Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education 9789460910418, 9789460910432, 9789460910449

Citation preview

TRANSGRESSIONS: CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION Series Editors Shirley Steinberg, McGill University, Canada Joe Kincheloe, McGill University, Canada Editorial Board Heinz-Hermann Kruger, Halle University, Germany Norman Denzin, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, USA Rhonda Hammer, University of California Los Angeles, USA Christine Quail, SUNY, Oneonta Ki Wan Sung, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea

TRANSGRESSIONS: CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION Cultural studies provides an analytical toolbox for both making sense of educational practice and extending the insights of educational professionals into their labors. In this context Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education provides a collection of books in the domain that specify this assertion. Crafted for an audience of teachers, teacher educators, scholars and students of cultural studies and others interested in cultural studies and pedagogy, the series documents both the possibilities of and the controversies surrounding the intersection of cultural studies and education. The editors and the authors of this series do not assume that the interaction of cultural studies and education devalues other types of knowledge and analytical forms. Rather the intersection of these knowledge disciplines offers a rejuvenating, optimistic, and positive perspective on education and educational institutions. Some might describe its contribution as democratic, emancipatory, and transformative. The editors and authors maintain that cultural studies helps free educators from sterile, monolithic analyses that have for too long undermined efforts to think of educational practices by providing other words, new languages, and fresh metaphors. Operating in an interdisciplinary cosmos, Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education is dedicated to exploring the ways cultural studies enhances the study and practice of education. With this in mind the series focuses in a non-exclusive way on popular culture as well as other dimensions of cultural studies including social theory, social justice and positionality, cultural dimensions of technological innovation, new media and media literacy, new forms of oppression emerging in an electronic hyperreality, and postcolonial global concerns. With these concerns in mind cultural studies scholars often argue that the realm of popular culture is the most powerful educational force in contemporary culture. Indeed, in the twenty-first century this pedagogical dynamic is sweeping through the entire world. Educators, they believe, must understand these emerging realities in order to gain an important voice in the pedagogical conversation. Without an understanding of cultural pedagogy’s (education that takes place outside of formal schooling) role in the shaping of individual identity–youth identity in particular–the role educators play in the lives of their students will continue to fade. Why do so many of our students feel that life is incomprehensible and devoid of meaning? What does it mean, teachers wonder, when young people are unable to describe their moods, their affective affiliation to the society around them. Meanings provided young people by mainstream institutions often do little to help them deal with their affective complexity, their difficulty negotiating the rift between meaning and affect. School knowledge and educational expectations seem as anachronistic as a ditto machine, not that learning ways of rational thought and making sense of the world are unimportant. But school knowledge and educational expectations often have little to offer students about making sense of the way they feel, the way their affective lives are shaped. In no way do we argue that analysis of the production of youth in an electronic mediated world demands some “touchy-feely” educational superficiality. What is needed in this context is a rigorous analysis of the interrelationship between pedagogy, popular culture, meaning making, and youth subjectivity. In an era marked by youth depression, violence, and suicide such insights become extremely important, even life saving. Pessimism about the future is the common sense of many contemporary youth with its concomitant feeling that no one can make a difference. If affective production can be shaped to reflect these perspectives, then it can be reshaped to lay the groundwork for optimism, passionate commitment, and transformative educational and political activity. In these ways cultural studies adds a dimension to the work of education unfilled by any other sub-discipline. This is what Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education seeks to produce—literature on these issues that makes a difference. It seeks to publish studies that help those who work with young people, those individuals involved in the disciplines that study children and youth, and young people themselves improve their lives in these bizarre times.

Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education

George J. Sefa Dei University of Toronto, OISE, Canada Foreword by

ATO SEKYI-OTU Professor Emeritus, Division of Social Science-Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto Canada.

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6091-041-8 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-043-2 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-044-9 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ................................................................................................................. vii Ato Sekyi-Otu 1. Fanon, Anti-Colonialism and Education: An Introduction.................................1 George J. Sefa Dei 2. Fanon and Anti-Colonial Theorizing ................................................................11 George J. Sefa Dei 3. Decolonizing the Euro-American Public Education System: A Transgressive Revisiting of Fanon................................................................29 Paul Issahaku 4. Decolonizing Imaginations ...............................................................................49 Natacha Nsabimana 5. The Cinematic Legacy of Frantz Fanon: On Claire Denis’ Beau Travail and I can’t Sleep ..........................................................................63 Hannah Dyer 6. Meeting Fanon in the Kasbash: Reading the Wretched of the Earth Through the Cinematic Lens of the Battle of the Algiers – Personal and Pedagogical Reflections .............................................................................75 Meredith Lordan 7. Reading Fanon Differently: Black Canadian Perspectives ...............................83 Njoki Wane 8. Understanding Race Induced Trauma and the Black Women’s Experience Through Fanon .............................................................................107 Nadesha Gayle 9. Fanon’s Pedagogical Implications to Women’s Studies in the Philippines.............................................................................................133 Rose Ann Torres 10. Fanon’s Psychology of the Mind, the “Yellow” Colonizer and the Racialized Minoritized in Japan .........................................................157 Yumiko Kawano

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

11. “The Last shall be First”: Nationalism, Decolonization and “New Humanism” Somalia – a nation in waiting, a state in the making........177 Fouzia Warsame 12. The Hundred Year Headache: Israel, Palestine, and Frantz Fanon ...............197 Neil Orlowsky Notes on Contributors ............................................................................................227

vi

FOREWORD

As this volume goes to press a new school year has begun in Toronto, as indeed in many parts of the world. In Toronto this is also the occasion for a novel experiment in public education: the opening of the first Africentric elementary school in the province – one in which the canonical curriculum will be delivered with a particular attention to the histories, cultures and living experiences of African peoples. For its advocates and architects, the necessity and mission of this experiment are ones that, as attested by the essays assembled here, are at the heart of the work of the AfricanCaribbean psychiatrist and social philosopher Frantz Fanon. For central to Fanon’s critical theory is the insight that racist culture vitiates the promise of education, understood not only as the acquisition of knowledge but also as the initiation of persons of equal moral worth into a civic community, even a world, of shareable affections and allegiances. How can it be otherwise in a social world in which the full humanity and individuality of persons are, according to Fanon, fundamentally called into question? In such a world the institutions, conventions and practices charged with the formation of the future citizen pose an enormous challenge to the selfesteem, expectations and capabilities of those set apart by race. A great many are condemned to fail, expected to fail, and do indeed fail. Under the ordinance of race, excellence and blackness are and are seen to be mutually exclusive, save for the anomalous exceptional black who, precisely, confirms the rule. Just as the social convention of blackness – “the lived experience of the black” – becomes “the fact of blackness”, so the judgment that black students fail becomes the reality of forty per cent of black schoolchildren failing in Toronto schools. What is to be done in the face of this toxic marriage of judgment and fact? If he were alive today, would Fanon endorse the establishment of Africentric schools as a solution to this problem, while we wait with baited breath for the dawn of the “postracial” day? We cannot answer with any degree of certainty. It is enough that with Fanon as pathfinder the contributors to Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education revisit the drama of racial degradation and other scenes of social exclusion and political subordination – from gender and cultural representations to internal colonialisms and the plight of the Palestinians. Together they explore paradigmatic forms of social, cultural, psychic and political structures that thwart the mission of education in the enlarged sense of the cultivation of human autonomy and community. More than that, they offer useful sketches of insurgent practices designed to reshape in life and mind what Fanon called “this narrow world” of subjugated beings. Ato Sekyi-Otu Professor Emeritus Division of Social Science/ Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought York University Toronto, Canada vii

GEORGE J. SEFA DEI

1. FANON, ANTI-COLONIALISM AND EDUCATION

AN INTRODUCTION

As noted in Dei and Simmons (2010a) Fanon is too important not to have been seriously engaged within debates about schooling and education. This book takes up the challenge of an anti-colonial reading of Fanon to broach questions of identity, difference and belonging, and the implications for schooling and education. The intention is to offer a careful and selective capturing of Fanon’s works, pointing to the relevance for oppressed communities as they resist reorganized colonial relations. While colonialism and neo-colonialism have functioned and continue to function differently in diverse environments and social contexts, we believe we can raise new questions in a bold attempt to re-theorize colonial relations, social difference and the representational politics of education. We must ask new questions in order to contribute to knowledge of how to resist the poisonous viruses of colonialism, racism, exploitation and alienation. Fanon is informative to the pursuit of critical education, especially, when we examine the colonial encounter and the colonized experience. Today we see a saturation of redemption and colonial discourses that re-insert oppressed bodies in re-organized colonial relations. Colonial colour lines continue to play out in our education system from the ways certain bodies and their knowledges are validated or invalidated. Notations of ‘excellence’ are usually ascribed to dominant bodies, their values and practices and, as many others have pointed out, Eurocentricty becomes the tacit norms that all learners are expected to reference in order to seek validation and acceptance in the educational system, (see Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1998). There is a privileging of white colonial knowledges, Black and minoritized bodies are the experts on ‘race’ and equity studies. In high schools, there is streaming of bodies in various programs with Black bodies largely represented in vocational courses as opposed to university-bound academic courses which have largely White and Asian populations (Dei, 2008, Scheurich & Young, 1997, Karenga, 1999, King, 2005, Brathwaite & James, 1996, Brown, 2004). In the universities notwithstanding attempts to diversify faculty we still have an overrepresentation of white bodies in the senior professoriate. We have an educational system that have materialized through a standardized curricula, we have an educational system that have been compartmentalized through a particular geo-body, we have those courses positioned as ‘science’ being represented through the body of the Euro-pedagogue, while at the same time the racialised body becomes the expert within the sphere of humanities. Reading Fanon provides some clues for the search for a subversion of G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 1–10. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

DEI

the imperial schooling and education [dis]order. The violence of colonialism is physical, mental, symbolic and much more. Fanon helps us to reinterpret violence, dehumanization and liberation in multiple educational sites. His understanding of the psychiatry of race, gender, class, sexuality and disability is powerful in that we are allowed to rethink the project of education for social change. Fanon understood the politics of embodiment, as well as what is means to evoke race, difference and nation simultaneously. Even in his problematic reading and analysis of gender, disability and difference Fanon’s insights pave way for us to re-theorize the links between race, class, gender, disability and the psychology and psychiatry of oppressions. One decides to edit a collection of essays with the belief and conviction that contributors have something new and important to say on the topic. I strategically digress therefore, to briefly speak about how I came to ‘know Fanon’. This is important in expressing how my intellectual knowing of Fanon has guided the way to bring his ideas into schooling and education. I remember as an undergraduate student at the University of Ghana, Legon, one of my sociology lecturers mentioned Fanon and compared his ideas with Gandhi. The lecturer argued that, and I am paraphrasing here, ‘Fanon was wrong in proposing violence as a solution to oppression and colonization’. This was a brief and cursory reference and I imagine most students would not have read anything into it, or been encouraged to explore further the works of this brilliant thinker. As a graduate student attending conferences in North America in the 1980s, I became increasingly aware of Fanon through a number of scholars who cited or quoted his work. Soon, it became apparent to me that not only was it intellectually fashionable to claim to know about Fanon, but also, that to cite his works had some currency attached to it in some quarters. As I started to read more about Fanon and other anti-colonial theorists, I increasingly realized Fanon’s depth of knowledge as well as the limits of my own knowledge of Fanon. I taught graduate courses that cursorily used some works of Fanon, which opened my eyes to the breadth of his ideas. When a graduate student agreed with me about the pedagogic urgency and relevance of doing a whole course on Frantz Fanon, I took up the challenge and developed a new graduate course on this brilliant thinker. And the rest is history, as they say, a learner has come to know a little bit about Fanon and decided to run with it! To reiterate, I have offered these personal reflections primarily to help the reader contextualize my current engagement with Fanon. FANON, SOCIAL DIFFERENCE AND AGENCY

