wretched-of-the-earth-frantz-fanon

livPREFACEPREFACEIvAcropolis. Okay: you've got the message. Not quite, however,because you are not in their shoes. Not yet. Otherwise you'd knowthey have no choice: they accumulate. Two worlds, that makestwo possessions: you dance all night long, at dawn you hurry tochurch to attend mass. Day by day the crack widens. Our enemybetrays his brothers and becomes our accomplice; his brothers dothe same. The status of "native" is a neurosis introduced andmaintained by the colonist in the colonized with their consent.Demanding yet denying the human condition makes for anexplosive contradiction. And explode it does, as you and I know.And we live in an age of conflagration: it only needs the risingbirth rate to worsen the food shortage, it only needs the newlyborn to fear living a little more than dying, and for the torrent ofviolence to sweep away all the barriers. In Algeria and Angola,Europeans are massacred on sight. This is the age of the boomerang,the third stage of violence: it flies right back at us, it strikesus and, once again, we have no idea what hit us. The "liberals"remain stunned: they admit we had not been polite enough tothe "natives," that it would have been wiser and fairer to grantthem certain rights, wherever possible; they would have beenonly too happy to admit them in batches without a sponsor tothat exclusive club-the human species; and now this barbaricexplosion of madness is putting them in the same boat as thewretched colonists. The metropolitan Left is in a quandary: it iswell aware of the true fate of the "natives," the pitiless oppressionthey are subjected to, and does not condemn their revolt,knowing that we did everything to provoke it. But even so, itthinks, there are limits: these guerrillas should make every effortto show some chivalry; this would be the best way of provingthey are men. Sometimes the Left berates them: ''You're goingtoo far; we cannot support you any longer." They don't care ashit for its support; it can shove it up its ass for what it's worth.As soon as the war began, they realized the harsh truth: we areall equally as good as each other. We have all taken advantageof them, they have nothing to prove, they won't give anyonepreferential treatment. A single duty, a single objective: drive outcolonialism by every means. And the most liberal among uswould be prepared to accept this, at a pinch, but they cannot helpseeing in this trial of strength a perfectly inhuman method usedby subhumans to claim for themselves a charter for humanity:let them acquire it as quickly as possible, but in order to meritit, let them use nonviolent methods. Our noble souls are racist.They would do well to read Fanon; he shows perfectly clearlythat this irrepressible violence is neither a storm in a teacup northe reemergence of savage instincts nor even a consequence ofresentment: it is man reconstructing himself. I believe we onceknew, and have since forgotten, the truth that no indulgence canerase the marks of violence: violence alone can eliminate them.And the colonized are cured of colonial neurosis by driving thecolonist out by force. Once their rage explodes, they recover theirlost coherence, they experience self-knowledge through reconstructionofthemselves; from afar we see their war as the triumphof barbarity; but it proceeds on its own to gradually emancipatethe fighter and progressively eliminates the colonial darkness insideand out. As soon as it begins it is merciless. Either one mustremain terrified or become terrifying-which means surrenderingto the dissociations ofa fabricated life or conquering the unityof one's native soil. When the peasants lay hands on a gun, theold myths fade, and one by one the taboos are overturned: afighter's weapon is his humanity. For in the first phase of therevolt killing is a necessity: killing a European is killing two birdswith one stone, eliminating in one go oppressor and oppressed:leaving one man dead and the other man free; for the first timethe survivor feels a national soil under his feet. In that momentthe nation does not forsake him: it is there wherever he goes andwherever he is-always by his side, it merges with his freedom.But after the initial surprise the colonial army responds: one mustunite or be massacred. Tribal conflicts diminish and tend todisappear: firstly, because they jeopardize the revolution, andmore precisely because they had no other purpose but to shift