wretched-of-the-earth-frantz-fanon

150 THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHON NATIONAL CULTURE151lies does so on a continental scale. The past is revered. The culturewhich has been retrieved from the past to be displayed inall its splendor is not his national culture. Colonialism, littletroubled by nuances, has always claimed that the "nigger" was asavage, not an Angolan or a Nigerian, but a "nigger." For colonialism,this vast continent was a den of savages, infested withsuperstitions and fanaticism, destined to be despised, cursed byGod, a land of cannibals, a land of "niggers." Colonialism's condemnationis continental in scale. Colonialism's claim that theprecolonial period was akin to a darkness of the human soul refersto the entire continent ofMrica. The colonized's endeavorsto rehabilitate himself and escape the sting of colonialism obeythe same rules of logic. The colonized intellectual, steeped inWestern culture and set on proving the existence of his ownculture, never does so in the name of Angola or Dahomey. Theculture proclaimed is Mican culture. When the black man, whohas never felt as much a "Negro" as he has under white domination,decides to prove his culture and act as a cultivated person,he realizes that history imposes on him a terrain already mappedout, that history sets him along a very precise path and that he isexpected to demonstrate the existence of a "Negro" culture.And it is all too true that the major responsibility for thisracialization ofthought, or at least the way it is applied, lies withthe Europeans who have never stopped placing white culture inopposition to the other noncultures. Colonialism did not thinkit worth its while denying one national culture after the other.Consequently the colonized's response was immediately continentalin scope. In Mrica, colonized literature over the last twentyyears has not been a national literature but a "Negro" literature.The concept of negritude for example was the affective if notlogical antithesis of that insult which the white man had leveledat the rest of humanity. This negritude, hurled against the contemptof the white man, has alone proved capable in some sectorsof lifting taboos and maledictions. Because the Kenyan andGuinean intellectuals were above all confronted with a generalizedostracism and the syncretic contempt of the colonizer, theirreaction was one of self-regard and celebration. Following theunconditional affirmation of European culture came the unconditionalaffirmation of Mrican culture. Generally speaking thebards of negritude would contrast old Europe versus young Mica,dull reason versus poetry, and stifling logic versus exuberantNature; on the one side there stood rigidity, ceremony, protocol,and skepticism, and on the other, na'ivete, petulance, freedom,and, indeed, luxuriance. But also irresponsibility.The bards of negritude did not hesitate to reach beyond theborders ofthe continent. Black voices from America took up therefrain on a larger scale. The "black world" came into being, andBusia from Ghana, Birago Diop from Senegal, Hampate Ba fromMali and Saint-Clair Drake from Chicago were quick to claimcommon ties and identical lines of thought.This might be an appropriate time to look at the example ofthe Arab world. We know that most of the Arab territories cameunder colonial domination. Colonialism used the same tacticsin these regions to inculcate the notion that the precolonial historyof the indigenous population had been steeped in barbarity.The struggle for national liberation was linked to a culturalphenomenon commonly known as the awakening ofIslam. Thepassion displayed by contemporary Arab authors in remindingtheir people of the great chapters of Arab history is in responseto the lies of the occupier. The great names of Arabic literaturehave been recorded and the past ofthe Arab civilization has beenbrandished with the same zeal and ardor as that of the Mricancivilizations. The Arab leaders have tried to revive that famousDar el Islam, which exerted such a shining influence in thetwelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.Today, at a political level, the Arab League is a concrete exampleof this determination to revive the legacy of the past and______BH..