A Critical Assessment Of Colonialism, Violence And Emancipation In Frantz Fanon
Chapter One
Preface
Background Of The Study
The miracle of violence, which occurs in our society nearly on a diurnal base, together with the workshop of some scholars on colonialism and liberation, was what provoked this exploration work. My interest in embarking on this work was also captured by the colonization of Africa and Africa’s struggle for liberation, which were approached from different confines by some African scholars. Some of these African scholars fought for their independence through dialogue, while others got theirs through intellectual kick or physical violence. Frantz Fanon, among other African scholars, supported violence for the liberation of Algeria, hence he supported the same approach for Africa as a whole. But why would Fanon conclude for violence?
The below question can well be answered if we reflect on how Africans were treated during the period of colonization. The invalidation of the slave trade in the nineteenth century steered in another form of servility of Africans called colonialism. This was made possible by the 1885 Berlin Conference that brought about the sharing and partitioning of Africa among some European countries, like England, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Germany. The opinions and conduct of these European countries”. were taken without any reference to the wishes and bournes of the people about whom they took their decision.” 1 The Africans defied, but the imperialists were suitable to subdue them. Africa, still, came a colony of the Western States. The Africans were considered by Westerners as having no soul, or, in other words, living tools. They were oppressed, suppressed, marginalized, molested, discerned against, treated as barbarians, and incipiently, as insensible objects. The Africans lost their rights, quality and freedom.
Freedom as a miracle is consummate in every person’s life. When it’s denied to any person or group of people, there’s a tendency for them to fight back to recapture their freedom. It’s possible that recovering this freedom will be a violent process. Far from reclaiming freedom through violence, one could argue that violence is a miracle that appears to live in society on a diurnal base. According to John Odey,”. all mortal society has some roots of violence within its structure, which frequently tends to centralize individualities into two primary groups the tyrants and the tyrannized.” 2 Violence is a miracle that occurs naturally in the lives of some mortal beings. It might manifest itself either psychologically or physically. Demarcation on the base of race, color, religion, or coitus is an illustration of cerebral violence. As physical violence, it may take the form of brutality, aggression, atrocity, and fighting. According to Adebola Ekanola,” violence in its colorful instantiations is a constant point of society; people appear to be too quick to resort to violence as a means of achieving asked ends without exhausting allnon-violent druthers .” 3 Naturally, every human being would want to fight back when he or she’s stroked or when his or her rights are violated. To this end, some see it”. as not only ineluctable but necessary in society,” 4 and it’s also an argument that,”. social progress can’t be recorded without violence.” 5
revolutions and violent revolutions are on the rise around the world, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. Violence can be seen in African countries similar as Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan. Ethnical hostility and its consequent physical conflicts, violent revolutions for liberation, and political assassinations are all common causes of violence. What’s the defense for violence? Must all fights or conflicts be settled with violence? are some people more violent than others? Is it ever possible to attain a thing through pacifism? Where is the defense for violence if Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. used pacifism to achieve their pretensions? Is not it wise to use violence to achieve a thing from time to time? In our world and Africa moment, is it wise to borrow violence to settle controversies? How numerous individualities of moment will be willing to pursue a course through violent means? Is it possible to use dialogue to resolve conflicts and controversies? How far can it go if it can?
Fanon was apathetic in dialogue, and he was inversely apathetic in pacifism. He chose physical violence rather, and his main thesis was the struggle against oppression, with colonialism as the target of his rage. Fanon’s attention was piqued by his harrowing experience in Algeria. His gospel of violence began with his treatment of wounded Front Liberation Nationale( FLN) revolutionists, whom he joined and latterly came their intelligencer. His military experience also led to him championing violence as a result to colonialism. He faced demarcation on a grand scale while serving in the army. White French colors were separated from black West Indians who were intended to be French residers there. Black African dogfaces were also separated from French colors, as were Arab Africans, whom the French despised and treated as lepers on their own soil. Fanon’s army service passed at a time when France was brazened with German fascism. As an adolescent, he fought in the war with all of these recollections fresh in his mind. The impact of isolation on his understanding of violence was circular. He appertained to racism as” the psychiatric complaint of colonialism.” 6
All of these gests led Fanon to endorse for increased violence as a means of combating the violence that’s colonialism. He stated it easily that,” Colonialism isn’t a allowing machine, nor a body endowed with logic faculties. It’s violence in its natural state, and it’ll only yield when brazened with lesser violence.” 7 He, thus, called on all Africans to indulge in decolonization through the violent process, since violence and atrocity are the major features of colonialism. To put it shortly, Fanon argues that true liberation of Africa from social dominance must be fulfilled by violence. The question is whether physical violence can be employed to free ourselves in moment’s Africa, despite the fact that we’re still subject to neocolonialism. Can our munitions contend with those of our so- called neocolonizers? How can we effectively free ourselves from the insulation of violence? This exploration tries to identify the most effective volition to violence in the face of conflicts and controversies.
