POL1: Fanon

What does Sartre argue is the truth of European development?

"the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters"

Which quote neatly summarises this temptation to emulate the practices of the colonised?

"the colonised man is an envious man".

What is the first chapter of the book?

'On Violence'.

Which more recent work explores the long-term psychological effects of racial violence?

'Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome' by Joy DeGruy (2005).

Although present throughout the text, where is the issue of psychological harm addressed in 'The Wretched of the Earth'?

'The Wretched of the Earth' repeatedly mentions issues of the psychological harm caused to the colonised. These are mostly isolated sentences throughout the text. The one sustained discussion is the final chapter, 'colonial war and mental disorders'.

How was the book's reception/interpretation different to its intentions?

Although violence is only one part of the larger decolonising vision Fanon advocates, in the 1960s, the book was solely embraced by a generation of young activists as a justification of violent protest.

What is another distinct feature of the colonial state, according to Fanon?

Fanon's depiction of the state is one of a colonial state which rules over what it perceived as two distinct communities, one of which is not recognised fully as human.

Which quote from this chapter exemplifies the psychological harm done through colonialism?

"Because it is a systematized negation of the other, a frenzied determination to deny the other any attribute of humanity, colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the question: 'Who am I in reality?'"

Which quote epitomises this?

"A normal Negro child, having grown up within a normal family, will become abnormal on the slightest contact with the white world".

How does Sartre summarise the cathartic power of violence for the colonised?

"The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting over the settler through force of arms".

What two sources of experience is 'The Wretched of the Earth' (1961) an attempt to synthesise?

1. Fanon was a witness to many of the atrocities of the Algerian War of Independence, in which the French buried Algerians alive by pushing earth on top of them with bulldozers, for example. 2. Fanon was a trained doctor and intellectual who had been immersed in many of the Black cultural movements of his time. The Wretched of the Earth tries to synthesise these two sources of experience by referring historical affairs to philosophical ideas of freedom and phenomenology. This is especially evidenced in his prolonged discussion of Manichaeism and how a dualistic worldview both perpetuates colonialism and leads to its demise.

When was Frantz Fanon born?

1925

When was 'Black Skin, White Masks' published?

1952

When did Fanon write 'A Dying Colonialism'?

1959

When was 'The Wretched of the Earth' published?

1961

When did he die?

1961, of Leukemia (aged 36).

What is Fanon's psychological approach based on?

A belief that mental illnesses take a form that is determined by social factors (can only understand neurological disorders by understanding social context).

In what way is this chapter different stylistically from the rest of the book?

A substantial part consists of detailed 'case notes' about Algerians and Europeans in Algeria, ordered largely by psychiatric condition, each of which he relates to their social condition. These came from Fanon's time working as a neuro-psychiatrist in the Blida Joinville Hospital.

What emerges from violence?

A unified subjectivity to replace the earlier colonised subjectivity of submission and passivity.

What context elucidates Sartre's excitement around Fanon's advocacy of violence?

According to Sartre, Fanon's emphasis on violence suggests a path to freedom that the human rights discourse of the time was unable, or unwilling, to consider. Instead of asking for abstract rights, the colonised were acting concretely to express their freedom

How was 'The Wretched of the Earth' received?

After its publication in 1961, 'The Wretched of the Earth' very rapidly became the bible of decolonisation, inspiring many different kinds of struggle against domination and oppression across the world.

What does Fanon instead call for?

An education of the masses, which will lead to diversity of opinions that are good for politics. People can move toward democracy once they are educated and rationally deliberating, instead of simply seeking power and being swayed by tribal and religious rivalries.

How does Fanon criticise Marxism?

Argues that it is too focused on class and fails to see that in colonial contexts, race is the primary axis of discrimination and inequality (i.e. fundamental division in a colony is between coloniser and colonised).

What is his perspective on the ideological conflict of the Cold War?

Argues that it is wrong to think that the conflict between capitalism and communism is the fundamental issue of the time. Instead, "large-scale investments and technical aid must be given to underdeveloped regions" (Bring in Moyo, 2007)

How did Fanon describe the war?

As "the logical consequence of an abortive attempt to decerebralise a people".

How does Fanon go on to describe interracial desire?

As a form of self-destruction in the desire to be white or to elevate one's social, political and cultural status in proximity to whiteness. In that sense, all depictions of interracial sexuality (exclusively heterosexual) are for Fanon FUNDAMENTALLY PATHOLOGICAL. The black woman who desires a white man suffers under the delusion that his body is a bridge to wealth and access. The black man who desires a white woman suffers under the delusions of what her body offers: innocence and purity.

