Analysis Of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched Of The Earth

Frantz Fanon’s approachx to violence and its effectsx on the individualx is dependentx on his own experiences. Fanonx was born and raisedx as a colonial subject in the Antilles. He was a studentx of medical schoolx and he did his psychiatric training at University of Lyon and he was the headx of the psychiatry departmentx at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in French-occupied Algeria. Fanon laterx joined the revolution againstx the French and in 1954 he joinedx the Algerianx liberation movementx and edited the revolutionary newspaper El Moudjahid. In 1961 Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, was published. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the French novelist, playwright and existentialist philosopher, wrote the preface to the book. Fanon in his
It is also equally problematic to normatively describe humanity “as purity of thought and rationality as thinking according to absolute rules of inference”, and then locate human existence exclusively within Europe (Headly, 2006: 7). This however, runs a “risk of confining and condemning non-Europeans to irrationality or cognitive underdevelopment” (Headly, 2006: 8). We need to rethink humanity in a critical way. Critical humanism entails the rethinking of the problematic of being or existence outside the confines of western metaphysic of presence. Fanon (1961: 205) believes that "Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." As a generation of a disbanded revolution in our underdeveloped countries we need to continuously question, challenge and resist the neo-liberal technocratic thinking and the legacy of “colonialism and also help on the maturing of the struggles of” our life time (Fanon, 1961: 206). For example formalized agreements between African Union and Europe Union, are generally assumed to be in the best interest of Africa, on grounds that the continent is impoverished, marginal and in desperate need to achieve “what Europe has achieved in terms of social and human development” (Zondi, 2013:10). We need to problematize this kind of thinking by working out new concept of being. To advance our humanity differently, we will have to invent and make discoveries that are made with the people and driven by the