perpetrators. While Fanon has been criticized on some levels, most significantly his stance on women, the accuracy of Wretched of the Earth and its themes on violence in regards to the Algerian revolution cannot be ignored.
Cesaire on the other hand lived most his life in Martinique, where he served as mayor of the capital Fort-de-France for almost fifty years. Cesaire may even be one of the bourgeois intellectuals Fanon discusses, a man who speaks the right words but lags behind the people’s desire for independence, who fails to call out for violence when the people are waiting for it, ready to follow, because his own position would be jeopardized should the colonial system collapse.
While Cesaire touches on the need to revolt, he does not do so with the level of instigation that Fanon uses. Cesaire does not speak of violence and the ramifications of revolution. Fanon criticizes the intellectual colonized for their lack of consideration of what must happen after independence – and Cesaire does not consider the issues a young postcolonial state would have to face.
Colonization ultimately defeats itself, according to both Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, through the very definition of its existence – the oppression of a culture which is bound to rebel. Cesaire and Fanon wrote not only of their own colonial experiences, not only of French Colonialism, but colonies everywhere. Their intent was to describe how the colonial mythology envisions, creates, and perpetuates the colonial reality. In essence, colonialist mythology is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The colonizer claims privilege at the expense of the suppressed colonized, and feels the need to justify this privilege by creating a myth of himself and the colonized. The colonizer becomes a virtuous, civilized man, whose higher capabilities and industriousness makes him worthy of his easily achieved position. He justifies his own easy work and high pay by designating the indigenous as inferior to himself. His presence on colonized soil as oppressor is ignored, but not forgotten – making the colonizer increasingly zealous in defending his position.
The arrival of the colonizer is the end of the history of the colonized, the end of their future, as they live on under the constrictions placed by the colony. With no ability to affect the state of affairs – no right to citizenship, no voting privileges, the inability to advance the future of his own culture which he is told is barbaric – the colonized brood in a frozen state.
Thus the colonized culture falls behind, and begins to atrophy. The colonial myth becomes self-prophetic but also self-defeating. The colonized living under a hopeless cause resign to their fate and begin to exhibit the very symptoms described by the colonizer.
Colonial policies grew out of a racist, hierarchical conception of human capacities. The racist belief that Africans were inherently lazy and unable to think for themselves was too ingrained,” explains Daniel Sherman, professor of French studies and history at Rice University. As an example of how the colonial mythology is self-fulfilling, charged with laziness by the colonizer, the colonized receives no reward for work done and slowly becomes unwilling to work, a.k.a. lazy.
The (noncompulsory) primary school system introduced by the French differed from the French system, especially on the emphasis on practical instruction in lieu of Western intellectual pursuits deemed too difficult for the colonized. Due largely to (compulsory) economic circumstances imposed by the French, but also in retaliation to the colonizer, few of the colonized attended school during the colonial period – assuming they even had the option, of course. Fanon and Cesaire both make the pertinent point, however, that this very treatment of the colonized as an animal returns onto the colonizer, who himself becomes a detestable creature.
Colonial influences continue after independence. Especially in independent Algeria, schools were heavily affected by movements to substitute French influence with Arabization, for example by reprinting school books in Arabic. “From excessive submission to Europe resulting in depersonalization, [colonized culture] passes to such a violent return to self that it is noxious,” writes Albert Memmi in The Colonizer and the Colonized. “Before and during revolt, the colonized always considers the colonizer as a model or as an antithesis. He continues to struggle against him.” (Memmi, 1957, p 140)
The result of Algerian Arabization was the quick emergence of a disillusioned youth whose Arab education disabled them from obtaining work in a civil system still using French as a prime language. The colonized continues to revolt against the colonizer, but as long as Fanon’s bourgeois intellectuals remain in power after independence, they will continue to perpetuate the colonial system.
In the preface to Discourse on Colonialism, Robin D.G. Kelly’s essay A Poetics of Anticolonialism mentions the criticism laid on Cesaire and Fanon: that while some claim these writers were proved wrong through the course of history, “we are hardly in a ‘postcolonial’ moment.” (1972, p 27) This is easily evidenced in any former colony, at least in Africa, where the former colonial power heavily involves itself in the local economy. In the Maghrib, for example, France is the primary import/export partner, and French television is the only available foreign channel.
The colonized is bound to react to the colonizer, and the urge for self-determination emerges. In reaction to the dominating force, the colonized eventually begins to resist the political, economic, and cultural invasion through a movement toward nationalism. Fanon explains well how the nationalist parties, consisting of urban workers, differs from the revolt among the rural population.
Fanon’s theory of violence becomes harder to apply directly, though, as too many factors determine how a nation achieves independence. Algeria faced a turbulent war of independence as the longest standing French colony in the Maghreb, and the one which France had come to consider an extension of France to the south.
Tunisia and Morocco, meanwhile, relatively easily and peacefully declared their independence largely due to the war between France and Algeria. Fanon and Cesaire’s own Martinique chose to be a department of France rather than an independent nation when given a choice in 1958, perhaps too brainwashed, or due to economic reasons, perhaps due to a faulty electoral system. In any case, every colonized group faces a unique situation, tied in with events in other colonies belonging to the so-called motherland.
Fanon and Cesaire are maybe never more relevant than today in order to comprehend the philosophy of colonization and is subtle effects on the souls of the colonized. Colonization may have changed its face, its name, its power holders, but it has not disappeared. While the western world has withdrawn from colonization, it has not withdrawn as economic occupants. Yesterday’s colonization is today’s “free trade” and “economic co-operation.”
The formerly colonized world is still struggling to throw off the burden of colonization as their natural resources and manpower efforts continue to travel away from them without proper compensation. Fanon urges independent colonies to demand retribution, pointing out that this has been done for the Jews in the case of the Nazi holocaust.
The effects of colonization are effectively negated in the colonized revolt after independence, when nationalist movements force the new nation to discard colonialism. In order to witness the complete cure of the colonized, his alienation must completely cease. The hope is that the colonizing process will naturally unravel. We must await the complete disappearance of colonization – including the period of revolt.
References:
Fanon, Frantz (1963). Wretched of the Earth.
New York: Grove Press.
Cesaire, Aime (1972). Discourse on Colonialism.
(4th ed.) New York: Monthly Review Press.
Kelley, Robin D.G. (1972) A Poetics of Anticolonialism.
Discourse on 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). The Colonizer and the Colonized.
Boston: The Orion Press.
