wretched-of-the-earth-frantz-fanon

148THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHON NATIONAL CULTURE149to forget that their psyche and their ego are conveniently safeguardedby a French or German culture whose worth has beenproven and which has gone unchallenged.I concede the fact that the actual existence of an Aztec civilizationhas done little to change the diet of today's Mexican peasant.I concede that whatever proof there is of a once mightySonghai civilization does not change the fact that the Songhaistoday are undernourished, illiterate, abandoned to the shes andwater, with a blank mind and glazed eyes. But, as we have saidon several occasions, this passionate quest for a national cultureprior to the colonial era can be justified by the colonized intellectuals'shared interest in stepping back and taking a hard lookat the Western culture in which they risk becoming ensnared.Fully aware they are in the process of losing themselves, andconsequently of being lost to their people, these men work awaywith raging heart and furious mind to renew contact with theirpeople's oldest, inner essence, the farthest removed from colonialtimes.Let us delve deeper; perhaps this passion and this rage arenurtured or at least guided by the secret hope of discoveringbeyond the present wretchedness, beyond this self-hatred, thisabdication and denial, some magnificent and shining era thatredeems us in our own eyes and those of others. I say that I havedecided to delve deeper. Since perhaps in their unconsciouscolonized intellectuals have been unable to come to loving termswith the present history of their oppressed people, since there isto marvel at in its current state of barbarity, they have decidedto go further, to delve deeper, and they must have beenoverjoyed to discover that the past was not branded with shame,but dignity, glory, and sobriety. Reclaiming the past does not onlyrehabilitate or justify the promise of a national culture. It triggersa change of fundamental importance in the colonized'spsycho-affective equilibrium. Perhaps it has not been sufficientlydemonstrated that colonialism is not content merely to imposeits law on the colonized country's present and future. Colonialismis not satisfied with snaring the people in its net or of drainingthe colonized brain of any form or substance. With a kindperverted logic, it turns its attention to the past of the colonizedpeople and distorts it, disfigures it, and destroys it. This effort todemean history prior to colonization today takes on a dialecticalsignificance.When we consider the resources deployed to achieve the culturalalienation so typical of the colonial period, we realize thatnothing was left to chance and that the final aim of colonizationwas to convince the indigenous population it would save themfrom darkness. The result was to hammer into the heads ofindigenous population that if the colonist were to leave theywould regress into barbarism, degradation, and bestiality. At thelevel of the unconscious, therefore, colonialism was not seekingto be perceived by the indigenous population as a sweet, kindheartedmother who protects her child from a hostile environment,but rather a mother who constantly prevents her basicallyperverse child from committing suicide or giving free rein tomalevolent instincts. The colonial mother is protecting the childfrom itself, from its ego, its physiology, its biology, and its ontologicalmisfortune.this context there is nothing extravagant about the demandsof the colonized intellectual, simply a demand for a coherentprogram. The colonized intellectual who wants to put his struggleon a legitimate footing, who is intent on providing proof andaccepts to bare himself in order to better display the history ofhis body, is fated to journey deep into the very bowels of hispeople.This journey into the depths is not specifically national. Thecolonized intellectual who decides to combat these colonialist%:'05;5(""