The Wretched of the Earth () is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanising effects of colonisation upon individuals and nations, and discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications of establishing a social movement for the decolonisation of a person and of a people.
Some believe that the French-language title derives from the opening line of "The Internationale", which is reflected in the English title as well. However, Fanon biographer Adam Shatz has stated that it originates from the poem (Dirty Negroes), published posthumously in 1945 in the collection by the Haitian poet Jacques Roumain (1907-1944).Shatz, Adam (2024). The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 314-315. .
Summary Through critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as coloniser and colonised, to teach and psychologically mould the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution.
Fanon proposes that revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to effect the expulsion of the colonists. In traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariats are the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat—especially criminals, vagrants and the unemployed—people who lack the class consciousness to participate in the socialist revolution.
Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to the colonial subjects who are not involved in industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the working class), the lumpenproletariat has sufficient intellectual independence from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class, ready to grasp that they can revolt against the colonial status quo and so decolonise their nation. One of the essays included in The Wretched of the Earth is "On National Culture", in which Fanon highlights the necessity for each generation to discover its mission and fight for it.
"On Violence" The first section is entitled "On Violence". It is a detailed explanation of violence in relation to both the colonial world and the process of decolonisation. Fanon begins with the premise that decolonisation is, by definition, a violent process without exception. The object of that process is the eventual replacement of one group of humans with another, and that process is only complete when the transition is total. This conception of decolonisation is based on Fanon's construction of the colonial world.
Through his observations, he concluded that all colonial structures are actually nested societies which are not complementary. He uses Aristotelian logic in that the colony followed the "principle of reciprocal exclusivity". Based on this conclusion, Fanon characterises the assessment of the native population by the settler class as dehumanising. The settlers literally do not see the natives as members of the same species.
The natives are incapable of ethics and thereby are the embodiment of absolute evil as opposed to the Christian settlers who are forces of good. This is a crucial point for Fanon because it explains two phenomena that occur in the colonial world. The first is the idea that decolonisation is the replacement of one population by another, and the second is that since the native knows that they are not animals, they immediately develop a feeling of rebellion against the settler.
One of the temporary consequences of colonisation that Fanon talks about is the division of the native into three groups. The first is the native worker who is valued by the settler for their labour. The second group is what he calls the "colonised intellectual". These are, by western standards, the more educated members of the native group who are in many ways recruited by the settler to be spokespeople for their views. The settlers had "implanted in the minds of the colonised intellectual that the essential qualities remain eternal in spite of the blunders men may make: the essential qualities of the West, of course". These intellectuals were "ready to defend the Graeco-Latin pedestal" against all foes, settler or native.
The third group described by Fanon are the lumpenproletariat. This group is described in Marxism as the poorest class; those who are outside of the system because they have so little. This group is often dismissed by Marxists as unable to assist in the organising of the workers, but Fanon sees them differently. For him, the lumpenproletariat will be the first to discover violence in the face of the settler.
Once the idea of revolution is accepted by the native, Fanon describes the process by which it is debated, adjusted, and finally implemented. According to Fanon, the revolution begins as an idea of total systematic change, and through the actual application to real world situations is watered down until it becomes a small shift of power within the existing system. "[The] pacifists and legalists ... put bluntly enough the demand ... 'Give us more power (46), but the "native intellectual has clothed his aggressiveness in his barely veiled desire to assimilate himself to the colonial world" (47).
The colonialist bourgeoisie offers non-violence and then compromise as further ways out of the violence of decolonization. These too are mechanisms to blunt and degrade the movement. An example of this is the newly independent Republic of Gabon which gained independence from France in 1960 and afterward, the new president, Léon M'ba said "Gabon is independent, but between Gabon and France nothing has changed; everything goes on as before". For Fanon, this is the perfect example of a decolonization movement which has been enfeebled by the tentativeness of its leaders. To fight this, "The newly independent Third World countries are urged not to emulate the decadent societies of the West (or East), but to chart a new path in defining human and international relationship".Fairchild, 2010, p. 194
In this essay, Fanon describes many aspects of the violence and response to violence necessary for total decolonization. He also offers cautions about several different approaches to that violence.
