At a time when Frantz Fanon is once again being discussed in Martinique, Georges Aliker, former president of AGEM, sent us this text and this insightful analysis by Raymond Relouzat, which were published in 1962 in Matouba No. 2, the official publication of AGEM [General Association of Students of Martinique]. .
1962! That is to say, during that crucial period in our political life [and in the political life and growing awareness of the leaders of the student movement] when the Martinican student movement moved beyond assimilationism and the focus solely on the pain —skin color—(what Raphaël Confiant calls, not without a great deal of irony, «Blackism»), to embrace the ideals of their national consciousness.
Raymond Relouzat (1939–2009), a professor of grammar, advisor to President Senghor, and member of GEREC, passed away in 2009; he remained on the same side of the fence throughout his life.
The following text was written in 1962. He was only 23 years old!
Frantz Fanon Through His Work
Frantz Fanon died in the United States of America at the age of 37 from an incurable illness. Now buried in Algerian soil, as he had wished, he rests in the country he had made his own and whose cause he had embraced.
And we, the people of Martinique, the people of the Antilles, are happy and proud that a man from Martinique has become Algerian; for too many of us have fought—and continue to fight—in the ranks of the French army and against the Algerian people, whether as conscripts or as mercenaries.
In a way, Frantz Fanon saves us and restores us to ourselves—he who first identified as a Martinican and a Black man «from our old colonies,» *Black Skin, White Masks*, then as an Algerian in *Year V of the Algerian Revolution*, and finally as a man of the Third World in *The Wretched of the Earth*.
His books reveal the fate of this man—who became the apostle of decolonization and the prophet of a future that would not be exclusively European—by offering us a human experience of astonishing richness.
First, *Black Skins, White Masks*. It is the lived experience of the Black man, of discovering, in France, this essential truth: «The Black man is a Black man.» It is also the at once objective and passionate account of a man who witnesses the constant and deliberate fragmentation of his being, the tearing apart of his personality: «Where do I belong? How do I define myself? Who am I, after all?»
That is the question Fanon asks himself—and the one we have asked ourselves.
To Be a Negro or to Be Black? To Be a Negro, or Black, or from Martinique?
Everywhere, ambiguity, desolation, despair. In the remarkable pages of the chapter titled «The Black Man’s Experience,» Frantz Fanon brings us face-to-face with this relentless pursuit of the Black man—hunted down, trapped within the image that the White man has of him and seeks to impose upon him; of his “Negro” outbursts, his “white” revolts, and the miserable and detestable consolation of the concept of the “mestizo.”.
This is truly a hunt—and a merciless one at that. To accept, to give in, to compromise—is to die.
The sections dealing purely with psychiatry may be open to debate, as may their reasoning; but the rest is enough to convince. Speaking as a psychiatrist and as a man—Fanon showed himself above all to be a man—he explains how to cut through this tangle of vipers, to shatter the deceptive frameworks within which the colonizer seeks to confine him, seeks to confine us: «We must set man free.» ”
A man set free can be anything; but he chooses to become Algerian, and to remake himself through action, through revolution.
As a psychiatrist in Algeria, Frantz Fanon was led, as he himself put it, to reflect on medical cases. He became aware of the misery of this people and the suffering of the Algerian land, which for 130 years had been subjected to the most odious form of oppression—precisely because it was the most hypocritical.
He witnesses this «perpetual rape of man» (Césaire), the colonizers« »brainwashing,« the »savagization of the civilized,« and the daily atrocities committed against the Algerian nation. »Iron, fire, cold, hunger—against an entire unarmed people!” He becomes an Algerian revolutionary: this is his second step on the path that will ultimately lead him to become a man of the Third World.
What is «Year V of the Algerian Republic»? It is the description of a process that has brought the Algerian nation into being; it is the story heard on the eve of the Revolution.
