This book, along with the piercing preface by Jean-Paul Sartre is up there as one of the most outright critical pieces of literature I have ever read. The two hold no bars in singling out all of the major issues with the colonialism of the world. Fanon does so to the extent of offering violence as the one option for decolonization. This is an idea we see emphasized by many of the worlds most well known and “successful” revolutionaries and critics of colonialism (che, castro, Subcomandante Marcos, Zapata etc. etc.). When reading on violence all I could think of relating it to was Malcom X and his famous line “by any means necessary”, in reference to the methods he believed in using to decolonize America’s relationship with it’s black population.
Whatever justification Fanon or any of the aforementioned revolutionaries use for the use of violence as an act of decolonization, it is still something that I struggle with personally, and that I believe anyone attempting to make a revolutionary act feels similarly towards. The example which I reference in my thought process is again that of the different ideological systems of Malcom X and Martin Luther King jr. Today we recognize both men as incredible important in the fight for black rights in the united states, yet each believing in a very different methodology. I don’t know that Fanon or Sartre would even place King’s work in the category of decolonizing.
I can’t say if I believe outright in the use of violence either way, it is something that I have always wrestled with in discussing these theories, yet I know that it creates an enormous gap between two groups who seek similar ends.
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