in the wretched of the earth frantz fanon

Black African soldiers were also segregated from French troops, as were Arab Africans, who the French reviled and treated like pariahs on their own soil.įanon lived this experience at the very moment that the French army set out to confront German fascism, with its notions of racial purity. White French troops were separated from Black West Indians, who were supposed to be French. Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique and left when he was 18 years old in 1943 to join the Free French Forces. Prior to this experience, he had also trained for combat in Algeria in the French army during the Second World War. It was during this first visit to Algeria that he encountered the virus of racism that somehow, seems to have eluded him in Martinique.Ī street on the island of Martinique, French West Indies, 1938. As a Martinican medical student specializing in clinical psychiatry in France in the 1950s, he treated impoverished Algerians as he himself both experienced and diagnosed colonial racism. In retrospect, Fanon's destiny appears to have been tied to Algeria from the beginning. He would often finish treating an Algerian, and then move on to a French police officer or official suffering from nervous exhaustion or trauma, a direct result of the demands of enforcing an oppressive colonial order. Unable to keep up the delicate balancing act, Fanon submitted his letter of resignation to the Resident Minister, Governor General of Algeria. There he put his life at risk by treating FLN fedayin who had been tortured by the French.

The FLN was at the forefront of Algeria's grueling battle against French colonialism, and Fanon had earned the respect of the FLN during his tenure as chef de médecin at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria in the mid-1950s. At the time, he was actively engaged in the Algerian liberation struggle, serving as the Front de libération nationale's (FLN) ambassador to Ghana. It was only some years later that I discovered the scope of the Fanon's influence, not only on anti-colonial movements, but also the New Left, Quebec nationalists and North American Indigenous activists.

From left to right: Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohamed Khider, Crown Prince of Morocco Moulay Hassan II, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf and Mostefa Lacheraf. The five leaders of the FLN (National Liberation Front) at Rabat airport before boarding a plane bound for Tunis, Oct.

In the wretched of the earth frantz fanon