Why can this lead towards dictatorship and authoritarianism?

Attempts of decolonised "national bourgeoisie" to grab industry in the cities or land in the country fractures the newly liberated nation. Bourgeoisie may try to quell resentment by turning to a quasi-dictatorial figure: "the popular leader", usually a military veteran who fought for decolonisation. Pacifies resentment by regaling people with stories of the fight, but this leads the nation to dictatorship/authoritarianism.

Why does Fanon explicitly reject claims of the superiority of supra-nationalism?

Because culture derives from national consciousness. There cannot be a culture that isn't national.

Why is it so tempting to mimic the attitudes, behaviours and structures of the coloniser post-independence?

Because there is no social order that withstood colonialism to revert to, there is a temptation to mimic the behaviours, structures and attitudes of the coloniser (e.g. have taken up European forms of ethnic nationalism, creating divisions within the formerly colonised world).

Which other anti-colonial figure has interesting parallels with Fanon?

Both Fanon and Che Guevara were trained doctors, who continued to practise their healing skills whenever called on even as they simultaneously carried on their day-to-day commitments to violent revolution. This apparent paradox, an ethics of healing through revolutionary violence, remains at the heart of the lives and works of both Guevara and Fanon. They thought of this by analogy with the practices of medicine itself: to cure the open wound of colonial rule by surgical intervention rather than the earlier Gandhian strategy of a therapeutic ayurvedic medicine.

How, according to Fanon, does the colonised intellectual seek to counter the demeaning force of colonised culture and cultural narratives?

By 'racialising culture' (e.g. through 'Negro literature' or 'Negro art' that unites Africa - sometimes called the 'Negritude' movement).

How does this chapter expand Fanon's definition of liberation?

By detailing the many disorders people experience under colonialism, Fanon makes an argument for decolonization as not only a liberation of a nation but also a liberation of individual psyches—a CURE FOR PATHOLOGY. He shows how what some psychologists consider innate is also a learned response to traumatic situations. Such a structural account of psychology—where neurosis is produced by a social and political situation rather than a personal or innate feature—makes Fanon's final analysis not only psychological, but also sociological. Fanon shows that social structures make some experiences so pervasive they are not individual, but shared and collective.

What is the title of chapter 5?

Colonial War and Mental Disorders

What does he suggest the 'colonised intellectuals' tend to do?

Considers how 'colonised intellectuals', who have been educated in urban areas and therefore influenced by Western ideas, having learned about political parties in countries like France and England, seek to mobilise the colonised masses by forming a nationalistic party of their own.

What will culture follow?

Culture will follow the establishment of nationhood because it will then have a national context in which to grow. (so how did all of the pre-colonial cultures come about without a nation?)

What is the major theme of this chapter?

Decolonisation does not end colonisation. Achieving independence does not immediately eradicate traces of a colonial mindset or other forms of colonial exploitation.

What is the main aim of the book?

Drawing heavily on psychoanalytical theory, Fanon sets out how the black individual - especially the black man - suffers a profound form of alienation in a predominantly white society, where reason is presented as a creation of white people's culture and blackness is associated with evil.

What happens during decolonisation?

During decolonisation, people lose interest in rituals and redirect violent energy into the anti-colonial struggle.

What is Fanon's concluding vision at the end of 'The Wretched of the Earth'?

Fanon advocates the Third World "starting a new history of man, a history which will have regard to the sometimes prodigious theses which Europe has put forward, but which will also not forget Europe's crimes". "Let us not pay tribute to creating states institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her".

How does this also alienate the black person from his or her fellow black people?

Fanon also remarks on how this fated-to-failure emphasis on diction in turn alienates the black person from his or her fellow black people—the desire to be white, Fanon's characterization of the drive to perfect diction, means alienation from blackness and this lands the black subject, again, in the zone of non-being.

When did Fanon assume a professional position in Algeria?

Fanon became the head of the Psychiatry Department at the hospital of Blida Joinvile in Algiers in 1953.

What did Fanon find when treating patients?

Fanon found that the social therapies he used worked generally well on Europeans in the hospital, but not on Algerians.

What enabled him to do this?

Fanon himself was from the Caribbean and had travelled widely in Africa as the FLN's envoy.

What is Fanon explicit about not being the reason he advocates violence?

