Fanon: Violence ka pujari(?)

Fanon and Violence are often taken in their togetherness in terms of cause and inevitable effect in the discourse of colonization and decolonization. Fanon’s idea of violence bear more resonance when the Wretched of the Earth is prefaced by Sartre who cements Fanon's argument as that of propagating violence of the colonized to counter that of the colonizers.

It is imperative before delving into the idea that is suggested by such an approach, to first make sense of the idea of violence in Fanon's perspective. In saying that, it is important to consider that Fanon could have done away without explaining the definition of violence. In his writing, violence takes on many forms and while he has used it as a broad argument, it, more often than not, becomes too broad to understand in specificity. Fanon describes violence as being physical, psychological injury, aggression, force, military etc. With that being said, an attempt should be made to understand Fanon in separation to the preface provided by Sartre to better understand the concept as laid out by Fanon. However, despite the attempts to understand Fanon remain, the arguments On Violence are still largely debatable.

 “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence”, Fanon writes. The importance of violence here in terms of a response to the colonial violence is being stressed to great extents. Violence is seen to be a tool to combat violence inflicted on the natives. 

While he can be interpreted as seeing the liberating force of violence, violence is still violence, regardless of what ends it might be advocating. It is therefore, a difficult argument to unpack when violence is seen to be a means through which anyone can be humanized.

It also then makes it difficult to understand Fanon’s reading into violence which is described as a way through which man creates himself.  He maintains that the colonized man "finds his freedom in and through violence" by espousing the colonizer through the force of arms and in that process rediscovers his lost innocence thereby finds himself as a sub-sequence. This perpetuates the concept of the colonized humanising themselves through the act of violence against that of the colonizers.

Therefore, it takes understanding Fanon in the light of him narrating the experience of Algeria, to see the expression of violence as a cathartic response of the colonized to understand that perhaps, it is not the physical liberation but more to do with the psychological emancipation of the colonized.

He writes, “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”

All in all, I believe reading into Fanon as a prophet of violence is a reductionist approach. Interpreting Fanon's response of violence towards colonization as a way of decolonization can be debated on to great extents. Looking at colonization as the violence and the colonized’s response of violence to it as decolonization takes away from the process of colonization. This interpretation might become as understanding colonization only in the form of violence as conventionally defined and subsequently takes away from the other varying effects of colonization that perpetuated over the colonized people and their land in its non-violent forms. Therefore, it is of importance to unpack the argument by Fanon and not be hasty in seeing colonization only through the lens of violence. Consequently, decolonization cannot be simply seen as violent means being used to achieve the ends of inverting the order of “the last shall be first and the first last”. Surely, colonization and decolonization, are not so simple.

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