The Wretched of the Earth

Summary

The Wretched of the Earth is Frantz Fanons seminal discussion of decolonization in

Africa, especially Algeria. Over the course of five chapters, Fanon covers a wide range
of topics, including patterns in how the colonized overthrow the colonist, how newly
independent countries form national and cultural consciousness, and the overall effect of
colonialism on the psychology of men and women in colonized countries. Fanons
discussion is both theoretical and journalistic. That is, he both reports on events in the
recent history of decolonization, and theorizes what these events mean or could mean
philosophically.

In Chapter 1, On Violence, Fanon introduces the colonial world as one that is divided
into the colonist and the colonized. These identities are created by the colonist in order to
assert his own superiority. The colonist maintains this hierarchy through violence by
police and soldiers, and in turn, it is only through violence that the colonized can re-assert
their own humanity. Decolonization is a violent process not only of overthrowing a
colonial government, but of freeing the colonized from the mindset imposed upon them.
At first, this anticolonial violence is sporadic, usually irrupting spontaneously in the rural
areas of a colonized country. But in time, as violence awakens the masses to the injustices
of colonialism, more and more fight back and soon the colonized people as a whole begin
to fight colonialism.

During this stage of decolonization, as Fanon discusses in Chapter 2, the colonized may
form a number of political organizations. The colonized elites in urban areas
intellectuals and owners of businessesmay form political parties, but these tend to
ignore the needs and desires of the colonized in rural areas, where the majority of the
colonized population actually lives. Similarly, the colonized workers in cities may
unionize and stage strikes in order to improve their working conditions, but this, too, is
limited and does not include the rural masses. The true revolution is eventually led by the
masses who have discovered that, through violence, they can liberate their souls at the
same time that they fight colonial oppression.

In Chapter 3, Fanon discusses how these different groupsthe urban elite, urban workers,
and rural fightersget together to form a nation after independence from the colonists.
Unfortunately, the nation does not just automatically cohere after independence. In fact,
businessmen and landowners often try to grab for more power after independence,
seeking to overtake the positions previously held by the colonists instead of eliminating
such hierarchical positions of power altogether. They re-create colonial situations in the
decolonized nation. Protesting against this pattern, Fanon calls for the education of people
across the entire nation so that they may come together for rational discussion and debate
about the future of the nation.

After this largely narrative discussion in chapters 13, which goes from life under
colonialism to the fight against colonialism to establishing a nation after colonialism,
Fanon approaches things more thematically in Chapters 45. Chapter 4 is about national
culture, and how intellectuals relate to culture under colonialism and while fighting
colonialism. Fanon tracks a trajectory among intellectuals, who move from wanting to
mimic European culture, to claiming the superiority of African culture, to, finally,
contributing to the national fight against colonization. For Fanon, culture must be a part
of the fight for nationalism.

In Chapter 5, Fanon draws upon his research as a psychiatrist in Algeria in the 1950s to
describe the psychological disorders colonialism produces in both the colonist and the
colonized. Because colonialism teaches the colonized that they are evil and even
subhuman, the colonized are always questioning reality, leading to a number of psychoses
including depression and anxiety disorders. At the same time, because the colonial world
is a violent world, people living in it may have post-traumatic disorders in which they
develop homicidal tendencies or are predisposed to psychotic breaks. Refugees, those
who have been sent to internment camps, and those who have been tortured also exhibit
a number of psychological symptoms. Fanon concludes by arguing that getting rid of
colonialism will get rid of the source of these neuroses and pathologies, and therefore will
liberate the personality of man in addition to his nation.

Chapter 1 - "On Violence"

Fanon begins The Wretched of the Earth by considering the identifies of colonizer and
colonized. He argues that the colonizer fabricates the colonized subject, which means
that colonizers create the colonized identity. The colonizer creates an entire mindset of
submission and inferiority on the part of the colonized. In turn, to decolonize means
creating new men, people with an entirely different mindset, one suited to freedom
rather than submission.

Because the colonial world is strictly divided between the colonist and colonized, it is
what Fanon callas a Manichaean world. That means a world cut into white and black,
good and evil, with no room for complexity. The colonist depicts the colonized as
absolutely evil, and sometimes goes so far as to depict the colonized as subhuman or a
mere animal. The colonized are lumped into this one category of brute evil, which means
forms of difference within that categorylike gender, religion, and classget erased.
But this can also be a resource for those who fight against colonialism. People can
organize around a national or racial consciousness, coming together and uniting in
coalition to fight the colonized.

Fanon considers the different means by which the colonizer creates colonized subjects
and maintains power over them. In more capitalist Western societies, like England and
France, the exploited members of a society are kept in submission through education,
religion, and morality. The working classes, for instance, are taught that having less power
is part of the natural order of society. But in colonized societies, Fanon argues, submission
is maintained by more overt exercises of power. The colonized are kept under close
scrutiny, and contained by rifle butts and napalm. In other words, colonial police,
soldiers, and their threats of violence, more than education or ideology, keep the
colonized in submission.

