FANON'S POST-COLONIAL THEORY

Fanon's post-colonial theory

Fanon's post-colonial theory

Introduction

Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique and trained in Paris as a psychiatrist. He practiced in Algeria during the bloody war of national liberation (1954-1962), where he wrote some of the most enduring reflections on the political and psychic dimensions of racism and violence. He was a supporter of the Algerian liberation movement, the FLN, and was deported from Algeria for his political activities. His two most famous works, The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skins, White Masks, are distinguished by their sensitivity to the interrelationship between objective historical conditions and human attitudes toward those conditions. The Wretched of the Earth was written in 1961, just months before Fanon died of leukemia. The book is a theoretical reflection inspired by the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and the experience of the newly independent nations in Africa. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon describes the colonial world as a Manichean one, a world divided in two, enforced by violence and marked by racial difference. He explains how the native bourgeoisie and the elite in newly independent African countries, instead of reversing and thereby reproducing the structure of colonial difference, often create neocolonial structures of domination.

The critique of global economic inequality developed by anti-colonial thinkers has also had an impact on contemporary debates about globalization. Some scholars use the term imperialism or neo-imperialism to describe economic domination exercised through international institutions rather than direct political or military control. The term neocolonialism is another way of describing the economic control that colonial powers exercise over their former colonies. The danger of neocolonialism was an important theme in Fanon's “The Wretched of the Earth”.

Thesis Statement

Post-colonialism is a political discourse that addresses the workings of colonial and neo-colonial power, resists colonial and neo-colonial oppression and exploitation, and has emerged in the context of liberation movements and other anti-colonial struggles/violence.

Discussion

Post-colonialism is a scholarly approach that asks why non-European texts have played such a marginal role in the humanities and social sciences. It also seeks to redress this lacuna by identifying a series of themes, thinkers, and movements that illuminate not only our understanding of colonialism and its legacies but also political power and political change. The intellectual history of this topic dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when intellectuals in the Middle East, India, Latin America, and Africa challenged the cultural and theoretical justifications for European domination. Some argued that European civilization was materialist, individualist, and violent and therefore did not have the moral authority to govern other peoples. Others developed an economic critique of the relationship between countries of the core and the periphery. Contemporary postcolonial theory emerged out the field of literary studies and emphasizes the relationships among representation, knowledge, and power. The postcolonial critique of universalism has implications for a number of contemporary political issues, including global justice and human rights.

Postcolonial theorists have also developed a distinctive approach to ethics. Most academic discussions of global justice start from the perspective of moral universalism ...