The Wretched of the EarthFirst published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Translated by Richard Philcox, and featuring now-classic critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as a new essay, this sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. |
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Fanon is a seminal Caribbean writer, from the island of Martinique, French Antilles. Fanon's work examined in intimate detail, the sociological, psychological effects of colonialism on its subjects and gave great insight into his time in Algeria. A medical doctor by profession, he shaped much of what is today's black-conscious movements.Fanon's impact though was global with many jihadist, and Islamic revolutionaries as well as Arab nationalist's citing him as an influencer of their political ideology.
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achieved action affective African Algerian Algiers already Arab armed asked authorities become body bourgeois capital claim colo colonial colonialist colonist colonized subject confrontation consciousness context culture death decided decolonization demand Earth economic emergence enemy establish Europe European everything existence faced fact Fanon feel fight force former French give hands human ideas independence intellectual issue kill lead leaders less liberation live longer look masses means methods mind national bourgeoisie nationalist native nature never once organized party patient peasant period police political population problem prove question reality realize reason regime regions remain rural sector seen social society struggle thing Third thought tion torture towns traditional turn underdeveloped countries understand village violence Western Wretched young
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Page xxix - The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists.
Page xxxvii - ... domination, massively affirms his superiority. The social group, militarily and economically subjugated, is dehumanized in accordance with a polydimensional method. Exploitation, tortures, raids, racism, collective liquidations, rational oppression take turns at different levels in order literally to make of the native an object in the hands of the occupying nation. This object man, without means of existing, without a raison d'etre, is broken in the very depth of his substance. The desire to...
Page 5 - In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich.
Page xxix - ... last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists. That affirmed intention to place the last at the head of things, and to make them climb at a pace (too quickly, some say) the well-known steps which characterize an organized society, can only triumph if we use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Wretched of the Earth |
| Author | Frantz Fanon |
| Translated by | Richard Philcox |
| Contributors | Homi K. Bhabha, Jean-Paul Sartre |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2007 |
| ISBN | 0802198856, 9780802198853 |
| Length | 320 pages |
| Subjects | › › Political Science / History & Theory Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |