This violence derives from the racialised views that the coloniser has about the colonised subjects. Fanon even asserts that violence is the ‘natural state’ of colonial rule (1963: 61). Fanon strongly emphasises that colonial rule ‘is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native’ (1963: 38). In other words, colonial rule is maintained through violence and repression. Fanon, using Algeria as his example, notes that:Įcolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature…heir first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together – that is to say the exploitation of the native by the settler – was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons (1963: 36). The potentiality of violence derives from the colonial context which the violent act is seeking to uproot.

In this brief paper, I will outline the Fanonian approach to the effects of violence on an individual, both negative and positive. However, these are often taken out of context, because Fanon is certainly not an advocate of gratuitous violence. His most famous and controversial remarks are those around the cathartic and self-actualising affect that violence can have on a colonial subject. Fanon’s outlines both the potentialities and negative aspects of violence. Fanon was later an employed psychiatrist in Algeria, where he later eventually joined the revolution against the French. He then undertook medical school and psychiatric training in France.

Fanon was born and raised as a colonial subject in the Antilles. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power the “thing” which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself (Fanon 1963: 36-37).įrantz Fanon’s approach to violence and its effects on the individual is uniquely guided by his lived experience. Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men.

The wretched of the earth 1963