One consequence of this is that decolonization must also turn to violence, according to
Fanon. Overhauling the colonial world, in which men are divided into good and evil
according to their status as colonist or colonizer, is a violent process. According to Fanon,
men always have violent urgesurges to use their muscular powerbut under
colonialism these urges tend to be repressed or redirected. Men have muscular dreams
where they fly or fight beasts, but these are only dreams at night instead of practices
during the day. During waking life, men might find physical release in dance or tribal
rituals. In these cases, violent urges are redirected away from a mission to fight
colonialism. But during decolonization, when a fight for liberation begins, people lose
interest in rituals, and start fighting their own oppression.

So once decolonization gets underway, violence starts to get directed at the colonists
themselves, who are no longer the only ones using violence against the colonized. At first,
the colonists might try different strategies to contain the colonized. They might turn to
education or technology. But Fanon says the colonized tend to be impervious to such
persuasions or bribes. This is because the colonized primarily care about land, the source
of their wealth from agriculture. The colonized will fight to have their land back under
their control.

Moreover, the very capitalist system that first led the colonists to colonized land in order
to extract their resources ends up working against the colonists. The global market needs
constantly to expand. Since the colonized represent a possible market, as colonization
proceeds the colonized themselves slowly become consumers, gaining economic power.
This threatens the absolute supremacy of the colonist.

This is just one example of the ways in which the means of power exercised by the
colonists end up working against them. Another way is when the Manichean mindset of
the colonist gets reversed: now, the colonized depict the colonist as absolute evil. Fanon
also reiterates that the colonists, who tried to use force and violence to control the
colonized, now also experience force and violence as a threat to their power. Fanon
describes a sort of domino effect of violence as well: once the colonized in one village
use violence against the colonists, word spreads and soon there are more uprisings, more
violent revolts. Violence unites people across regions and tribes. Moreover, it has a
cleansing force, purging individuals of their inferiority complex and their former
passivity. From violence emerges a unified fight against the colonists and the creation of
a new, active, and liberated subjectivity to replace the earlier colonized subjectivity of
submission and passivity.

Fanon ends his first chapter by commenting on how this colonial fight fits into a larger
global picture. We have already seen that, for Fanon, global capitalism implicitly supports
decolonization because it wants consumers in the colonies. But how does anticolonial
violenceor a war on colonialismfit into the larger Cold War that was raging between
capitalism and communism when Fanon wrote? This is what Fanon argues: An end must
be put to this cold war that gets us nowhere, the nuclear arms race must be stopped and
the underdeveloped regions must receive generous investments and technical aid. The
fate of the world depends on the response given to this question. In other words,
capitalism would be better off investing in the colonies and helping them develop than it
would be in waging a war against a perceived communist threat.

Analysis

This provocative opening chapter of The Wretched of the Earth displays many of the
characteristic features of Fanons writing style. His language is vivid and sweeping,
capturing much of the revolutionary spirit in which he is writing. At the same time, his
writing has the tendency to jump around; there are frequent section breaks, and at no point
does Fanon ever give a roadmap to the ideas to come. This, too, suggests some of Fanons
revolutionary zeal. Rather than writing a textbook or neatly structured argument, Fanon
is writing a polemic, and the writing reflects the urgency of his ideas.

That doesnt mean, however, that the chapter doesnt have arguments or that Fanon fails
to provide evidence for his claims. In fact, Fanon makes an important and carefully
interrelated set of arguments, each of which intervenes into the common sense theories
people may have about decolonization. One such theory is Marxism, which Fanon singles
out as being too focused on class to be able to see that, in colonial contexts, race is the
primary axis of discrimination and inequality. By saying the fundamental division in the
colonies is between colonist and colonized, Fanon in fact completely overturns the
foundation of Marxism, which had inspired other revolutionaries earlier in the twentieth
century. In the decades after Fanon, similar critiques would also be made about a
revolutionary focus on class alone. Just as Fanon calls our attention to race, feminists, for
instance, would call our attention to how gender structures society over and above class.

In order to make his case, Fanon blends journalism and philosophy. It is important to
remember that Fanon was both a witness to many of the atrocities of the Algerian War of
Independence and was a trained doctor and intellectual who had been immersed in many
of the Black cultural movements of his time. The Wretched of the Earth tries to synthesize
these two sources of experience. It refers historical affairs and the unfolding events of the
war to philosophical ideas of freedom and phenomenology. This is especially evidenced
in his prolonged discussion of Manichaeism and how a dualistic worldview both
perpetuates colonialism and leads to its demise.

At the same time, Fanon also shows in this chapter an understanding of global issues
beyond the colonial context. In the 1950s, much of the West was as focused on the Cold
War as on decolonization. Fanons intervention on this front was to show how colonialism
and decolonization were centrally an issue of the Cold War that, for instance, capitalist
countries had no choice but to confront. In this way, Fanon shows himself to be both of
his time and to have an expansive and cosmopolitan perspective on the issues he faces.
This also allows him to apply his critique of colonialism to a critique of the Cold War. As
Homi Bhaba has remarked on The Wretched of the Earth, the Cold War, by dividing the
world into capitalist and communist countries, repeats the Manichaean structure of
possession and dispossession experienced in the colonial world (xxvi). It is this kind of
dualist thinking that Fanon invites us to abandon.

