wretched-of-the-earth-frantz-fanon

222THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHCOLONIAL WAR AND MENTAL DISORDERS223The Algerian is an habitual killer: It's a fact, the magistrateswill tell you, that four fifths of the cases heard involve assault andbattery. The crime rate in Algeria is one of the highest in theworld, they claim. There are no petty delinquents.Algerian, and this annlies to allthe wrong sidegoes to extremes.is a savage killer: And his weapon of choice ismagistrates "who know the country" have elaboratedtheir own theory on the subject. The Kabyles, for example,prefer a revolver or shotgun. The Arabs from the plains have apreference for the knife. Some magistrates wonder whether theAlgerian does not have a need to see blood. The Algerian, theywill tell you, needs to feel the heat of blood and steep himself inhis victim's blood. These magistrates and police officers veryseriously hold forth on the connections between the Muslimpsyche and blood. 38 A number of magistrates evensay that killing a man for an Algerian meansslitting his throat. The savagery ofso far as tothem inflicteddeath. Autopsies undeniably esfact:the killer gives the impression he wanted to killan incalcUlable number of times given the equal deadliness ofthe wounds inflicted.The Algerian is a senseless killer: Very often the magistrates andpolice officers are stunned by the motives for the murder: a gesture,an allusion, an ambiguous remark, a quarrel over the ownershipof an olive tree or an animal that has strayed a few feet.The search for the cause, which is expected to iustifv anddown the murder, in some cases a double orup a hopelessly trivial motive. Hencethat38 We know for a fact that Islam forbids eating mcat from an animal thathas not been drained of its blood. This is why the animals have their throatscut.robberybreaking and entereverycase involving asowner.elements focalizing on Algerian criminality appearedsufficiently evident to support an attempt at systematization.Since similar, though less implicit, observations had been conductedin Tunisia and Morocco, was increasingly madeto a North Mrican criminality. For more than thirty years, underthe constant direction of Professor Porot, professor of psychiatryat the Faculty of Algiers, several teams worked on defining thiscriminality's modes of expression and offering a sociological,functional, and anatomical interpretation.The main research work onchiatric school ofResearchover more than ayear period were the we recall, oflectures giventhe chair of psychiatry.Consequently the Algerian doctors who graduated from theFaculty of Algiers were forced to hear and learn that the Algerianis a born criminal. Moreover I remember one of us in allseriousness expounding these theories he had learned and adding:"It's hard to swallow, but it's been scientifically proved."The North African is a criminal, his predatory instinct a knownfact and his unwieldy aggressiveness visible to the naked eye.African loves extremes so you can never entirely trustToday, your best friend, tomorrow your worst enemy. He is immuneto nuances, Cartesianism is fundamentally foreign to himlOderation, a sense of proportion and level-headedness, areto his inner nature. The North Mrican is violent, hereditarilyviolent. He finds it impossible to discipline himself andchannel his instincts. Yes, the Algerian is congenitally impulsive.But, they tell us, this impulsiveness is highly aggressive andgenerally homicidal. This explains, they say, the unorthodox behaviorof the melancholic Algerian. French psychiatrists in Algeriawere faced with a difficult problem. They had been trained