by Frantz Fanon
78 de Beauvoir, 321.
79 Jules Roy in Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 338.
80 My account is based on Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 221-22. For the discursive representation of the event, and the implications of its various ideological interpretations and manifestations, see LeSueur, “Massacre at Melouza: The ‘Whodunit’ of the French-Algerian War?” 166ff.
81 Horne, 222.
82 WE, 18.
83 WE, 21.
84 WE, 31.
85 WE, 34.
86 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), 69.
87 WE, 89.
88 I have slightly altered Sartre’s phrase “to bring the dialectic to its conclusion.” See Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, 150.
89 Sartre, 151.
90 Ibid., 150.
91 Ibid., 149-50.
92 I have adapted this phrase from Frantz Fanon, “Racism and Culture” in Towards an African Revolution, 35.
93 Ibid.
94 de Beauvoir, 318.
95 WE, 16.
96 In a larger version of this essay to be published in A Global Measure (Harvard University Press), I develop the concept of “false-guilt” in the direction of an understanding of shame.
97 WE, 17.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid.
100 WE, 44.
101 WE, 132.
102 de Beauvoir, 317.
103 Francis Jeanson, quoted in Macey, 159.
104 Macey, 433.
105 WE, 122.
1 We have demonstrated in Black Skin, White Masks the mechanism of this Manichaean world.
* Translator’s Note: Present-day Zimbabwe
2 Colonial Wars and Mental Disorders, chapter 5.
3 Friedrich Engels, Anti-Diihring. trans. Emile Burns (New York International Publishers), pt. 2, chap. III (The Force Theory), 184.
4 The arrested leader might very well be the authentic mouthpiece of the colonized masses. In this case, the colonial authorities will take advantage of his detention to try and establish new leaders.
5 It is obvious that this general clean-up destroys the thing one wants to save. This is exactly what Sartre indicates when he says: “In short, by the very act of repeating them (i.e., racist ideas) one shows that it is impossible for everyone to unite simultaneously against the natives, that it is merely shifting recurrence, and that in any case such a unification could occur as an active grouping only so as to massacre the colonized people, which is the perpetual absurd temptation of the colonialists, and, which, if it were possible, would amount to the immediate destruction of colonization.” Critique of Dialectical Reason. Translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith.
6 Aimé Césaire, “And the dogs were silent” in Lyric and Dramatic Poetry— 1946-82, trans. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1990).
7 In order to gauge the importance of this decision by the French government in Algeria we need to return to this period. In issue no. 4 of Résistance Algérienne dated March 28, 1957, we read:
“In response to the wishes of the United Nations General Assembly, the French government has recently decided to create urban militias. Enough bloodshed, said the UN. Let us form militias, replies Lacoste. Cease fire, advised the UN. Let us arm the civilians, screams Lacoste. The two parties involved are requested to make initial contacts in order to agree on a democratic and peaceful solution, the UN recommended. Lacoste decrees that henceforth every European shall be armed and should fire on anybody appearing suspect. The savage, iniquitous repression bordering on genocide must above all things be combated by the authorities, was then the general opinion. Lacoste retorts: Let us systematize the repression, let us organize a manhunt of Algerians. And symbolically he hands over civilian power to the military and military power to the civilians. The circle is sealed. In the middle, the Algerian, disarmed, starved, hounded, jostled, struck, lynched and soon to be shot because he is a suspect. Today in Algeria there is not a single Frenchman who is not authorized or welcome to make use of his arms. Not a single Frenchman in Algeria one month after the UN’s appeal for calm who does not have permission or the obligation to unearth, fabricate and hunt down suspects.
One month after the UN General Assembly’s resolution there is not a single European in Algeria who is not party to the most appalling act of extermination in modern times. Democratic solution? Okay, concedes Lacoste, let’s start by eliminating the Algerians. In order to do so let’s arm the civilians and let them do the job. The majority of the Parisian press cautiously reported the creation of these armed gangs. Fascist militia, they said. Yes. But at the level of the individual and human rights what is fascism but colonialism at the very heart of traditionally colonialist countries? Systematically authorized and condoned assassination they suggested. But for one hundred and thirty years hasn’t Algerian flesh borne the marks of ever gaping, ever growing, ever deeper wounds? We should be careful, advises Monsieur Kenne-Vignes, parliamentary member for the M.R.P. party, not to widen the abyss between the two communities in Algeria by creating these militias. Yes. But isn’t the colonial status the organized enslavement of an entire people? The Algerian Revolution is precisely the living challenge to this enslavement and this abyss. The Algerian Revolution addresses the occupying nation as follows: ‘Remove your fangs from Algeria’s bruised and wounded flesh! Let the Algerian people speak!’
The creation of these militias, they say, will alleviate the army. They will free units whose mission is to protect the borders with Tunisia and Morocco.