However, there should perhaps be a qualification to this us addressed by Fanon.

Throughout this chapter, Fanon seems primarily to be writing as a colonized person
addressing other colonized people. Notice, for instance, the use of we in this passage
about the Cold War:

It is clear therefore that the young nations of the Third World are wrong to grovel at the
feet of the capitalist countries. We are powerful in our own right and the justness of our
position. It is our duty, however, to tell and explain to the capitalist countries that they
are wrong to think the fundamental issue of our time is the war between the socialist
regime and them. An end must be put to this cold war that gets us nowhere, the nuclear
arms race must be stopped, and the underdeveloped regions must receive generous
investments and technical aid. The fate of the world depends on the response given to this
question. (61)
In this passage, Fanon rallies his compatriots and also shows how they have much to teach
not only each other but also the world. Decolonization, lead by the colonized for the
colonized, will also determine the fate of the world.

Chapter 2 - Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity

In the previous chapter, Fanon argued that violence by the colonized against the colonist
is the seed of decolonization. It releases a desire for liberation on the part of the people.
But at first, this violence is spontaneous and sporadic. There may be an uprising in a
village here and a village there, but it is not wholly unified or organized as a movement.
In this chapter, then, Fanon turns to how the colonized begin to organizes themselves in
the early stages of an anticolonial revolution.

Fanon begins by considering the colonized intellectuals, those who were educated in
urban areas and therefore influenced by Western ideas they have learned there. Colonized
intellectuals have, for instance, learned about political parties in countries like England
and France, and their first idea for mobilizing the colonized masses is thus to form a
nationalist political party of their own. But this approach is flawed from the beginning,
Fanon argues. First of all, modeling an anticolonial movement on colonial politics is a
bad start. Why mimic the Western influence you are trying to overthrow? Second, these
parties, because founded by intellectuals in urban areas, usually only address the issues
faced by a metropolitan elite and therefore do not inspire those in rural areas or outside
the cities. Unfortunately, it is in these rural areas where the majority of the colonized live.

The failure of the intellectual nationalist parties to address these rural concerns leads to a
division. Fanon is careful to argue that this is not a typical division between town and
country, urban versus rural. Rather, it is a division between the most privileged within the
colonized population and the least privileged. The intellectuals in the cities have
sometimes benefited from colonialism, which has brought businesses and other industries
from which they profit. But those in rural areas have only been hurt by colonialism. It is
this difference in privilege and the effects of colonialism that is the fundamental thing the
national political parties overlook. Another thing they are blind to is the fundamental
importance of violence in liberating the consciousness of the colonized in rural areas.
Violence, which is the main form of colonial control in rural areas, is overlooked by urban
intellectuals, for whom it is not a part of daily life.

In addition to the national political parties started by the urban intellectuals, African
leaders in the cities may begin to form national labor parties instead. These parties are
more directly concerned with the work conditions of the colonized. They are very
effective at getting demands met by the colonists because they stage strikes, paralyzing
the colonial economy and industry. But, like the intellectual political parties, they remain
limited to metropolitan areas, and so, once more, the rural populationthe majority of
the colonized populationis not addressed or brought into the fold.

But, as we have seen in the previous chapter, it is when the rural villages begin to exercise
violence and exert their agency that a true anticolonial subjectivity becomes possible, and
the fight for freedom can begin. As this violence spreads through the country and becomes
the motor of decolonization, then the urban political and labor parties, which used to be
privileged, become isolated. Fanon says that rural leaders, observing the ardor and
enthusiasm of the people as they deal decisive blows to the colonialist machine, become
increasingly distrustful of traditional politics. Every victory justifies their hostility
towards what they now call hot air, verbiage, bantering, and futile agitation. A radically
revolutionary force is created, and leads the way to fighting colonialism outside of the
traditional forms of politics.

As a result, colonialism must also adapt its strategy to keep the colonies contained and in
line. It turns to what Fanon calls psychological warfare, trying to create divisions within
the revolutionary force and turning some fighters against others. One way it may do so is
through manipulating local religious and tribal leaders. The revolutionary force, based in
villages, largely reveres these leaders, so manipulating them is a targeted way for
colonialism to manipulate the masses. Once again, once the colonist no longer is in
control of all the force and violence in the country, it turns to more ideological means,
trying to control how people think in order to gain their submission that way instead of
through force.

