“That violence which is just under the skin”
The necessity of violent resistance to colonialism comes from a truth that, according to Fanon, every colonised subject knows:
> Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is
> violence in its natural state (61).
Here, Fanon implies an old opposition which will, in part, animate the rest of the chapter on violence: the opposition between the _body_ and the _mind_. Fanon does not, exactly, reject the binary formed by these two terms, but (in the manner described by Bogues as ‘heresy’) employs the opposition against its previous uses. This opposition, of course, has been the root of traditional racist tropes: the mind is held to be the distinguishing feature of the human being, and is restricted to the _white_ being; black people exist solely at the level of the body, and thus are not, really, human.
We can see this usage in the attempts of the colonial power to unite with the native bourgeoisie and intelligensia on the basis of a commonality of interests:
> It is therefore urgent and indespensible to come to terms for the public good. Non-violence
> is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around a green baize table, before any
> regrettable act has been performed or irreparable gesture made, before any blood has been
> shed” (62).
The commonality here is a commonality of intellectuality around the “green baize table.” The “affranchised slave” (61), the colonial power decrees, has a share of mind that differentiates her from and opposes her to the bloody body of the colonized people. For Fanon, who has already seen that colonialism is absolutely of the body, this claim by the colonial power to be defending the (white) mind against the (black) body can be nothing but a lie; the truth, in fact, is almost the direct opposite.
It might seem that Fanon’s theory of violence accepts at least some of the racist implications of the racialized mind-body opposition: if the colonial subjects’ response to the violence of colonialism is simply greater violence, they too remain on the level of the body. Fanon’s understanding of anti-colonial violence is not so simple, however: it is (and necessarily) bodily, but it is so as an _embodiment_ of the collective anti-colonial _mind_.
Anti-colonial violence arises from a rejection of the false intellectuality of negotiations with the oppressor: “The masses, without waiting for the chairs to be arranged around the baize table, listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and setting fire to buildings” (62f). But this rejection is not bodily in the sense of being _without_ mind; on the contrary, it articulates itself, it is the masses responding to their own voice. Further, in the course of developing their means of violence, the consciousness of the revolutionary masses develops (as described throughout the chapter and specifically mentioned on 72).
One of the reasons, then, for the central role of violence in Fanon’s account of revolution is that violence is a _praxis_, a unity of theory and practice. It “fulfills for the native a role which is not simply informative but also operative” (70). Instead of an opposition between the mind and the body, then, which has been racialized and used to dehumanize, violence provides Fanon with a unity of mind and body through which the revolutionary subject can construct a complete humanity.
(Written for a class on Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Dunno whether I want to start reproducing academic work on here regularly — it might lower the tone. We’ll see.)
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i guess i still don’t see how he ever endorses a mind/body dualism… even that first quote refers to a “body endowed with reasoning faculties,” which i take to be his interpretation of humans in general. i think his seeming endorsement of such a split is really his recognition that others, namely Euros, do indeed endorse it, and so it has a certain materiality in colonialism.
Comment by geo @ 9/23/2005 8:28 am
i read fanon’s work on violence and colonialism for a paper i was writing about resistance movements in the west and north america last year.
i read it in conjunction with Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology, which is as dogmatic as its title suggests, but also a fascinating critique of contemporary and historical pacifist movements. Churchill lambasts pacifist movements while attempting to clear a space for the subject of violent resistance to at least make headway in political conversation on the left. It is interesting to note how the dialogue has completely shut down in this respect, with reference to anti-war movements and the like.
Just recently (8 months ago?) in Canada and article was published in the Globe about how CSIS (the national spy agency) had ceased spying on the peace movement, since the anti-globalisation movement had morphed into or been eaten by the peace movement. The anti-globalisation movement was considered threatening to the state, but apparently the utterly pacifist (and ineffective) peace movement is not. Is it any surprise, though, really? How does a peave movement *really* disrupt the hegemonic force of society? By “speaking truth to power”? Please. Power knows the truth. It just doesn’t give a fuck.
Enjoy Fanon. And I say, continue posting yoru academic work. I like it.
Comment by elise @ 9/28/2005 7:34 am
just a note to say that i fucking love that book by ward, and that it doesn’t get the credit it deserves…
Comment by geo @ 10/1/2005 9:35 am