T R I B U T Eimpasse between domination and misery.An equally necessary preconditionis the modification of the relationshipbetween international forcesand their rebalancing in favour ofcountries in the Global South. But thisalso concerns the former colonialcountries, to submit to the yoke ofmarkets.In the context of international relations,the leaders, without any legitimacybut the strength of their armedforces and external support, commandno weight on the international stage.It will be time for the great powers,which consider themselves internallydemocratic, to end their desire tomaintain their hegemony over the lessdeveloped world.The opinionatedness of Fanon,and his determination, shows thatthere is no inevitability to failure, solong as the drama is known to be theway of life of the people. The solidarityof progress, and the convergenceof struggles, the resistance todictators and neo-colonial and imperialhegemony, are the milestones onthe road to redress. Solidarity and internationalism– which for Fanonwere inextricably linked – give a continuinghuman dimension to peoples’struggles.Fanon, with his skills as a psychiatrist,essayist and militant, hasturned the spotlight onto the unity ofthe colonised world, despite the factit is highly differentiated and riddledwith contradictions. Therefore, forFanon the Mujahideen, there is nodifference between the struggle ascarried forward by the people of theCaribbean, Africa or Latin America.One can even continue this Fanonesqueanalysis: globalisation, with itsexpansionary tendency, which hadtransferred liberalism’s modes of organisationonto the Global South, isnow doing the same to the North.The political and social dividescharacteristic of exclusion and exploitationtend to unify the world underthe interest of the tiny minorities. Thetreatment imposed on Greece was aresponse to a foreign debt racked upwith the complicity of the ultra-liberalsin the EU and the banks. This casereveals the strategies of dismantlingThe spirit of resistancewhich impregnates thework of Fanon inspiresthose who struggle forrights across the world.utes to the criminalisation of thoseexcluded and disenfranchised bythese processes. The media treatmentof the recent riots in the UK recallsthat seen in France during the revoltsin the working-class suburbs in 2005.By successive slides, facilitated by thesuperimposition of social and ethnoculturalcategories – the poor, blacks,Arabs, Muslims – Western regimeshave re-injected the colonial discourseinto domestic politics. By a paradoxwith a secret history, the indigene isever present not only in his originalform but equally in what Fanon called‘the forbidden towns’ where newforms of discrimination are enforced.He noted in The Wretched of the Earththat:‘The colonised world is cut intwo... The zone inhabited by the colonisedis not complementary to thezone inhabited by the coloniser. Thesetwo zones face each other but not aspart of a greater whole... The world iscompartmentalised, each occupied bya different species. The originality ofthe colonial context is that the economicreality, inequality, the enormousdifference between ways of life,never manages to mask the human reality.’It can be seen that, whilst themode of operation may have changed,oppression and domination of peopleis perennial. It has even widened toinclude in these categories the mostfragile populations, under the guise ofbeing ‘protected’ by the dominantnations. The form of alienation haschanged, but the ideological underpinningsof exploitation invariablyremain, and become elements ofsocial advances which are now beingput to work in the developed world.Surveillance culture, constructedin the name of anti-terrorism, contribglobalisationwhich make the planetconform to a uniform pattern. Theeconomic crisis is a crisis of Westerncapitalism. For the people of Africaand the Arab world, re-colonisation –under the auspices of military humanitarianintervention – no longer invokes‘the mission to civilise’ but theresponsibility to protect, a slippery inventionof the self-proclaimed ‘internationalcommunity’. It keeps its oppressivenature but with an alienating,depersonalised character.For those who would wish togloss over the colonial past and thepresent of injustice and dispossession,the works of Fanon will be left by thewayside and portrayed as nothing butan apology for violence. Its detractorswill recruit from neoconservative ‘intellectuals’who have commenced awitch-hunt against him. Throughskewed readings and biased representations,they reproduce their own ignoranceof Fanon’s works and theirracism.The violence defended by Fanon,as a last resort of those denied, exploitedand reduced to slavery, is thatof legitimate defence of the oppressedwho are subject to a much greater violence:that of domination, dispossessionand contempt.But, in the face of all manipulationsand propaganda, reality is stubborn.Various mechanisms are alwaysat work reshaping relations betweenformer colonies and former colonisers.The rejection of submission andlies, the spirit of resistance which impregnatesthe work of Fanon, inspiresthose who struggle for rights acrossthe world. In Palestine, as elsewhere,in the backyards of those who arewaking up to oppression, the thoughtsin action of Fanon are real, despitechanges in the world.Is our world free of dispossession,alienation and injustice? He callson us to resist and never surrender. uMireille Fanon Mendès-France is a member of theAdministrative Council of the Frantz FanonFoundation. This article is reproduced fromPambazuka News (Issue 561, 6 December 2011,www.pambazuka.org, English edition, ISSN 1753-6839). It was translated from the French forPambazuka News by Portia Roelofs, a mastersstudent of African Politics at the School of Orientaland African Studies, University of London.THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE No 255/25671
P O E T R YThe Lu (1907-1989), a Vietnamese poet who also wrote fiction, was distinguishedfor his introduction of new genres and styles to Vietnamese literature.Yearning for the jungleThe Lu(The voice of a tiger in captivity in a zoo)In the iron cage my heart seething with anger,I lie through long slow months,Despising the gang of addle swaggerersWho through tiny eyes dare to mock the jungle’s majesty.Now fallen and captive, I swallow my prideTo be a curiosity, a toy,An equal to the despicable bears,To the pair of clueless leopards next door.I drag a life filled with longing and loveFor good old days of mighty dominion,In the jungle amidst huge old shade trees,Mighty howling winds, and thundering falls,Roaring my epic and powerful roar,I strutted in commanding steps sure and proud,My rhythmic wave-like body strong and stout,Stalking silent ‘mongst brambles and sharp grass.In dark caves once I flashed my awesome eyesAll life lay quiet holding its hushed breath.I basked in smugness, king of all creatures,Roaming amidst the nameless plants and trees.Now where are those moonlit nights by the streamWhen hearty dinner done I savoured the moonlight?Where are those rainstorms that shook the jungle domainWhen I quietly surveyed my revived kingdom?Where are those daybreaks that bathed the lush treesAnd birdsongs that riotously awakened me?Where the blood-red rays that drowned the jungleWhen I couldn’t wait for the hot sun to dieSo I could seize its secret for myself.— Oh, where have they all gone, those glory days?I smother my deep perpetual angerHating the things that never ever change,The spaces that were deceitfully built,With tended blooms, mown grass, straight paths, grown trees,A dark trickle that passed as forest streamsLurking ‘mongst phony low-lying hillocksWith docile foliage shorn of mystery,Faking so miserably the wildernessAnd its eternal life’s solemnity.O noble proud land of majestyWhere my valiant kind always holds firm sway,The vast realm that I used to rule over,Country that I will never see again!Did you know in my days of dark despairI still nurture lofty grandiose dreamsIn my soul of being in your midst again,O my dear old awesome jungle domain?Translated by Thomas D LeTHIRD WORLD RESURGENCE No 255/25672
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