Fanon is quite explicit that he is not advocating violence for the purposes of retribution or out of anger ("hatred and resentment - 'a legitimate desire for revenge' - cannot sustain a war of liberation").

What functions does violence fulfil, for Fanon?

Fanon presents violence as fulfilling three major functions: i) Unity for colonised people. "each individual forms a violent link in the great change" as part of a unified "organism of violence" ii) Redemption - violence is a "cleansing force" which "frees the native from his [sic] inferiority complex". iii) Education: enables the masses to "understand social truths and gives the key to them".

Why did Fanon resign his position?

Fanon resigned his position after three years on the grounds that it was impossible to cure with psychiatry the psychic wounds that were the direct result of the continued oppression of the colonial system (Oprah).

Where was Fanon educated?

Fanon studied medicine and psychiatry at Lyon University (France)

From which conviction is the argument of this text drawn?

Fanon's conviction that colonialism is a total project that does not leave any part of the human person and its reality untouched.

How extensive is Fanon's explicit treatment of Marxism?

Fanon's explicit treatment of Marxism is limited. It is Sartre who insists in his preface that the revolution will inaugurate a socialist future. Perhaps Fanon does not address Marxism in great detail because he does not want to foreground what it still a European school of thought.

Who does Fanon quote in his exposition of the legacy of colonialism post-independence?

For Fanon, colonialism has destroyed pre-existing social forms, and in its place it has left primarily mimicry of itself. Quotes Monsieur M'ba, the president of the Republic of Gabon: "Gabon is independent, but between Gabon and France nothing has changed; everything goes on as before"

How does Fanon redefine the term 'lumpenproletariat'?

For Marx, this term referred to the rogue working class, those members of the working class who were too disorganised and uninformed ever to be part of the class revolution. Fanon argues that being uneducated means in part to be free of colonial ideologies. These rogue members of the colonial proletariat - which Fanon identifies as the rural peasantry, are therefore in a special position to lead the revolution, instead of being excluded from it. (link to comment on corrupting force of language in BSWM)

What is his theory of the lumpenproletariat a development on?

Formalisation of Fanon's earlier reflections on the role of the fellah in colonial Algeria - the group lying outside the system of urban colonial and anti-colonial struggle, a figure of purity and revolutionary power.

Where does Fanon articulate his anti-essentialist view of struggle?

In a 1960 essay entitled 'Unity and Solidarity are the Conditions for African Liberation", Fanon writes that inter-African solidarity must be a "solidarity of action".

What is the title of the second chapter?

Grandeur and the Weakness of Spontaneity

How does he criticise himself?

He doesn't see himself as a legitimate architect of post-colonial society as he himself no longer has the pre-colonial, non-European psychology.

What parallel does Fanon draw with the trauma induced by colonial violence?

He draws a parallel between the psychological effects of the horrors of the world wars (now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

How does Fanon characterise the colonial world?

He views the colonial world as a "manichean world", strictly divided between good and evil, black and white, the colonised and the coloniser, subhuman and human. Internal divisions like gender, religion, ethnicity and class get erased (although this can enable greater unity and organisation around a national or racial consciousness)

In colonised societies, how are the means of achieving submission different?

In colonised societies, submission maintained by more overt, violent exercises of power, "contained by rifle butts and napalm". Colonial police, soldiers and their threats of violence, more than education/ideology, keep colonised in submission.

What does Fanon argue should be the purpose of the state?

To uphold and defend psychological integrity. Hobbes viewed state's purpose as delivering physical security to individuals, but Fanon emphasises this psychological protection as the primary purpose.

How was this context reflected in his work?

His participation in the Algerian revolutionary struggle shifted his thinking from theorisation of blackness to a wider, more ambitious theory of colonialism, anti-colonial struggle, and visions for a post-colonial culture and society.

Who describes Arendt's critique.

Homi Bhaba paraphrases the situation: Arendt's criticism of the book in the late sixties was "an attempt at staunching the wildfire it spread across university campuses" while she readily acknowledged that it was really Sartre's preface that glorified violence beyond Fanon's words or wishes.

What can Fanon's work as a whole be understood to engage with?

How respect is secured, destroyed and regained; how the ability to struggle is part of self-respect; and the consequences for the loss of respect for psychological well-being; and the connection between self-respect and how one is treated by one's government and one's society.

What does this chapter consider?

How the colonised begin to organise themselves in the early stages of anti-colonial revolution.

What does this chapter, The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness, address?

