Student Question
According to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, how is colonization processed and who creates the identities of the colonizer and the colonized?
Quick answer:
Frantz Fanon argues that colonization involves the violent reorganization of society, where the colonizer suppresses indigenous cultures to impose new institutions reflecting the colonial power's values. This process creates identities for both the colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer justifies its rule by portraying itself as a benevolent force bringing civilization to "barbaric" peoples. In turn, the colonized are labeled as savages until they conform as loyal subjects, homogenizing their diverse cultures.
In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon describes the process of colonization as political and social reorganization through violence. The colonizer attempts to control the colonized people by extinguishing their traditional culture and making them dependent on new institutions provided by and reflecting the values of the colonial power.
In doing this, the colonizing power creates new identities for both itself and the colonized people. It does this to provide a mythological justification for colonialism. The colonizer represents its own interests as primarily altruistic, spreading civilization, freedom, and peace to populations which were formerly barbaric, poverty-stricken, and constantly at war with each other. Every empire from the Roman to the British has used these justifications.
The colonized people are left with a collective identity as savages until they shed this by becoming loyal and submissive citizens of the empire. This means that all the different cultures colonized by the empire are treated by its new institutions as homogenous in their barbarism.
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