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I intend to argue that, appeal to national culture of the colonised is, perhaps, preferable to the use of violence as means of achieving a holistic emancipation of the colonised or the peoples of the third world countries. My argument is based on a premise. The premise is that the catharic effect argument upon which Frantz Fanon builds the universality of the use of violence is apparently faulty. The catharic effect argument maintains that, there is the limbic system in the human brain. The limbic system is the nucleic in the brain that allows responses to shocks and threats. This limbic system informs the human brain to react to violence, according to Fanon. If this is taken then, it becomes the case that scientifically the use of violence against violence could be implied. The first question to ask is, how universal is the universality assumed of the cathartic effect argument?
One of the ways to answer this question is that, though, the limbic system operation supported the natural use of violence against violence, yet it is not the case that it establishes it universality. If it did then, it would have been the case that all available violence done to an individual should attract counter violence. But these have not been the case, even as a means of emancipation among the colonised in the history of the colonisers and the colonised. As such, one can argue that the use of violence as a means of emancipation is not universal but rather contextual. Fanon’s argument for violence as tool of emancipation probably was predicated on his experience from Martinique, an African province of France. In Martinique, like in some other French colonies, France ruled through the policy of assimilation. The policy of assimilation aims at making a French-man of a Black-man or a colonised person. France considered it appropriate to extend rights of citizenship and political rights to the African residents of Dakar, Goree, Rafisque, Saint Louis, and Senegal on the condition of imbibing French culture and thought pattern.
This foremost French colonial enclave in West Africa became the experimental laboratory for assimilation practice. I think the underlying essence of the policy is to affirm the assumed superiority of French culture to those of its non-European colonies. Fanon, who witnessed the denigration, subjugation and all forms of inhuman treatment done to the colonised in Martinique, Senegal and Algeria all in the name of civilization was convinced that violence is a justifiable tool for the colonised to regain their distorted essence and worth. One of the major ways in which colonization has affected the black is through the assimilation of the black by the total adoption of the French Whiteman’s language. Fanon sees this as a way in which the white make a definition out of the black because according to Fanon the adoption of the French language makes the black a completely changed man to himself, family and neighborhood. Fanon states that colonization took away the black culture, civilization, long historical past which has been difficult to regain through resistance and eventually decolonization.
However, Fanon says that it is time to fight against this process. As such, violence is acceptable for him. But then, British method of rule is different. The British government used the policy of association. The policy of association acknowledged that the Euro-African relationship should be one of mutual cooperation for the overall profit of the colony and metropolis. In theory, the new policy was supposed to respect African culture and institutions; however, it is constantly renewed by the intellectual and cultural leadership of coloniser as an agent of civilization.
In essence, the association policy could be considered more cost-effective, and less prone to local resistance. This is because, for instance, there were no continual uses of violence in any of the British West African. The point here is that the direct and indirect effect of the policy of assimilation had its cathartic effect on Fanon, and as such, informed his means for emancipation. While in British West Africa countries the subjugation and the marginalization in these countries could not have attracted the use of violence as a tool for decolonisation or emancipation that is why we couldn’t have one especially in a country like Nigeria, for it is said that her independence was given on a platter of gold. As such, the need for violence as a tool for emancipation may not be a universal thing even when there is a natural explanation for it use.
In other words, all societies do not have similar experience of colonialism, some experience were more humane than others. The French assimilation policy was brutal, it took a tabu-larasa approach; assuming that the colonised had no better self worth, value and dignity of their own. As such, the use of violence as a means of asserting one’s identity and re-capturing one’s humanity in Algeria is justifiable given the brutality done to the humanity of the colonised. But in cases like Nigeria and Ghana, there may not be the need for violence, for the approach used by Britain is more humane.
Thus, if violence will not work in all societies as a tool for a holistic emancipation, what then could work? In other words, if the use of violence as a means of regaining self worth and value may not be conceived as universal thing, what else could be prescribed as a tool to regaining self identity, robust consciousness, value and dignity of the colonised nations? Can culture work?
Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth argued for the importance of resuscitating national culture. Frantz Fanon’s essay on ‘National Culture’ focuses on helping various cultures of the world, particularly the African American cultures, to rediscover who they were and how unique they were prior to colonisation, with the understanding that they have lost their identity due to colonization. Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of culture that is based not so much on collective cultural traditions or ancestor-worship as political agency and the collective attempt to dismantle the economic foundations of colonial rule. Colonialism, as Fanon argues, not only physically disarms the colonized subject but robs her of a pre-colonial cultural heritage. For Fanon, a national culture is not folklore, not an abstract populism that believes it can discover the people's true nature.
A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence. The point here is that national culture is defined as a culture that encompasses the value system of particular nations. This means that culture is resilient and rudimentary to having a holistic emancipation. On this basis, the author is of the view that culture should be elevated as against violence as a means of emancipation. This is because; it is forever resilient and not ephemeral, because as Amilcar Cabral also says, mode of production, which is the material and the technological part of a people’s culture, is the determinant of history of a people.
For Cabral, mode of production as the aspect of a people’s culture encapsulates their history, in that, it shows, when studied the level of a people’s achievements through their own dint of hard work, within their unique environment, of which they can be proud justifiably. Hence, revamping ‘National Culture’ people’s self-expression through heroic exploits of conditioning their local environment serves their needs and sustains their very existence. So, national culture is a way of saying “ I had, over time, deploying my intelligence to mediate my environment and local condition, in such ways that had yielded a symbiosis between both of us, and because of this I am proud of my efforts, and those of my forebears that had existed in history”. So, my history did not start just on contact with the white coloniser! This is an expression of self-worth and dignity!
In other words, the concept of national liberation according to Amilcar Cabral is ‘the regaining of the historical personality of the people, its return to history through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which it was subjected’9. This means that national liberation is the absence and total destruction of imperialist domination, it also deals with the restoration of the lost historical personality of people which imperialism had destroyed through colonization. As such, rather than elevating the use of violence for emancipation as presented by Fanon, his appeal to culture, I suppose, should be elevated. We should have the centricity of ‘National Culture’ rather than violence as a means and process of emancipation.
Conclusion
In spite of the arguments levelled for the use of violence as a means of emancipation, culture is a preferable tool.
References and further readings:
Fanon, Frantz Black Skin White Masks, (New York: Groove Press, 1967)
Fanon Frantz, Toward the African Revolution (New York: Groove Press, 1967)
Iliffe, John Africans: the History of a Continent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Fanon, Frantz The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Groove Press, 1967)
Blackey, Robert "Fanon and Cabral: A Contrast" in Theories of Revolution for Africa, Vol 12, No.2 June 1974