Blog 5 - The Ire of the Wretched
Blog 5 – The Ire of the Wretched
The third paragraph on page eight and the paragraph immediately following it of the Wretched of the Earth [“Such an occurrence… but to flee”] tells of the process of realization that dawns on the colonized gradually. It tells of how the colonizer if aware that with power and might alone, their control over the land is unsustainable. With that, they seek to impose a cultural domination through bringing into their machinery some members of the native bourgeoisie. We can understand that the local elite are put to good use by the colonizer for not only their bureaucratic administration but also their cultural imposition. Rather, the two purposes proceed simultaneously. In India, the British gave the rights of tax collection and ownership over land that previously run by centrally commissioned Zamindars to independent landowners. These grew to form a strong elite who then became comparatively integrated into and buoyed up a British education and lifestyle. But this cultural assault does not necessarily provide the colonizer significant control over the colonized masses. For they do not care about abstract issues of culture as much as they care for their needs for sustenance. In this passage, Fanon analyses the role of cultural and political values in two ways. First with regard to the importance they hold for the colonized, and second with regard to how they dupe the colonized intellectual.
What is paramount in this passage is Fanon’s identification of the lack of even the question of human dignity arising in the minds of the colonized. Twice does Fanon refer to the oft-spouted Western ideals of equality among men and living a good, ‘dignified’ life. The Enlightenment and its ensuing ideals emphasized the need for all people in Europe to live by a particular conception of ‘dignity’ rather than a life controlled by religious superstition or economic ‘backwardness’. Or to live in dignity as ordered by the Christian religion. But this kind of dignity, one that necessitates growth and betterment is entirely irrelevant for the colonized in the face of the immense violence perpetrated against them. The juxtaposition Fanon presents here is poignant: that the colonized person is starved and beaten; the obviously tangible violence; and the people who claim a monopoly on cultural dissemination; the more abstracted ideals; say nothing. He suggests that a set of metaphysical and theoretical moral values bear little effect on violent realities.
However, one may question if the colonized, before the appearance of the colonizer, felt similarly about their cultural values. This question is for those more inequitable communities that existed before colonization, and if the poor of those eras felt as alienated from notions of culture and religion as when the colonial dynamic entered.
Fanon criticizes the colonized intellectual for their short-sightedness. Now having stepped into the colonizer’s framework, the intellectual thinks that the notions of sovereignty practiced by the white man for himself should apply to the colony as well. And hence they lay claim to independence using the notions articulated by the white man. But they are so deeply mired in winning an ideological battle, one that brings a liberty in name and hence a façade of it, that they fail to see the truth. The colonizer wishes to dominate despite decolonization, in the form of neocolonial economic relationships.
The colonized then seizes the mantle of anger, precisely because those values could not embed themselves in popular imagination. The colonizer also perpetuates notions of civility and polite political discourse. Hence, the anger of the natives is rejected as proof of their incivility. This ire pushes those subjects to see themselves as equal to the colonizer, which becomes then the fundamental premise for the entire mass of the colonized, to demand independence.
The third paragraph on page eight and the paragraph immediately following it of the Wretched of the Earth [“Such an occurrence… but to flee”] tells of the process of realization that dawns on the colonized gradually. It tells of how the colonizer if aware that with power and might alone, their control over the land is unsustainable. With that, they seek to impose a cultural domination through bringing into their machinery some members of the native bourgeoisie. We can understand that the local elite are put to good use by the colonizer for not only their bureaucratic administration but also their cultural imposition. Rather, the two purposes proceed simultaneously. In India, the British gave the rights of tax collection and ownership over land that previously run by centrally commissioned Zamindars to independent landowners. These grew to form a strong elite who then became comparatively integrated into and buoyed up a British education and lifestyle. But this cultural assault does not necessarily provide the colonizer significant control over the colonized masses. For they do not care about abstract issues of culture as much as they care for their needs for sustenance. In this passage, Fanon analyses the role of cultural and political values in two ways. First with regard to the importance they hold for the colonized, and second with regard to how they dupe the colonized intellectual.
What is paramount in this passage is Fanon’s identification of the lack of even the question of human dignity arising in the minds of the colonized. Twice does Fanon refer to the oft-spouted Western ideals of equality among men and living a good, ‘dignified’ life. The Enlightenment and its ensuing ideals emphasized the need for all people in Europe to live by a particular conception of ‘dignity’ rather than a life controlled by religious superstition or economic ‘backwardness’. Or to live in dignity as ordered by the Christian religion. But this kind of dignity, one that necessitates growth and betterment is entirely irrelevant for the colonized in the face of the immense violence perpetrated against them. The juxtaposition Fanon presents here is poignant: that the colonized person is starved and beaten; the obviously tangible violence; and the people who claim a monopoly on cultural dissemination; the more abstracted ideals; say nothing. He suggests that a set of metaphysical and theoretical moral values bear little effect on violent realities.
However, one may question if the colonized, before the appearance of the colonizer, felt similarly about their cultural values. This question is for those more inequitable communities that existed before colonization, and if the poor of those eras felt as alienated from notions of culture and religion as when the colonial dynamic entered.
Fanon criticizes the colonized intellectual for their short-sightedness. Now having stepped into the colonizer’s framework, the intellectual thinks that the notions of sovereignty practiced by the white man for himself should apply to the colony as well. And hence they lay claim to independence using the notions articulated by the white man. But they are so deeply mired in winning an ideological battle, one that brings a liberty in name and hence a façade of it, that they fail to see the truth. The colonizer wishes to dominate despite decolonization, in the form of neocolonial economic relationships.
The colonized then seizes the mantle of anger, precisely because those values could not embed themselves in popular imagination. The colonizer also perpetuates notions of civility and polite political discourse. Hence, the anger of the natives is rejected as proof of their incivility. This ire pushes those subjects to see themselves as equal to the colonizer, which becomes then the fundamental premise for the entire mass of the colonized, to demand independence.
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