In broaching Fanon, anti-colonial education and addressing the oppressive relations of schooling and education, perhaps we need to ask some questions: Beyond discourses of race saliency/centrality and the ways we also speak of the race-class connection, where then is gender (and by extension sexuality, disability, etc.) situated in anti-colonial analyses of schooling and education? This is the question about social difference and it can be approached in multiple ways. For me, answering this question offers an opportunity to ground the discussion in schooling and education as I/we know it. Schools utilize gendered tropes to create new 2

FANON, ANTI-COLONIALISM AND EDUCATION

re-organized relations of ruling based on the allocation of power and resource. We note from Fanon that the colonizer and the colonized mutually constitute each other’s identity. Males subordinate females in order to lay claim to societal resources. Gender is and has been fundamental principle of social organization and identity formation. For anti-colonial discourse and practice, the question of how race is lived through the lens of gender (and also social class, disability, sexuality, etc.) must necessarily be theorized to inform politics of liberation. We have long learned that the experiences of gender oppression conflated and compounded with racial, class, sexual, ability, religious and linguistic oppressions indicate a ‘simultaneity of oppression’ (Brewer, 1993), ‘a matrix of oppression’ (Collins, 1993) and ‘a multiplex of oppression’ (Dei, 1996). This oppression represents a different kind of oppression that moves away from the additive model of oppression (e.g., double/triple jeopardy). Such oppression is qualitatively different in both substance and intensity from other experiences. Again we must ask new questions if even we cannot provide fitting answers: How are gender, colonial and patriarchal relations reproduced in schooling? Gender is a contested, fluid and paradoxical discursive formation. Much of the scholarly discussions around gender speak about the aestheticised heterosexual performativity of femininity and masculinity. But how might we understand gender through race? Is gender as configured through Euro-modernity race? Is the subject of Euro-modernity as constituted through gender a racializing procedure? Is the “archetype of humanism” as endowed through Euro-modernity, discursively formed through particular bodies of racialized classifications, and by producing/reproducing ontological gendered normatives? How might we begin to engage a discussion concerning race and the ontological able-body through the perspectives of disability studies? In other words, how is the ontological able-body constituted through race and gender? What does Fanon give us by way of an anti-colonial framework to discuss gender by centering race? The significance of gender for anti-colonial work is that it [gender] is a form of identity and a basis of knowledge production. Gender is also about embodiment and how bodies are read. It is a basis of political mobilization and the entanglements of gender and power demand that we do not decouple gender and race in anti-racist work. In other words, gender is a social relations of power and privilege that shapes, structures and is informed by identity and experience. The social categories of gender, class, race, disability, etc are not mutually exclusive categories. For example, one’s Blackness cannot erase one’s femaleness or [dis]ability. Race does not exist outside of gender, sexuality, class or vice versa. There are gender differences around how race and racism are experienced. There is a specificity to a Black woman’s experiences. Bodies matter and body image and representation are key sites of anti-racism investigation. Like gender, race intersects with sexuality. We should be careful not to phrase the challenges oppressed peoples face as issues that stem from our ‘cultural/ sexual/class/linguistic differences’ and not from the power of ‘common sense/ hegemonic thinking’ which are presented as rigid ideological orthodoxies. There are gender/sexual/class/disability differences and specificities around how race and racism are experienced. Bodies matter and body image and representation are 3

DEI

key sites of anti-racism investigation. Sexuality is about the state of being, manner or characteristic of ‘sexual’, constitution of sexual orientation. [Transgender/ bisexual are not simply expressions but a way of being]. Understanding the extent to which the violence of history has shaped fears and anxieties about sexuality. For example, Black and Asian femininity have been accorded a sexualized promiscuity and the notions of Jezebel/Hottentot have conjured up sexualized images for the consumption of the dominant. Similarly, we must be careful that we do not assume the markers of Western sexuality for all peoples. Sexuality is constitutive part of our identities. It is socially constructed, politically constitutive and relational to other sites of difference. Sexuality is significant for anti-colonial work because it is expressive of self, feelings, body and image. Sexuality also helps in destabilizing notions of the essential subject. The question of political disaggregation of identities – Blackness/Whiteness/Indigeneity, spiritual identities, etc. – as notions marked and demarcated by sexuality and sexual politics cannot be dismissed. Sexuality relates to the political project of decolonization. That is, an acknowledgment of the ways, for example, the gay and lesbian space and presence along with Black feminisms and pan-Indigeneity have altered “the public face of Black politics” (Mercer, 1996, p. 128). This calls for linking sexual politics and Black liberation. We are increasingly learning how educational studies show homophobia and misogyny are linked in everyday schooling interactions. It is also important to call on anti-colonial politics to challenge the racialist construct that Blacks are “somehow intrinsically more homophobic by virtue of being supposedly closer to nature and hence less civilized”? (Mercer, 1996, p. 121) Increasingly critical anti-colonial work in schooling is broaching the intersections of race and masculinity in terms of how notions of manhood are racialized. Seeing schools as masculinizing agencies, means exploring the ways school policies and practices (curriculum, pedagogy and instruction) reinforce certain notions of what it means to be a man. We also know that there are hierarchies of masculinity in school and society (for example, in examination of which forms of masculinity are granted the most power and privilege on what basis, using who or what as a reference point, etc.). Research is beginning to explore whether or not there is a connection between masculinity and school-based violence (McCready, 2008, personal communication). As noted in Dei (2010b), the question of gender and sexual identities in Fanon’s work may inform a reframing of critical anti-colonial education. In raising issues of gender and sexuality in Fanon, I acknowledge that there has been thought provoking critical feminist analysis of Fanon highlighting the problematic of his over-sexualizing Black women’s bodies, his use of hyper-masculine language, and general misunderstanding of the complicated experiences of Black women’s lives (see also Wane and Torres, this collection). Fanon did not acknowledge the possibilities of the gendered [in this case Black female] subject in his work. Fanon’s analysis of the Black ‘Other’ is devoid of gender and female subjectivity (that is, contributions of Black women to discussions of race, nation and citizenship and the Black Diaspora). Pedagogically, Fanon worked with essentialist, anti-essentialist, materialist and idealist interpretations of “Blackness and subjectivity”. It may be argued that his 4

FANON, ANTI-COLONIALISM AND EDUCATION

analysis of White[ness] and Black[ness] subjects, despite pretensions to the contrary, was still caught in the oppressive effects of the colonialist binary modes of thought (see Mercer, 1996). But this binary was part of the contradiction. In coming to consciousness the Black subject must move from the margins [void] to the centre to achieve subjectivity. It is not important for the Black ‘Other’ to be recognized by the White subject in order for the former to become a subject. The search for recognition can place Black bodies in the dominant tropes of searching for legitimacy in White colonial and colonized spaces. To recall, this was one of Fanon’s critique of the Negritude movement. To Fanon the Black subject can only achieve his subjectivity independent of the dominant through political action not mimicking the language of the dominant. Fanon (1967a) opines further that the mask a Black subject wears in his quest for Whiteness [subject status] is language. The mask is about assimilation to the colonizer’s institutions (e.g., education, media, communication, politics, etc.), which ensures that the colonized “can only express himself in terms that renders him as an object” (Wright, 2004, p. 115). The mask gives a semblance of ‘subject status,’ which is simply about mimicking the White subject, his institutions and his values. Yet even in such a case, the Black ‘Other’ never assumes the ‘identity of the White subject’. Hence what appears to be a binary of White subject and the Black ‘Other’ can be located in both a materialist and idealist nexus/bifurcation. An idealist dialectic affirms the Black will always be the ‘Other’ while a materialist dialectic holds possibilities for resistance and change. To Fanon, the binary itself points to the paradoxes and contradictions of oppressions. The struggles to “perform a negation of the negation” (Wright, 2004, p. 119) points to the paradoxes of resisting oppressions (e.g., every action produces a reaction, and sometimes the double slippage into the form, logic and implicit assumptions of the very things the oppressed is contesting and the ensuing personal contradictions). Hence, the [im]possibility of the Black subject in the West/Diasporic context. The first action of the Black ‘Other’ is a reaction to the white subject act. While the colonizer has his own space [the metropolis] there is also the ‘colonial and colonized space’ [the margins] which is dictated and shaped by the colonizer. In the eyes of the White subject, the Black functions in the collective as there is an ambivalence in a lack of individuality, being indistinguishable from the collective, ensuring that the white subject only enunciate the Black subject as the ‘Other’. To Fanon, psychoanalysis and the pre-occupation with sexuality offer ‘an explanatory paradigm of the Black problem’, there is more to sexuality. Questions of gender and sexuality linger in decolonizing projects of the oppressed and colonized. Sexuality is a key component of identities. Though Fanon has been taken to task for his problematic treatment of sexuality, he still cannot be dismissed in a totalizing way. His work is relevant when engaging the issues of identity and sexual politics within and among colonized and oppressed communities. It is not just that homosexuality “is a powerful source of anxiety within Fanon’s theorizing” (Mercer, 1996, p. 125). In fact, homosexuality is a “key issue in Black sexual politics” (ibid. p. 128) and an inability to recognize this fact points to the limits of a given politics. Thus, in re-theorizing the anti-colonial with a Fanonian gaze, we need to pay attention to the role of sexuality and, particularly, sexual 5

DEI

politics among oppressed groups in furthering resistance struggles. Given the connections of sexuality and politics one would have hoped that Fanon had embarked upon a critical analysis of sexuality and the connections with politics and liberation struggles. As signaled in Dei (2009a), again if it is the violence of history that has shaped fears and anxieties about sexuality then we must focus on and retool Fanon’s analysis of colonial, colonialism and psycho-sexuality, as well as on integrating sexual politics, Black peoples struggles and oppressed people’s liberation everywhere. We must be able to link sexuality to the political project of decolonization as one of the political strategies to de-center what has been called “the outmoded notion of the essential Black subject” (Mercer, 1996, p. 122) that schools continually reproduce. An integrated anti-colonial analysis of Fanon must seek to draw out pedagogic implications. Colonizing relations of schooling are structured along race, class, gender, sexuality, [dis]ability, language and religious lines. Dealing with social difference is also to confront the power saturated issues of schooling. An anticolonial analysis of schooling informed by Fanon offer a space for us to think about colonizing procedures of schooling and education and how we work to create a decolonized education. Decolonized education is education that brings to the fore questions of power relations among actors and different players in the school system while at the same time upholding the agency, resistance and local cultural resource knowledges of all learners. Decolonizing education is about change, it is about a particular way of knowing that emerged through bodies of difference, it is about embodied knowledge, it is a particular process that counters the foreign and the local of imposition. It is about resistance and the fight for social justice. It is about understanding spirit injury through critical consciousness. It is about the process of coming to know self through historic specificities. Decolonization as Fanon tells us “is always a violent phenomenon.” (Fanon, 1963, p. 35). OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

Most scholars have engaged the work of Frantz Fanon through a phenomenological reading. While we too embrace such inquiries we are engrossed with thinking through a reading of Fanon in an anti-colonial framework. In this way we can speak to the interwoven complexities of race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, language, religion and class. With Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, we hope to invoke different possibilities for emancipatory ways of knowing. We come to this writing through a sense of solidarity and urgency for equity and social justice. In the essays that follow, the authors take on the myriad challenges of anticolonial work and decolonizing education through a not so conventional engagement with the writings of Frantz Fanon. Education is conceptualized broadly through the different socio-cultural/political terrain. The essays start with a direct focus on schooling and education questions and then venture into the educative potential of the arts and popular culture. There is an engagement of the question of difference, specifically Fanon and gender and womanist studies. The essays further extend to the pedagogic implications of decolonizing projects of the contemporary state in the context of competing political agendas and struggles for national and 6

