This essay will ultimately argue that despite the centrality of violence to Fanon’s theses on decolonisation, he does not advocate arbitrary violence, but rather recognises the dangers, physical and psychological, of violence without a cause. This analysis will focus on Fanon’s conceptions of the internal contradictions and Manichean character of colonial society, the role of rural peasants, the urban working class and political leadership in the anticolonial struggle, and, importantly, the role of violence as a necessary part of decolonisation and the construction of a postcolonial national culture and identity.

The aim of this essay is to engage in careful examination of The Wretched of the Earth, in order to analyse and clarify Fanon’s key theses on decolonisation.

Fanon’s view of the necessity of violence as part of the anticolonial struggle has been a particular topic of contention for critics, commonly leading to accusations of ‘barbarism and terrorism’ (Smith, 1973: 32). The Wretched of the Earth deeply influenced African and African American social movements and has been widely praised, but it is most certainly not a work free of controversy (Fairchild, 1994: 191). Wherever there is colonization there is institutionalized violence of a type that systematically robs the native of his civil, economic, and human rights, and is thus a highly abnormal and unnatural condition, the psychiatrist says.“How they’re as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they’re human.” (Lee, 2015: 252).įrantz Fanon, a psychiatrist who played an active role in the Algerian war of independence from French colonial rule, remains a key thinker on decolonisation and Third World independence struggles. Fanon asserts that decolonization is always a violent struggle and those who would undertake it must be prepared to get and keep the upper hand.Īlthough Frantz Fanon does not endorse violence per se, he describes the act of colonization wherein one class of human beings subjugates another as pure violence, often accompanied by the brutality of knives and guns. Martin Luther King's nonviolent consciousness raising.

Upon reading the first page, indeed the first paragraph, the reader realizes at once there is a vast difference between Frantz Fanon's approach to the black struggle and that of Rev. Chapter 1, Concerning Violence Summary and Analysis

The wretched of the earth on violence