How to unite the urban and rural areas into a single 'national consciousness'.

Where does Fanon compare anti-semitism with anti-black racism?

In Chapter 5, Fanon discusses Sartre's account of anti-Semitism (1948). Whereas the anti-Semite fears the Jew because of his alleged power and super-capacity, the anti-Black racist detests the Black person because of his alleged weakness and incapacity. That is, anti-Semitism reflects a panic about Jewish superiority, anti-Black racism reflects contempt for Black inferiority.

What was the contrast between Fanon's treatment in France and his treatment in Martinique?

In Martinique, he was middle class and fair-skinned whereas in France people called out in the streets when they saw him.

Where does Fanon explore the veil?

In the chapter 'Algeria Unveiled', Fanon explores the relationship between Islam, tradition, colonial rule, and revolutionary consciousness. The veil puzzles Fanon and challenges his deepest political commitment: postcoloniality means an embrace of the new. Revolution is absolute and radical, marking a break with the past rather than a return to a different version of the past. What does that mean for traditions that have been suppressed by colonial rule, for example the veil in Islamic cultural practice? Fanon clear that a return to African civilisation = mirage. Not the case for Fanon's treatment of Islamic traditions in Algeria and other parts of the Maghreb. Fanon claims that even the women's "alleged confinement" in the pre-revolutionary period was in fact a chosen withdrawal into a secret realm untouchable by the colonisers. "The Algerian woman, in imposing such a restriction on herself, in choosing a form of existence limited in scope, was deepening her consciousness of struggle and preparing for combat".

What does he argue in an essay on medicine?

In the essay on medicine in 'A Dying Colonialism', Fanon argues that even colonial medicine, which 'in all objectivity and all humanity' ought to be perceived as utterly beneficial, is perceived by the colonised as just another part of colonial oppression. Moreover, because the colonised held back from colonial medicine until that last possible moment, colonised patients were likely to be extremely sick, and most often died, which in turn reinforced the general mistrust.

What point does Fanon make about language?

In the opening chapter to Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues that to speak a language is to participate in a world, to adopt a civilisation. If speaking a language means participating in a world and adopting a civilisation, then the language of the colonised, a language imposed by centuries of colonial domination and dedicated to the elimination or abjection of other expressive forms, speaks the world of the coloniser. To speak as the colonised is therefore to participate in one's own oppression and to reflect the very structures of your alienation in everything from vocabulary to syntax to intonation.

What does Fanon explore in the penultimate chapter?

In the penultimate chapter, 'The Negro and Psychopathology', Fanon explores from a psycho-analytical perspective the relationship between a nation and a family. A European family inculcates in their children the beliefs and behaviours that make them good citizens. Argues that the ways in which black families become inculcated with views present them as the danger.

What was the wider intellectual context of 'The Wretched of the Earth' (1961)?

In the wave of decolonisation following WW2, a number of public intellectuals were discussing how colonised people would create new nations after independence.

What appears as a slight tension/contradiction here?

Initially appears to be a bit of a contradiction running through Fanon's text as he portrays the colonised people as falsely and harmfully accepting the ideas of the coloniser and as having awoken to the self-serving claims of the coloniser.

How does Fanon subdivide the colonised?

Into 3 groups: i) the worker - relation of dependency (material needs supplied by the colonial system) and naturally revolutionary (exploited, yet also that upon which the coloniser depends). ii) colonised intellectual - compromised figure who plays a crucial role across the body of wretched. Mediates the relation of the colonised for the coloniser, translating the terms of colonial life into the language concepts and thinkable politics of the colonial power. iii) lumpenproletariat - disposable populations that provide nothing to the colonial system (displaced people, slum dwellers, subsistence farmers) and therefore, from the outside, remain the greatest threat to the system.

What is perhaps the sensible middle position?

It is perhaps more plausible to see Fanon as understanding there to be an instinctive, subconscious rejection of the coloniser's claims, one that provokes suspicion but has not yet been fully grasped by the colonised. The purpose of Fanon's text then is to bring out what that rejection amounts to, and what it entails for future society.

What did he then do?

Joined the National Liberation Front (FLN).

What does Judith Butler point out?

Many of the university campuses which took up Fanon's call to arms were never meant to be an audience to the book.

Where was he from?

Martinique, then a French colony in the eastern Caribbean.

What does Fanon argue that men always have?

Men always have violent urges to use their "muscular power" which are repressed/redirected under colonialism (often into dance or tribal rituals).

How does this new phase move away from a pan-African approach?