Another tactic colonialism enlists is dividing the colonized population. We have seen that
colonial violence at first unifies different tribes and religious sects, treating them as a
homogenous group of subordinated people. Because colonialism lumped all the colonized
people together into one oppressed category based on race and nation, it is initially easy
for the colonized to form coalitions that fight back against colonialism as, precisely, one
race and nation. But the fact that urban parties have different interests than rural fighters
shows that this "race" can now be re-divided in order to cut down these coalitions. Thus,
the colonists begin to sow seeds of distrust in the revolutionary force by showing that one
tribe may have different interests than others or may benefit from fighting in different
ways. In this way, populations within the colonized may begin to turn on each other. The
colonist is no longer public enemy number one.

[Another tatic colonialism explores is the concession. They give small concessions to the
lumpen proletariat, who desperate seeks anything that humanizes them.]

Analysis

In this chapter, Fanon continues a relatively journalistic or historical account of the

progress of decolonization. Fanon is describing a general pattern. Although he draws from
his experience in Algeria, he also references other places, like Kenya, and throughout the
chapter, he seems to suggest there is a general trajectory of decolonization in different
contexts. In this way, Fanon suggests some of the essential features of decolonization.
What always seems to happen is that there is a division of the anticolonial force, divided
at first by region and later by colonial manipulation. This happens in Kenya and Algeria
alike.

At the same time, Fanon continues to weave theory into his discussion. One of the most
widely cited passages of this chapter is Fanons treatment of the lumpenproletariat,
which is a technical Marxist term that Fanon re-defines. The proletariat are the working
class in a society and lumpen means rogue in German; for Marx, then, the
lumpenproletariat were the rogue working class, in particular, those members of the
working class who were too disorganized and uninformed ever to be a part of a class
revolution. Fanon completely overhauls this understanding. Fanon argues that being
uneducated means in part to be free of colonial ideologies. These rogue members of the
colonial proletariatwhich Fanon identifies as the rural peasantryare therefore in a
special position to lead the revolution, instead of being excluded from it.

This revision of the Marxist term has great implications for the role of the colonial
struggle in a larger global struggle for equality and freedom for all. In the last chapter, we
already saw how Fanon gives decolonization a central position in the larger global Cold
War. Here, he also positions the revolutionary leaders or vanguard of the colonial
context, which a global communist movement inspired by Marx would have thought were
too backwards to be revolutionary, at the head of the global movement. Margaret
Majumdar explains the reversal this way: In rejecting one of the major assumptions of
European socialism, which saw the vanguard of the socialist revolution consisting in the
most productive elements of the working-class, or the labor aristocracy, Fanon gave a
space to those involved in anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles to break free from their
status as junior partners in the international communist movement (101).

At the same time, one should not put too much emphasis on the Marxist components of
Fanons analysis. Although he borrows some Marxist terminology, Fanon was hardly
obsessed with Marxism, and did not set out to write a communist polemic. In fact, people
tend to read Fanon through Marxism not because of his own writing but because of the
original introduction to the book written by Jean-Paul Sartre, which is discussed in the
section on Fanon and Sartre in this ClassicNote. As for Fanon himself, Vikki Bell
explains that his explicit treatment of Marxism is limited, and it is Sartre, the French
philosopher with whom Fanon was most closely in dialogue, who insists in his Preface
that the revolution will inaugurate a socialist future (9).

In any case, we should remember that Fanon addressed The Wretched of the Earth
primarily to other colonized people, and this explains, too, why he is not interested in
following Marxism, a European school of thought, too closely. In addressing the
colonized, this chapter is both a history of decolonizing efforts and a warning to ongoing
ones. For by explaining how the colonists may divide and conquer a revolutionary force,
sowing seeds of distrust, Fanon also warns his readers to be on guard against this kind of
psychological warfare. It is important to remember the colonist is public enemy
number one and that the colonized people share a common antagonist despite their
regional, religious, or ethnic differences.

Chapter 3 - The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

In this chapter, Fanon continues his roughly historical progression through the
anticolonial fight. We have seen that violence erupts in the rural areas, shifting the fight
against colonialism away from an urban emphasis on political or labor parties. But now
the question becomes how the urban and rural areas can be united into a single national
consciousness. That is, once the colonists have lost their power, weakened by the
insurrection, how does a nation form to replace them and centralize power by and for the
newly liberated people?

Fanon begins his discussion with the national bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is the class
of people in a society that controls the economy and means of production. Under
colonialism, there was a colonial bourgeoisie full of the elite colonists who controlled
the colony. Once colonialism is overthrown, there is a national bourgeoisie made up of
the formerly colonized elite. That is, the colonized people who had the most power under
colonialism take over power from the colonial regime once it is overthrown. But this new
ruling class is an underdeveloped bourgeoisie, Fanon says. It does not have strong
industries or a long enough history to really know how to control the economy. In turn,
they cannot truly nationalize the economy. Instead, they primarily serve as intermediaries.
They merely ship resources from the country to Europe. In turn, the economy looks pretty
much the same as it did under colonialism; the only difference is who benefits from
exploiting the masses.

