Concerning Violence

‘National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.’ These are the opening words of Fanon’s seminal text, The Wretched of the Earth. Within certain sections of France like Nanterre are the descendants, like Merzouk, of colonial subjects who either migrated to France and made it their home in hopes of a more prosperous future or once fought for the dignity and promise of independence in their own homeland. At the height of France’s empire, the country had colonies in North Africa, West Africa and the Caribbean. Fanon asserted that the first encounters between France and its colonial subjects were ‘marked by violence’ and that their existence together ‘was carried on by a dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons.’ Thus, for the colonial subject, ‘from birth it is clear to him that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called into question by absolute violence.’ To Fanon, arguably, the present uprising on the Parisian streets might be but a logical response and product of a violent colonial history.

Fanon’s sharp words ornament the opening chapter, entitled ‘Concerning Violence’, in which he discusses the legitimacy, logic and inevitably of violence as a liberatory tool against colonialism. The Wretched of the Earth circulated widely as a blueprint for the liberation movements that occurred globally through the second half of the 20th century, and today the book remains a staple of the ongoing battle against Western hegemony. The text at once emphasized the struggle of Africans and understood that struggle as but one thread of a large tapestry of imperialist oppression that could only be uprooted through violence. Fanon’s theories on violence emerged after he completed his studies in France and left for Algeria, then a French colony, in 1953 for a position at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital. A year later, the Algerian Revolution erupted, prompting his resignation from that post in 1956 to become an active supporter of the movement, and his deportation to Tunisia in 1957.

By this time, Fanon was all too familiar with the tactics of French colonialism. Born on 20 July 1925, into a well-to-do family in Martinique (which remains a French colony today) Fanon experienced life as a Black man both in various French colonies and in the metropole. However, it was during his doctorate program in France that Fanon submitted a dissertation that became his entrance into the intellectual arm of the revolutionary current active across the world. The dissertation was rejected at the academic level, but he later published it as Black Skin, White Masks. The book specifically discussed the experience of the Black person who lives within a racist, colonial society. As much as it was a critique of colonial oppression, it was perhaps much more of a self-criticism which posits that though one may not be responsible for their condition, they are ultimately responsible for their fate—an argument that would position him to later present his argument on violence as a tool of liberation.

But even though this early text specifically focuses on the brokenness of Black consciousness in a colonial situation, Fanon still displayed embers of his evolving humanist understanding of the universal experience of colonialism for other communities. Fanon writes, ‘all forms of exploitation are identical, since they apply to the same “object”: man.’ Elaborating further, he affirms ‘that a society is racist or is not. As long as this evidence has not been grasped, a great many problems will have been overlooked…it is utopian to try to differentiate one kind of inhuman behaviour from another.’

One might argue that the foundation for Fanon’s understanding was two-fold. The first is Fanon’s experience in France, where his exposure to the situational proximity of Black and Arab communities in France also began presenting itself: ‘It is utopian to expect the Black man and the Arab to make the effort of including abstract values in their weltanschauung when they barely have enough food to survive.’ The second is France’s brand of colonialism. Paulette Nardal, his Martinican contemporary and patron of the Negritude movement, once described the distinction of French colonialism as having a ‘liberal spirit’ towards ‘coloured peoples’, with a ‘lack of colour prejudice’ due to the fact that they are ‘certain to transform the mind of any a coloured man into a truly French one in a comparatively short time.’

Within the large swaths of French colonies in the Caribbean, West and North Africa, France was not only interested in economic and political domination but also in isolating those communities from their culture and identity, replacing it with a French one by convincing them their own was savage and barbaric. In fact, and in example, the term ‘Berber’, a now pejorative name which formerly designated indigenous Amazighen North African communities, etymologically stems from Old French barbarie, connected to Latin barbaria and Greek barbaros, all cognates which mean foreign, strange, and ultimately, barbarian. This demonstrates that colonialism was not simply a product of modern times, but an extension of an earlier history. This legacy of cultural alienation within French colonialism still largely impacts the mode of operation in present-day France; race is not discussed and one who gains citizenship in France is only considered to be French; their previous cultural identities are erased as not even a census regarding ethnicity is taken in the country. While some utopian outlooks may see these as an attempt at equality, Fanon might see it as the French colonial tradition of cultural erasure, rejection and subsequently complete domination.

France’s historical policy of converting all their so-called subjects into Frenchmen arguably has positioned conversations in France to circumvent conversations around Merzouk’s Algerian and Moroccan roots. Instead, French authorities and leaders opt for understanding the issue at hand as an economic—not racial or cultural—problem of affluent and impoverished locales, of urban development, of city planning and fund allocation. It just so happens that the impoverished, underdeveloped, and underfunded locales are predominately composed of Black and Arab communities formed prior to and throughout the colonial and revolutionary periods of a not-so-distant past.

The uprising in Paris was perhaps catalysed by what Fanon described as ‘certain episodes in the life of the community in order to hold themselves ready and to keep alive their revolutionary zeal.’ This ‘certain episode’ concerns the all-too-familiar clash between young people of colour and so-called law enforcement. Conversations around Merzouk ‘being known to police’ despite not having a criminal record has exposed the links between supposed innocence or guilt, criminality and race within the French system.

For this, Fanon has a theory too:

The identification with Merzouk is more than just about his individual confrontation with the system; his death represents the failures of French colonialism and the unbroken chain of poverty, discrimination, and violence that has been visited upon France’s communities of colour for centuries now. This unbroken chain of violence Fanon predicted, ‘will be claimed and taken over by the (colonized person) at the moment when, deciding to embody history in his own person, he surges into the forbidden quarters. To wreck the colonial world is henceforward a mental picture of action which is very clear, very easy to understand.’ In times of unrest, Fanon continues, authorities might appeal to ‘reason’, imploring the bereaved to ‘put their trust in qualities which are well-tried, solid, and highly esteemed.’ However, Fanon asserted that ‘the violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the (colonized) mean that, in revenge, the (colonized) laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him.’

‘The dividing line,’ Fanon wrote, the demarcations of European and non-European quarters in the colonial world are represented ‘by barracks and police stations…The two zones are opposed, but not in the service of a higher unity.’ As a result, the uprising is juxtaposed with ‘the symbols of social order—the police, the bugle calls in the barrack, military parades and the waving flags.’ Fanon asserted that these ‘are at once and the same time inhibitory and stimulating: for they do not convey the message “don’t dare to budge”; rather, they cry out “Get ready to attack.”’ One step further, Fanon wrote that for those who wish to take action, ‘the settler has shown him the way he should take if he is to become free. The argument the (colonized person) chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an ironic turning of the tables it is the (colonized person) who now affirms that the colonialist understands nothing but force.’ In a few words, the reaction of the masses to Merzouk’s death is a logical and direct historical and psychological consequence of a centuries-long history of violence.