2. Name : Anjali Rathod
Sem : 3
Roll No : 2
Enrollment No : 4069206420220024
Paper : 203
Subject : Fanon’s Theory of Violence
Contact Info : rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English , MK
Bhavnagar University
3. Table of contents
01
04 05
03
06
Introduction
Importance of
Violence
Conclusion
02
What is Violence?
Fanon’s Main
Elements Thoughts
are
Theory of Violence
4. Introduction
● Frantz Fanon, in full Frantz Omar , West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher known for his
theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation
of colonial peoples. Fanon perceived colonialism as a form of domination whose necessary goal for
success was the reordering of the world of indigenous peoples. He saw violence as the defining
characteristic of colonialism. But if violence was a tool of social control, it may also, argued Fanon, be a
cathartic reaction to the oppression of colonialism and a necessary tool of political engagement.(Peterson#)
● Fanon has been made the symbol of conflict; we must see that he also stood for reconciliation. Fanon who
did not trust fervor must be confronted if we are to understand the Fanon who later preached violence. He
always remembered his West Indian origins, even while trying to identify himself first as a Frenchman,
and later as an anti- French Algerian rebel. (Seigel#)
● Frantz Fanon was born on July 1925 in Forte-de-france, the capital of the French colony of Martinique.
After receiving his early education, he joined French army in 1943 in response to the call of General de
Gaulle to save France. After the second World War he went to France in 1947 to receive higher education in
medicine and stayed there for five years upto 1952. It was during this period that he wrote his first book,
Black Skin, White Masks, which was published in 1952. He came to Algeria in 1953 to work as a
psychiatrist and dedicated himself to the cause of Algerian independence. He was expelled from Algeria
in 1957. From 1957 till his death in 1961, he worked as a professional revolutionary. It was during this last
phase of his life that he published most of his works. (Jha#)
5. Fanon’s Main Elements Thoughts are…
❖ His stress on Black consciousness and his revolt against
racist colonialism.
❖ His belief in and concern for creating a new humanism.
❖ The incorporation of existentialist and Marxist
influences; fourthly, the discovery of peasantry and
lumpen-proletariat as new agents of revolution in the
Third World; and finally, his glorification of violence. (Jha#)
6. ❖ Fanon defines the term violence in clearcut terms, he has used it in more senses than one.
For example , He has used it in the sense of physical injury.
❖ This is one sense in which he refers to colonial regime as being created and maintained by violence.
Fanon writes, "Their first encounter was worked by violence and their existence-that is to say the
exploitation of the native by the settler-was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannon".
❖ Fanon's meaning of violence is not quite clear. It is fraught with ambiguities. His violence means
anything except non-violence. His concept of violence "encompasses almost the entire range of political
pressure", including physical or psychological injury, aggression, military, coercion, power, or force.
❖ He writes, "The hecatombs are an indication that between oppressor and oppressed everything can be
solved by forces". Again, while explaining the real nature of violence, Fanon says, "We have seen that it is
the institution of the colonized masses that their liberation must, and can only, be achieved by force".
(Jha#)
What is Violence?
7. Importance of violence
1) Fanon attaches great importance to violence on several grounds. First, Fanon maintains that it is only
through violence hat man creates himself. Revolutionary violence frees man's consciousness and creates a
new man. Fanon's idea is quite different from that of Hegel and Marx. While according to Hegel man is the
product of his thought, Marx maintains that man is the product of labour. But Fanon says that man produces
himself through violence. According to Sartre, Fanon makes it clear that "irrepressible violence is neither
sound and fury, There is also another sense in which man creates himself through violence. Fanon
maintains that colonized man "finds his freedom in and through violence"
2) Fanon uses violence as a catharsis. He argues that violence is a cleansing force. It frees the colonized from
his feeling of inferiority and humiliation. To quote Fanon, "At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing
force; It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him
fearless and restores his self-respect". Thus Fanon believes in the purificatory role of violence.
3) Fanon glorifies violence because it acts as a unifying force for the native people. He maintains that it is not
enough for the colonized to gain liberation as consciousness. This solidarity can be built only by violence. It
binds the people together to form a collective individual. Fanon writes, "the practice of violence binds them
together as a whole, since each individual forms a violent link in the great chain, a part of the great
organism of violence which has surged upwards in reaction to the settler's violence in the beginning.(Jha#)
8. 4) Fanon maintains that violence pays not only during the colonial struggle for independence, but also in the
second phase of decolonization. The second phase of decolonization is the period of national reconstruction
and building up of the nation. The solidarity of the people gained during the struggle for independence helps in
the "liquidation of regionalism and tribalism" during the period of national reconstruction. The difference is
that while during the colonial period the people are called upon to fight against oppression; after national
liberation, they are called upon to fight against "poverty, illiteracy and underdevelopment". Thus the struggle
goes on and the people realize that life is an unending contest.