FANON, ANTI-COLONIALISM AND EDUCATION

Indigenous liberation and self determination. Collectively, the quest for educational transformation is the underlying intention of this much-needed collection. In particular, a common theme discussed is the way in which the colonial experience becomes organized through foreign and local sites of imposition. We have struggled with the burgeoning pedagogical implications of engaging Fanon’s oeuvre, and at the same time having to work through the colonizing masculinist and de-ableizing overtones residing within Fanon’s language. We share a spirited belief in praxis for social justice. We hope this contribution encourages sincere dialogue for all political actors alike committed to better the quality of humanism. Dei’s opening chapter sets the tone for the interrogation of Fanon and anticolonial theorizing, pointing to the pedagogic and revolutionary possibilities of ideas. It is argued that in line with Fanonian conception of colonial and colonizing relations as unending we need to theorize the ‘colonial’ in anti-colonial theory as re-organized, continual relations that shape the organization and operation of social structures in contemporary society. Dei links the relevance of Fanon to other anti-colonial theorists like Memmi, Cabral, etc. in pointing to the colonizing relations of schooling and education as broadly defined. He concludes the discussion identifying the key elements of a ‘pedagogy of hope’ that could transform schooling and education for true democratic and humane participation. Paul Issahaku’s chapter, Decolonizing the Euro-American Public Education System: A Transgressive Revisiting of Fanon, problematizes the North American public education system and offers ways for social transformation. He contends that the Euro-American system is violent and invisibilizes racialized minoritized students. He argues that the current system of public education is a colonial edifice, founded upon the imperative of promoting white European supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism. After noting how the education system violates and renders racial minority students invisible, Issahaku then calls for decolonization in the Fanonian sense, where teaching and learning are worthwhile activities, one where all stakeholders come to find space, voice and meaning. Natacha Nsabimana’s essay, Colonizing and Decolonizing Imaginations, is concerned with the violence of colonialism and the mis-education of colonial education. Through illustrations from the mainstream media and the entertainment arena, Nsabimana discusses particular manifestations of colonial mis-education, the focus being on how violence, as it resides outside of the classroom, comes to be deeply embedded in popular culture. Much attention is paid to the psychological, cultural, intellectual and emotional implications of colonial education on the human psyche. We are reminded of the challenges and labour that decolonizing education is faced with in transforming the educational system, deeply entrenched as it is within historical colonial paradigms. Hannah Dyer’s, The Cinematic Legacy of Frantz Fanon: On Claire Denis’ Beau Travail and I Can’t Sleep, examines the filmic work of Claire Denis and its acknowledged debt to Fanon’s writings, specifically its citations of Black Skin White Masks. Underscoring this paper is a call for a better understanding of film and artistic representation as pedagogical texts. Dyer addresses the corpus of Denis’ work, but privileges two of her films as texts that detail the “psychological damage wrought on many colonial peoples—and the colonizers who oppress 7

DEI

them.” The author proposes that, the ambivalence with which Denis treats her (post) colonial character, and her refusal of the many colonial linguistic traps, has created pieces of art that speak with Fanon’s postures on the psychic toll of colonialism. Meredith Lordan’s, Meeting Fanon in the Kasbah: Reading The Wretched of the Earth through the cinematic lens of The Battle of Algiers – Personal and Pedagogical Reflections, recalls the enigmatic images of the Kasbah in Gillo Pontecorvo’s film the Battle of Algiers (1964). Her discussion recounts the author’s first encounter with Fanon via the film. Uniting cinematic and theoretical insights, Lordan’s discussion reveals some of the first tensions emerging for the new – and now more mature – student of anti-colonialism. Drawing upon these early recollections and their influence over a young student, her discussion concludes with pedagogical ideas for critical engagement of anti-colonialism via self-reflexive learning, critical media analysis, and how to support students as they link the ideas and images found in the theoretical and artistic realms to real-world issues and events. Njoki Wane’s, Reading Fanon Differently: Black Canadian Feminist Perspectives, discusses the issues of colonization and decolonization in Black Skin White Masks, through a dialogue with themes concerning language, interracial marriages, politics of the color line and psychological violence. One of her goals is not to argue whether Fanon engaged with the issues of Black women, but rather, to think about how Fanon’s work can help us to understand the experience of Black Canadian women’s lived realities, realities that constitute their feminist theorizing. It is with this focus that Wane re-reads Black Skin White Masks, to initiate a dialogue concerning the relevance of Fanon’s work on theorizing Black Canadian feminisms. Nevertheless, her reading of Black Skin White Masks may leave more questions than answers and this is to echo Fanon’s final quest – “My final prayer: O my body, always make me a man who questions” (206). Nadesha Gayle addresses the Black women’s experience and race-induced trauma. In her chapter, Understanding Race Induced Trauma and the Black Women’s Experience through Fanon, Gayle takes up the task of understanding the role of racism and the co-present trauma, as a lived reality for women of African ancestry. An anti-colonial framework and Black feminist thought are utilized to situate the experiences of race-induced trauma by Black women, and also to problematize the failure of the Western academy to include black women within the discourse of trauma. Central to Rose Ann Torres’ writing is the decolonizing of education in the Philippines context, and the impact of colonialism on the Indigenous Filipino women, in particular the way in which colonialism informs gendered relations. Her chapter, Fanon’s Pedagogical Implications to Women’s Studies in the Philippines, allows us to engage with Fanon’s work on colonization and invites us to consider the pedagogical implications to Women’s Studies in the Philippines. Her reflexivity is grounded in her experience as a previous graduate student in the Women’s Studies in the Philippines. Importantly, Torres notes how decolonization, the meeting of two oppositional forces, comes to be identified as a violent encounter. A key contribution to the conversation is Yumiko Kawano’s Fanon’s Psychology of the Mind, the “Yellow” Colonizer and Racialized Minorities in Japan. Kawano 8

FANON, ANTI-COLONIALISM AND EDUCATION

speaks about how Japanese people, once labeled as inferior by European countries, became a colonizer of other Indigenous groups in Japan and other geographies of Asia. Her discussion brings to the surface the importance of Ainu and Japan Indigenous knowledges in decolonizing historical colonial schooling and the creation of a Japanese “yellow” colonizer in the school system in the broader social context of European colonizer, Japanese elite and Indigenous Ainu peoples. The contemporary situation of the African nation-state of Somalia is discussed in Fouzia Warsame’s “The Last shall be First”: Nationalism, Decolonization and “New humanism,” Somalia – a nation in waiting, a state in the making. Warsame, through a discussion concerning Somalia and the politics of identity, draws on Fanon’s work on decolonization, to engage historic classifications of nationalism, humanism and nation-building, social transformation and the implication of violence, and neo-colonial narratives of body and state. Ultimately, Fouzia’s intention is to reclaim Somalia’s negated history and devalued cultural heritage, through a pedagogical recovery of the human. Neil Orlowsky’s, The Hundred Year Headache: Israel, Palestine, and Frantz Fanon, grounds his discussion in Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth.” He engages with a historical and ethnographic inquiry of the Middle East region in order to better understand what are the conditions that allow for contemporary discourses of peace and violence to render themselves as seemingly permanent. Through conversations concerning violence, nationalism, subjugation, decolonization and colonialism, as it forms itself within historical debates concerning Israel-Palestine, Orlowsky engages the act of political violence as it is utilized as an agent of change for reclaiming national, cultural and political liberation. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank Shirley Steinberg for her untiring efforts to place a publisher for this second book on Fanon. This book continues the conversation in our first collection by focusing on key questions of education, social difference, anticolonialism and Fanon. Personally, I want to thank the many educators, students and administrators whose words have provided the inspiration for putting together this collection. Marlon Simmons has been helpful for the editorial assistance with this volume. The students in my advanced-level graduate course, SES3999: ‘Frantz Fanon and Education: Thinking Through Pedagogical Possibilities’ [Fall, 2008] have continued to challenge scholarhsip in terms of their critical discursive and political engagements, as well as comments, questions, and insistence that as critical educators we continually push the edges of the intellectual envelope.

9

DEI

REFERENCES Asante, M. K. (2009). Maulana Karenga: An intellectual topography of an activist scholar. Cambridge: Polity Press. [forthcoming]. Brathwaite, K., & James, C. (Eds.). (1996). Educating African Canadians. Toronto: James Lorimer & Co. Brewer, R. (1993). Theorizing race, class and gender: The new scholarship of black feminist intellectuals and black women’s labour. In M. James & P. A. Baize (Eds.), Theorizing black feminisms: The visionary pragmatism of black women (pp. 13–30). London: Routledge. Brown, M. J. (2004). In their own voices: African-Canadians in the greater Toronto area share experiences of police profiling. Report Commission by the African-Canadian Community Coalition on Racial Profiling. Toronto: African-Canadian Coalition on Racial Profiling. Cabral, A. (1970). National liberation and culture. New York: Syracuse University Press. Collins, P. H. (1993). Towards a Neew vision: Race, class, and gender as categories of analysis and connection. Race, Sex and Class, 1, 25–45. Dei, G. J. S. (1996). Anti- Racism education: Theory and practice. Fernwood Publishing. Dei, G. J. S. (2008). Racists beware: Uncovering racial politics in contemporary society. Sense Publishers. Dei, G. J. S., & Simmons, M. (2010a). The Pedagogy of Fanon: An Introduction. In G. Dei & M. Simmons (Eds.), Fanon and Education: Thinking through Pedagogical Possibilities. New York: Peter Lang. [Forthcoming] Dei, G. J. S. (2010b). Re-reading Fanon for his pedagogy and implications for schooling and education. In G. J. S. Dei & M. Simmons (Eds.), Fanon and Education: Thinking through Pedagogical Possibilities. New York: Peter Lang. [Forthcoming] Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin white masks. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Karenga, M. (1999). Whiteness studies: Deceptive or welcome discourse? Black Issues in Higher Education, 16(6), 26–28. Kincheloe, J., & Steinberg, S. R. (1998). Addressing the crisis of whiteness: Reconfiguring white identity in a pedagogy of whiteness. In J. L. Kincheloe, S. R. Steinberg, N. M. Rodriguez, & R. E. Chennault (Eds.), White reign: Deploying whiteness in America (pp. 1–29). New York: St Martin’s Press. King, J. (Ed.). (2005). Black education. A transformative research and action agenda for the new century. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Memmi, A. (1969). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Mercer, K. (1996). Decolonization and disappointment: Reading Fanon’s sexual politics. In A. Reed (Ed.), The fact of blackness: Fanon and visual representation (pp. 114–131). Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Scheurich, P., & Young, M. (1997). Coloring epistemologies: Are our research epistemologies racially biased? Educational Researcher, 26(4), 4–16. Wright, M. (2004). Some women disappear: Frantz Fanon’s legacy in black nationalist thought and the black [Male] subject. In Becoming black, creating identity in the African diaspora (pp. 111–135). Durham and London: Duke University Press.

