On National Culture-

(chapter 4)
Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
 French West Indian Psychiatrist, intellectual and political
philosopher
 Fanon has inspired national –liberation movements and

other radical political organizations

 His works became revolutionary to the literature of critical

thought
 He developed an analysis of anti black racism
 The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a
1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author
provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of
colonization upon the individual and the nation(main theme)
 Discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications

of establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a

person and of a people.
 The French-language title derives from the opening lyrics of "The

Internationale".
 This chapter, which was first presented as a paper at the
Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Rome in
1959
 Question – How can a national culture form after

independence?
 Colonialism destroys and perverts culture, for instance

teaching the colonized to consider their past as unworthy

or evil.
 What can the colonized do to assert or reclaim or newly

produce culture after this kind of brainwashing?

 The mission of underdeveloped countries has been to
resist colonialism and clear the path for new struggles

 In a post-colonial world, the colonized have fought

heartily.

 If their struggle failed to grace the international stage, it is

not because they are not champions, but because the
international situation is different.
 A national culture should be built on the material

resistance of a people against colonial domination

Decolonization
 Decolonization is the process by which a colony gains its
independence from a colonial power, a process opposite to
colonization.
 Decolonization could be achieved by attaining independence,

integrating with the administering power or another state, or

establishing a "free association" status.
 Fanon talks about the decolonization of mind
 The return to precolonial history

 Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of the nation

that is based not so much on collective cultural traditions or
ancestor-worship
 Colonialism, as Fanon argues, not only physically disarms the
colonized subject but robs her of a "pre-colonial" cultural
heritage.
 Colonialism was not content to merely exploit and abuse the
people, the colonial power stripped the indigenous people of
culture and history as well.
 Colonial power turns to the past of the colonized and “distorts it,
disfigures it, and destroys it.” The result was like a “hammer to
the head of the indigenous population.” In this way, it is not
difficult to understand why the colonized intellectual sought to
return to precolonial times and culture.
 For Fanon, colonizers attempt to write the precolonial
history of a colonized people as one of "barbarism,
degradation, and bestiality" in order to justify the
supremacy of Western civilization.
 To upset the supremacy of the colonial society, writes

Fanon, the colonized intellectual feels the need to return to

their so-called 'barbaric' culture, to prove its existence and
its value in relation to the West.
 The past is brought back, but not the cultural past. Under

colonialism, the continent of Africa is seen as a “den of

savages” that is cursed, evil, and hated on a continental
scale.
Colonized Intellectuals
 They are a cultured class within colonized countries who wants
the recognition of a national culture and its right to exist
 The colonized intellectual’s attempt to right this wrong must then
be continental, too, and they embrace African, or “Negro,”
culture.
 Fanon begins by considering the “colonized intellectual,” someone
who has been educated by the colonist but reacts against him.
 They seek to return to the pre-colonial times and culture due to
the distortion by white
 They believe to be in a place in between their homeland and their
coloniser - like an adoptive child- it may give them a universal
perspective
Negro Art or Negritude movement
 It basically argues with colonists on their own terms.

Colonists lump all of Africa into one group, ignoring

differences of tribe or ethnicity and the rich cultural
histories different places have.
 Negro culture was itself brought by the colonial power
 Négritude ("Blackness") is a framework of critique and
literary theory, developed mainly by francophone
intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora
during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "Black
consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora.
 Négritude gathers writers such as sisters Paulette and

Jeanne Nardal Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Abdoulaye

Sadji, Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first President of
Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana.
 Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, racism and

Eurocentrism. They promoted African culture within a

framework of persistent Franco-African ties. The
intellectuals employed Marxist political philosophy, in the
Black radical tradition.
 Fanon says, the movement negritude, and its writers do not
hesitate to go beyond the continent of Africa. Negritude has
stretched all the way to America, where the “black world” is
formed by those from Ghana, Senegal, and Chicago.
 Those in the “black world” share similar ties and thoughts.
However, African culture instead of a national culture is a
“dead end” to African intellectuals.
 Take for example the African Society for Culture, which was
created to establish the existence of African culture. The
African Society for Culture quickly turns to the Cultural Society
for the Black World, and they include all of the black diaspora,
including the millions of black people in the Americas.
Double consciousness
 The term was introduced by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1842
essay "The Transcendentalist". Du Bois first used the term in an
article titled "Strivings of the Negro People“
 Very similarly to Du Bois, Frantz Fanon touched upon the term of
double consciousness in his life.
 He expressed his hopelessness at being neither white nor black.
Fanon identifies the double consciousness that African Americans
face and its source; he claimed the cultural and social confusions
of African Americans were caused by European culture.
 Double consciousness is the internal conflict experienced by
subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society.
 the struggle African Americans face to remain true to black culture
while at the same time conforming to the dominant white society.
 In the process of attaining national culture, intellectuals must
create self determination aswell as the deconstruction of their
subconcious colonial hierarchy
 Fanon details three stages in the cultural trajectory of the

