www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, October 2002
Black/Red View
Fanon and terrorism
by John Alan After the tragedy of September 11, the French general Paul
Aussaresses published his memoir THE BATTLE OF THE CASBAH, recounting the way
the French conducted their war to "combat terrorism" in Algeria in
1954-62. The French committed atrocities trying to maintain their colony in
Africa against the Algerian nationalists. The memoir asks when is it acceptable to use torture or
abrogate legal norms. He said: "Once you have seen with your own eyes as I
did, civilians, men, women, and children quartered, disemboweled and nailed to
doors, you are changed for life. What feelings can anyone have towards those who
perpetrated such barbaric acts and their accomplices?" It should be noted that no United States president has ever
strongly opposed or actively intervened to stop atrocities committed by
Europeans in Africa. President Kennedy made some anti-colonialist remarks, but
Fanon thought that Kennedy's position on the war in Algeria was hardly different
from that of France. Frantz Fanon is undoubtedly the most outstanding thinker
and activist involved in de-colonization of Algeria. He recognized at once that
violence was embedded in the very structure of colonial society, in other words,
in its geographical layout, which "implies a line of force." Fanon
points out, "The colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line,
the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations. In the colonies it is
the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the
spokesmen of the settlers and his rule of oppression.…The policeman and the
soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action
maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle-butts and
napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the
language of pure force" (Frantz Fanon, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, Grove
Press, 1963, p. 31). As the head of the psychiatric department of the
Blida-Joinville hospital in Algeria, Fanon treated both victims of torture and
torturers. His experience caused him to have a personal horror of violence.
While he didn't rule out the use of violence by the national liberation
struggles, he didn't treat the Algerian victims of violence as heroes, nor the
torturers as the enemies. Both were people to him, broken by their experience
and in need of treatment. Fanon recognized that psychiatric treatment was not a
solution. He resigned his post and became active in the struggle for liberation
of Algeria. For Fanon, the form his own activism took was not armed struggle but
being a spokesperson for the idea of freedom. David Macey, in his biography of Fanon, says, "'Fanon
and violence' is now such a spontaneous association in France that it
trivializes what he is actually describing.…Critics like [Jean] Daniel and
[Jean-Marie] Domenach suggest that Fanon's thesis on violence are an attempt to
justify the unjustifiable. Hannah Arendt makes the same point and quite
erroneously claims that he glorifies 'violence for its own sake.' Fanon does not
'glorify' violence and in fact rarely describes it in any detail….It is absurd
to criticize Fanon for his advocacy of violence. He did not need to advocate
it" (pp. 474-75). Fanon represented the idea that violence in a world
pervaded by violence and dominance should not be "instrumental." There
had to be an absolute break with the world of the colonizers and the colonized,
creating what he called "a new man." The terror of
fundamentalism and Osama bin Laden is an anti-humanism and a calcification of a
modern man's thinking as he creates in his mind visions of pure closed forms
from the past. Fanon was looking for a way to break completely from the
past. He was seeking a new humanity. "Let us combine our muscles and our
brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has
been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth" (THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH,
p. 253). It is Fanon's concept of a creation of a new human being that we have to find for today if we hope to break the never-ending cycle of war and terror in which Bush's own simplistic moralism as well as any other fundamentalism mires us. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