10

GEORGE J. SEFA DEI

2. FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

INTRODUCTION

It is useful for me to start by contextualizing Fanon with other thinkers and the near global anti-colonial movement going on during his time. As argued elsewhere (Dei, 2006) contemporary anti-colonial thought has its roots in the decolonizing movements of colonial states that fought for independence from European countries at the end of the second world war. The revolutionary ideas of Frantz Fanon, Mohandas Gandhi, Mao-Tse-Tung, Albert Memmi, Ame Cesaire, Kwame Nkrumah, and Che Guevara, to name a few, were instrumental in fomenting and shaping anti-colonial struggles. Most of these scholars were avowed nationalists who were deeply committed to social transformation. They saw the existing social order and did not like it one bit. There were born to be resistors! They sought political liberation for all colonized peoples and communities using the power of knowledge and a passion for justice and fairness. In particular, Fanon’s and Gandhi’s writings on the violence of colonialism and the necessity for open resistance (see Fanon, 1967a, b, Gandhi, 1967). Similarly, Albert Memmi’s (1969) discursive on the relations between the colonized and the colonizer helped instill in the minds of colonized peoples the importance of engaging in acts of resistance to resist the violence of colonialism. In later years, particularly in the contexts of Africa, other scholars including Aime Cesaire (1972), Leopald Senghor (1996) and Amilcar Cabral (1969, 1970) introduced questions of language, identity and national culture into anti-colonial debates for political and intellectual liberation. Very significant in the early theorizing of anti-colonials was the idea of the ‘twosidedness’ (see also Howard, 2004) of colonial relations. In other words, there is a two-sidedness to any critical study of domination and oppression. The privileged and the subordinate position. Thus, dismantling colonial relations and practices has as much to do with studying whiteness and oppression as well as a study of the marginalized positions and their strategies of resistance. It is also clear from the early scholarship on anti-colonialism that it was colonized peoples and minoritized scholars who have spearheaded the study of the colonial encounter and resistance. In re-thinking ‘anti-colonial thought’ today we must see it as the emergence of a new [but an old idea] political, cultural and intellectual movement that reflects the values and aspirations of colonized and resisting peoples/subjects. Memmi and Fanon were both instrumental in shaping and refining the thought that colonization is equally about a study of subjectivity and power relations. Colonialism and colonization had significant effects on the human [colonized] psyche. The psychological effects of colonization (Fanon, 1967a) – colonized mimicry can lead G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 11–27. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

DEI

to a loss of the soul, just as the effects of colonization can render the colonizer with no heart. These ideas also propelled a larger politics built on the efficacy of global anti-colonial politics. While Cesaire (1972) was drawing parallels and equating colonization with ‘thingification’ (i.e., the objectification of the colonized subject), a Negritude politics affirming a Black consciousness and racial identity was becoming key to anti-colonial struggles. Memmi (1969) recognized the colonial encounter as a violent encounter creating an intense divide between the colonizer and colonized. He would note that this schism/divide has detrimental consequences in terms of depersonalizing the colonized and simultaneously making the colonizer inhuman. Cabral, for his part stressed the importance of forging a ‘national culture’ through a positive (solution-oriented) retrieval of cultural values of every social group in society in service of the anti-colonial struggle. Culture was more about ideas and a political consciousness. Thus, in Cabral’s anti-colonial work ‘culture and politics’ became powerful intertwined in the discourse of ‘national culture’. It was the values, traditions (culture) provides the [colonized/African] personality. And, political liberation is predicated upon effective rehabilitation of the cultures of the colonized so destroyed by the colonial encounter. Mohandas Gandhi was intent upon ‘speaking truth to power’. He saw the development of a strong inner and collective sense of self and group as central to social justice pursuits and he would argue that spirituality, religion and politics and intertwined. His was a politicized understanding of spirituality and religion. In effect a coming to being of a ‘religious spirituality’. The colonizer/oppressor must reclaim the self [the spiritual sense of self] ....but not for oneself, but for a meaningful collective existence. His thesis of non-violence was that the oppressed cannot overthrow violence/oppression through more violence/oppression. Gandhi like Fanon was opposed to aimless and misdirected violence. Perhaps, and as noted in the Introduction to this collection, the failure to powerfully situate gender and difference (locational, cultural and sexual politics) in early anti-colonial thought [narratives] and practice was a limitation of knowledge. Gender and sexual politics, as well as women as importance voices in anti-colonial struggles needed to be acknowledges not merely sites for the production and pursuance of knowledge but for political action. Women participated actively in anti-colonial struggles and yet their voices have been missing. Also, the ambiguity around gender politics was such that on the one hand women militancy was lauded and yet silenced in the telling of the anti-colonial story! Increasing a global anticolonial politics has recognized that women struggles and participation in anticolonial movements provided important lessons to challenge dominant feminist, anti-colonial thought and theorizing. Women’s role in anti-colonial struggles point to both their intellectual agency and resistance of the colonized. Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) has been described as a psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, and a political analyst whose writings have influenced anti-colonial struggles, black consciousness and the civil rights movement.1 The importance of Fanon for anti-colonial theorizing is not in question. His ideas challenge us as we come to terms with the process and evocation of modernity. Although modernity has many faces, as a particular ordering of society it is still a colonial and colonizing modernity. The privileging of certain values and the contestations 12

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

over knowledge are a case in point. In the modernizing project, questions of representation (identity/subjectivity/hybridity) and materiality go hand in hand. Fanon was big on broader political economic issues. But the reading of the dialectic espoused by both Hegel and Marx (ideas and materiality) cannot be dismissed even as we engage with Fanon [with his political-economic emphasis]. I read materiality in this sense as viewing the body as consequential, also acknowledging the material conditions under which bodies reproduce themselves as ‘subjects’ and ‘agents’, as well as the ways in which subjects reproduce themselves as ‘constitutive bodies’. In linking Fanonian ideas and anti-colonial theorizing, I am also working with an understanding of the power of both ‘theoretical integration’ and a cultivation of a ‘diversity of episteme’. As already noted, Fanon did not develop his ideas in isolation. He was influenced by other social thinkers. What is crucial though is to acknowledge that Fanon is pivotal to anti-colonial theorizing as the latter is equally central to Fanonian discursive analysis. Similarly, reading Fanon means knowing about the intersections of anti-colonial and anti-racist analyses. So, it is important to ask: how do we bridge integrative anti-racist analysis and anti-colonial theorizing with Fanon? The search for a theory to understand oppressions/colonialisms must be cognizant of the implications of theoretical clarity. Epistemological positioning is always critical, as much as we use tactical methods of analysis to examine, analyze and interpret social reality (i.e., technique and technologies of knowledge and power). Similarly educational strategies should not only be a discursive approach to change but must also allow for actual political intervention. By anticolonial, I refer to an approach to theorizing colonial and re-colonial [re-organized colonial] relations and the implications of imperial structures on processes of knowledge production and validation, the understanding of Indigeneity, as well as the pursuit of agency, resistance and subjective politics. ‘Colonial’, in this context, is understood as not simply ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’ but as anything ‘imposed’ and ‘dominating’ (see also Dei, 2000, Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2001). Anti-colonialism today is about re-organized ‘colonial’ rather then a ‘new colonial’. The old colonial and colonizing have not disappeared. They appear in new organized forms and means. Hence anti-colonial practice means a focus on the ways re-organized colonial relations and the power of a colonial and colonized mindsets dominate relations of knowledge production, ruling and social practice (Dei, 2006). Fanon contributes to the basic ideas of anti-colonial thought by writing about and cautioning that the colonial encounter and the politics of decolonization as a huge undertaking filled with risks and violence (see Dei, 2010b). He theorizes the links of the colonized and colonizer, as subjects and encounters, in his many works. Colonial relations implicate both the oppressor and oppressed. Both the colonized and colonizer need to simultaneously decolonize. By decolonization as anti-colonial practice, Fanon is referring to the intellectual, cultural and political resistance of dominant knowings and practices. Understanding colonial relations and encounters is critical to pursing decolonization as a political, mental and spiritual practice. This process is about allowing theory to inform practice and vice versa. Situating decolonization in the anti-colonial project calls for the cultivation of one’s self-identity and collective consciousness. Decolonization is an activity, 13

DEI

which also recognizes that the social and political processes of education as a dynamic, encounter between different actors with different and sometimes competing stakes in the outcomes. Anti-colonialism acknowledges the power of Indigenousness and Indigeneity (see Dei & Kempf, 2006). ‘Indigenousness’ is about developing a local consciousness of one’s existence (individual, social and collective). The understanding of the notion of ‘Indigenousness’ draws on the absence of colonial imposition and a spiritual awareness. Anti-colonialism is also about spirituality and spiritual knowings. The idea of spirituality and ‘spiritual knowing’ entails a shift in our understanding of spirituality beyond the aesthetic concerns of peace, love, humility, respect to what can be termed, action-oriented/revolutionary spirituality. It calls for action and revolutionary struggle to bring about change. In order to engage spirituality we must avoid the secular/sacred split, the material, non-material dichotomy and the tendency to evade power issues in speaking about spirituality and multiple knowing. Anti-colonialism is also about troubling the subjectivity/ materiality. The world is not all about ‘subjects and subjectivities’ and the preoccupation with the subject, forgetting that there are powerful material and political questions that script us (as subjects), is limiting (Dei, 2006). For Frantz Fanon this means addressing spiritual and psychological damage, scars of the colonial process, what this has done to the African psyche, and what it means to resist the amputation of the past. Fanon’s ideas about the colonial project and the consequences for humanity, speak to his grounding in spirituality. He connected human spiritual existence to an end goal of becoming free from oppression, colonization and domination. Setting aside a critique of the gendered language it can be argued that when Fanon says “Man is a Yes: Yes to life, Yes to love, and Yes to generosity” (Fanon, 1967a, p. 222) he is referring to creating a basic humanness that respects oneself and the collective existence that uphold certain moral and spiritual virtues while rejecting values that are inhuman. His abhorrence of oppression leads him to claim “[Hu]man is also No: No to scorn of [hu]man. No to degradation of [hu]man. No to exploitation of [hu]man (Fanon, 1967a, p. 222). When the self encounters resistance from the Other, the self consciousness undergoes the experience of desire and, further, assumes a risk of life in the course of searching for the dignity of spirit. Such ‘desire’ is asking to be “considered……not merely here and now, sealed into thingness…. But somewhere else and for something else” (Fanon, 1967a, p. 218). In other words, pursuing spiritual politics for a larger cause. Colonization has consequences for any attempts to evoke spirituality. To say no to oppression, colonization and racism is to contribute to “the victory of the dignity of the spirit” (Fanon, 1967a, p. 226). Alienation from body, mind and soul emerges when a colonized person aspires to a white world that rejects him or her. Reclaiming the past can be a limiting exercise in spiritualizing the self/body [decolonization] unless it is matched with a politics of social transformation. As Fanon argues “the discovery of the existence of a Negro civilization in the fifteenth century confers no patent of humanity on me. Like it or not, the past can in no way guide me in the present moment” (Fanon, 1967a, p. 225). Disalienation comes into being “through a refusal to accept the present as definite” (Fanon, 1967a, p. 226). When a Black, 14

