Franz Fanon's The Wreched of the earth

 This blog is based on Franz Fanon's The Wreched of the earth and this task was assigned by Megha Trivedi Ma'am.

Introduction

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the the Earth remains a foundational work in anti-colonial theory, post-colonial studies, and critical theory. Written in the context of the Algerian War of Independence, it combines psychiatric insight, philosophical reflection, Marxist-influenced class analysis, and visceral lived experience of colonial violence. Fanon interrogates how colonialism dehumanises both the colonised and the coloniser, how decolonisation is fundamentally revolutionary and violent, and how the newly independent nation‐state risks repeating old patterns of domination. In what follows I address your eight questions in turn, while weaving in how the themes interconnect, and with attention to accuracy and nuance.

1) What is the role of violence in colonialism with reference to The Wretched of the Earth?

Fanon’s argument opens with a startling claim: colonialism is not a “thinking machine” or “body endowed with reasoning faculties,” but rather “naked violence” and will only yield when confronted with greater violence. 

Key points:

The colonial situation is built on conquest, subjugation, coercion, dispossession. Fanon describes the colonial world as divided into two “species”: the settler and the colonised, not just socially but biologically-metaphorically. 

Within that division, violence is not simply episodic: it is structural, embedded in every aspect of the colonial set-up—military, police, economic expropriation, segregation of space (coloniser sector vs native quarters). 

For Fanon, the process of decolonisation is inherently violent: it is the “unconditional and total substitution of one ‘species’ of mankind by another.” 

Why violence? Because the colonised subject must break the internalised inferiority, the “atmospheric violence” (a pervasive violence beneath the skin). Through violent struggle the colonised reclaim agency, humanity, subjectivity. Fanon writes that the colonised “intuitively believe that their liberation must be achieved and can only be achieved by force.” 

However, Fanon does not romanticise violence: he warns that if violence simply replaces colonial rule by a domestic elite, then the result may mimic colonial oppression. The aim is not only overthrow but transformation.

In short: violence is the engine of colonial rule and of decolonisation: colonialism is violent at its root; decolonisation for Fanon must be violent to heal the psychic and material injury of colonialism.

2) Describe what Manichaeism means in a colonial context.

Fanon uses the term Machaean to characterise the colonial world: a world divided starkly into “good” vs “evil,” “white” vs “black,” “civilised” vs “savage.” For him:

The coloniser projects onto the colonised a figure of absolute evil. The colonised are reduced to beast, animal, “other species”. The coloniser’s world becomes a binary, antagonistic universe. 

Colonial space is structured accordingly: the settler side is clean, modern, safe; the native quarters are neglected, pathological, criminal. Fanon describes this as the colonial world’s geometry of violence and segregation. 

The effect of the Manichaean framing is dehumanisation: if you are placed as “dark,” you are not merely exploited, you are rendered ethically suspect, without subjectivity. Fanon writes: “the colonized is—the quintessence of evil.” 

This condition, in Fanon’s view, explains why the colonised must resort to violence: for the colonised cannot operate within the moral economy of the coloniser—they must assert their humanity outside the binary imposed on them.

Thus within the colonial context, Manichaeism is the ideological-metaphysical condition that enables and justifies the material domination of the colonised, by reducing them to an ontological “other.”

3) What does Fanon mean when he says “the infrastructure is also a superstructure” in colonialism?

The phrase is: “In the colonies the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect: you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich.” 

Explanation:

In classical Marxist terms, the infrastructure (or base) refers to economic relations of production, while the superstructure refers to ideology, culture, law, politics. Fanon argues that in the colonial context these categories collapse: the economic and the ideological are intertwined in the racialised logic of colonialism. 

That is to say: racial privilege (whiteness) is not simply built on wealth, but the wealth is built on racial privilege; similarly racial privilege (whiteness) is reinforced by wealth. In the colonies the economic relations (infrastructure) and the ideological/ racial relations (superstructure) are one and the same.

Fanon says this means a pure base-superstructure analysis is insufficient: one cannot say that culture is simply a reflection of the economy. In colonialism, the racial logic (superstructure) is the economy (infrastructure). Thus he says Marxist analysis must be “slightly stretched” when applied to colonial conditions. 

The practical implication: to understand colonialism you must attend to the interlocking of economics and race/colonial ideology. The colonised are exploited economically, but that exploitation is legitimised and shaped by racial ideology; and the ideology is enabled by the economic extraction.

In short: Fanon is pointing to the fusion of economic and ideological domination in colonial settings, which demands a different analytic approach.

4) According to Fanon, what is wrong with the “racialization” of culture?

Fanon examines culture in the chapter “On National Culture”, and he criticises what he calls the racialization of culture (for example through the movement of Négritude, or simplistic appeals to a primitive African essentialist culture) as opposed to nationalisation of culture. Key points:

Racialization of culture occurs when colonised intellectuals adopt the logic of the coloniser’s racial dichotomies and respond by locating culture purely in, e.g., blackness, African roots, tribal identity, authenticity of the past. Fanon argues this is inadequate. 

Fanon’s critique: If you fixate on a racial essence (“We are black, we are African, we have this rooted pre-colonial culture”), you risk reenacting the colonial binary (white/black, civilised/primitive). Moreover such culture becomes static, mythic, frozen, rather than dynamic, resistant, creative. 

He argues instead for a national culture forged in the struggle of decolonisation: culture arises from collective resistance, from the lived experience of the masses, not from exoticised or romanticised pre-colonial traditions. “National culture in the underdeveloped countries … must lie at the very heart of the liberation struggle.” 

Racialization, for Fanon, also risks co-option: the colonised intellectual might be drawn into serving the colonial myth of the “authentic native,” which then becomes consumable within neo-colonial circuits.