Statement Of Problem
In substance, every mortal being values his or her freedom and rights. When an existent’s freedom and rights are violated, it becomes a problem because that existent will fight to reclaim his freedom and rights. The question now is how to reclaim one’s freedom. What styles can be used to achieve freedom? Though it’s said that man is a free beast, this doesn’t indicate that man’s freedom is unlimited. The morning of one’s freedom coincides with the morning of another’s. As a result, it’s constantly stated that” bone ‘s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins.” As a result, it’s inhuman for man to enslave or populate another. Colonization has the essential point of depriving settled peoples of their rights and freedom. It goes hand in hand with oppression, dominance, subjection, exploitation, and demarcation. Those who mutinied against the pioneers were severely dealt with or silenced. Those who were unfit to repel failed in silence. The brutal system of suppressing the settled is through force, and therefore through violence. Because of the pioneers’ station toward Africans, Fanon proposed violence as a result to decolonization. Is violence also justified? Some authors and scholars argue that the primary causes of violence are injustice, denial of another’s freedom, and oppression. They argue that when a man suffers injustice, he frequently responds with violence, which is Fanon’s position. Can not there be other ways to settle controversies or conflicts without resorting to violence, given that injustice types violence? Is it necessary to resort to lesser violence? The purpose of this exploration is to address the issues raised above.
Purpose Of Study
The Africans were subordinated to wantonness and dehumanization at the hands of the Colonialists. Africans’ freedom was tromped on, and their rights were snared down from them. It’s an inarguable fact that man is a free being by nature. Mondin has nailed it.
Away from intelligence, man is also extremely free. As a result, freedom is another title for his excellence and nobility, and it represents yet another great window into the riddle of man, with the thing of gaining a more correct, complete, and acceptable understanding of him. 8
adds,” man is by nature free; freedom is part of his very nature as a rational being.” 9 This rationality in man allows him to understand and see justice in the fact that his freedom is limited and that his freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins. When someone’s freedom is taken down from him, he naturally wants it back. The process of recovering this freedom may affect in violence. This portrays injustice as a source of violence. With regard to the colonization of Africa and the European relationship with Africa, which is exploitative, rough, and discriminative, Fanon supported for lesser violence to be used in violence. He writes,” Their actuality together, that’s to say, the exploitation of the natives by the settlers, was carried on by the hole of a great array of bayonets and cannon.” 10 This led Fanon to see colonialism as” violence in its natural state.” 11 Some people won’t indeed stay to be provoked before resorting to violence. Some long for it and take pleasure in displaying it.
therefore, from a philosophical viewpoint, this work seeks to dissect and estimate Fanon’s conception of violence, with the thing of concluding that violence isn’t the result to every extremity, conflict, or provocation, but rather that pacifism or dialogue could be used to appear freedom or liberation.
Significance Of Study
The significance of this study lies in Frantz Fanon’s conception or notion of violence. Frantz Fanon’s generality of violence wasn’t deduced from the blues. It was the result of the settlers’ heinous treatment of the natives. According to Fanon, the natives lost their quality and freedom, and in order to free themselves, they had to resort to violence.
moment, there’s a surge of violence in some corridor of Africa and indeed the rest of the world. There are cases of ethnical wars and conflicts, civil wars, secessionist attempts, and conflicts between nations over land and natural coffers similar as crude oil painting in some contemporary African countries. This exploration is critical in moment’s world, particularly in this region, where revolutions and violent revolutions are wreaking annihilation. It’s also essential for social and political judges interested in conflict resolution and peace. It’s also brutal because it’ll expose, condemn, and upgrade Fanon’s violence by rejecting its nature and embracing dialogue as a prelude tore-educating Africans.
Compass Of Study
This exploration is a philosophical examination of Frantz Fanon’s ideas about colonialism, violence, and liberation. It also focuses on physical, cerebral, and structural violence, particularly physical violence, as proposed by Frantz Fanon to fight colonialism, which is a nature of violence in and of itself for the liberation of Africa. It should also probe the explanation for the use of violence in the liberation of Africans from their social Masters.
Methodology
In this study, our system will be to present, through critical analysis, Frantz Fanon’s generality of colonialism, violence, and liberation in four chapters, while the chapter five will be for critical evaluation and conclusion. Our data for this exploration work was collected from both primary and secondary sources. In the primary sources, this study made use of the workshop entitled Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Masks, and Toward the African Revolution, all by Frantz Fanon. In the secondary sources, it made use of journals and papers both published and unpublished, journals, magazines, and philosophical workshop by some proponents on Frantz Fanon’s notion of colonialism, violence, and liberation. This study is divided into five chapters. Chapter one attempts to give a background of the work. It also presents the background of the study of gospel of violence. This chapter also looks into the problem we’re set to break, the purpose of our study, the compass of our study, the significance of our study and incipiently the system we espoused. Chapter two reviews literature on violence, colonialism and liberation. In this chapter also we shall look at other proponents and thinkers ’ views on colonialism, violence and liberation, see their positions with or against Frantz Fanon’s view, presents Fanon’s generality of colonialism, and presents Fanon’s view of violence. chapter three looks at Fanon’s view of liberation. While chapter four dwells on the critical appraisal of violence as supposed by Fanon. It also examines the merit and faults of Fanon’s notion of colonialism, violence and liberation. Incipiently chapter five presents the critical evaluation and conclusion.
Description Of Terms
Violence Violence could be seen in Marxist gospel in the dethronement of the plutocrat( bourgeoisie) by the proletariats with the end of establishing a cloddish and stateless communist society.
Colonialism Colonialism may be seen as the establishment of a colony or colonies in another country by a superior country.
Emancipation This could be defined as the act of setting free from the power of another, from slavery, domination, dependence, or controlling influence; also, the state of being therefore set free; emancipation
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