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

oppressed or colonized body “conceives of European culture as a means of stripping himself of his race, he becomes alienated” (Fanon, 1967, p. 224). In effect, decolonization involves a spiritual undertaking as much as intellectual, mental and concrete material practice. Fanon makes the point that a spiritual community constitutes “the most solid bastion of the…Revolution” (Fanon, 1965, p. 120). It is the inner strength, confidence and internal resistance of a colonized people that defeats colonialism. Being reflexive on the power of anti-colonial theory, I would argue that we need to offer counter and oppositional critiques of the ‘post-colonial’ experience that foreground an anti-colonial framework. As I note elsewhere (Dei, 2006) while critics like Benita Parry or Neil Lazarus offer a Marxist critique of postcolonialisms, I am influenced by writings of Fanon to develop an integrated critical perspective informed by an anti-colonial framework to understand the experiences of colonialism, colonial, re-colonial relations, and the continued relations of social oppressions. In the Fanonian sense, colonialism cannot exist without imperialism to politically, militarily, culturally and economically support it. Fanon argued that “colonialism is not a type of individual relations but the conquest of a national territory and the oppression of a people [by mental, physical and spiritual force]” (Fanon, 1967b, p. 81). He saw colonialism as “a military domination’ (p. 81) and something which constitutes an important part of the [imperial] history” (p. 83). Definitely anticolonial knowledge overlaps critical race theory, critical antiracism, Black feminism, critical whiteness, and other libratory discourses. What anti-colonial theory shares with these frameworks is the critique of liberalism, the dominant framings of the essentialism vs. anti-essentialism debates as without fecundity, and a call to focus on intersectional analysis of power and difference. Fanon helps us to rethink transformative anti-colonial pedagogy and education. The oppressor can only oppress those he/she considers less than human to her/himself. In objectifying human qualities, our experiences, histories and lives become ‘things’ devoid of human characteristics and worthy only of the utmost ideological (and concrete political) contempt. Colonialism comes with a persistent dehumanizing portrayal of the colonized subject. This has continued in the modern day with negative portrayals and dehumanization of certain groups [especially, but not exclusively peoples of African descent] in modern popular culture, mass media. Colonized peoples, especially Africans, have been characterized with a ‘defective rationality and depraved sexuality’. Western European imperial practices continue to produce the colonized subjects as symbolically, philosophically, and materially inferior human beings – [i.e., ‘other and lesser’ – (relative to Western Europeans)]. There is a long history for this. Colonized subjects were considered to be incapable of complex abstract thought, and instead, capable only of the most elementary animalistic thinking. What are needed then are revitalized cultural knowledges to challenge the dominance of Western imperial knowledge, a knowledge system that privileges universality, naturalism, hierarchy, and elitism. We must search for discursive ways to challenge the Enlightenment and its centralizing rationality, which for the dominant is the litmus test of civilization. We need cultural knowledges to trouble and complicate a politics devoid of the ‘us/them’ binaries of the 15

DEI

Enlightenment. Western knowledge’s systemic indifference to social historical analysis as well we resistance to the grounding of local cultural knowledges has constituted a serious impediment to the pursuit of knowledge. Despite the institutional indifference of the academy to a social and historical reading of ideas, we must continually challenge the dominance of Eurocentricity as far as the ownership and promotion of ideas. In this context, local cultural knowledge becomes an intellectual and political resistance. Affirming such knowledge means we cannot exclude other thinkers from the pantheon of ideas that have shaped and continue to shape human growth and development. Personal and collective experiences are helpful. But, there are limits and possibilities to the focus on storytelling and lived experience as the way to name the reality of the marginalized. A major problem that oppressed and marginalized people have to deal with is the negation of historical experiences and collective and cultural memories, negation of our subjectivities, the denial of the embodiment of knowledge, engaging in a continual struggle against our dehumanization, and the incurring ‘spirit injury’ due to challenges of perpetual resistance. In looking at contemporary education we may ask: what constrains, but at the same time promotes, transformative learning for young adults? To provide an answer, we must understand how race and social difference affect schooling and education. We must talk about how categories of difference can help facilitate a meaningful dialogue about accountability and responsibility, and acknowledge oppressive and privileging practices that influence students’ educational achievement. These social categories are themselves discursively constructed. Yet this realization does not detract from the legitimacy of the categories themselves due to their political effects and currency in schooling. Furthermore, due to the existence of multiple identities, we know that some racialized-minoritized bodies may experience multiple violations, making historical contexts critical when accounting for academic ‘success.’ Race and difference are linked with school practices and, particularly, to knowledge production. The relative saliencies of different identities and the situational and contextual variations in intensities of oppressions coupled, with an extreme diversity of issues for certain groups in our school system, means that a social theory that accounts for educational transformation must centre its analysis around an understanding of social difference. For example, as Howard (2004) aptly notes, while not conflating race and politics, we recognize that, despite its fluidity, porosity and contexts, race works through well-rehearsed narratives and in broadly predictable ways to position Whites as superior to the ‘othered’ body. Apart from such saliencies, there is also the issue of particularity. For example, difference produces its own set of experiences, that is to say the experience of being Aboriginal is different for Indigenous populations, just as, for example, the experience of being Black, is different from the experience of other racializedminoritized bodies. By no means is the intent here to homogenize the experience of Blackness, instead we must recognize and centre the historic specificity of oppression within the Black experience if we are to understand the complex relationships within identity and identifications. These distinctions are facts and must not be confused with a discourse about a hierarchy of oppression. They 16

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

instead acknowledge the various contexts of social groups, which is something that certain aspects of the postmodern fascination with difference has unwittingly erased with its critique of essentialism. Hence, we must also connect schooling to class, sexuality, [dis]ability, gender and the hetero-patriarchal structures of society. In considering the interconnected practices of schooling, it is imperative to challenge how dominant notions and expressions of socialization in schools reinforce mutual disempowerments of race, class, gender, [dis]ability, culture and sexual orientation. Similarly, we must make the connection between schooling and student aspirations in terms of future social success, and what students see as the capital of educational achievement. Students from diverse social backgrounds see these issues differently based on their experience and ability to make links with broader macro-economic and political structures and this is significant to our theoretical analysis. The psychology of oppression is about understanding both the contexts and implications the dialectic of both oppressed and the oppressor. The psychology of the oppressor is working on the oppressed’s mind and intellect. The oppressed internalizes the tropes of the oppressor and oppression itself. This internalization requires a resistant consciousness to overcome the invisibility and visibility of oppression. Both the oppressor and oppressed simultaneously engage in the cult of victimization. There is the internalized racism of the colonized/oppressed and the false rationality [of dominance] and objectivity [of the oppressor]. Fanon’s ‘psychology of oppression’ was in a sense, pre-conditioned through Gramsci’s notion of hegemony in terms of how dominance and hegemony work. Fanon maintained that the oppressor has within herself/himself the capabilities and the tools to transcend the woes of oppression. That power, when unleashed, can be devastating to the reigns of dominance. This power can only be manifested through strategies, for decolonization includes mind, body, spirit and political action. Fanon (1967b) argues, that “the habit of considering racism as a mental quirk, as a psychological flaw must be abandoned” (p. 38). There is a rationality to racism as much as racism is an irrational act or an irrational systemic practice. The racist “in a culture with racism is therefore normal. He has achieved a perfect harmony of economic relations and ideology” (p. 40). In fact, “at the time of imposing his domination, in order to justify slavery, the oppressor had invoked a scientific argument” (p. 43). Fanon (1967b) opines, that “race prejudice in fact obeys a flawless logic. A country that lives, draws its substance from the exploitation of other people, makes those peoples inferior. Race prejudice applied to those people is normal” and that “racism is therefore not a constant of the human spirit” (p. 41). To Fanon, it “is not possible to enslave men without logically making them inferior through and through. And racism is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization” (p. 40). In resisting racism there is a particular truth claim, for example, “customs, traditions, beliefs formerly denied and passed over in silence are violently valorized and affirmed” (Fanon, 1967b, p. 43). In truth, “tradition is no longer scoffed at by the group. The group no longer runs away from it. The sense of the past is rediscovered, the worship of ancestors resumed…..The past becomes henceforth a constellation of values, becomes identified with the Truth’ (p. 43). In 17

DEI

other words, this “rediscovery, this absolute valorization almost in defiance of reality, objectivity indefensible, assumes an incompatible and subjective importance’ (p. 43). FANON AND NEGRITUDE

Teasing out the intersections of anti-racist and anti-colonial analyses invariably and necessarily should lead us to consider the understanding of race in Fanon’s works. In fact, to flesh out the place of race in Fanon’s thinking we must step back and examine an important philosophical prism that shaped the practice of Black decolonization. It is also fitting and appropriate that in teasing out Fanon and the links of to anti-colonialism and social difference, we briefly examine his early engagement with Negritude philosophy. This is in no way an exhaustive treatment of the topic. Fanon was influenced by the late Martinique poet and anti-colonial theorist Aimé Césaire and the Negritude Movement. Césaire was his teacher and it accounts for the Fanon’a initial embrace and later critical engagement of Negritude philosophy. There is a little doubt that race was central to Fanon’s life in Martinique, France and later in Algeria although to different degrees. The Negritude movement was about Black cultural consciousness and the legitimizing of Black culture and identity. Often critiqued as an intellectual luxury, its protagonists believed in the power of ideas to bring about racial and social change. In fact, Negritude as theorized by Cesaire (1972) was a liberation philosophy and movement. As a philosophy (i.e., an idea) Negritude postulated cultural action informed by the spiritual, existential and sociological conditions of the Black person. It is “humanism with a universal scope” (Senghor, 2001, p. 144). It was also a political ideology, as well as an artistic movement expressed in figurative and surrealist (not literal) language. It was a primary vehicle for the liberation of the colonized mind. Negritude asserted that there is Black African ontology, a particular way of knowing self, through a collective history and shared memory of enslavement. Negritude also espoused a totality of values of the Black and oppressed humanity, a unity of existence and the need to see the self and the subject as a whole, not fragmented parts. Arguably, the failure of Negritude may be its discursive connection to modernity and its failure to broaden an anti-racist agenda into the more expansive terrain of anti-colonialism, one that engages and subverts the larger issues of political economy and globalism. Other critics point to what is perceived as Negritude’s embrace of primitivism and a wholesale valorization of the traditions of Indigenous society (Fontenot, 1978, p. 111). With its post-colonial overtones, Negritude’s response to historical racist narratives as located in France, considered a reclamation of humanism through black cultural tropes. Part and parcel of Negritude was a sense of a celebratory narrative, which worked to evoke a particular qualification of African cultural practices to counter the governing aestheticized narratives of Euro-modernity. At the same time, what Negritude left intact were the colonial paradigms, which located blackness outside the schema of Euro-humanism. Fanon’s lived experience with racism in France and Martinique differed. 18

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

Moving through the interstices of race, class, gender and sexuality as endowed through the material good of education, Fanon experienced a privileged way of life in Martinique. He found though in France, that this privilege was no more. In France, the discursive formations of race were rigid and permanent, neither as elastic nor pliable than what he had experienced in Martinique. Notably, in France the constitutive good of education did not allow the black body relative agency as inscribed through the colonial governance located in Martinique. Fanon understood that he too was positioned as “the wretched of the earth” within the Eurocircumscript of France, that the materiality of education did not allow for a privileging of his body as experienced through the circulating class construct immanent to Martinique. The experience of this cultural and discursive dislocation led to critical interrogation of questions about Eurocentric identity formation and resistance thereto. What Fanon is asking, is “how do we extricate ourselves?” (Fanon, 1967, 10). That is, how do we retrieve a humanism from the confines of Euro-modernity? Fanon is pushing us to move beyond the telling of “lived experience of Blackness”. He does this through an anti-colonial reading, postured through in particular, an anti-racist lens. The problematic surfaces, through Fanon’s hyper-masculinist and de-ableizing language, and the manner in which it constitutes local discursive forms of imposition. The desire to develop a broad social movement politics presented challenges particularly around the limits of knowing. Fanon, who was initially steeped in Negritude politics, later criticized and rejected the movement and philosophy. He pointed to its celebration of the ‘authentic Negro” and his suspicions regarding “the magical elements in the tribal customs of the African people” (Fontenot, 1978, p. 111). To Fanon, the religious, spiritual and magical beliefs of African peoples prevented mounting a formidable resistance to European colonization. However, it would appear that to Fanon it was the [rightly or wrongly] perceived parochial interests of race and racial politics that he was objecting to. It is arguable whether or not Negritude was an irrational reaction to white colonialism in its insistence of the union of ‘Black Soul’ with nature (see Fontenot, 1978, p. 111). What is critical though is that Negritude was forerunner of Black consciousness. It accorded an ‘absolute density’ to the Black experience, that is an “essence and determinations of its being” (Bernasconi, 2004, p. 107). There is no doubt that Negritude centered race while also working against other forms of oppression. Yet, this fact is often lost on critics who argue Negritude was about race essentialism. Negritude followers would argue racist colonialisms trump simple class analysis. Such position is informed in part by the evidence of premodern, pre-capitalist prejudices against minoritized peoples, especially Blacks, as well as the expressed trans-historical and trans-class European cultural, religious, moral and aesthetic superiority. Thus, it is important to acknowledge that Negritude is deeply rooted in anti-capitalist critiques. I have always assumed [as a racialized minoritized body] that a critical raced-based analysis is necessary to develop a strong anti-capitalist position in the first place. And, as Kempf (2008) also argues, for the racially dominant perhaps a class-based analysis may be the gateway to better understand anti-racism theory and politics. In fact, Aime Césaire’s work is the foremost race-laced in an anti-capitalist formulation. While Césaire was anti-capitalist 19

