Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth

Economy, politics, psychology and imperialism.

S. F. Jakobsen <sfja2004@gmail.com>, 5. Marts 2025

As a second entry following the first on Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, I found it harder to write about Fanon's work than with Khalidi's work. The problem, I think, is that Fanon addresses a wide array of topics relevant to colonizalism and liberation, but he still ties the whole thing together in a coherent narrative. The way Fanon ties economy, politics, philosophy, nationality, psychology and many other topics into this larger coherent narrative, makes his work such a masterpiece, in my opinion. I'll try to list some points, but keep in mind that any of my explanations are less coherent, and reductionist in comparison to Fanon's explanations. Another obstacle relates to the text's difficulty. It's a difficult text. Passages are expressed artistically, and often with unconsice articulation. The first 200 pages are seperated into 4 chapters, with no further categorization. Trying to quote a section always leads me to want to include more in the quote. If I were to read it again, I would be more careful about writing notes with page numbers. In any case, what I present here will most likely not reflect the Fanon's work, in any meaningful capacity. To grasp the work, read the book. Anyway, enough disclaimer.

To give a resume, I'll just cite the resume from the back cover[1].

Written at the height of the Algerian war for independence, Frantz Fanon's classic text has provided inspiration for anti-colonial movements ever since. With power and anger, Fanon makes clear the economic and psychological degradation inflicted by imperialism. It was Fanon, himself a psychotherapist, who exposed the connection between colonial war and mental disease, who showed how the fight for freedom must be combined with building a national culture, and who showed the way ahead, through revolutionary violence, to socialism. Many of the great calls to arms from the era of decolonization are now purely of historical interest, yet this passionate polemic is just as illuminating about the world we live in today.

Anti-colonialism and imperial hegemony of thought

Fanon writes:

Discourtesy is first and foremost a manner to be used in dealings with the others, with the former colonists who come to observe and to investigate- The ‘ex-native’ too often gets the impression that these reports are already written. The photos which illustrate the article are simply a proof that one knows what one is talking about, and that one has visited the country. The report intends to verify the evidence: everything’s going badly out there since we left. Frequently reporters complain of being badly received, of being forced to work under bad conditions and of being fenced round by indifference or hostility: all this is quite normal. The nationalist leaders know that international opinion is formed solely by the Western Press. Now, when a journalist from the West asks us questions, it is seldom in order to help us. In the Algerian war, for example, even the most liberal of the French reporters never ceased to use ambiguous terms in describing our struggle. When we reproached them for this, they replied in all good faith that they were being objective. For the native, objectivity is always directed against him. (p. 60)

The message is clear. After a formerly colonized country has rid itself, through war of liberation, of its colonizer, the colonizer still has control of the narrative, especially in the imperialist country. To say that everything the imperialist press publishes is lies would be dishonest. The key takeaway is that the imperialist press controls the narrative and framing of the affairs in the formerly colonized country, i.e. the imperialist press has hegemony over the mental framework, meaning hegemony over how people think about the liberated country. This helps in manufactoring consent in the imperialist country for intervention in the liberated country. This also has the implication that the struggle against imperialism continues long after liberation.

Colonialism and imperialist racism theory

Towards the end of the book, Fanon retells many of the contemporary naturalized racism theories devised by western scholars. The theories attempt to give scientific justifications for imperialist dominance. Fanon responds to these theories with a simple and powerful passage:

If we have spent a long time in going over the theories held by colonialist scientists, it was less with the intention of showing their poverty and absurdity than of raising a very important theoretical and practical problem. In fact, Algerian criminality only represented a sub-section of the questions which were raised by the Revolution, which could be reasoned out on the level of political discussion and de-mystification. But it so happens that the talks which formed the subject of this theme were so fruitful that they allowed us to understand and discern more deeply the idea of social and individual liberation. When in revolutionary practice the question of Algerian criminality is raised in the presence of leaders and militants, when the average figures of crimes, misdemeanours and robberies are cited for the period before the Revolution, when it is explained that the nature of a crime or the frequency of offences depend on the relations which exist between men and women and between persons and the state, and when everybody understands this; when we see before us the breaking-up of the idea of the Algerian or the North African who is a criminal by vocation, an idea which was equally implanted into the consciousness of the Algerian because after all 'we're a quick-tempered, rowdy, bad lot; that's the way it is': then it can be said for sure that the Revolution is making progress. (p. 246)

Perspective

It is commonly held in the West, that the North-European countries who built their country on colonial profiteering, all have stopped engaging in imperialist domination of other countries. Apart from adversarial war, such as Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine, imperialist dynamics are often disregarded. Modern imperialist domination is often either denied outright for apologized for, i.e. justified. These justifactions often very similar to the ones shown by Fanon; e.g. rherotic like that the colonized peoples' are backwards or inferior in some way, and therefore dependend of Western countries to civilize them. A modern example of this is the relation between Denmark and Greenland. I think interesting studies could be done on this example, especially given the situation unfolding currently with USA's imperialist ambitions.

Conclusion

Read the book. I could spent hours quoting and explaning in worse ways sections until the whole book is quoted. The masterpiece of this work lies, in my opinion, in its assembling of the whole.

When reading the book beware of this: to understand the message, some sympathy for oppressed people is required. Fanon's work is not an academic dissertation or a sob story meant to convince Westerners to donate to charity. It's a revolutionary work.

COME, then comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute. (p. 251)

...

For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man. (p. 255)

Sources

1. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin Books, originally published 1961, reprinted 2001, ISBN 9780141186542