1/6/2024 0 Comments Franz fanonHe represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. The native is declared insensible to ethics. It is not for the colonist to affirm that those values have disappeared from, or still better never existed in, the colonial world. “Native society is not simply described as a society lacking in values. Colonialism is seen not just as a system of material exploitation, but worse, one of spiritual impoverishment. This, it must be understood, is not only a statement concerning what is the case, but of what ought to be the case. ![]() The theme is stark, simple and direct - the process of decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. The work begins with an exploration of the role of violence in the fight for national liberation and unity. It is the synthesis which emerges from the dialectical confrontation between Fanon, the colonial Fanon, the rebel Fanon, the child and agent of violence and the institutionalized violence against which he fought, the colonial situation. It is art which transcends the reality of the separation of the creator from the thing created. The Damned goes beyond the normal relationship of a writer and his material. It is the heart and soul of a movement, written, as it could only have been written, by one who fully participated in it. ![]() And this is the fact that The Damned is itself a part of the revolution which, on one level, it is analyzing. However, it goes far beyond this and not to realize it, is to miss the whole significance of the work. This it certainly does better than any other work on the subject I have yet read. That same relationship which the works of Voltaire and Rousseau bore to the French Revolution, which the Communist Manifesto bore to the revolutionary labour movements of the 19th century, is to be found in the relationship between The Damned and the movement of the colonised peoples of the world in overthrowing their oppressors.įor The Damned is not only a reflection, not just another run-of-the-mill analysis of colonialism and the process of decolonisation. Fanon’s The Dammed is one of those rare books which stands out not only through the brilliance of its penetrating social and psychological insights, or through the sheer vigour and originality of its style, but derives its greatest importance from the fact of being the key work which embodies the Zeitgeist of a revolutionary social movement. It is impossible to do justice to this remarkable work in the short space I have at my disposal.
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