DEI

his entry point to colonialism is largely [although not exclusively] through race. Negritude long recognized that when class is presented as the sole or primary basis of identity construction and articulation it serves to displace notions of culture, place, land, spirituality and race ….which have long been central in the construction of traditional/Indigenous identities of many colonized peoples (see also Kempf, 2008). Negritude philosophy worked with a broader definition of ‘colonial’ understood as asymmetrical power relations. In many ways negritude also foresaw the need to be critical of how anti-colonial discourse can be co-opted in order to silence anti-racism, which speaks of a race saliency. What anti-colonial politics can learn from Negritude is the importance of being politically strategic. On that score, the movement is still relevant today for political and academic liberation. For example, cultural decolonization is critical to address cultural colonization, i.e., by developing a critical consciousness, a radical and mobilizing new awareness. Change must be read in transformation of the consciousness of the people. We know that cultural domination has been a major cause of so-called ‘underdevelopment’ [if ever there was such a thing]. It is also important to call for the re-affirmation of African [Indigenous] identities. Such political reclamation of identity rests on a true search for sovereignty and collective destiny. It also rests on the focus on Indigenous language and oral literature. There are some important points in connecting Negritude philosophy and conventional Marxism: Marxism as a global theory of oppression overarching historical perspective has a lot to offer for understanding of oppression and colonial relations. The concept of historical materialism imbricates race, gender, class and capital. Material advantage is key to understanding social dynamics. There is a materialism of the body given the material conditions under which subjects reproduce themselves as constitutive bodies. Yet, as noted, the claim that the ‘material’ is simply the economic, can be problematic and limiting. We must see the ‘material’ in terms of a sociological and empirical understanding that can be other things than material. To Negritude, the notion of ‘race as consequential’ is equally a materialist interpretation. But it is a more complex understanding that helps us move beyond the ‘material and physical’ to the spiritual, ideological and non-material. Similarly, ‘exploitation’ in the case of race, gender, class, etc has other dimensions (spiritual, psychological, etc.) besides the extraction of surplus value in the relations and mode of production i.e., economic). The fact is that race, class, gender etc cannot simply be polarized as ‘separate and distinct analytical categories’. White colonial/racist privilege is trans-class, trans-gender. Similarly, we know in anti-colonial theory that language, religion, sexuality, etc. can be racialized and vice versa. In fact all identities are contingent upon each other – class, gender, sexuality, [dis]ability, etc. As noted, Frantz Fanon, while coming out of the Negritude movement, later followed Sartre (2001) to declare the pitfalls of racial identification stressing that the “unconditional affirmation of African culture has succeeded the unconditional affirmation of European culture” (Fanon, 1967a, 212). Fanon was searching for a humanness. There are implications for social theory and theorizing Fanon for anticolonial politics. The poverty of theory in not responding to the mechanizations 20

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

of the colonist and capitalist machine must be troubling to any anti-colonial practitioner. We must work on articulating a social theory that helps us to understand internalized oppression and the way it works. It must also help us to problematize the seduction of the ‘multicultural imperialism’ and the denial of the consequences of the materiality of race and social oppressions. The supposedly ‘clash of civilizations’ and ‘clash of fundamentalism’ is an imperial imagination. WHAT THEN ARE THE PEDAGOGICAL POSSIBILITIES OF WORKING WITH FANON?

Fanon’s anti-colonialism, when engaged in schooling and education debates helps uncover the bankruptcy of ideas for social, economic, and political consciousness pursued through the pedagogic, instructional and communicative practices of schooling. There is an absence of a humanist ideology that usually characterizes any truly decolonized relation. The pursuit of critical education through anticolonial perspectives requires that learning promotes and sustains new, creative and original ideas about what constitutes schooling and education. Critical educators will have to ground themselves in a firm knowledge of the importance of educational transformation that links schooling and education to the broader socio-economic and spiritual transformation of society for the benefit of all learners. Education should be seen as a social good in itself that should not necessarily be dominated by the needs of a particular sector of society. The path to achieve a working humanist ideology in general is not easy and is filled with important lessons. For example, history suggests a passing phase of nationalism, ultra-nationalism, and chauvinism through racism, which reproduces its own internal colonialisms. Eurocentric educational projects can feed on nationalist sentiments to create divisions among communities of learners, those who see themselves as having entitlements to their schools and those who continually have to defend their presence/existence in such schools. If education is about creating a community of learners then we must find ways to work with difference. Education should be about a shared and collective consciousness and social action. Fanon’s analysis of nationalism and internal colonialism is helpful in this regard. Nationalism is a term crudely and loosely defined and applied to the development of a national consciousness. To Fanon, critical nationalism should be about a transition from national consciousness to social and political consciousness and action. For example, in the context of an anti-colonial discursive, what does it mean for Diasporic bodies to be cognizant of national consciousness? How does the Diasporic body actively engage with its difference to maneuver through colonial spaces of Euro-modernity? In an anti-colonial struggle, nationalism is not a mere political doctrine. It is about thinking through historic specificities to make possible different geographies of humanism. It is about the self, dialoguing with embodied knowledge as imbued through the colonizing experience. It is about colonized, oppressed and Indigenous peoples engaging with local memories to fecund the spirit of pan-Indigenity. Education has a role to play here. Fanon (1963) admitted that the battle against colonialism runs along the tracks of nationalism. However, Fanon’s problem was with indiscriminate forms of nationalism that fails 21

DEI

to bring about social and political awareness/consciousness or transformation. To him this was a narrow nationalism representing a race. When nationalism intended to uproot European colonialism is based on a ‘primitive Manicheism divide’ of the ‘settler’ [White] and subject colonized [Black] without looking at internal cleavages of class, age, ethnicity, and gender, then the reproduction of neo-colonial relations are held intact and not subjected to critique. What is needed is a rethinking of what constitutes a school [as nation] in which the sense of belonging and community applies to all learners irrespective of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability. In other words, a feeling of belonging to a community of difference prepared to work together to create a new humanism. I see this new Humanism as one that builds on connections, interrelations among peoples and groups and subverts the asymmetrical power relations in society to create equity, fairness and justice. Schools systems have a way of creating hierarchies of difference either through the privileges of knowledges, bodies, experiences or histories including demarcations of successes and failures. When this happens there is the absence of a collective consciousness of belonging to a community of learners. In such schooling spaces, interval divisions are fostered and cemented through practices of colonizing relations, i.e., internal colonialism. When Fanon asserts that “colonial domination has marked certain regions for privilege …[and]….colonialism hardly exploits the whole country” (Fanon, 1963, 159), one can apply this reasoning to school systems. The territories with rich resources [i.e., schools located in affluent communities or neighborhoods] are ‘developed’, while other areas [inner city schools or schools in poor neighborhoods] are neglected thereby creating internal inequities in the educational system. It is in the existing disparities that a new form of colonialism rears its ugly head. The parents and ‘communities of the powerful’ advocate on behalf of their children and they speak authoritatively on behalf of the entire educational system. Oppressed and marginalized group[s are forced to compete for limited resources. Similarly, schools and educators gravitate towards those marked as ‘successful’ and confine those facing any academic challenges to the dustbin of ‘problem cases’. Such internal colonialisms feeds on ethnic, regional, class, religious, spiritual and [gender] rivalries and differences that rear their heads even in a given school. The formal colonizing authorities [in this case, dominant decision-making bodies] may intensify the existence of such divisions to their benefit. Such internal divisions not only create a dis-unified school, but also, thwart the cause of unity of the oppressed and marginalized, something that has historically been a torn in the struggle against colonialism. In bringing an anti-colonial perspective to education, I am asking new questions about the procedures of educational delivery [i.e., processes for teaching, learning and administration of education]. For example, in the area of educational policy, I am asking questions about who is making policies of behalf of learners, what are the personal, educational and life histories that shape the work of policy makers? What policies are in place and what are the particular politics of knowledge production that shape policy making? Given that, notwithstanding the many progressive educational policies, many the books we have schools systems fail segments of our population. I thus wonder whether policy has itself become as an escape route not 22

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

to concretely deal with educational problems? I also marvel about the lip service engagement of the critical literature of minoritized scholars, the lack of attention to systemic and institutional factors and forces in favour of an audit culture? I ask why we expect to see success by doing the same things that have produced failures, and why is it that the false assumption of a level playing field still pervade our thinking? I inquire why the failure of educational policies to critically engage the question of social difference [i.e., race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, language and religion] persists, and why we continue to focus on ‘outcomes’ rather than ‘processes of schooling? It is also important to ask why the unquestioned faith in integration? In the anti-colonial vein I call for a return to the source (see Dei, 2009b). Fanon was against the racist philosophy that emerges with uncritical nationalism. Hence he argued blood and race prejudice must be broken on both sides. In fact, he was alluding to both Western bourgeois racial prejudice and the nationalist racist philosophy. Applied to our reasoning of current school systems, those privileged and who speak on behalf of the entire school system from positions of social difference (e.g., class and white privilege) must work for the good of education for all. But in admitting that a nationalist racism could be racism based on fear and pursued as defense (Fanon, 1963, 164) Fanon was making a distinction between racism of the dominant which is intended to establish advantage and oppress others on one hand. and those whose practices would advocate for their oppressed communities along lines of racial identity informed by the oppression of the dominant on the other. In any case, the oppressed must be careful not to substitute a new and equally racist humanist for the Europeans racist humanism that enslaved and oppressed ‘colonized’ subjects and devalued our humanity. But the biggest challenge lies in translating critical national consciousness into social and political consciousness. Uncritical nationalism can breed ethnic chauvinism and pure racism when based simply on primordial attachments and not grounded in the social and political realities of people. Within the nation the collective struggle must be against poverty, human dignity and rights of all people. CONTESTING FUTURES: FANON, REVOLUTIONARY POSSIBILITIES, AND THE PEDAGOGY OF HOPE

To say that the future is being hotly contested is an understatement. It is imperative that we contextualize the place of knowledge and politics through an anti-colonial space, by claiming marginalized and resisting identities, as well as local cultural knowledges and experiences that help inform the way forward. Fanon cautioned us not to look to the colonizer for salvation. In fact, to him the colonizer himself/ herself is in need of spiritual and psychological cleansing. So the search for the way forward must begin anew with rekindled hearts and spirits. The past and present are definitely relevant in the search for a way forward and we must critically read the past and its history. We must link identity, difference, knowledge, power and agency in terms of a critical Fanonian conception of the way forward. We must ask: what are the pedagogies of identification[s] that can be adopted to frame anti-colonial politics of education? How do we theorize the connections of 23