A six hundred thousand strong army. Almost the entire navy and airforce. A vast police network, operating expeditiously, with a staggering record since it recruited the ex-torturers of the Moroccan and Tunisian peoples. Territorial units one hundred thousand men strong. The job of the army must be alleviated. Let’s create urban militias. So impressive is Lacoste’s criminal and hysterical frenzy it convinces even clear-sighted Frenchmen. The truth is that the justification for creating such militias is contradictory in itself. The French army’s job is infinite. From the moment its mission is to gag the mouths of the Algerians the door to the future is closed for ever. Above all there is a refusal to analyze, to understand and to gauge the depth and the density of the Algerian Revolution: every district, every section, every street, every housing block, every floor has its community leader. . . . Coverage on the ground is now backed up by coverage floor by floor.
In 48 hours two thousand candidates were enrolled. The Europeans of Algeria immediately responded to Lacoste’s call for murder. From now on every European will have to make a list of the surviving Algerians in his sector. Gathering intelligence, ‘rapid response’ to terrorism, identifying suspects, elimination of runaways and police reinforcements. Yes the army must be alleviated of such jobs. Combing the ground is now backed up by combing floor by floor. Haphazard killings are now backed up by premeditated murder. Stop the bloodshed, urged the UN. The best way of doing so, retorts Lacoste, is to have no more blood to shed. After having been delivered up to Massu’s hordes the Algerian people are now entrusted to the care of the urban militias. Lacoste’s decision to create these militias clearly means hands off HIS war. It is proof there are no limits once the rot has set in. Of course now he is a prisoner, but what a delight to drag down everyone with him.
After every one of these decisions the Algerian people increase their muscular tension and intensify their struggle. After every one of these organized, requisitioned killings the Algerian people better structure their consciousness and strengthen their resistance. Yes. The tasks for the French army are infinite because the unity of the Algerian people is infinite, O so infinite!”
8 This is the reason why at the outbreak of hostilities, no prisoners are taken. It is only through politicizing the cadres that the leaders manage to get the masses to accept (1) that the recruits dispatched from the métropole are
not always sent of their own free will and in some cases even are sickened by this war; (2) that it is in the current interest of the movement to wage a struggle abiding by certain international conventions; (3) that an army which takes prisoners is an army, and ceases to be considered a gang of outlaws; (4) in any case, the possession of prisoners constitutes a significant means of applying pressure for protecting our militants held by the enemy.
9 In the current international context capitalism does not impose an economic blockade solely upon the colonies in Africa and Asia. The U.S. with its anti-Castro policy has inaugurated in the Western Hemisphere a new chapter in the history of man’s laborious fight for freedom. Latin America composed of independent countries sitting at the UN with their own national currency should be a lesson for Africa. Since their liberation these former colonies live in terror and destitution under Western capitalism’s stranglehold.
The liberation of Africa and the development of man’s consciousness have enabled the peoples of Latin America to break the spiral of dictatorships where one regime looked very much like the next. Castro takes power in Cuba and hands it to the people. The Yankees feel this heresy to be a national scourge and the U.S. organizes counter-revolutionary brigades, fabricates a provisional government, burns the sugar cane harvests, and finally decides to place an implacable stranglehold on the Cuban people. It won’t be easy, however. The Cuban people will suffer, but they will win in the end. Janos Quadros, the president of Brazil, recently declared in a declaration of historical importance that his country will defend the Cuban Revolution by every means possible. Perhaps the U.S. too will bow to the will of the people. That will be a day for rejoicing since it will be a crucial moment for men and women throughout the world. The almighty power of the dollar, whose security after all is only guaranteed by the slaves of this world, toiling in the oil wells of the Middle East, the mines of Peru and the Congo, and the United Fruit or Firestone plantations, will then cease to dominate these slaves who created it and who continue to drain their heads and bellies of all their substance to feed it.
10 Some countries which have benefited from a large European settlement acquire walls and avenues with their independence and tend to forget the poverty and starvation in the back-country. In a kind of complicity of silence, by an irony of fate, they act as if their towns were contemporary with independence.
11 And it is true that Germany has not paid in full the reparations for its war crimes. The compensation imposed on the conquered nation has not been claimed in full because the injured parties included Germany in their anti-Communist defense system. The colonialist countries are motivated by the same concerns when they try to obtain military bases and enclaves from their former colonies, failing their integration into the system of the West. They have decided by common agreement to waive their claims in the name of NATO’s strategy, in the name of the free world. And we have seen Germany receive wave after wave of dollars and equipment. A strong and powerful Germany back on its feet was a necessity for the Western camp. It was clearly in the interests of a so-called free Europe to have a prosperous, reconstructed Germany capable of serving as a bastion against the threatened Red hordes. Germany has manipulated the European crisis. Consequently, the U.S. and the other European states feel legitimately bitter toward this Germany, once brought to its knees and now one of their most ruthless competitors on the market.
