Fanon and the Colonizer

     This is something of a backtrack, but Fanon is one of my favorite philosophers and I can't miss a chance to write about him. During discussion about him, something Dr. J said stuck with me. She said that she had a vested interest in there not being a revolution, in the sense of there not being essentially anarchy in the streets. We all have this interest. It seems, for Fanon, that the revolution of the third world would require violent revolution, but it's not clear what a revolution of the first world would look like. On the one hand, I think we can agree that a society without racism (whatever form that would take) would be better than racist hegemony, but on the other, violent overthrow of power structures might cause more damage than it would fix. The history of revolutions would seem to suggest this.

      Fanon, in Wretched of the Earth, which we did not read, suggests that the violence of the colonized is a direct result of the violence of the colonizer. That is, it is a psychological effect of colonialism to instill in its subjects the seeds of its own destruction. Dehumanizing force and coercion beget violence. But this is only one side of his account. He is conscious of the fact that colonialism itself inhibits the freedom of the colonizer, as well as the colonized. The colonizer him or herself is a slave to the function of colonization. They are free in a way that the colonized are not. They (or we, as the case may be) are free to act out their lives relatively uninhibited. But they, we must remain within a certain ideological ground, act as if certain things were true. The colonizing civilization requires its citizens to adhere strictly to the culture of colonialism.
One can see the beginnings of this at the end of "Racism and Culture:"

The end of race prejudice begins with a sudden incomprehension.

The occupant's spasmed and rigid culture, now liberated, opens at last to the culture of people who have really become brothers. The two cultures can affront each other, enrich each other.

The very act of resistance to colonization jars the colonizer and his or her worldview. Resistance begins (or can begin - there will remain adherents to the "forces of order") a process of opening up the space for both the former colonizer and the colonized to engage in mutually enriching dialogue. The two cultures may finally meet and recognize one another as equals.

      Thus, the colonizer, the everyday racist, and the myriad functionaries that serve and compose hegemony have an implicit and vested interest in the end of colonialism, racism, and the hegemony: the diversity of culture and the possibility of mutual enrichment. It's a thin interest, and it can be easily dismissed with claims of superiority, but if one can show another the value of education through cultural exchange, one might be able to demonstrate the ethically void and profoundly unfree situation which hegemony creates. As to whether or not this argument might outweigh an individual's economic interests, I suppose it would depend on the individual. What does seem certain to me is that words alone will not constitute legitimate social change. That would require action. It is my hope that such action need not be violent.