Homecoming and Decolonization

From Frantz Fanon's "On Violence," we can explore decolonization as a story of homecoming. It is a journey from being a stranger to a refugee, and finally a new-born- ultimately manifesting into the restoration of you to yourself. It is indeed the story of coming back home, the home which was been violated and ravished by colonizers for centuries, both literally and metaphorically.  Therefore, when you return home, you are not simply returning to a place to live, but you are also returning to the sense of belonging, the feeling of being loved, and indefinitely you are returning to your truest self. From feeling alienated, to seeking refuge in the familiar, and finally realizing a new way of inhabiting and defining the world – that too on your own terms- is what decolonization essentially boiled down to. It meant coming home.

The colonized became alien subjects in their own homes, which meant that home no longer felt like home. Home was in fact disintegrated into the “Manchean world,” wracked by compartmentalization and difference. While the colonizer’s compartment was the “sector of lights and paved roads,” the colonized’s was a “shanty town” infested by the “disreputable.” The colonized were rendered as superfluous through their depersonalization. They were confined to claustrophobic spaces, where no one cared if they lived or died. Boundaries were created in their own homes, and if they dare transgress, the police and the military would admonish them. Home was not only lost in the physical sense, but it also became devoid of its emotional value. It lost the aspect of personalization, and with that the feeling of belonging also withered away. This happened when the colonizers started writing histories of their home, and projected themselves as extensions of it. These histories were epics or odysseys of sorts; invariable odes to the political, technological, and cultural superiority of the colonizers. Indefinitely, these histories failed to recount the colonized subjects who were being despoiled, impoverished, and destroyed to make the colonizer’s life this epic, and this odyssey. They were erased from their own stories, which severely fractured their sense of belonging to their homes and to themselves. Home was dominated by the colonizers, not just spatially but also by their stories; which meant  that the colonized had become strangers. The colonizers overarching presence and boundless power meant they could no longer inhabit home on their own terms, they could no longer relate it to, and they most certainly could no longer feel it.

However, they try to remedy this homesickness by seeking refuge in the familiar, and plunging themselves into a world of fantasies and myths. They obsessively draw towards terrifying myths such as the “leopard men” and “zombies,” – inhibitions which are far more alarming than the colonizers. These operate as an undeniable reality, and succumb the “natives” into the traditions and history of their ethnic groups. By resonating with the familiar, the colonized contend themselves with the false sense of belonging, which they desperately crave after the deprivation of home. They seek refuge in this home of facades and illusions, which tends to provide comfort by portraying the mythical creatures as far more adversarial and perilous than the colonizer. However, this is merely an abode of delusions, soon to unmask itself.

Only “with his (colonizer’s) back to the wall” and “the knife at his throat,” the colonized stop telling these stories. The struggle for liberation results in a singular loss of interest in these myths and fantasies. It starts with the recognition of the real force which has violated his/her home: colonialism. It is the time to relinquish the realm of imagination, and cater to more “real and urgent issues,” such as providing food to the famished or installing lookouts. It is the time for discovering the reality and initiating the liberation agenda. It is the time to reclaim your home, and yourself. It is indeed the time for new stories- stories about being new-born- untainted by any limitations and boundaries, stories about endless freedom and possibilities, and stories about restoring you to yourself- the you which had become so detached and unrecognizable- and then loving yourself immensely. What is an act of restoration if it is not an act of homecoming? This is perhaps best encapsulated in Derek Walcott’s poem, “You will love again the stranger who was yourself.”