Quotes
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon discusses colonialism and the process by which cultures can move away from and recover from being colonized.
Fanon says that colonization is "always a violent event." The way that people are and remain colonized are violent and therefore it has to be fought with violence as well. He says that "the 'thing' colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation." He makes it clear that colonized people internalize negative attitudes about themselves that place them below the colonizers. That has to be overturned before people can truly go through the process of decolonization.
Fanon believes that peasants are an essential factor in decolonization. He says that "the peasantry is systematically left out of most of the nationalist parties' propaganda. But it is obvious that in colonial countries only the peasantry is revolutionary." He explains that for people in that social group, there is no alternative to gain something positive but violence. Liberation movements, according to Fanon, need to mobilize and consider the concerns of the peasants.
When Fanon discusses the mental impacts left on people who were colonized, he says that "Total liberation involves every facet of the personality." He explains that you can't move forward through decolonization and establish a new government and national culture successfully unless you're willing to examine and treat the wounds of the past. To accomplish this argument, he uses examples from his work in Algeria to show what people went through.
While Fanon recognizes the need for outside help in certain parts of culture building, he insists that the people of the colonized country itself must be involved and must appropriate the actions that it takes to rebuild for themselves. Fanon says:
Just as every fighter clung to the nation during the period of armed struggle, so during the period of nation building every citizen must continue in his daily purpose to embrace the nation as a whole, to embody the constantly dialectical truth of the nation, and to will here and now the triumph of man in his totality. If the building of a bridge does not enrich the consciousness of those working on it, then don't build the bridge, and let the citizens continue to swim across the river or use a ferry. The bridge must not be pitchforked or foisted upon the social landscape by a deus ex machina, but, on the contrary, must be the product of the citizens' brains and muscles. And there is no doubt architects and engineers, foreigners for the most part, will probably be needed, but the local party leaders must see to it that techniques seep into the desert of the citizen's brain so that the bridge in its entirety and in every detail can be integrated, redesigned, and reappropriated. The citizen must appropriate the bridge. Then, and only then, is everything possible.
Fanon makes it clear throughout his book that everyone in the decolonized culture must be brought into the process of recovering from colonization. Only then can they truly begin to heal and rebuild a country that's truly theirs.
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