Week 4 - What freedom?

In Monday's class we discussed that part of what made martyrs like Lumumba and Husain Ibn Ali so special was their ability to see something beautiful in the world that no one else could. They could think beyond the constraints of what was immediate to them and envision a better, more free world and strive towards that.

But what freedom is this? And hence, who is it really for? I argue that Franz Fanon's analysis of the veil and the dynamics that surround it as a social and revolutionary practice in "Algeria Unveiled" could never lead to a world that truly freed women. 

Characteristics like gender, race, and sexuality are important in that they mean people will have entirely unique ways of perspectives on things. Fanon is, well, a man. The absence of the unique perspective you gain by being a woman mean that his view on what makes a woman free is not only perhaps illegitimate, but also often incorrect. This tendency can be seen in "Algeria Unveiled" in how his analysis of the past is uncritical.

Given that he is talking from the perspective of someone trying to resist the current and lasting influence of  colonial powers, he is obviously critical in his analysis of them. Here, he focuses on  the numerous ways colonial powers attempted to break down the links between indigenous people in order to limit their freedom and ability to resist, in particular how they demonized certain aspects of indigenous culture such as the veil to gain control of women. The central figure hence, is the woman in native societies and how her freedom is contravened. However, Fanon is problematic here in that he launches a defense of native culture that is also not critical of how the native culture themselves may have also restricted the freedom of women. He has entirely one sided takes on what function the veil performed and how it was perceived by both Algerian women and men. Statements such as how, upon wearing the veil, "things became well defined and ordered" lack nuance and any evidence of any attempt at seeing things from the perspective of women. While it is true that the colonial powers were not the noble liberators of women that they made themselves out to be - this does not mean that women did not suffer a fair bit under native cultures And Fanon, in his tirade on the importance of countering Colonial powers through culture misses out on that completely.

Fanon goes a step further though - he actively instrumentalizes women in the fight for freedom. Fanon's analysis of the veil's function in revolutionary warfare is stringent to the point where he demonizes women who choose to discard the veil. This is rather horrible - he endorses women taking on a practice that he does not consider the patriarchal implications of in the first place and he demonizes women exercising their right to choose NOT to take part in said warfare. If Fanon is promising freedom, it is clearly not for women. Who is it for?