The bourgeoisie in the rural areas are not much better. Farmers in the country will try to
take control of the land left by the colonists. They try to get power over the region through
land ownership. But they do not change the farming practices on the land or give any
power to the peasants. Once again, things remain the same, except the colonists have been
replaced by the local elite.

Moreover, the attempts made by the decolonized "national bourgeoisie"whether to grab

industry in the cities or to grab land in the countryfractures the newly liberated nation.
People make claims to ownership based on tribe or religion, inciting tribal or religious
rivalries and fights. The lack of a strong centralized party leaves everything up for grabs,
and ethnic, tribal, and religious differences are enflamed rather than negotiated.

At first, the bourgeoisie may try to quell the resentment growing throughout the nation
by turning to a quasi-dictatorial figure: the popular leader. This popular leader is usually
a military veteran who fought for decolonization. He has the aura of the violence that
inspired the people and for this reason gains their respect as a patriot. He pacifies
resentment by regaling the people with stories of the fight. But this leads the nation in the
direction of a dictatorship or authoritarian regime. Like under colonialism, where the
masses are monitored by the colonial regime, the decolonized masses are now
monitored by the party of the popular leader. This party starts to act more like a gang,
according to Fanon, than a political party. Its leader is like a thuggish gang leader who
inspires allegiance because of his history of force and violence.

By contrast, Fanon suggests other ways of politicizing the masses that are better for the
nation. Fanon bemoans the fact that most people think of politicizing the masses as
haranguing them with a major political speech, inspiring emotions within them rather
than forming ideas. Fanon calls instead for an education of the masses, which will lead to
diversity of opinions that are good for politics. Instead of authoritarian leaders, Fanon
says the new nation needs discussion of opinions and rational deliberation: We must not
cultivate the spirit of the exceptional or look for the hero, another form of leader. We
must elevate the people, expand their minds, equip them, differentiate them, and
humanize them.

In doing so, the country will also leave behind the bourgeoisie that had formerly tried to
fill in the power vacuum left by the colonists. The country will begin to see that, in fact,
the bourgeoisie serves no purpose. They are merely gang leaders and petty traders,
selling the country back to Europe just like the colonists did. Once this class or caste
has been eliminated, Fanon argues, swallowed up by its own contradictions, it will be
clear to everyone that no progress has been made since independence and that everything
has to be started over again from scratch. People can move toward democracy once they
are educated and rationally deliberating, instead of simply seeking power and being
swayed by tribal and religious rivalries.
Analysis

The central theme of this chapter is that decolonization does not end colonization. In other
words, achieving independence does not immediately eradicate traces of a colonial
mindset or forms of colonial exploitation. Remember that, in Chapter 1, Fanon talked
about how colonialism produces not just exploitation but also a specific psychology in
the colonized person. Fanon will return to this point in Chapter 5, when he details the
psychological problems colonialism produces in colonial subjects. Learning how to break
free from this psychologyliberating the mind as well as the bodyis an ongoing task.

In this chapter, Fanon is especially attuned to the tragic irony that decolonized people
may erect hierarchies reminiscent of colonialism. This happens when the coastal elite
where coastal refers to cities, as most of the African cities were along the coastsseek
to exploit the rural masses. Fanon has no sympathy for this elite when they are
exploitative. He uses biting language that lumps them together, reminiscent of the words
he used to describe the colonists themselves. Indeed, he explicitly says they operate like
the colonists, simply stepping into the shoes the latter have left behind.

At the same time, this chapter marks a turning point in The Wretched of the Earth, and it
is fitting that it comes halfway through the book. Although Fanon begins with critique in
this chapter, criticizing the useless national bourgeoisie, he concludes with a more
positive call to action. His ultimate goal is not criticismhe seems even to suggest the
national bourgeoisie are in the end not worth criticizingbut building something better
into the future. This is democracy. Fanon wants to think about the best practices for
developing a critical citizenry who take seriously and strategize around their collective
problems.

We have seen throughout The Wretched of the Earth that Fanon balances history and
theory, journalism and philosophy. In moving in this direction of nation-building, Fanon
necessarily has to lean more on theory than on history. He cant tell a story of what has
already happened, because he doesnt have models yet for how a fair and democratic
postcolonial nation can be built. That is why, at times, Fanons discussion of democracy
can seem a bit vague. He calls for elevation of the people: the nation should expand
their minds, equip them, differentiate them, and humanize them. These are grand words,
but Fanon does not detail how the people should be equipped, or even by whom. Some
might say that Fanon speaks too generally at a moment when he should be providing
concrete plans for how to build a better world. It is easy to criticize, but it is harder to find
solutions.

A more generous reading of Fanon is also possible, however. If Fanon really believes that
people must deliberate and debate the building of the nation, then it would be wrong of
him, an individual, to give a recipe for doing so. It would turn him into a kind of hero
or charismatic individual leader like those he criticizes, instead of a member of a larger
population. Perhaps Fanon, in this chapter, only wants to outline the aspirations and goals
of a nation and leave for later, in discussion with others, the means for reaching them.

