Let's take the plunge into FRANTZ FANON's "The Wretched of the Earth"

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) is getting namedropped a lot lately.

Fanon used his psychiatric expertise as the lens through which he analyzed the effects of colonialism in influential works like Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961).

Given all the horrifying violence in the news these few days, some have found that the rhetoric from these works still rings true: e.g., "Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence."

But what was the context for statements like these? To what extent is it still appropriate to quote these with regards to present-day conflicts? Submarines, let's plunge into Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, up to the point at which the above quote appears (or further, if you're keen; or not at all, if you're not... Join us anyway!) :

• First part of "On Violence", Chapter 1 from The Wretched of the Earth, 1961 (pgs. 1-24 of the book text, labelled as pgs. 2-14 of the PDF document) by Frantz Fanon (alternative translation/text version here; see pgs. 17-33 of the PDF document, labelled inline as pgs. 33-61 of the source text). Audio readings of the two translations can be found here (up to around 1:12:00) and here (up to around 1:06:40).

For more context, feel free to also check out :

• "Fanon's conception of violence does not work in Palestine" by Mark LeVine (Opinion piece from Al Jazeera, 10 Oct 2023)
• See remarks on Fanon and his influence in "On Violence" by Hannah Arendt (see pg. 12-21)