A Dying Colonialism Chapter Summary

In his second book, A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon provides us with an astute account of the social and cultural changes that occurred in Algeria during the War of Independence. This review will examine the book’s two most discussed chapters, “Algeria Unveiled” and “The Algerian Family.” Fanon uses two distinct narrative forms: one that is reflective of his first-hand experience and personal investment in the quest for Algerian liberation and another, more descriptive, clinical-analytical approach. Given the fact that Fanons had hardly any access to native non-European female patients, his narrative is largely informed by his own observations and the case studies of his European patients (French soldiers and “pied-noirs”) as well as Algerian …show more content…
In doing so, he focuses on its function as a tool in the struggle against the French colonizers, who initially tried to utilize public mass unveilings to “rectify” and “modernize” the Muslim society. By “freeing” the Algerian women from the subjugation of their backward husbands, the French intended to “Frenchify” the Algerian populace (37-8). Fanon eloquently describes how Algerian women appropriated this hypocrite strategy to undermine the efforts to create a female-male divide in the Algerian society by turning it into one of the most effective tools in the struggle for independence (47-55; 58). However, his later description is mostly limited to young Algerian women and is at times extremely sexualized, when Fanon gets overly excited and provides us with a detailed description of the bodily sensations that he seems to detect in the newly unveiled women …show more content…
He wrote the book while the war was still going on. It was written with a clear intent, to foster the goal of independence, to illustrate what the Algerian people were up against, and why they reverted to “terrorism.” Thus, to criticize the book for not providing a balanced account would be greatly misinformed. It was meant to be an account that promotes the cause that describes the resourcefulness and innovativeness of the colonized in their struggle against their oppressors. He wanted to win over a broader world public, provide a counterbalance account to the French propaganda. With this in mind, we should feel free to criticize his work, but we should be cautious to do so from our present point of view, especially the knowledge how things turned out in Algeria in the long term. Fanon might not have had the presence of mind to see that the conservative forces within the Algerian nation would soon take over once the war ended. However, what we can take from his writings is that he would have been one of their fiercest critics if he would have lived to see his