Chapter 4 - On National Culture

This chapter, which was first presented as a paper at the Second Congress of Black
Writers and Artists in Rome in 1959, is in some ways a continuation of the previous
chapter. That chapter was about how a nation can form politically to replace the colonists
after independence. This chapter asks, relatedly: how can a national culture form after
independence? Colonialism destroys and perverts culture, for instance teaching the
colonized to consider their past as unworthy or evil. What can the colonized do to assert
or reclaim or newly produce culture after this kind of brainwashing?

Fanon begins by considering the colonized intellectual, someone who has been
educated by the colonist but reacts against him. The intellectuals strategy is to counter
the demeaning force of colonized culture by racializing culture, for instance advocating
for a Negro literature or Negro art that unites all of Africa. This is what is sometimes
called the Ngritude movement. For Fanon, this is too reactive of an approach. It
basically argues with colonists on their own terms. Colonists lump all of Africa into one
group, ignoring differences of tribe or ethnicity and the rich cultural histories different
places have. Now, intellectuals more or less do the same thing, but instead say all of
Africa is the source of good values, rather than bad ones.

But this does not have to be the only stage in the colonized intellectuals life. In fact,
Fanon details three stages in the cultural trajectory of the colonized intellectual. In the
first stage, the intellectual mimics the colonist and conforms to colonial tastes. This is a
stage of trying to be like the Europeans, extolling European culture. In the second stage,
the colonized reacts against this. This is the Ngritude phase in which, in reaction to the
European casting of African culture as inferior, the intellectual extols each and every
thing about African culture as superior. In the third stage, this love for culture finally
moves to a fight for liberation. The intellectual begins to write combat literature,
revolutionary literature that hopes to galvanize the people into fighting the colonist.
Here, the hope is that developing a new culture will begin to shape a new nation.

This is an important progression, because it moves the intellectual from a pan-African

approach to an approach that is about a nationrather than an entire raceasserting its
nationhood against colonialism. However, there is still room for more progress.
Eventually, the intellectual has to realize that culture doesnt produce nationhood. Rather,
a revolutionary fight produces nationhood. All along, the intellectuals mistake has been
in thinking that culture justifies a nation. In the first phase, the superiority of European
culture justifies colonialism; in the third phase, national culture justifies anticolonialism.
But only a national fight produces nationhood. Culture follows from nationalism rather
than the other way around.

According to Fanon, the colonized intellectual is responsible not to his national culture,
but to the nation as whole, whose culture is, after all, but one aspect. In other words, the
intellectual has first to fight for the liberation of the nation, and then culture will follow
because it will have a national context in which to grow. It is the revolutionary action that
produces culture, not culture that produces revolution. National culture is the collective
thought process of a people to describe, justify, and extol the actions whereby they have
joined forces and remained strong, writes Fanon. National culture in the under-
developed countries, therefore, must lie at the very heart of the liberation struggle these
countries are waging.

Fanon spends a good deal of space in this chapter focusing on one example, a poem by
Guinean intellectual named Keita Fodeba. What Fanon likes about Fodebas poem is that
it draws upon his nations history while also re-contextualizing it within the struggle for
liberation. Here, culture is used in order to fight for the future. The poem absorbs the
rhythms of combat. In it, culture cannot stand apart from fighting. This is the kind of
literature the revolution needs, and it shows the intellectual cannot stand apart from
combat, but rather derives his materials from it.

Fanon concludes this chapter by considering recent calls for a culture that is supra-
national. Here is how Fanon summarizes these recent calls: Humanity, some say, has got
past the stage of nationalist claims. The time has come to build larger political unions,
and consequently the old-fashioned nationalists should correct their mistakes. What is
wrong about these calls, Fanon says, is they fundamentally mistake what culture is. As
Fanon has just argued, culture derives from national consciousness. There therefore
cannot be a culture that isnt national. National culture is the highest form of culture, and
any form of international or global culture has to be based on national culture. It cannot
surpass it.

Analysis

This chapter began as a lecture, which suggests its ability to stand on its own. Indeed, this
chapter and the next are, compared with the previous chapters, seemingly discrete and
isolated. The previous three chapters moved roughly chronologically, from colonialism
to postcolonial nation-building, whereas this chapter and the next are more thematic.
Within each themeintellectuals here, psychology in the next chapterFanon moves
across the colonial timeline in order to pick up trends throughout.

Still, it would be a mistake to think that the intellectual has not been a theme throughout
The Wretched of the Earth. In Chapter 1, he foreshadows this chapter in this passage:
The colonialist bourgeoisie hammered into the colonized mind the notion of a society of
individuals where each is locked in his subjectivity, where wealth lies in thought. But the
colonized intellectual who is lucky enough to bunker down with the people during the
liberation struggle will soon discover the falsity of this theory (11). Fanon has already
suggested, in other words, how joining the combat can liberate the intellectual, who
derives culture from it. This chapter, then, is not so much a standalone piece as a
culmination of previous lines of thinking. Different references to the intellectual from
earlier in the book are weaved together and brought into deeper analysis here.