DEI

subjective agency, voice and national liberation? I raise these two questions not because there are perfect answers or solutions, but because it is important for us as critical educators to think about these issues. And, so I end where I began. Fanon, anti-colonialism and education is part of the long search for ways to think through some new and hard questions. It is important to validate critical, oppositional voices that challenge the normalizing gaze and assumptions of schooling and education. There will be a cost to such intellectual and political engagements. But Fanon offers us some encouragement and caution in working through the challenges. It is about the power of ideas. Fanon long ago observed that colonialists look for collaborators and “feudal elements” on their side. Colonialists also embark upon an economic strategy- cutting of the people from the revolution, improving the living standards of the population will hopefully stifle the revolution. This strategy can be doomed to fail as it is based on the premise that the revolution does not rest on national consciousness but primarily economic survival. In any revolutionary struggle there are fabricating and fermenting contradictions in the movement (e.g., the existence of “counter-revolutionary currents” through the exploitation of “…local hostilities created by colonialism” (Fanon, 1967b, p. 59). Revolution is about decolonization, revolution is about engaging colonial historic specificities as they reshape history in contemporary life. Revolution engenders a consciousness cognizant of a colonial presence, be it foreign or local. Revolution is about praxis and transformation through social justice. In arguing for oppositional discourses one must expect the evocation and use of academic torture or intellectual hypocrisy such as can be witnessed in the delegitimation of counter/oppositional/anti-colonial knowledge and the proponents as ‘anti-intellectual’, ‘separatists’, too ‘emotional’ and as not working with ‘theory’ or ‘rational thought’. Fanon himself understood this process in the colonial and colonizing context when he argued that, “colonialism cannot be understood without the possibility of torturing, of violating, or of massacring” (Fanon, 1967b, p. 66). By deliberating, complicating and/or negating the powerful dialectic of the ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’ we witness the denial of basic truths. Rather than see what is shared in the struggle for human dignity and self/collective worth, the colonizer sees his humanity above that of the colonized/oppressed. In fact, the colonizer as the oppressor always “looks upon the native as marking a limit to his dignity and defines himself as constituting an irreducible negation of the colonized country’s national existence” (Fanon, 1967b, p. 81). To discuss colonizer/colonialist or even the oppressed as “too affective, too emotional….is placing a national problem [colonialism/oppression] on a psychological level” (Fanon, 1967, p. 81). To contest the future we must claim and reclaim the wholeness of being and bring politics and agency to our work as educators, learners and practitioners. We cannot afford to compartmentalize our work and individualize ourselves. Fanon is credited with the notion of ‘amputation’ that is, to sever ties or connections. While the notion evokes biological images of ‘disability’ I still think we can work with the concept in lieu of a more appropriate term/terminology. That is, to accentuate the need for the decolonizing project to cast away? that which the colonized has damaged (e.g., decolonizing the mind and body, sheds the legacies of dehumanization and depersonalization). The way forward for anti-colonial 24

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING

education is for educators and learners to work together to create decolonized spaces that allow for rethinking of notions of ‘identity’ and ‘belonging’ ‘history’ ‘culture’ and ‘politics’. For the oppressed, I see this form of education as reclaiming education (see also Rich, 1979). Fanon was not about a total negation or denigration of the past, culture and tradition (see also Dei, 2010b). At one level, there must be a ‘resistance to amputation’ that is a resistance to a total severing of any connection to that which helps the oppressed to resist – history, past and its lessons of resistance. We must resist any call for the severing of ties with any history, culture and tradition that strengthens and helps us challenge domination and colonization. Obviously there are significant pedagogical challenges. In the ‘Fact of Blackness”, Fanon concedes and acknowledges a resistance to amputation of the past, that is, a challenge to “an amputation, an excision” of a part of the Black body (Fanon, 1967a, p. 112). He writes, “nevertheless with all my strength I refuse to accept that amputation” (Fanon, 1967a, p. 140). He would add, “without a Negro past, without a Negro future, it was impossible for me to live my Negrohood” (p. 138). We cannot acknowledge that the past informs us and simultaneously assert the past is irrelevant to present and future struggles. Sure, we should let the past imprison us. We cannot be too steeped in the past. So then how are we to interpret Fanon’s (1967a) exhortations in the concluding chapter of: Black Skin, White Masks? “In no way should I derive my basic purpose from the past of the peoples of color” (p. 226). Or, that “I would not make myself a man of the past (p. 226)? He also goes on to write “I do not want to exalt the past at the expense of my present and of my future” (p. 226) and that the “Vietnamese who die before firing squads are not hoping that their sacrifice will bring about a reappearance of the past. It is for the sake of the present and of the future that they are willing to die” (p. 227). We can only confer that Fanon was more interested in a “living past” not a reclamation of a “dead and fossilized past”. In other words, to Fanon the past was only relevant if it informs political and liberation struggles of the present not in their mere recuperation, celebration or valorization. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon (1963) was emphatic that we “must use the past with the intention of opening the future, an invitation to action and a basis of hope. But to ensure that hope and to give it form, [we] must take part in action and throw [our] body and soul into the national struggle” (p. 232). This is an investment in the past for purposes of transforming futures. Our evocation of the past must not be reactive or reactionary. The past cannot simply be about looking to find “coherent elements which counteract colonialism’s attempts to falsify and harm” (Fanon, 1963). The past is relevant if it helps us “construct the future and to prepare the ground where vigorous shoots are already springing up” (Fanon, 1963, p. 233). A pedagogy of hope (see also Freire 1994), which celebrates the indomitable human spirit, teaching love, justice and healing, is important to contest a future so over-determined current geo-political forces of colonial and imperial encounter. A pedagogy of hope allows us to bring emotions to our work and for it to propel action. It is about a conviction that there will be success at the end of a struggle and that hope for a better future has to be struggled for and gained. A pedagogy of hope is about coming to know holistically. A pedagogy of hope is teaching about 25

DEI

diverse and multiple knowledges, including the active learning of multiple cultures, histories, experiences and knowledges emphasizing the complexities of such knowledges). Such pedagogy seeks to promote and enhance local/Indigenous culture and languages and break the false separation between the ‘school’ and the ‘home’ or off-school culture. A pedagogy of hope creates spaces of knowledge and power-sharing for family/community involvement in schools (i.e., in areas of pedagogy, instruction and curricular development) and emphasizes instructional and pedagogic practices that herald collective learning and responsibility by redefining ‘success’ broadly to include academic and social success. Such a pedagogy of hope also promotes curricular and instructional approaches that foreground questions of social difference and power relations (race, ethnicity, gender, class, language, [dis]ability, religious, age, and sexuality issues). It seeks to heal wounds of colonizing and oppressive relations and practices and cultivates in all learners agency and upholding the virtues of spiritual, emotional, psychological and [moral] values development of a whole being. Such a pedagogy of hope assists learners to believe in their power to transform their circumstances and to create a better future for all. This is the critical humanism that Fanon wrote about as the creation of a new social world. ACKNOWLDGEMENTS

I acknowledge the assistance of Marlon Simmons and Arlo Kempf of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto [OISE/UT] for reading and commenting on drafts of the paper. I also thank the faculty and staff of the Centre for School and Community Science and Technology Studies (SACOST), University of Education, Winneba, Ghana for our intense discussions about schooling and education in pluralistic contexts. NOTES 1

See The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, New York, 1963 (back cover).

REFERENCES Asante, M. K. (2009). Maulana Karenga: An intellectual topography of an activist scholar. Cambridge: Polity Press. [forthcoming]. Bernasconi, R. (2004). Identity and agency in Frantz Fanon. Sartre Studies International, 10, 106–109. Brewer, R. (1993). Theorizing race, class and gender: The new scholarship of black feminist intellectuals and black women’s labour. In M. James & P. A. Baize (Eds.), Theorizing black feminisms: The visionary pragmatism of black women (pp. 13–30). London: Routledge. Cabral, A. (1970). National liberation and culture. New York: Syracuse University Press. Cesaire, A. (1972). Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Collins, P. H. (1993). Towards a new vision: Race, class, and gender as categories of analysis and connection. Race, Sex and Class, 1, 25–45. Dei, G. J. S. (1996). Anti-Racism education: Theory and practice. Fernwood Publishing.

26

FANON AND ANTI-COLONIALTHEORIZING Dei, G. J. S. (2000). Rethinking the role of indigenous knowledges in the academy. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 4(2), 111–132. Dei, G. J. S. (2006a). Mapping the terrain: Anti-colonial thought and politics of resistance. In G. Dei & A. Kempf (Eds.), Anti-colonial thought, education and politics of resistance (pp. 1–24). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers/Peter Lang Publishers. Dei, G. J. S. (2009, May 1–2). Educational policies and the search for academic excellence for Black/African learners: Towards a new policy framework? Invited featured address. DuBoisNkrumah-Dunham International Conference on: ‘Academic Achievement in Africa and Its Diaspora: Challenges and Solutions’. University of Pittsburgh. Dei, G. J. S. (2010b). Re-reading Fanon for his pedagogy and implications for schooling and education. In G. J. S. Dei & M. Simmons (Eds.), Fanon and Education: Thinking through Pedagogical Possibilities. New York: Peter Lang. [Forthcoming] Dei, G. J. S., & Asgharzadeh, A. (2001). The power of social theory: Towards an anti-colonial discursive framework. Journal of Educational Thought, 353, 297–323. Dei, G. J. S., Karumanchery, L., & Karumanchery-Luik, N. (2004). Playing the race card: Exposing white power and privilege. New York: Peter Lang. Dei, G. J. S., & Kempf, A. (Eds.). (2006). Anti-colonial thought, education and politics of resistance. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers/Peter Lang Publishers. Dei, G. J. S., & Simmons, M. (2010a). The Pedagogy of Fanon: An Introduction. In G. Dei & M. Simmons (Eds.), Fanon and Education: Thinking through Pedagogical Possibilities. New York: Peter Lang. [Forthcoming] Fanon, F. (1967a). Black skin white masks. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1967b). Toward the African revolution: Political essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. Fanon, F. (1965). A dying colonialism. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fontenot, F. J. (1978). Fanon and the Devourers. Journal of Black Studies, 9(1), 93–114. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gandhi, M. (1967). Political and national life and affairs. Ahmedabad: Navijivan Press. Howard, P. (2004). Reflections on a reading course: ‘Interrogating whiteness in critical/anti-racist and other ostensibly equitable spaces. Unpublished Paper, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Kempf, A. (2008). The anti-colonial discursive framework: Toward an application to the Cuban educational context. Ph.D Comprehensive paper, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Mercer, K. (1996). Decolonization and disappointment: Reading Fanon’s sexual politics. In A. Reed (Ed.), The fact of blackness: Fanon and visual representation (pp. 114–131). Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Rich, A. (1979). Claiming an education. In On lies, secrets and silence. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Sartre, J.-P. (2001). Black orpheus. In R. Bernasconi (Ed.), Race (pp. 115–142). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Senghor, L. (2001). Negritude and modernity or negritude as a humanism for the twentieth century. In R. Bernasconi (Ed)., Race (pp. 143–166). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Wright, M. (2004). Some women disappear: Frantz Fanon’s legacy in black nationalist thought and the black [Male] subject. In Becoming black, creating identity in the African diaspora (pp. 111–135). Durham and London: Duke University Press.

