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Wretched of the Earth - Chapter 1 (vegantheoryclub.org)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Some people (lol me) benefit from more structured discussions!

Let's use this post to share questions as top level comments. I'm going to re-post some of the questions I had from this post and also from the lists of more generic book club questions found in this post. Anyone who has read/listened to the chapter should feel welcome to respond to any question. You don't need to be an expert or to "know" the answer. Use this space to work out your own thoughts. This is valuable to your comrades!

Please feel free to post your own, and don't be shy! We are here to learn and discuss. It's okay to not get it all and you can't learn if you don't ask 💖

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I don’t really understand the discussion of myths of the colonized as “inhibitions for his aggressiveness”. I understand the suggestion that these traditions can make the colonizer seem less all imposing, and that working collectively (as demanded by these myths) have real benefit to the struggle. But beyond that I feel like I am missing something. Can anyone explain? Is this mostly related to Fanon’s background as a psychiatrist and what he observed in the course of his work?

He goes on to speak about dance and how it is an outlet but that it is abandoned in during the struggle for liberation and what remains is violence directed towards colonialism.

There is this sentence, and then I feel like the subject changes:

The challenge now is to seize this violence as it realigns itself. Whereas it once reveled in myths and contrived ways to commit collective suicide, a fresh set of circumstances will now enable it to change directions.

Can anyone explain the conclusion here?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think those are ideas driven by his background as a psychiatrist, yes. They do echo Marx's "Opium of the masses" - religion or, here, superstition, as a pacifier. In that sense Fanon explains how those beliefs serve an integral part in upkeeping the status quo, how they detract from the material conditions of those people and the real oppression they're suffering from.

The conclusion, I believe, is that belief can only impede the reversal of violence for so long before it reaches its end. There is a time where it isn't enough, when the oppressed do rise up. So that ritual catalyst for violence or sexual desire or whatever else isn't needed and dissolves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Wow, thanks Mosquibee! That was really helpful.