Moves from a pan-African approach to one focused on the nation - rather than an entire 'race'.

Which economic proposal seems to go against Fanonian principles?

Must ask what Fanon would make of calls for the New Economic Partnership for Africa (NEPAD), an economic doctrine that claims to be 'new' yet is wedded to the neoliberal discourse of capitalist exploitation and is being propounded by an African elite. Clearly further integrates Africa into an unfair global economy and extend suffering of Africa's poor though the continued promotion of private-sector investment. In the forefront of the calls for NEPAD are the African business elites in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya as well as African politicians who launched the policy as a means to give this class an opportunity to reposition themselves vis-a-vis the neoliberal capitalist order.

How does the colonial state maintain its power? What narrative does this subvert?

Under colonial rule, it is much more upfront and transparent in the form of the policeman and the soldier. Inverts the narrative of colonialism as a civilising force to subdue the innate, animalistic violence of the colonised.

Which non-Western author can you cite to back up Fanon's psychological claims?

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1986) explains that colonialism's "most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world". For wa Thiong'o, this is essential to complete/make effective economic and political control.

How must any perceived tendency towards violence on the part of the colonised be understood?

Not as innate to their nature but produced in response to the violence they themselves have experienced.

What is the title of chapter 4?

On National Culture.

How else did Fanon justify his approval of violence?

On the grounds that violence, not civilisation or the rule of law, was the constitutive condition of colonialism itself.

What replaces the colonial bourgeoisie following the achievement of formal independence?

Once colonialism is overthrown, there is a "national bourgeoisie" made up of formerly colonised elite

What is the basic argument of DeGruy's book?

PTSS posits that centuries of slavery in the United States, followed by systemic and structural racism and oppression, including lynching, Jim Crow laws, and unwarranted mass incarceration, have resulted in multigenerational maladaptive behaviors, which originated as survival strategies. The syndrome continues because children whose parents suffer from PTSS are often indoctrinated into the same behaviors, long after the behaviors have lost their contextual effectiveness. DeGruy states that PTSS is not a disorder that can simply be treated and remedied clinically but rather also requires profound social change in individuals, as well as in institutions that continue to reify inequality and injustice toward the descendants of enslaved Africans.

What does the colonial state turn to when force fails?

Psychological warfare which seeks to divide the revolutionary force through manipulating local religious and tribal leaders. When force fails, the colonial state turns to ideological means, trying to control how people think in order to gain submission.

What have colonial authorities sought to train their subjects to believe?

That colonialism was for their own good, seeking to 'convince the natives that colonialism came to lighten their darkness'. They sought to embed the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would once fall back into "barbarism, degradation, and bestiality".

What must the intellectual then realise?

That culture does not produce nationhood, revolution does.

What does Fanon argue about this approach?

That it is too reactive (e.g. still conforming to the colonist's conception of Africa as one group, ignoring the differences of tribe or ethnicity or history).

What does Fanon argue about revolutionary socialism?

That it must be achieved everywhere, otherwise formerly colonised nations will be defeated by their former colonial masters.

What does Fanon argue, conversely?

That movements should not be based on colonial politics and that such parties usually only address the issues faced by a 'metropolitan elite' and therefore do not inspire the majority of the colonised population.

What is the title of the third chapter?

The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

What does Fanon suggest about the black individual who has become part of the 'middle class'?

The black individual who has become part of the 'middle class' has lost her/his affiliation with her/his ancestors' culture, but is treated with persistent suspicion or contempt or condescension by the cultural group with which s/he now seeks to affiliate. The culture s/he seeks to be part of it is imbued with negative stereotypes about black people, resulting in an UNREALISED SELF-HATRED.

Why can the black person never have equal participation in the language and world of the white Parisian?

The black person can perfect speech, but cannot have equal participation in the language and world of the white Parisian because of what Fanon terms the epidermal character of race. To be black and speak with perfect diction is still to be black, and therefore marked as special, unique and surprising. Surprise is a reminder of inferiority. Black people are locked in blackness and white people are locked in whiteness.

What process does Fanon describe in this chapter ('On Violence')?

The coloniser constructs the colonised subject, creating a mindset of submission and inferiority. Decolonisation is therefore about creating 'new men' with a new mindset suited to freedom and not submission.

For this reason, who attacked the book?

The eminent philosopher Hannah Arendt.

In what way is the psychological inferiority described by Fanon still playing out in beauty standards?

