Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) Writings on alienation and freedom. BSWM: Black Skin, White Masks (1952) EAL: Eons sur Valiénation et Ja liberté ({1951-1961] 2015) TAL: Tomard the African Revolution 1964 WE: The Wretched of the Earth, 1961 1 “A world compartmentalized, Manichean and petrified, a world of statues: the statue of the general who led the conquest, the statue of the engineer who built the bridge. A world cock-sute of itself, crushing with its stoniness the backbones of those scarred by the whip. That is the colonial world. The colonial subject is a man penned in; apartheid is but one method of compartmentalizing the colonial world. The first thing the colonial subject learns is to remain in his place and not overstep its limits. Hence the dreams of the colonial subject are muscular dreams, dreams of action, dreams of aggressive vitality. I dream I am jumping, swimming, running, and climbing,” WE p. 15 (Ch 1 “On violence”) 2 “Mental illness, in a phenomenology that would leave out large alterations of consciousness, appears as a real pathology of freedom. The disease locates the patient in a world where his freedom, his will, his desires are constantly broken by obsessions, inhibitions, counter-orders, anxieties. The classic hospitalization considerably limits the patient's scope for action, forbids any compensation, any movement, restricts him to the closed field of the hospital and condemns him to exercise his freedom in the unreal world of fantasies. It is therefore not surprising that the patient can only feel free in his opposition to the doctor who holds him.” EAL p. 419 (“L’hospitalisation de jour en psychiatrie, valeur ct limites”, 1959) 3 “The colonized are trapped in the tightly knit web of colonialism. But we have seen how, on the inside the colonist achieves only a pseudo petrification. The muscular tension of the colonized periodically erupts into bloody fighting between tribes, clans and individuals. [...] So one of the ways the colonized subject releases his muscular tension is through the very real collective self-destruction of these internecine feuds, Such behaviour represents a death wish in the face of danger, a suicidal conduct which reinforces the colonist’s existence and domination and reassures him that such men are not rational.” WE p. 17-18 4-‘Within the framework of the new society just set up, we are witnessing the transformation of the old symptoms, in their pure form, desocialized, invaded more and more by the sphere of mobility [la sphere motive] (stereotypies, subintrant [fits of] agitations, catatonisation [muscular rigidity and stupor]...) as were seen in asylums. There is now, in the patient, a need to verbalize, to explain, to explain himself, to take a position. There is retention of an investment in an object-world [/e monde objetal| having acquired ‘a new density. Socialtherapy tears the patient away from his fantasies and forces him to confront reality in a new way [sur un nouvean registr).” EAL p. 420 5 “In the liberation struggle, however, this people who were once relegated to the realm of the imagination, victims of unspeakable tezzors, but content to lose themselves in hallucinatory dreams, are thrown into disarray, reform, and amid blood and tears give birth to very real an urgent issues. Giving food to the mujahideen, stationing lookouts, helping deprived families and taking over from the slain or imprisoned husband — such are the practical tasks the people are asked to undertake in the liberation struggle”. WE p. 19 6“ Dirty nigger!” Or simply, ‘Look, a Negro!” I came into the world imbued with the will to reveal a meaning in things, my soul filled with the desire to be the origin of the world and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.” BSWM p. 109.7 [When the new elites are unprepared and cowardly] “Instead of being the coordinated crystallization of the people’s innermost aspirations, instead of being the most tangible, immediate product of populat mobilization, national consciousness is nothing but a crude, empty, fragile shell. The cracks in it explain how easy itis for young independent countries to switch back from nation to ethnic group and fom state to tribe ~ a regression which is so teztibly detrimental and prejudicial to the development of the nation and national unity.” WE p. 97 (Ch 3 “ The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness”) 8 “For nearly three years I have been trying to bring the misty idea of African Unity out of the subjectivist bogs of the majority of its supporters. African Unity is a principle on the basis of which it is Proposed to achieve the United States of Africa without passing through the middle-class chauvinistic ‘ational phase with its procession of wars and death-tolls. Some, like Guinea, Ghana, Mali, and tomorrow pethaps Algeria, put political action to the forefront. Others like Liberia and Nigeria insist on economic cooperation. The UAR [United Arab Republic] on its side puts more emphasis on the caltural aspect. Everything is possible and the different states should avoid discrediting or denouncing those that see this unity, this coming-together of the African states, in a way that differs from theirs.” TAR p.187 9 “We do not believe that a neurological trouble [...] can generate a specific psychiatric syndrome. But ‘we want to show that any neurological impairment somehow begins to break the personality, And this open fault within the ego will be more noticeable the mote rigorous and irreversible the symptomatology assumed by the neurological disorder will be. [..] We think in terms of bodies and focal lesions when he should think of functions and disintegration. Our medical optics is spatial, while should increasingly be temporalized.” EAL p. 178 10 “Cinema must not remain a succession of images with accompanying sound: it must become the course of a life, a story. So the Film Society, choosing a movie and commenting it in a special column in the newspaper, gives the cinematographic fact its true meaning.” EAL p. 299. Frantz Fanon et Jacques Azoulay, “La Socialthérapie dans un service d’hommes musulmans: difficultés méthodologiques”, 1954. 11 “What sort of misjudgement made us a think that a Western-inspited social therapy was possible in 4 ward of insane Muslims? How could a structural analysis be possible if we ignored geographical, historical, cultural and social frameworks?” EAL p. 305 12 “The Westerner generally believes that madness alienates man, that one can not understand the behavior of the patient regardless of the disease. However this belief does not always mean a logical attitude in practice, it is as if the Westerner often forgot the disease: the insane is perceived as showing some complacency towards the disease and tends to use it more or less to abuse his entourage. EAL p 357, Frantz Fanon et Francois Sanchez, « Attitudes du musulman maghrébin devant la folie », 1956. 13 “If there is an established certainty those in the Maghreb hold about madness, itis its determinism. ‘The mental patient is absolutely alienated, it is irresponsible to his troubles; only the djinas bear full responsibility.” EAL P.357