5) Fanon extols violence because it is a key to social truth and action. He conceives of violence as a process in
which two phases can be distinguished. In the first phase, there is spontaneous outburst of violence, without
organization and without any political concept, against the foreign intruder. In the second phase, it gets
organized and politicized. The first phase of violence is motivated by the racial hatred, the second by political
indoctrination; the first releases the pent up feelings, the second raises consciousness; the one tends to do away
with the psychological alienation of the colonized, the other changes the capitalist colonial structures which
produce such alienation.
❖ "Violence alone, violence committed by the people, violence organized and educated by its leaders, makes
it possible for the masses to understand social truths and gives the key to them. Without the struggle,
there's nothing but a fancy-dress parade and the blare of the trumpets”. (Jha#)
9. Theory of Violence
❏ Fanon's theory of violence is open to searching criticisms and several serious objections may be
raised against it.
To begin with, though Fanon gives much importance to vio- lence, he does not define it in clear cut
terms. He uses it in a sense that embodies the connotations we associate with injury, coercion, force,
power, and the like. In fact, Fanon's violence, used to explain everything, explains nothing. The loose
usage of such a critical term weakens its analytical utility.
❏ volutionary violence may degenerate into "political masochism", The shortcomings of any
celebration of violence are not only limited to the level of individual psychosis, they may pose
problems to the social and political system.
❏ Fanon maintains, that violence re-creates man by liberating his consciousness. It is true that Fanon
is not alone in his appeal to violence as a liberating force for man. Nevertheless, violence is not the
only way to achieve liberation of consciousness has been admitted by Fanon himself when he
writes, "It is clear that other peoples have come to the same conclusion in different ways. We know
for sure today that in Algeria the test of force was inevitable; but other countries through political
action and through the work of clarification undertaken by a party have led their people to the same
results". (Jha#)
10. Continue…
❏ Fanon is also mistaken in regarding violence as a cause of colonial alienation. He does not say in
what precise manner violence causes the alienation of the native. We know, for instance, that in
the colonized society like Algeria the violence of the colonizer was not the only form of violence
and that the colonized was also violent. How can we be sure that a particular alienation
expressed by a particular person is not the result of native's own violence, different from the
violence of the colonial regime.
❏ Fanon's thesis that violence is a unifying force is questionable on several grounds. First
violence is the result of a psychological state of mind which is haunted by anger, hatred,
divisions and fighting. People who suffer from such psychological distortions may forge a bond
of unity for a time being against a common enemy, but there is no guarantee that such unity will
continue after the disappearance of the common enemy. Second, real unity is possible where
there is harmony and friendship and these can not be secured on the basis of violence. Third,
the gang which is engaged in inflicting violence on foreigners may adopt the same device of
injuring one another in dealing with its own members. (Jha#)
11. Conclusion
To sum up, it may, therefore, be said that the general applicability of Fanon's theory of
violence is doubtful. Fanon has a somewhat limited historical experience as he proceeds
mainly from the experience of Algeria. There is much evidence to suggest that violence may be
necessary in African countries which are or were dominated by white settler groups, as in
Algeria, Rhodesia, South Africa, and the Portuguese territories. Fanon's theory of violence is a
queer mixture of revolutionary romanticism and utopianism, of revolutionary integrity and
reckless venture, of heroic self- sacrifice and political naivete. He attempts to foist violence
upon the people from above. He forgets that such type of violence is bound to end in intrigue
and conspiracy. In fact, revolution must be the achievement of something new. But the
violence and the effects of violence suspicion, resentment, and hatred are things only too
familiar, too hopelessly unrevolutionary. (Jha#)
12. JHA, B. K. “FANON’S THEORY OF VIOLENCE: A CRITIQUE.” The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 49,
no. 3, 1988, pp. 359–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41855881 . Accessed 18 Oct. 2023.
Peterson, Charles. "Frantz Fanon". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Aug. 2023,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frantz-Fanon . Accessed 18 October 2023.
SEIGEL, J. E. “On Frantz Fanon.” The American Scholar, vol. 38, no. 1, 1968, pp. 84–96. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41209632 . Accessed 18 Oct. 2023.
References