The increasing preponderance of young African women (as well as mature African women) who wear wigs, weaves, skin-bleach, wear false eyelashes, false nails and blue or light brown contact lens in their eyes in the West, is a consequence of the historical denigration of African women and the elevation of Europeanised/Westernised forms of beauty that have had a profound adverse influence on self-perception. It is also a manifestation of the profound alienation that exists on an unconscious level among African women as a consequence of the sophisticated forms of social conditioning and programming in the prevailing racist Western dominated society. The escape from one's natural self; false synthetic attachments to one's natural body that are intended to allegedly beautify and imitate European forms of beauty are the epitome of a people who engage in self-contempt and self-hatred of their own skin and representations.

What horrified Fanon upon arrival at the hospital?

The indigenous inmates were all chained to their beds in straightjackets when Fanon arrived. He immediately ordered the nurse to release them all. Fanon explained to them that there will be no more straightjackets, no more chains, no more segregation in the wards between settlers and natives, that henceforth the patients will live and work together in and as groups. Perhaps nothing in Fanon's life so decisive represented his politics of translation as his dramatic entrance to the hospital at Blida-Joinville, translating the patients from passive, victimised objects into subjects who began to recognise that they were in charge of their own destiny. From disempowerment to empowerment, from the experience of Black Skin, White Masks to the revolutionary Wretched of the Earth

Which social group did Fanon see as a significant force of social change?

The lumpenproletariat, those who are excluded from the formal sphere of the economy and politics, and who are often dismissed as a viable political force.

How does the cycle of dependency continue today?

The majority of NGOs in Africa are engaged in the provision of services that are the responsibility of the African state to provide for their people (clean water, healthcare, education etc).

Where is the title 'The Wretched of the Earth' (1961) derived from?

The opening lyrics of 'the internationale', a socialist anthem written by a leading member of the Paris Commune in the month after it was crushed, which emphasises the idea that there are no supreme saviours, but rather the people must save themselves.

Although Fanon mentions Algeria throughout the text, who is he addressing?

The peoples of the 'third world' more broadly. Aimed at a global audience of the colonised and those within countries that were formally newly independent, to give an account of how colonialism has left a huge social and intellectual legacy that had not yet been thoroughly appreciated or challenged. He also draws broadly from the experiences of the colonised world.

What did he witness whilst working at the hospital?

The start of an insurgency (from 1st November 1954) that turned into the Algerian War of Independence.

What did this lead him to conclude?

This led him to the conclusion that the colonial framework hindered interpersonal relationships to such an extent that he, as a black psychiatrist from a colonial outpost, could not engage authentically with other colonised people. Fanon argues - crediting Hobbes - that meaningful relationships can only be created when all parties to that relationship validate the social contract. In colonised societies, colonised people cannot validate the social contract with sincerity.

However, in what ways does this new national bourgeoisie replicate colonial patterns?

This ruling class is an "underdeveloped bourgeoisie", lacking strong industries or a long enough history to really know how to control the economy. In turn they cannot truly nationalise the economy and instead primarily serve as intermediaries, shipping resources from the country to Europe and meaning that the economy looks pretty much the same as it did under colonialism - the only difference is who benefits from exploiting the masses.

For Fanon, how does the capitalist modern state perpetuate its ideology and thus maintain power?

Through a whole set of principles and intermediaries ("moral teachers, counsellors and 'bewilderers'") which elicit conformity from the people, however impoverished they are.

How is the experience of colonialism different for the colonised intellectual compared with those in rural areas?

Urban intellectuals have in some ways benefited from colonialism, which brought in businesses and industries from which they profit, whereas it has only hurt those in rural areas. National parties over look this difference and are blind to the importance of violence as it is not part of the daily lives of intellectuals.

To what does Fanon attribute centrality in his analysis of colonial rule?

Violence.

What had changed when the book was re-issued?

When the book was re-issued in 1968 as an African-American mass-market paperback, the subtitle had changed. Now it was 'The Handbook for the Black Revolution that is changing the shape of the World'

How does the chapter end?

With a comment about how global capitalism implicitly supports decolonisation because it wants consumers in the colonies.

In the third stage, what do intellectuals begin to do?

Write "combat literature, revolutionary literature" to galvanise people into fighting the colonist.

What does Fanon suggest are the 3 stages in the cultural trajectory of the colonised intellectual?

i) mimicry of colonial culture, ii) 'negritude' phase - extolling the virtues of African culture, iii) love for culture moves to a fight for liberation.