“The damned of the earth”; (Feb. 19, 2010)
“Decolonization process affects the individual and fundamentally modifies him; it transforms crushed and unessential spectators to privilege actors. Decolonization introduces a proper rhythm to the newly created man, to the new languages, and a newer humanity. Man is liberated through the process and demands revisiting a set of questions in the integrality of the new situation: The damned spectators in the last rows want to edge to the first rows and then become full actors on the scene.
The damned of the earth want to smash the tribal and clannish conditions that colonial powers maintained to divide and subjugate. This kind of violence is a desintoxicating phase to getting rid of the inferiority complex. This initial violence tends to unify the damned of the earth toward national unity regardless of tribal and sectarian roots. Thus, this violence has no pity to reactionary forces that struggle to maintain colonial statue-quo.
The damned needs the post colonial violence to re-gaining self-esteem; he wants to believe that success was the work of all the damned, even if not a single shot was fired in many decolonization conditions. The damned is elevated to the rank of leader and refuses to confirm any single person as the “liberator” simply because he wants to understand everything and then to decide on every issue.
Illuminated by violence the conscience of the damned rebels against any sort of pacification program. The decolonized damned of the earth intend to demand from the colonial powers to rehabilitate man, his dignity, and his human rights. (1961)”
Frantz Fanon (1925-61) was born in French Martinique Island and died of cancer at the Bethesda hospital in Washington DC. He was buried, according to his will, in Algeria where he practiced as psychiatrist for four years (1954-57). Algeria acquired its independence the following year to Fanon’s death.
Fanon was engaged in the French Liberation Army in 1943 and received the war medal in 1945. He then studied psychiatry in Lyon; he adopted the vision of his mentor Francois Tosquelles (1912-94) that says that hospital should be the center of unifying the sick, nurses, and physicians for the sole objective of rehabilitating and re-inserting the sick to normal society.
Frantz was incensed to witnessing Creole people (mixed blood) in French colonies trying to behave as class apart of blacks and be accepted as white to the heavy price of deep amputation in their heritage and culture. Thus, Fanon published in 1952 his “Black skin, white mask” which is a study of the alienation of black people whose identity is defined by the others (white prejudiced culture).
“Race is a prison for black man; he is radically alienated into becoming an object. Black man should refuse to shoulder the burden of past slavery and thrives to catch up as man among men. Nigger is not; White too is not!
Mother, look at this nigger; I am scared: he wants to eat me live. Every white child is scared when he sees me. When a black man shivers of cold then the kid thinks that the black man is shivering of rage. I tended to get amused first but quickly this game turned impossible to suffer. It dawned on me that every apartheid attitude is fundamentally not based solely on color but on every culture that is different of the mainstream culture. (1952)”
Note: Fifty years after acquiring independence, most African States have reverted to tribalism and religious antagonism. The colonial and imperial powers have been at it indirectly: the enemy is not that obvious because black foremen and black intellectual are doing the maligning and the work hired by multinationals that are mostly directly backed by their respective powerful governments.
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