Trauma, Visceral Experiences of Colonial Racism & PETA’s Animal Liberation

Project: Applying Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

First published in French, in 1961, The Wretched of the Earth was, and still
is, a groundbreaking literary work. Taking a Freudian psychoanalytical approach to
anti-colonialism and decolonization, the author, Frantz Fanon, addresses the
collective emotional and mental processes of colonized peoples. Born in
Martinique in 1925, Fanon attended college in France, focused on psychiatry, and
spent a significant portion of his residency in an Algerian hospital. After
witnessing the traumatic experience of colonialism by his patients who were both
the colonized and colonizers, Fanon joined the Algerian national movement against
colonialism (Fanon 2004).
In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon argues that in order for decolonization
and nation-building of colonized people to be successful, the national
consciousness must be focused on humanism and solidarity of the colonized subjects
(Fanon 2004). Too often, Fanon notes, the nationalist elite representing the newly
decolonized people are more interested in benefiting from European capitalists, as
opposed to returning the resources, land, and right to determination, back to the
original habitants: the indigenous people of that once colonized region.
While colonized people transition into decolonial consciousness and
sovereignty, Fanon warns his countrymen of the pitfalls that many newly “free”
nations often fall into: capitalist greed, tribalism, selling national resources
to the West, ethnoracism, and “proving” to the West that they are a intelligent
people who had a “culture” before colonialism occurred (Fanon 2004). For example,
Fanon focuses on the damaging effects of internalized racism on two newly
decolonized regions of Africa:
1.
2. The national bourgeoisie of each of these two major regions [(Saharan Africa
and North Africa)], who have assimilated to the core the most despicable aspects
of the colonial mentality, take over from the Europeans and lay the foundations
for a racist philosophy that is terribly prejudicial to the future of Africa.
Through its apathy and mimicry it encourages the growth and development of racism
that was typical of the colonial period. (Fanon 2004, 108)

In the words of Audre Lorde, for Frantz Fanon, “The master’s tools will not
dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 1984, 112). In other words, nation-building,
during decolonization, should not have its leaders seeking to occupy the same
philosophical positions as the exiled European colonizers. Instead, the new
leaders should push to obliterate the entire colonial system and European
foundations of nationalism, economics, politics, etc (Fanon 2004). Decolonial
theorist, Albert Memmi, shares a similar belief as Fanon. Memmi argues that the
idea of engaging in ethnoracism among one’s own countrymen is destructive. In his
book, Racism, Memmi questions the efficacy of ethnoracism among colonized
subjects. He asks that if the colonized people construct their ethnicity/race as
superior, “Does one not risk committing the same errors as the racist partisans of
difference? Does one not soon risk affirming oneself against others?” (Memmi 2000,
50)
Towards the end of the book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon shares with the
reader his personal memos about his patients who suffered deep trauma from the
violence of colonialism: both as victims and perpetrators of colonialism. From his
observations, of an emotionally tortured police officer who actually tortures
“insurgents”, to Algerian children who decided to killed their European friend, to
an Algerian man who could not find spiritual and emotional harmony because of the
French soldiers who raped his wife “while looking for him” (Fanon 2004), Fanon’s
insistence of using violence to ensure decolonization, becomes rather
contradictory.
I feel that Fanon’s constant reference to trauma and psychological scarring is
one of the most provocative and innovative aspects of this book. It shows how
devastating and traumatizing colonialism is, for the colonized and the colonizer.
Much like his Algerian countrymen that he describes in his book, Fanon believes
that enacting violence on the colonizer is the only language that the colonizer
will understand. The book’s underlying message is that the colonized people are
enraged, angry, and ready to take back their dignity and right to sovereignty.
Colonial violence has displaced their nation, fragmented their consciousness, and
tore them from their connection to their motherland. Fanon believes that the
colonized have the visceral experience of a suffering and agony that nothing but
violence can resolve; nonviolence is no longer an option.
While reading through these translated pages of Fanon’s internal thought
process on decolonial nation building, it becomes clear to me that Fanon struggles
with how to deal with his own trauma, that of his Algerian and French people’s
trauma, and perhaps internalized hate he has against his own early and possible
collusion with the French government as an intellectual colonial subject; a
educationally privileged subject who perhaps grappled with an identity similar to
that of a patient he once had. This patient felt like he was a traitor to the
Algerian brotherhood, simply because he had decided to disengage with his
involvement in the insurrection against colonialism and instead focus on on his
job skills (Fanon 2004). Unlike Fanon, Albert Memmi disagrees with the philosophy
of violence as the key to liberating the colonized (Memmi 2000). Though Memmi’s
experiences with colonial racism differ from that of Fanon’s (he is a Tunisian
Jewish man), his nonviolent approach could also be considered as an alternative
path to Fanon’s violent decolonization; particularly after one has read Fanon’s
disturbing reports about his psychiatric patients and what colonial violence has
done to them. Why, after seeing the misery and violence of colonialism manifest
on the psyches and bodies of human beings, does Fanon firmly believe that only
violence can lead to the freedom of the colonized people?

