Wretched Of The Earth By Frantz Fanon: Chapter Analysis

Violence is essential to the quest of colonial liberation, no matter how we call the struggle for freedom. With this straightforward proposition, Frantz Fanon opens the discussion of his liberation strategy in his third and final book, The Wretched of the Earth. The original French version of the book was published in 1961, shortly before Fanon lost his battle against leukemia on December 6th of the same year in the United States, far away from his adopted mother country Algeria. The first chapter of the book is characterized by Fanon’s enduring commitment to a comprehensive approach to decolonialization that addresses both the external and the internal effects of long-term racist oppression. In addition to Fanon’s famous/infamous discussion of violence, the chapter includes a perceptive assessment of the …show more content…
The creation of a level-playing field through a violence, would lead to an end of all feelings of inadequacy, of not measuring up to the colonizer (104). However, it is doubtful that the long-term exposure to the racist indoctrination could be undone so easily. The least, this assessment stands in contrast to his thorough and detailed discussion of the deep and traumatic impact colonization has on the bodies and the minds of the native population. The all-encompassing structure of oppression as it has been laid out by the colonizer to control the colonized through physical violence, spatial segregation and through the colonialization of their souls and minds at the hands of educational and social institutions. Here, Fanon is particularly critical of the Christian religion and its role in “brainwashing” the colonized, making them believe that there is a benefit in enduring the violence they face in the “Manichean world;” that they need to suppress the aggressive impulses that grow out of their daily mistreatment