The Wretched of the Earth

From MarxWiki

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth outlines the struggle of colonized countries against the countries that force them in to servitude and ideological slavery. While his psychological analysis of the colonized within revolution is important to our analysis of how a hegemonic power disseminates its ideology, perhaps his biggest contribution to the discussion of revolution in general is his exploration of the role of violence in decolonization. He calls for a need for physical violence and defines it as a natural part of our human need to rebel: “it is precisely at the moment he [the native] realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure his victory” (43).

Fanon also redefines the Marxist movement in terms that reflect the colonial problem. He calls for a need to re-define base and superstructure within racial terms in the conversation of colonization, and closes the gap between base and superstructure in the colonial world. “In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem.” (40) Before, the base, being the economic system, defined the superstructure, which dictates your role in society, your ability to move within society, politics, the construction of history, and everything in between. There is a distinct hierarchy: the base informs the superstructure and because of this, there is a separation between the two. But in the colonial problem, Fanon argues that they are not as separable as cultural theory has believed. When base and superstructure are framed within the racial hierarchy established by the mother country, they can be seen as interminably linked and harder to distinguish from one another. Your skin color determines your place in society: you place in society determines your skin color.

Fanon also discusses the specific colonial conditions that create resistance and inform the nature of the nation after independence, including the role of the native intellectual and of the divide between town and country in national liberation struggles.

It is also important to consider Fanon’s background when interpreting the text, just as you would any other. There are many ironies in the content of his book and the audience for it: he clearly addresses the book to those subjugated people’s experiences that he describes, yet the audience for the book is the educated members of society in industrialized nations where the literacy rate is higher than in third world nations, i.e. the “first world.”