How radio, a tool of the colonizer, becomes a weapon of the colonized. How Algerian women are transformed by the Revolution and for the Revolution. How a war of liberation revitalizes and unifies a people while throwing the oppressor into disarray. How, through a redemptive dialectic, what the colonizer sought to impose—the European way of life, the advancement of women, and so on—is ultimately realized, but not for the colonizer, rather against him: this is what this book tells us.
Through him, we delve into the details of human actions and reactions within the context of a colonizer-colonized relationship; we see how, inevitably and inexorably, the Algerian Revolution gives rise to a new man and a new woman: the Algerians. But first, the author of this book: his style, from *Black Skins, White Masks* to *Year V of the Algerian Revolution*, has become more assertive and concise: it is made for action, not for contemplation; the ideas are dense, the thinking precise and clear. It is a different man who writes: it is a man who has resolved his contradictions by sweeping them aside, by throwing himself into revolutionary action.
If we consider how the need to fight the colonizer shatters the traditional structures of the Algerian family, transforming its members into nothing but activists, we will realize that such faith and such devotion to the cause give the colonized—who have been despised, hated, insulted, and tortured for centuries, a unity of character and a spirit of sacrifice that are objectively beneficial—qualities that have enabled the FLN to hold off the best-trained army in Europe for the past seven years.
But also that, as we read on, we see the full extent of the misfortunes that have befallen the Algerian homeland. Torture, abuses of every kind, crime for crime’s sake; «civilization» turning into open, flagrant, blatant barbarism. No more modesty, no more hypocrisy—only lies.
And there is a desire to «prepare» the Algerian people; Mao Zedong is discovered; the colonizer tries to counter the momentum of the revolutionary idea with another idea; but, entangled in its own contradictions and sacrificing itself to the «objective» necessities of the struggle, it continues to behead those very people whose minds it seeks to mold in its own image.
But as Black Africa and other nations gained independence, neocolonialism emerged; those who had rebelled just the day before believed they had achieved their goals, only to become the West’s lackeys once again.
The Third World is wavering, swinging back and forth. Is decolonization in jeopardy? Is the greatest adventure of the 20th century over?
Explanations are no longer enough; we must shake people’s consciences, rouse them from their slumber, and call for action: and here is the bible of the colonized, Fanon’s final book, where lyricism and truth come together: *The Wretched of the Earth*. The culmination of a journey of consciousness, and a return to the essential truth: to be or not to be colonized. But also, rising to the universal: the total awareness of our world, its obligations, and its possibilities. This book is the history of two forms of consciousness: that of the colonized and that of the colonizer.
We see the former—initially reduced to nothing—awaken, rise up, and, despite the pitfalls that are inevitably set in her path—and those she herself creates (the most dangerous being that of culture)—manage to become autonomous and free. Let us listen to Sartre, who wrote the preface to this book: «Europeans, open this book and step inside. After a few steps into the night, you will see strangers gathered around a fire; approach, listen: they are discussing the fate they have in store for your trading posts and the mercenaries who defend them.»
And, in truth, what is new and extraordinary about this book is its indifference toward the West. It is written for the Third World, for the colonized. The enemy may take note of this, but it will do him no good. Any dialogue with the colonizer must henceforth be turned against him, should the word ever be addressed to him. The West is no longer the model; the frameworks are no longer European. What will they be? What will we do?
Fanon replies:
«No, we don’t want to catch up to anyone. But we want to walk all the time, night and day, alongside people—all people…»
«The Third World stands today before Europe as a colossal force whose mission must be to try to resolve the problems that Europe has failed to solve… » «For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades, we must reinvent ourselves and strive to create a new kind of person.»
For Europe is no longer the absolute it had believed itself to be—and which, alas, we had believed it to be; it is simply a part of the world, nothing more. There are no longer those who make history and those who endure it. There must be only subjects; and “Brotherhood” will then take on a different meaning. This is what Fanon and his work tell us.
R. RELOUZAT
In «Matouba» No. 2 – April 1962
