Fanon


Fanon’s chapter on culture is so complex that it can be understood and applied in so many ways. The intriguing words written are evergreen and can be applied in every era in a different context. Even today, so many years later, the truth of those words ring true at so many levels. In today’s blog, I want to make take a leap and make an analogy between the colonizer’s relations with colonized with that of the men and women in our society. This blog will apply Fanons ideology in the context of patriarchy. When the colonizers took over the public realm in the colonies, the natives of the society were pushed inwards to the private sphere to practice their free will. Hence, the men, having been debarred from the public realm, exerted their power in the private dominion, . This gave rise to an intense form of patriarchy where men made up for the loss of their power in the public realm by exercising it in the life on women. Thus the three stages that the colonized go through; stranger-refugee-new born, are the exact three stages a woman is subjugated to at the hands of man.
When a girl is born, she’s born with the possibilities of the world before her. She dreams the dreams any man does. There are no boundaries to her possibilities. This is the pre-colonized state of a native, who goes around practicing free will. Slowly the girl grows up and is bound by different limitations on not just her physical movement, but her thoughts. She is told what she can and can’t do. She’s suppose to get an education but what she does with that education will be decided by the men of the house. This is very similar to the colonizer telling the colonized that he needs to be civilized like the European, but what he does with that knowledge and how far he can go with that is decided by the colonized master. A colonizer and colonized can be equally educated but their status is society is never equal just like an equally qualified man and women are never seen in the same light.
Moving on, slowly, women accept this as their faith. They start dwelling in roles prescribed for women by society and men. They learn to cook, clean, childcare, etc.; everything that is associated with female roles. They start to accept this as their only purpose in life. Instead of looking down upon them like men do, they embrace these and create standards of success based on how well they do at these roles. At this point women are at a refugee stage. Instead of going forward, and learning to tackle the problem with innovative new ways, they dwell themselves in the old traditions and cultural practices assigned to women. There is nothing wrong with these roles but the power imbalance associated with them is the problem. These roles are somehow perceived as inferior.
Further on, eventually, through education and their own realization, some women realize the oppression they are subjugated to. They learn that it is only through adopting and embracing their roles in light with the modern times that they can progress and stand at an equal footing with men. They realize that there is nothing inherently wrong with them that make them second-rate to men. That is it only the power relations created by men that requires women to be suppressed.  The women, just like the colonized realize that they are just as capable and equal as their oppressors are; that they have been manipulated and brainwashed throughout their life to believe that they are less.
It is only after this emancipation that it be possible for these women to be born anew; to dream again without limits; to live life on their own terms.
So just like a colonized in fanons ideology goes through three stages of realization before he is emancipated, the women go through similar stages. The women of this century are finally emerging out of the refugee state and on their way to being a ‘new born’. It is only through this liberation that women will be able to write their own destiny. And for this, just like the colonized natives, the women will have to put up a united front and first personally believe themselves as equal to men. The anger Fanon felt at the plight of the colonized is the same anger that liberated women today feel while fighting for their rights.


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