12 “To make a radical distinction between the construction of socialism in Europe and ‘relations with the Third World’ (as .if our only relations with it were external) is, knowingly or unknowingly, giving priority to restructuring the colonial heritage over the liberation of the underdeveloped countries, in other words constructing a de luxe type of socialism on the fruits of imperial plunder—as if a gang were to share out the loot more or less equitably even if it means giving a little to the poor by way of charity and forgetting they are giving back to the people they stole from.” Marcel Péju, “Mourir pour de Gaulle?” in Temps Modernes No. 175-176, October-November 1960.
* Translator’s Note: Present-day Beninese and Burkinabés
** Translator’s Note: Present-day Malian
13 Mamadou Dia, Nations africaines et solidarité mondiale, P.U.F., 140.
14 Ibid.
15 Translator’s Note: In the original, Fanon uses the English word leader and compares it to the French verb conduire.
16 “The Political Leader as Representative of a Culture.” Paper presented at the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, Rome, 1959.
17 Translator’s Note: Present-day Tanzanians
18 “The lady was not alone/She had a husband/A fine, upstanding husband/Who recited Racine and Corneille/And Voltaire and Rousseau/And old Hugo and the young Musset/And Gide and Valéry/And so many others as well.” Rene Depestre, “Face à la nuit”
19 “The lady was not alone/She had a husband/A husband who knew everything/But to tell the truth knew nothing/Because culture does not come without making concessions/Without conceding your flesh and blood/Without conceding yourself to others/A concession worth just as much as/Classicism or Romanticism/And all that nurtures our soul.” Rene Depestre, “Face a la nuit.”
20 René Char, “Partage Formel.”
21 At the last school prize-giving ceremony in Dakar, the president of the Republic of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, announced that negritude should be included in the school curriculum. If this decision is an exercise in cultural history, it can only be approved. But if it is a matter of shaping black consciousness it is simply turning one’s back on history which has already noted the fact that most “Negroes” have ceased to exist.
22 In the unpublished introduction of the first two editions of L’an V de la revolution algérienne (Studies in a Dying Colonialism), we already indicated that an entire generation of Algerians, steeped in collective, gratuitous homicide with all the psychosomatic consequences this entails, would be France’s human legacy in Algeria. The French who condemn torture in Algeria constantly adopt a strictly French point of view. This is not a reproach, merely an affirmation: they want to safeguard the conscience of present and potential torturers and try and protect French youth from moral degradation. We, for our part, can but approve such an approach. Some of the observations collected here, notably case histories nos. 4 and 5 of series A, sadly illustrate and justify this obsessive fear of French democrats. Our purpose, in any case, is to demonstrate that any torture deeply dislocates, as might be expected, the personality of the tortured.
23 The circumstances surrounding the symptoms are interesting for several reasons. Several months after his country had gained independence he had made the acquaintance of nationals from the former colonizing nation. They became friends. These men and women welcomed the newly acquired independence and unhesitatingly paid tribute to the courage of the patriots in the national liberation struggle. The militant was then overcome by a kind of vertigo. He anxiously asked himself whether among the victims of his bomb there might have been individuals similar to his new acquaintances. It was true the bombed café was known to be the haunt of notorious racists, but nothing could stop any passerby from entering and having a drink. From that day on the man tried to avoid thinking of past events. But paradoxically a few days before the critical date the first symptoms would break out. They have been a regular occurrence ever since.
In other words, our actions never cease to haunt us. The way they are ordered, organized, and reasoned can be a posteriori radically transformed. It is by no means the least of the traps history and its many determinations set for us. But can we escape vertigo? Who dares claim that vertigo does not prey on every life?
24 After the medical and legal reports had stressed the pathological nature of the act, the legal proceedings initiated by the ALN’s staff headquarters were dropped.
25 This case revealed the existence of a coherent system that leaves nothing intact. The torturer who loves birds or quietly enjoys a symphony or a sonata is simply one stage. The next st
age is nothing more than radical and absolute sadism.
26 Rivet is a village in the region around Algiers which became headline news one day in 1956. One evening the village was raided by French militia who dragged forty men from their beds and murdered them.
27 During the year 1955 cases of this sort were extremely numerous in Algeria. Unfortunately, not all of them had the good fortune to be admitted to a hospital.
28 This type of torture is the cause of a great many deaths. The high pressure of the enema causes multiple lesions and minute perforations to the mucous membrane of the intestine. Gaseous embolism and peritonitis commonly result.
29 We are speaking of course of those Algerians who know something and have not confessed under torture for it is a fact that an Algerian who confesses is killed immediately afterward.
30 The medical staff have to take turns attending the patient night and day and explaining things to him. The idea that “the patient needs a little bullying” is understandably of little use here.