colonized intellectual.
 In the first stage, the intellectual mimics the colonist and
conforms to colonial tastes. This is a stage of trying to be
like the Europeans, extolling European culture.
 In the second stage, the colonized reacts against this. This is
the Négritude phase in which, in reaction to the European
casting of African culture as inferior, the intellectual extols
each and every thing about African culture as superior.(Goes
back to precolonial)
 In the third stage, this love for culture finally moves to a
fight for liberation. The intellectual begins to write “combat
literature, revolutionary literature” that hopes to galvanize
the people into fighting the colonist. Here, the hope is that
developing a new culture will begin to shape a new nation.
 The third stage was more powerful as it carried the spirit of
nationalism
 Eventually, the intellectual has to realize that culture

doesn’t produce nationhood. Rather, a revolutionary fight

produces nationhood.
 In the first phase, the superiority of European culture

justifies colonialism; in the third phase, national culture

justifies anticolonialism. But only a national fight produces
nationhood. Culture follows from nationalism rather than
the other way around.
 In other words, the intellectual has first to fight for the

liberation of the nation, and then culture will follow

because it will have a national context in which to grow
Struggle as the site of national culture

 “National culture in the under­developed countries,

therefore, must lie at the very heart of the liberation
struggle these countries are waging.”
 Fanon spends a good deal of space in this chapter focusing

on one example, a poem by Guinean intellectual named

Keita Fodeba. What Fanon likes about Fodeba’s poem is
that it draws upon his nation’s history while also re-
contextualizing it within the struggle for liberation.
 Here, culture is used in order to fight for the future. The

poem absorbs the rhythms of combat. In it, culture cannot

stand apart from fighting. This is the kind of literature the
revolution needs, and it shows the intellectual cannot stand
apart from combat, but rather derives his materials from it.
 African Dawn is the poem – Naman –the hero of battle
fields
 Keita Fodeba sees further. In colonized countries,

colonialism, after making use of the natives on the

battlefields, uses them as trained soldiers to put down the
movements of independence.
 The ex-service associations in the colonies are one of the

most anti-nationalist elements which exist.

 The French secret service used the ex servicemen to break

up the young independent Guinean state.

 According to Fanon, rather than imitate European culture or
promote a global black culture, native intellectuals must
realize their culture is national.
 He quotes the Haitian poet René Depestre and Guinean poet

Fodéba Keita as examples of poetry born of national struggle.

 He also believes national culture cannot give birth to the

nation. Poetry will not free the nation.

 The struggle to free the nation creates national culture.
 Those without a nation are faced with serious psychological
effects. They are “without an anchorage, without borders,
colorless, stateless, rootless,” Fanon claims, and they are
forced to assume two identities. For instance,
a colonized individual is both Algerian and French or
Nigerian and English.
 The colonized intellectual wants to escape white culture

and identity, and he will look anywhere, as long as it gets

him away from his oppressor.
 The very language the colonized intellectual uses to
appreciate a piece of art is that of the oppressor. The
intellectual talks of African art in terms of nationality, but it
ends up sounding of exoticism.
 The intellectual is “mesmerized by these mummified

fragments,” which, all bunched together, are negated.

Culture cannot be simplified, Fanon says, and this is why
the intellectual is “out of step.”
 In the visual arts, the colonized creator, in an attempt to make
art of national importance, ends up working in stereotypes.
They search for genuine national culture and want to represent
a national truth. Under colonial rule, the colonized painter did
not paint the national landscape; he or she instead chose still
life or nonrepresentational art. In an independent nation, the
painter returns to the people and wants to represent national
reality, which is often “reminiscent of death rather than life.”
 Poetry is much the same. The colonized poet, too, wants to pen
a poem of national significance; but when he writes of his
people, he or she comes up short. The poet must first define
his or her subject in order to write, but he must first
understand his or her “alienation.”
 Fighting for national culture is also to fight for the nation’s
liberation. The people of Algeria, for instance, are fighting
for liberation, and Algerian national culture takes shape in
that fight. Thus, the formerly colonized should not turn to
the past to prove that their national culture exists.
 National culture is not folklore, nor is it gestures or words.

National culture is the “collective thought process of a

people to describe, justify, and extol” the struggles of
liberation.
 Black culture was considered inferior by the West, and it
was erased, suppressed, and destroyed at every turn. The
absence of art and intellect is considered the height of
savagery, and by erasing the culture of the Third World,
Europe could thereby declare those from the Third World
savages.
 Fanon’s reference to national literature as “combat

literature” again reflects this art as a form of resistance,

which makes it part of the struggle for nationhood and the
very definition of culture. Writing and storytelling respond
to the nation; thus, they accurately reflect it.
Towards an international consciousness

 Fanon concludes this chapter by considering recent calls for

a culture that is supra-national. Here is how Fanon
summarizes these recent calls
 The time has come to build larger political unions, and
consequently the old-fashioned nationalists should correct
their mistakes.” What is wrong about these calls, Fanon says,
is they fundamentally mistake what culture is. As Fanon has
just argued, culture derives from national consciousness.
There therefore cannot be a culture that isn’t national.
 National culture is the highest form of culture, and any form
of international or global culture has to be based on national
culture. It cannot surpass it.
 However, the struggle for freedom does not mean that the
national culture of the past is restored. Once the struggle is
over, Fanon says, colonialism is dead, but so are the
colonized. “If culture is the expression of national
consciousness,” Fanon continues, “I shall have no
hesitation in saying, in the case in point, that national
consciousness is the highest form of culture.”
Important points
 Colonialism and racism
 Decolonization
 Negritude movement
 Oppression and mental health
 Nation vs Culture
 Psychological insights of people