Who Is Philantz Fanon's Second Wave Criticism?

Few theoretical fields can compare with the amount of internal conflict that plagues postcolonial theory: a semmingly constant stream of debates centring on internal rather than external elements. One such debate can be located between the ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’ critics of the theory, who are often engaged with one another in a rather antagonistic manner. A simple explanation of the stances of each wave can be stated as such: first wave criticism challenges the colonial status quo, whereas second wave instigates a critique of first wave criticism. Therefore, as Ellen Grunkemeier states, it is “inappropriate” to class the second wave as a replacement of the first wave; rather they co-exist within the theory, clashing but neither gaining …show more content…
Second wave criticism strives to re-establish an acknowledgment of the political procedure within the dialectical battle for social development: insisting on the crucial positions of antagonism and opposition within the prolific and cathartic strain existing between clear-cut, antithetical groups such as the colonisers and the colonised. As second wave criticism is an embodiment of the Marxist theory, and these critics draw largely on the work of Frantz Fanon. Leading on from his explanation of the coloniser/colonised binary, it is Fanon’s understanding that the native people must forcefully oppose colonial oppression. He views this as a psychologically liberating process that flushes out colonial enslavement from the consciousness of the colonised, and in turn re-establishes dignity to the exploited. Therefore, second wave scholarship offers a forceful critique of the ‘ambivalence’ based resistance of critics such as Bhabha, as they interpret it as the dismissal of the Fanonian coloniser/colonised binary and subsequent promotion of literary forms of authority that essentially diffuse the historical resistance within colonisation. Second wave critics such as Benita Parry seek to divert postcolonial theory towards an understanding of colonial resistance as “a political and historical reality” which should not be impeded by the first wave critic’s “privileged study of epistemological disruption or discursive negotiations” within literature. It is not enough, according to Parry, to present ‘resistance’ as the simple literary questioning of colonial authority, as is the case with Bhabha. David Jeffress likewise takes this stance, arguing