Blog 5: Violence

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon discusses how after the colonists left the country to the nation’s elite, they saw the rise of a bourgeois class that dominated the country and subjugated its own people for personal economic and political gain. We also discussed that violence to Fanon is the last stretch that the colonists had provoked, and it was the only possible and equal response left to give. In National Consciousness, Fanon discusses how power continued to be manipulated and misused by the elite in post-colonialism.  "As we have seen, the inadequacies of the bourgeoisie are not restricted to economics. Achieving power in the name of a narrowminded nationalism, in the name of the race, and in spite of its magnificently worded declarations totally void of content, irresponsibly wielding phrases straight out of Europe's treatises on ethics and political philosophy, the bourgeoisie proves itself incapable of implementing a program with even a minimum humanist content."

Perhaps, instead of violence being the last stop in the process of decolonization, violence itself may be the key to living a free life under any colonial, post-colonial or decolonized world. I say this because even in a country in the world not having a colonial history (which leaves a people traumatized both economically and spiritually), humans are always dealing with some type of subjugation. Whether it is the pressure to conform to societies standards and norms causing them to lose their identities and sense of individuality, or accessibility to technology leading to social media overdose causing increased feelings of prolonged loneliness and anxiety, we all go through internal and external battles in our life. Most importantly, we all also go through battles of the self, having to make decisions fighting the heart or the mind and have to struggle within oneself, against the harmful desires of the self to be able to live a moral and ethical life.

And if not for fighting and struggling against these forces, we would never truly be free because we would always be controlled by desires, our own and societies. Therefore, I also propose that violence is necessary in every stage of our life and in every socio-political historical context- if we dont struggle and fight against the battles life poses, we would just be limited and bogged down by the complexities and difficulties it poses. Violence should not be a feat we try to subdue but a concept we should try to embody, first and foremost with our ownselves and then with the contending forces of the outside world.