Sunday, July 25, 2021

Summary: Decolonization in Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth

According to Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth the decolonization struggleIt seeks to achieve political and economic independence from Europe, but it does not stop or limit itself to it, but continues towards the construction of a sovereign and dignified nation. Fanon criticizes that nationalist bourgeoisies are emerging in underdeveloped countries, channeled only to intermediate activities, without industrial or financial ones. This underdeveloped bourgeoisie occupies the psychological place of the western bourgeoisie, but is unable to reproduce its dynamic and forward-thinking aspect, as inventor and discoverer of worlds. According to Fanon, the theoretical dilemma as to whether or not the underdeveloped countries can skip the bourgeois stage, as the more orthodox Marxist currents would maintain, must be resolved at the level of revolutionary action and not by reasoning. “We must not fight the national bourgeoisie in underdeveloped countries because it threatens to halt the global and harmonious development of the nation. You have to resolutely oppose it because it is literally useless ”. Along with the useless bourgeoisie, the nationalist parties become instruments of the government and promote dictatorial regimes, sometimes tribal and personalist.

The solution lies in educating and politicizing the masses, placing the party at their beck and call, and decentralizing power as much as possible. “To politicize is to open the spirit, awaken the spirit, give light to the spirit. It's like Césaire used to say: 'invent souls' ”. The struggle for national culture is at the very center of the liberation struggle. Fanon makes an analysis of native writing in three stages: the first, in which he tries to assimilate the culture of the occupier and the colonized intellectuals embrace the culture of the surrealist poets and French symbolism; the second, where there is a search for authenticity, which tends towards exoticism, which reproduces coloniality while using imported ideas to create and not recognize man; the third, when there is writing of struggle, However, the national consciousness - the dynamic consciousness of all the people - is not nationalism. With all this, a dignified and free people can emerge that is a sovereign people.