Week 10 - Frantz Fanon and the history of the native

In this chapter, 'Concerning Violence [1]', Fanon deals with the relationship between the colonist and native, discussing the nature of the industrially progressive victor and the 'other', meaning that the two are tied in a relationship of envy/lust and superiority. Therefore we arrive at a 'divided history', where both parties are culturally averse to change, leading inexorably to a state of violence that is inescapable. Violence serves then not only as a release, but as the first and last resort, forming a profitable work of marketed cultural differences.

Frantz Fanon

While reading this, I felt that this was applicable to modern warfare and colonialism. In Haiti and Jamaica; in Iraq and Afghanistan, the relationship of the 'colonist' is unavoidably mired in violence and inequality, with the two sides becoming equally abrasive. There are few profits for the natives - as we are told, 'independence brings no immediate change' - due to the implications of hierarchical rule, which locks the colonists to a positive historical consciousness, and the natives to a negative one.

[1] Fanon, Frantz, 'Concerning Violence' in The Wretched of the Earth, London, Penguin, trans. by Constance Farrington