How it Ties Into My Analysis of the PETA Animal Liberation Project Responses

Fanon’s work makes a significant contribution to my own work, as an animal

rights, food justice, and health activist within the African American community of
the United States. Currently, I am analyzing PETA’s Animal Liberation project. In
this project, PETA has argued that non-human animal suffering and human suffering
stem from the same source: dominance and power through “othering”. Their new
campaign positions images of exploited non-human animals next to images of black
slavery, blacks during Jim Crow era in the U.S.A., Jewish Holocaust victims, and
Native American genocide. My research examines the responses from the black
community who viewed PETA’s tactics as entrenched in white racism and cultural
appropriation of ethnic suffering to promote PETA’s animal rights agenda. In
response to the descendants of colonized and enslaved U.S.A. Africans, who were
traumatized by the advertisement's images of black lynched men, PETA’s president,
Ingrid Newkirk, a white identified female, wrote in 2005, “We’re all animals, so
get over it.” Newkirk’s response indicates that she does not have a thorough
understanding of the psychic trauma, collectively suffered by black identified
people who were born and raised in the U.S.A. Dr. Joy Leary, a specialist in post
traumatic slave syndrome, explains that blacks in the U.S.A. are still trying to
heal from the intense trauma of surviving through colonialism and African slavery
(Leary 2005). In concert with Leary’s works, The Wretched of the Earth gives me
excellent insight to the psyche of [the descendants of] colonized people;
particularly the collective consciousness of the African American community that I
work within.

Fanon’s impressive understanding of the colonized subjects roots of rage help

me better articulate to PETA, why their advertising strategy is more of a
triggering mechanism for traumatic experiences, for many black Americans, than it
is an enlightening educational tool about animal exploitation. I have found that
blacks in the U.S.A collectively equate being called an “animal” (or equating
one’s suffering to an animal) to the colonial connotation of the word, paralleling
African peoples to a subhuman social position. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon
mentions numerous times how the colonized were dehumanized and/or perceived as
being animals or even lower than animals (Fanon 2004).
Upon interviewing my mother’s responses to the PETA advertisement, she
responded fervently against the very idea that black slavery, Jim Crow, and
continued overt and institutional racism could be paralleled to non-human animal
suffering and exploitation. She admitted that as a black female from Jim Crow era,
she felt offended by the advertisement. During our dialogue, she recounted the
traumatic experiences of being called “animal” , “dirty”, and/or “nigger” by her
teachers during her kindergarten through high school educational experience.
Though I am an animal rights and human rights activist, Fanon’s psychoanalytical
approach helps me understand my mother’s interpretations of the PETA campaign.
Hence, I do not reduce her responses to that of mere human-ego centric perception
of animals; the latter being the interpretation that Ingrid Newkirk employed when
responding to the black community’s reactions to her campaign (Newkirk 2005).
Fanon’s book allows me to bring the socio-historical and psychological context of
racism and trauma into understanding my mother’s (and the collective black U.S.A.
community’s) interpretation of seeing PETA as equating black suffering to being an
“animal”. http://web.mac.com/sistahvegan98/iWeb/research/Frantz_Fanon.html