"On National Culture" In the essay "On National Culture" published in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon sets out to define how a national culture can emerge among the former and, at the time of its release in 1961, colonized nations of Africa. Rather than depending on an orientalised, fetishised understanding of precolonial history, Fanon argues a national culture should be built on the material resistance of a people against colonial domination. Fanon narrates the essay with reference to what he calls the "colonised intellectual".
The return to precolonial history For Fanon, colonisers attempt to write the precolonial history of a colonized people as one of "barbarism, degradation, and bestiality" to justify the supremacy of Western civilization. To upset the supremacy of the colonial society, writes Fanon, the colonised intellectual feels the need to return to their so-called "barbaric" culture, to prove its existence and its value in relation to the West.
Fanon suggests colonized intellectuals often fall into the trap of trying to prove the existence of a common African or "Negro" culture. This is a dead end, according to Fanon, because it was originally the colonists who essentialized the peoples in Africa as "Negro", without considering distinct national cultures and histories. This points to what Fanon sees as one of the limits of the Négritude movement. In articulating a continental identity, based on the colonial category of the "Negro", Fanon argues "the men who set out to embody it realized that every culture is first and foremost national".
An attempt among colonized intellectuals to "return" to the nation's pre-colonial culture is then ultimately an unfruitful pursuit, according to Fanon. Rather than culture, the intellectual emphasizes traditions, costumes, and clichés, which romanticize history in a similar way as the colonist would. The desire to reconsider the nation's pre-colonial history, even if it results in orientalized clichés, still marks an important turn according to Fanon, since by rejecting the normalized eurocentrism of colonial thought, these intellectuals provide a "radical condemnation" of the larger colonial enterprise.
This radical condemnation attains its full meaning when we consider that the "final aim of colonization", according to Fanon, "was to convince the indigenous population that it would save them from darkness". A persistent refusal among Indigenous peoples to admonish national traditions in the face of colonial rule, according to Fanon, is a demonstration of nationhood, but one that holds on to a fixed idea of the nation as something of the past, a corpse.
Struggle as the site of national culture Ultimately, Fanon argues that the colonised intellectual will have to realise that a national culture is not a historical reality waiting to be uncovered in a return to pre-colonial history and tradition, but is already existing in the present national reality. National struggle and national culture then become inextricably linked in Fanon's analysis. To struggle for national liberation is to struggle for the terrain whereby a culture can grow, since Fanon concludes a national culture cannot exist under conditions of colonial domination.
A decisive turn in the development of the colonized intellectual is when they stop addressing the oppressor in their work and begin addressing their own people. This often produces what Fanon calls "combat literature", writing that calls upon the people to undertake the struggle against the colonial oppressor. This change is reflected in all modes of artistic expression among the colonized nation, from literature to pottery, to ceramics, and oral story-telling. Fanon specifically uses the example of Algerian storytellers changing the content and narration of their traditional stories to reflect the present moment of struggle against French colonial rule.
He considers the bebop jazz movement in America as a similar turn, whereby black jazz musicians began to delink themselves from the image imposed on them by a white-Southern imaginary. Whereas the common trope of African-American jazz musicians was, according to Fanon, "an old 'Negro', five whiskeys under his belt, bemoaning his misfortune", bebop was full of energy and dynamism that resisted and undermined the common racist trope.
For Fanon, national culture is then intimately tied to the struggle for the nation itself, the act of living and engaging with the present reality that gives birth to the range of cultural productions. This might be best summarized in Fanon's idea of replacing the "concept" with the "muscle". Fanon is suggesting that the actual practice and exercise of decolonization, rather than decolonization as an academic pursuit, is what forms the basis of national culture.
Towards an international consciousness