A Book Review

This was written by Sophie, one of our student interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth examines the landscape of colonialism and the legacy of violence perpetrated by the colonial system. Written in 1961, Fanon utilizes Algeria and the multiple revolutions in the country’s history against the French colonial system. Although Fanon would not live to see the end of the 1954 revolution which granted Algeria independence in 1962, he wrote The Wretched of the Earth in order to articulate the direction he believed necessary for Algeria to follow in order to truly decolonize and remove all future French influence.

Born in Martinique, Fanon attended school in France and specialized in psychiatry. Upon working in a hospital, he became sympathetic to the Algerian independence movement, beginning to write on colonialism. Famous for The Wretched of the Earth, he also wrote A Dying Colonialism and Black Skin, White Masks. Fanon devoted himself to examining the processes of colonialism, especially the violence inflicted on victims of colonialism and the violent responses to the dehumanizing mission of the French colonial system.

The major discussion surrounding Fanon’s book centers on his acceptance of violence as necessary to dismantle colonialism, an unsettling and often unpalatable idea for modern readers. I’ll even admit, I was apprehensive at the start of the chapter entitled “On Violence.” However, despite acknowledging that when an immoveable object (colonialism) meets an unstoppable force (revolutionary and anti-colonial movements), violence occurs, Fanon is more focused on to remove colonialism from the systems in place than in the violence that may or may not occur. Destroying a society does not interest Fanon, he wants to build an Algeria that is entirely Algerian in its make-up. How colonialism is removed, is, Fanon admits, violent, but the product of that violence has to be building a new society that reflects an independent national culture, national business, and permanently independent nation.

Fanon analyzes spaces: the differences between the colonial subject and the colonizer, ethnic and religious difference that can destroy independence movements, the middle ground the up and coming bourgeoise class occupies, in order to articulate how colonialism must be dismantled.

These spaces serve as the birth and death of colonization—with the importation of European culture to create living quarters for white settlers, the necessity of violence to police the sections of the city reserved for “natives,” and the destruction of culture. The two distinct places reinforce the violence of colonialism, turning both groups inwards and cultivating fear. The spaces between the imported boulevards of the colonizing and the crowded, heavily policed areas of those being colonized create the fear and inter-group fighting that allow colonization to continue.

The gaps between the two broad groups, the religious and ethnic tensions, and the inability to move past these gaps are the remaining legacy of colonialism. A legacy Fanon argues threatens the independence of nations like Algeria and the work of anti-colonialism everywhere.

Important to Fanon, embroiled in the Cold War, facing the cross-hairs of the capitalism v. communism debate, was the redistribution of wealth and the rejecting of being forced to play a game of choosing one or the other superpower for survival. He wrote, “[w]hat matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be” (Fanon, translated by Richard Philcox, 55).

Although no longer strictly defined by Communist vs. capitalist, USA v. USSR, the world still divides itself along Global North and Global South and country borders determined by colonialism and not similar groupings of people. As Bernie Sander’s campaign highlights, wealth redistribution has become a focal point in political conversations: reparations, redistribution—all different ways of redistributing the wealth collected at the hands of the wealthy who refuse to let it trickle down. 

Fanon knew what we are still coming to grips with: colonialisms legacy involves the immense capture of wealth by individuals and nations. In order to undo and eradicate colonialism, wealth will have to be redistributed. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is where Fanon directly links the stereotypes of violence facing the Algerian people with the trauma inflicted on them by the French colonial system. Using his background as a psychiatrist and his work in an Algerian hospital treating both Algerian victims of torture and violence, as well as French officials, Fanon carefully documents the psychological harm colonialism inflicts.

Examining the case studies of patients who fought in the National Liberation Front, the French police officials who administrated torture, and both those Algerians who fought in the war and thus were “guilty” of knowing something and those who knew nothing but were tortured anyway, Fanon details in precise terms the cost of colonialism and the cost of fighting for independence.

It is horrific. It is clinical. It is moving and descriptive in the lengths people will go to in order to experience freedom and the lengths French colonial authorities thought necessary to preserve an untenable colonial system. After spending the majority of The Wretched of the Earth discussing how to build another, post-colonial system, Fanon dedicates time to the sacrifices made and being made in pursuit of that goal. Violence is a necessity for Fanon, but he never loses sight of the cost of that violence, the human cost of colonialism and maintaining colonialism despite seeing the end approaching.

Fanon is not necessarily an easy read nor do some of his ideas land, although some, like the belief in wealth redistribution, are still viewed as vital. The Wretched of the Earth serves as a reminder, perhaps a warning, of all the work that still has to be accomplished. The book demonstrates the power violence has—in creating fear, maintaining a lifestyle, destroying said lifestyle, providing a way of tangible resistance—and also demonstrates the long-term impacts that violence has on the society it seeks to liberate.

In The Wretched of the Earth Fanon writes, “[e]ach generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its own mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

Algeria achieved independence, although Fanon did not live to see it, and then struggled to define that independence, to decide what the Algerian nation would stand for and how it would eradicate the colonialism that dominated its recent history.

Fanon still asks formerly colonized nations to “discover its own mission.” But Fanon is also asking us to discover our own mission, to play our own part—in destroying colonialism, yes, but also in the causes we find in our everyday life, in our daily struggles with issues that define our reality.

So, out of our relative obscurity, we must discover our own mission. And then we must act.