Perhaps needless to say, this is also an intensely personal chapter for Fanon, who was
himself an intellectual. His training as a psychiatrist is of special importance in the next
chapter, on psychological disorders. In this chapter, the intellectual context perhaps most
important is the experience Fanon had with Aim Csaire. Both were from Martinique,
the French island in the Carribbean, and Fanon served on Csaires parliamentary
campaign there before Fanon moved to France. Csaire was a leader of the Ngritude
movement, which called for a common cultural movement and identity on behalf of
Blacks all over the globe, regardless of national context. Fanon was clearly sympathetic
to this movement. At the same time, he seems to critique it in this chapter as a
racialization of culture, rather than a nationalization. Margaret Majumdar remarks that,
although [t]here is a thread linking Fanon to some of the ideas put forward by his fellow
Martiniquan, Aim Csaire, and the other proponents of Negritude, Fanon nonetheless
synthesizes his views on race, culture and the nation into a radically different
perspective, which challenges all attempts to box him into mechanistic categories and all
forms of reductionism of his thought to simplistic notions (97).
The point, though, is that Fanons critique is born from a place of experience and respect.
His critique of Ngritude is different from the one he has of, for instance, the national
bourgeoisie in the previous chapter. Rather, Fanon can see, from personal experience, a
racialization of culture as something he himself was attracted to. He understands its role
for the Black intellectual. But he nonetheless argues for moving in a different direction.

In doing so, Fanon also practices a form of self-reflection in this Chapter. It is not an
explicit self-reflection; this book has remarkably little autobiography, perhaps because
Fanon was interested in a collective movement more than an individual experience. But
by talking about the paths an intellectual can take, he is generalizing from his own
experience and also criticizing himself in order to move in a more political and national
direction. In Chapter 1, Fanon writes:

Self-criticism has been much talked about recently, but few realize that it was first of all
an African institution. Whether it be in the djemaas of North Africa or the palavers of
West Africa, tradition has it that disputes which break out in a village are worked out in
public. By this I mean collective self-criticism with a touch of humor because everyone
is relaxed, because in the end we all want the same thing. The intellectual sheds all that
calculating, all those strange silences, those ulterior motives, that devious thinking and
secrecy as he gradually plunges deeper among the people. In this respect then we can
genuinely say that the community has already triumphed and exudes its own light, its own
reason. (12)

It is this form of self-criticism, in public in the sense that he is writing a book for
collective consumption, that Fanon practices here. As always, the final goal is
community, now understood as national.

Chapter 5 - Colonial War and Mental Disorders"

In this final chapter, Fanon turns to the psychology of colonialismmore specifically,

the kinds of psychological disorder colonialism produces. Fanon foreshadowed this line
of inquiry in Chapter 1, where he argues that the colonist creates the identities of colonist
and colonized, and in turn instills in the colonized an entire subjectivity of submission
and inferiority. He also talked about how colonialism represses mens muscular power,
their violent desire for freedom. In this chapter, he goes further in discussing the great
variety of psychological disturbances the colonized can experience, and he also discusses
how colonialism psychologically damages the colonists, too.

Fanon begins with a general and more theoretical discussion of possible sources of
psychological disturbance. Philosophically, he notes the effect dehumanization has on
how the colonized conceptualize something like reality: Because it is a systematized
negation of the other, a frenzied determination to deny the other any attribute of humanity,
colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the question: Who am I in reality?
In other words, because colonialism constantly denies that the colonized are fully human,
the colonized also asks if they truly are what they think they are (i.e., human beings).
From this a number of psychological disturbances can follow. Another source of
disturbance can be from the violence the colonized and colonist witness or perpetuate.
Here, Fanon notes that, after WWI and WWII, psychologists observed an upsurge in
disorders we would now identify as something like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Soldiers who witnessed destruction as well as civilian refugees and bombing victims
displayed a number of disorders. If colonialism is maintained by violence, then perhaps
those under colonialism will have similar disorders.

After this theoretical introduction, Fanon turns to actual case studies he has observed in
his capacity as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1954 to 1959. He divides these cases into
four different groups, or series. In Series A, he considers reaction disorders. This
is when people develop a disorder in direct response to a specific traumatic event. For
instance, after one Algerian man witnessed the rape of his wife, he become incapable of
sexual arousal himself. In another case, a 37-year-old witnessed a massacre of his village
and, as a reaction, developed homicidal impulses of his own. Colonists are not immune
from these disorders either. In one case, a European police officer develops uncontrolled
violent urges, even torturing his wife and children. The violence of war, and the feeling
of disempowerment within it, leads some men to want to assert their power at home.

In Series B, Fanon collects cases with less direct causes. Here, people do not develop a
disorder in reaction to a traumatic event, but because of a more general atmosphere of
violence and chaos in Algeria. A number of people develop suicidal thoughts or anxiety
disorders because of the terrible conditions surrounding them. Fanon considers the case
of a number of refugees, for instance. Child refugees, due to the trauma of displacement,
develop adjustment disorders in which they have fears of abandonment and suffer from
insomnia and bedwetting. Women refugees who are pregnant, who also live in a state of
permanent insecurity, may also develop suicidal tendencies or depressive tendencies.

