The Wretched of the Earth

The Wretched of the Earth

Cover of the first edition
Author Frantz Fanon
Original title Les Damnés de la Terre
Translator Constance Farrington (1963)
Richard Philcox (2004)
Illustrator Zonama Bonaharda
Country France
Language French
Subject Racism and Colonialism, Violence, Post-colonialism, Third-world development, Revolution
Publisher Grove Press (1963 translation)
Publication date
 1961
Published in English
 1963
Media type Print
Pages 251
ISBN 0-8021-5083-7
OCLC 11787563

The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by Frantz Fanon, in which Fanon provides a psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanising effects of colonization upon the individual, and the nation, and discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications inherent to establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people. The French-language title derives from the opening lyrics of "The Internationale", the 19th-century anthem of the Left Wing.

Summary

Fanon presents thorough critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as colonizer and colonized in order to teach and psychologically mold the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution. Fanon proposes that revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to effect the expulsion of the colonists. Moreover, in traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariat are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat social-class—especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed—people who lacked the class consciousness to actively participate in the anti-colonial revolution.

Yet, Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to identify the colonial subjects who are not involved in industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the working class), the lumpenproletariat have sufficient intellectual independence from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class to readily grasp that they can successfully revolt against the colonial status quo, and so decolonize their nation.

One of the essays that is included in the "Wretched of the Earth" is On National Culture in which Fanon highlights the necessity of generations to discover its mission and to fight for said mission.

Reception

In his introduction to the 1961 edition of The Wretched of the Earth, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre supported Frantz Fanon’s advocacy of justified violence by the colonized people against the foreign colonizer, as necessary for their mental health and political liberation; Sartre later applied that introduction in Colonialism and Neocolonialism (1964), a politico–philosophic critique of France’s Algerian colonialism.[1] The political focus derives from the first chapter of the book, “Concerning Violence”, wherein Fanon indicts colonialism and its post-colonial legacies, for which violence is a means of catharsis and liberation from being a colonial subject. Nonetheless, in the foreword to the 2004 edition of The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Homi K. Bhabha criticized Sartre’s introduction, stating that it limits the reader’s approach to the book to focus on its promotion of violent resistance to oppression.[2]

Anthony Elliott writes that The Wretched of the Earth is a "seminal" work.[3]

Translations

References

  1. ↑ Jean-Paul Sartre Preface to Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth"
  2. ↑ Homi Bhabha's 2004 foreword p. xxi; Franz Fanon (2004), The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press
  3. ↑ Elliott, Anthony (2002). Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. New York: Palgrave. p. 56. ISBN 0-333-91912-2.
  4. ↑ «La jeune génération est un enjeu» Archived December 5, 2006, at the Wayback Machine., interview with Gilles Kepel in L'Express, 26 January 2006 (French)


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