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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