In Series C, Fanon turns to people who develop disorders in response to torture. In turn,
this section also describes techniques of torture itself, in somewhat graphic detail.
Common symptoms of people who have been victims of torture include depression,
eating disorders, and insomnia. Fanon describes men whose brains are broken by the
injustice of having been tortured for no apparent reason. These men may become
apathetic. Fanon also talks about people who are chemically tortured by being given a
truth serum to swallow. Some of these people develop cognitive disorders in addition
to psychological ones, for instance blurred mental and sensory perception.

The psychosomatic disorders collected in Series D are those in which patients

develop physical, bodily (somatic) symptoms that are actually caused by psychological
factors instead of, for instance, bodily disease. Women might stop menstruating, for
instance, or a young persons hair might turn white. Other common symptoms include
ulcers, uncontrollable shaking that resembles Parkinsons even though patients do not
have Parkinsons, and pain in urination that feels like kidney stones although patients do
not have kidney stones. Fanon finds all these psychosomatic symptoms in Algerians sent
to internment camps. The brutal conditions there caused his patients to develop these
severe somatic symptoms.

Fanon concludes the chapter with another theoretical discussion, this time in response to
colonial scholars who have argued that colonized peoples are, by definition, degenerate
and prone to violence. This was part of the colonial division of the world into black and
white, good and evil. But Fanon argues that any perceived difference in tendency toward
violence on the part of the colonized must be understood not as innate to their nature but
produced in response to the violence they themselves have experienced. The criminality
of the Algerian, his impulsiveness, the savagery of his murders are not, therefore, the
consequence of how his nervous system is organized or specific character traits, but the
direct result of the colonial situation. In turn, overthrowing colonialism will also liberate
Algerians from the mental disorders they experience. By detailing the many disorders
people experience under colonialism, Fanon makes an argument for decolonization as not
only a liberation of a nation but also a liberation of individual psychesa cure for
pathology.

Analysis

Fanon begins this chapter with some hesitation: Perhaps the reader will find these notes
on psychiatry out of place or untimely in a book like this (181). Indeed, this chapter may
seem a bit uncharacteristic compared to the relatively more historical or theoretical
chapters preceding. Nowhere before has Fanon used the case studies approach he does
in this chapter, where individual cases are presented. Instead, he has looked mostly at
patterns in colonial and postcolonial history. Fanon is, then, more of a synthetic thinker
in the previous chapters. But here, he turns to case studies in order to make a larger point
about how the effects of war are not just physical, but also psychological. Looking at
individual stories paints a picture of the collective devastation all around.

Although different in style from the previous chapters, it should be remembered that
psychology has not been absent from Fanons consideration. His fundamental definition
of colonialism as the production of a kind of man and decolonization as the production
of a different kind was, we have seen, inherently psychological. He has always been
interested in how colonial submission, for instance, is created through fear, inferiority
complexes, repression, and other psychological means. But here, he turns to more severe
or unusual neuroses and shows how these, too, are explained by war. Fanons point seems
to be that, in war, the unusual or neurotic becomes normal.

Fanons first book, Black Skin, White Masks, published in 1952, was a more sustained
look at how colonialism produces psychological problems for colonized people. There,
he showed how the impossibility of Black people fitting into White masksor
embodying the norms and expectations of a white societyleads to a number of
psychopathologies. He also showed how cultural representations of Black people as
evilwhich Fanon also discusses in Chapter 1 of The Wretched of the Earthcan be
internalized by Black children, leading to additional traumatic experiences and
pathologies. Chapter 5 of The Wretched of the Earth is in some ways a sequel to that
book. It explores these themes in a new context: colonial warfare.

In doing so, Fanon not only analyzes the colonial warfare context, but also revises
predominant European theories of personality. We have seen Fanon do this throughout
the book. In discussing Marxism, for instance, Fanon not only develops an account of
colonial society, but also links the colonial context to the European one in order to
intervene into European accounts of class-based revolution. Now, the colonial context is
also positioned to intervene into European psychology. He shows how what some
psychologists consider innate is also a learned response to traumatic situations.

Such a structural account of psychologywhere neurosis is produced by a social and

political situation rather than a personal or innate featuremakes Fanons final analysis
not only psychological, but also sociological. In traditional psychoanalytic accounts, a
persons psychology can sometimes be explained by their individual childhood
experiences. Fanon shows that social structures make some experiences so pervasive they
are not individual, but shared and collective. In turn, there can be something like a
collective psychologywhether that of submission under colonialism or that of trauma
under warfareand the cure cannot be an individual one, because the cause is social
and political. This is a final and powerful plea for political solutions: the mental health of
a nation, in addition to its social and economic prosperity, are at stake in decolonization.