Finally, Fanon warns that a culture defined purely in racial terms may become inward-looking, exclusionary, or ossified—thus defeating the emancipatory potential of culture.

In brief: Fanon accepts the necessity of culture but insists it must be revolutionary, rooted in struggle, dynamic—not a nostalgic racial “essence.”

5) What is the national bourgeoisie, and why does Fanon think it is “useless”?

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon develops a critique of the “national bourgeoisie” (or “native bourgeoisie”) in the newly independent or decolonising countries.

Definition / characteristics:

The national bourgeoisie is the class within the colonised nation that is relatively privileged under colonialism—urban professionals, small entrepreneurs, civil servants, lawyers, doctors—who benefit from the colonial system and have stakes in its continuation. 

They aim at replacing the foreign (coloniser) elite but within the same structures of power, often replicating extraction rather than transforming society. “It is better for the bourgeoisie if colonial channels of oppression are maintained.” 

Why Fanon thinks they are “useless”:

Fanon writes that in the history of under-developed countries the bourgeois phase “is a completely useless phase.” 

Because this class lacks the revolutionary drive: they have something to lose; they are socially tied to the colonial apparatus; they wish primarily to inherit the trappings of coloniser privilege rather than emancipate the masses. Thus they tend towards neo-colonialism, internalised class domination, and perpetuation of inequality. 

Fanon warns that if the national bourgeoisie takes power, the independence will be hollow—a change of faces but not a change of relations. They will reproduce the colonial state, often worse. 

So for Fanon genuine decolonisation must bypass or transform the national bourgeoisie; the revolutionary constituencies must instead be the peasants, lumpen-proletariat, masses—the “wretched of the earth” who have nothing to lose. 

Hence, the national bourgeoisie is “useless” in the sense of being incapable of delivering transformative decolonisation; rather, they risk becoming an internalised version of the coloniser.

6) Describe how decolonisation fits into a larger global capitalist picture.

Fanon situates decolonisation not merely as the removal of foreign rule, but as the rupture of a global system of capitalist-imperial extraction. Some key strands:

He argues that colonialism was central to the accumulation of wealth in Europe: resource extraction, forced labour, dispossession of colonised peoples. 

Decolonisation then is not simply national liberation—it is a challenge to the world order of capitalist imperialism. The newly independent nation must address not just political sovereignty, but economic dependency and neocolonial structures. For Fanon: “the misfortune of the colonized African masses … is first of a vital, material order.” 

He warns, however, that many post-colonial states fall into neocolonial patterns: though the coloniser may depart, the structures of extraction, dependency, unequal trade, foreign corporations, continue. Thus decolonisation must include economic transformation, not just political change. 

Furthermore, Fanon emphasises that the masses (peasants and lumpen) are the revolutionary subject because they are outside the colonial class structure; they are the global proletariat of the colonial system. This links the local struggle to global capitalist relations. 

Thus decolonisation in Fanon’s view is neither purely nationalistic nor purely political: it is a global economic and social upheaval that challenges capitalist-imperialist order.

7) What is the relation Fanon describes between culture and combat?

Fanon connects culture (in its dynamic sense) and combat (the struggle of the colonised) in a number of ways:

He argues that culture does not simply precede struggle: rather, culture is born of struggle. In “On National Culture” he writes that “the revolutionary action produces culture, not culture that produces revolution.” 

Combat (violent struggle, resistance) is the moment when the colonised reclaim agency, self-respect, subjectivity. That moment feeds into national consciousness, and that consciousness shapes new cultural forms. In this sense culture becomes militant, combative: it is the expression of liberation. 

Fanon uses the example of literature, arts, oral storytelling: when colonised people fight, their cultural productions change—they no longer mimic the coloniser’s forms but express the lived reality of resistance. Thus culture and combat are mutually reinforcing. 

However, Fanon warns that culture without combat—and a merely aesthetic culture rooted in nostalgia—becomes passive, safe and eventually sterile. The authentic national culture must be rooted in the lived collective struggle of the people.

Therefore the relation is dialectical: culture is transformed by combat, and combat must inform culture. The fight for liberation creates the ground for cultural renewal.

8) Write a short note on the title “The Wretched of the Earth”.

The title evokes several layered meanings:

“Wretched” refers to the colonised masses—those subjected to exploitation, dispossession, dehumanisation, and violence. Fanon speaks of the peasantry, the lumpen-proletariat, the “mass of underdeveloped nations” who are the true actors of decolonisation, not the elites. 

“Of the Earth” suggests universality: the wretched are not just in one place but across the globe—the colonised of Asia, Africa, Latin America engaged in the global system of colonial capitalism. The earth is wide, but their condition is shared.

The title can thus be read as a claim: there are millions living at the margins of the earth, whose history has been imposed upon them, whose voices have been suppressed, and who now must assert themselves in the process of decolonisation.

At the same time the phrase evokes religious and moral overtones (cf. “Blessed are the meek” etc.), though Fanon is not speaking in religious terms but secular revolutionary terms: the wretched are the oppressed, the object of history, and now the subject of their own becoming.

In sum, the title encapsulates Fanon’s moral-political orientation: solidarity with the oppressed, recognition of their collective agency, and the ambition of rewriting the world’s order from the vantage of those who have been rendered wretched.

Conclusion

Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is uncompromising in its diagnosis of colonialism and ambitious in its articulation of decolonisation. It insists on the centrality of violence in both the maintenance of empire and the liberation from it; it shows how in the colonial context race, economy, culture and power are intimately entwined; it warns of the dangers of post-colonial elites and of mere independence without transformation; and it insists that culture freed from struggle is at risk of becoming cosmetic or complicit.