27

PAUL ALHASSAN ISSAHAKU

3. DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM A Transgressive Revisiting of Fanon

INTRODUCTION

Frantz Fanon the psychiatrist is long gone but Fanonism lives on. A postmodern century is witnessing the resurgence of interest in Fanonian theory as a model with which to understand and explain the socio-economic, political, and cultural upheavals plaguing humankind. The analytic appeal of Fanonism derives from its power to diagnose and remediate social ills and, more importantly, to engender ‘true’ social transformation. Frantz Fanon is outstanding among anti-colonialism theorists and activists because he offered an illuminating diagnosis of colonialism/ colonization and proposed its counterforce – decolonization. In this paper I aim to use the analytic framework bequeathed to us by Fanon to diagnose the North American public education system as a colonizing industry and to call for its transformation. It is appropriate to note that Fanon did not offer just a critique of colonialism but found it unacceptable (a social disease) and called for its disappearance and replacement. In a similar vein, I do not aim merely to critique the Euro-American public school system but to diagnose it and call for its transformation. I use the term ‘transformation’ to signal that I will not be calling for ‘reform’ as usual. My work revisits Fanon to illuminate three questions: how colonizing is the current Euro-American public education system? What actions need to be taken and who should take such actions to bring about a transformation of the system? And what does a decolonized education system look like? CONCEPTION OF THE PROJECT

My interest in this project derives from my unique social location. As a Black man born in Ghana now studying in North America, I am implicated in a EuroAmerican education system. Ghana was colonized by Britain and made subject to the Crown. Today though Ghana is regarded as an ‘Independent republic’ we are still under the clutches of colonialism through economic exploitation, political manipulation, and a continuous adherence to colonial legal and education systems. Some refer to this phenomenon as ‘neocolonialism’ while Dei (2008) characterizes it as ‘reorganized colonialism’. I am a product of colonized and colonizing systems. In North America my racialized status makes me available for the white gaze and racist discipline. On the other hand, my working class background and G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 29–48. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ISSAHAKU

my professional values as a social worker make me an advocate for equity and social justice, to end oppression. And, my social location – a colonized and minoritized body – is a vantage point from which to diagnose the education system and to propose a corrective. As the saying goes ‘he who feels it knows it, and he who knows it feels it’. Just as Fanon was, I am concerned for the sake of humanity. Though I can not change the past, I can work towards changing the future. It is important to note that in literary, cultural, and sociological works and critiques Fanon has been ab/used, hailed, chastised, and/or altogether, dismissed (Robinson, 1993). Gates, Jr. (1991) for example, takes the position that Fanon belongs to the past and so Fanonism has no place in contemporary theorizing. Gates, Jr. describes Fanon as “a Rorschach blot with legs” whose “writings are rife with contradictions” and “in any event highly porous…” (p. 458). To this end, Gates, Jr. (1991) admonishes that we not “elevate him [Fanon] above his localities of discourse as a transcultural, transhistorical Global theorist…” (p. 470). For Verges (1997) Fanonism is merely a reflection “of Lacan mediated by Sartre and of Freud mediated by Marie Bonaparte…” (p. 579). To Verges (1997) Fanon is full of disavowal and ambivalence. Similarly, Bhabha (1994) reads Fanon only in the shadow of more authentic others. According to Bhabha (1994) Fanon is “Heir to the ingenuity and artistry of Toussaint and Senghor, as well as the iconoclasm of Nietzsche, Freud and Sartre” who speaks “from the uncertain interstices of historical change: from the area of ambivalence between race and sexuality, out of an unresolved contradiction between culture and class, from deep within the struggle of psychic representation and social reality” (p. 113). In the presentation of the three scholars cited above it seems that Fanon has nothing of theoretical value to offer. However, as Robinson (1993, p. 79) contends, these scholars have “implicated an imagined Fanon in their self-referential debates on colonial discourse”. Similarly Gibson’s (1999, p. 113) intervention shows that Fanon is historical, authentic in himself and, his “revolutionary dialectic…remains alive” in contemporary times. It is in Gibson’s (1999) positive intervention that my current project finds articulation. My work is not merely a ‘remembering’ of Fanon as Bhabha (1994) puts it. I aim to recuperate Fanonism in a ‘transgressive’ uncovering of the fault-lines in the Euro-American school system and to prescribe a corrective. ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

We ought to uplift the people, we must develop their brains, fill them with ideas, change them and make them into human beings (Fanon, 1963, p. 157) All human life is bound up with education – the teaching and learning of how to think, feel, and act – which is inherently a political process. Globally, the importance of public education cannot be overemphasized. The United Nations’ (2000) Millennium Declaration enjoined all nations to ensure that all children complete a full course of primary education by the year 2015. More than ever, education has been framed as a right for all children, not just for the privileged. Education is 30

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

predicated on the need to “prepare youth to assume the responsibilities of national and global citizenship” (Dei, Mazzuca, McIsaac & Zine, 1997, p. 7). Murnane and Steele (2007, p. 16) note of the United States that “expanding economic opportunity, enhancing social mobility, developing a skilled workforce and preparing young people to participate in a democratic society” are outcomes required of the public education system. As a result, the worth of a school system is determined, to a large extent, by its ability to meet this challenge. The work of educators – school principals and classroom teachers – is critically assessed based on performance of their schools and students measured against some standardized success targets (Portelli, Shield & Vibert, 2007, Grubb & Flessa, 2006). Educational reforms, both large-scale and small-scale, have been undertaken across North America all aimed at raising school success levels (Leithwood, Jantzi & Mascal, 2002, Anderson, 2003). Increasingly, stakeholders in education task educators and administrators to develop far more suitable and effective techniques and technologies of education. The call for effective and appropriate education is premised on the believe that without education one will fail to function socially, economically, and politically in a world now described as ‘a global village’. We need, however, to pose an interjection. What type of education is posited here? Whose values, philosophy, and ideologies are being articulated and, whose are disarticulated by this system of education? Social commentators and progressive educators across North America have drawn attention to the negative and discomfiting experiences of Black and racialized students in the current education system. Black and minoritized students suffer severe disadvantages within the public school system which account for many of them feeling hopeless about the future and disengaging from school (Driscoll, 1999, Glick & White, 2004, Die, 1997). Anxiety and frustration among the local community regarding the failure of the school system to adequately address the needs of Black and minoritized youth have been reported (Kao & Thompson, 2003, Dei et al., 1997). According to Dei et al. (1997) “Black/African-Canadian parents, guardians, caregivers, community workers, students, and educators continue to ask fundamental questions about the ability of public schools to equip Black youth with the requisite tools and skills to take advantage of the opportunities available to youth” (p. 9). Dei and colleagues further note that “the structural processes of schooling and education provide unequal opportunities and create differential outcomes, particularly for racial minority students and students from low socioeconomic family backgrounds” (p. 13). One example of the unequal opportunities in the school system, according to Murnane and Steele (2007, p. 15) is that “Poor children and children of color are disproportionately assigned to teachers with the least preparation and the weakest academic backgrounds”. The way forward, as this paper calls for, is a revolution, a transformation – in a word –decolonization of the education system from the vantage point of Black and minoritized students. This is crucial because according to Fanon (1963) public education should turn out “fully conscious men” and women, it should raise their level of thought and their political awareness. Further, Fanon points out that for men and women, true “education means opening their minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence…” (p. 157). Moreover, as Fanon dictated in 31

ISSAHAKU

the epigram that opened this section, an education system ought to uplift people, develop their brains, fill them with ideas, change them and make them into human beings. The current system fails its stakeholders, most severely, racialized students, on all these scores. That is why I call for decolonization of the system. My use of the language of decolonization may come across as a disjuncture because colonization and decolonization are conventionally understood in terms of the past, the history of European exploitation of Blacks and other peoples through economic, political, epistemological, and ideological domination, and a subsequent attempt of colonized people to liberate themselves. However, I am attempting to understand these concepts in the Fanonian tradition in which we encounter colonizing, exploitative, and oppressive forces which shape people’s lived experience in all facets of their lives and across time and space. I deploy these concepts in a transgressive departure synonymous to what Suleri (1994) notes of the mobility of the term ‘postcolonialism’. According to Suleri (1994, p. 246) Where the term once referred exclusively to the discursive practices produced by the historical fact of prior colonization in certain geographically specific segments of the world, it is now more of an abstraction available for figurative deployment in any strategic redefinition of marginality (my emphasis). Following Fanon, we understand that racism, classism, capitalism, sexism, and gender disadvantage are all colonizing social processes that must be countered through an agenda for social transformation, decolonization. And, contrary to Bhabha’s (1994) view that “memories of Fanon tend to the mythical….as a prophetic spirit in ‘Third World’ Liberation or, ... as an exterminating angel” that inspires violence “in the Black Power Movement” (p. 113) I recuperate Fanon not in the ‘Third World’ but to diagnose a Euro-American school system and, not only for the sake of racialized bodies but for the sake of Europe as well. Fanon’s (1963) epigrammatic prescription was and is still eloquent: “For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man” (p. 255). Drawing from the above I explore and explicate as colonizing all aspects of the education system which are oppressive and violent to as well as invisibilize Black and minoritized students. I call for decolonization within the system which will envision a transformed system and structure in which minoritized students feel liberated and empowered to pursue the type of schooling that satisfies their material and spiritual hopes and aspirations. As Dei et al. (1997, p. 6) succinctly put it, “We cannot look at the ‘crisis’ plaguing Black/African-Canadian youth today, with respect to education and achievement, and unproblematically accept the status quo”. The call to “social commitment and political action for educational transformation and social change” must be eloquent. The call is for a just education system, or at least, a less unjust one. My work here has some resonance with Loomba’s (1989) intervention which uncovers how English literature was – and probably still is- a tool for the imperial domestication and domination of India. Loomba (1989) argues that this form of Eurocentric education “not only responded to the exigencies, ideologies as well as the contradictions of colonial rule, but was crucial to imperialist strategy” (p. 11). The same observation can be made about the form of education instituted in all 32

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

colonized and settler territories. My point of departure from Loomba and other ‘postcolonial’ critics of Eurocentric education is that I draw on Fanon to diagnose and ‘cure’ not at the ‘margin’ but right here in the Global North. THE COLONIZING NATURE OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

In this section I argue that from the standpoint of Black and minoritized students the current Euro-American public education system is colonizing, the ideological suband super-structure of the system is racist and Eurocentric. As Fanon (1963) noted: That same Europe where they were never done talking of Man, and where they never stopped proclaiming that they were anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid [and is paying] for every one of their triumphs of the mind (p. 252). Bannerji (1997, p. 30) points out that a “racist culture, textured through and through with the cult of “raced” masculinity, cannot but claim its victims”, since white masculinity is not simply a “physical fact” but more so, “a moral imperative and an ideology”. Alcoff (2001) also contends that race is, and has always been, a strong determinant of social life, social reality. In Alcoff’s presentation: The legitimacy and moral relevance of racial concepts is officially denied even while race continues to determine job prospects, career possibilities, available places to live, potential friends and lovers, reactions from the police, credence from jurors, and the amount of credibility one is given by one’s students (p. 269). Further, Alcoff explains that “Race may not correlate with clinal variations, but it persistently correlates with a statistically overwhelming significance in wage levels, unemployment levels, poverty levels, and the likelihood of incarceration”. Alcoff’s litany here corroborates Fanon’s (1963) observation that “When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species” (p. 32). It is along this grain of thought that Goldberg (cited in Alcoff, 2001, p. 269) argues that “liberal Western societies maintain a paradoxical position whereby “Race is irrelevant, but all is race” ”. Drawing from the preceding arguments I contend that in the current education system a student’s race determines, to a large extent, his/her success or failure. Two analytic concepts which I employ in explicating my argument are ‘in/visibility’ and ‘violence’. Minoritized Students’ In/Visibility The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man. Overnight Negro has been given two frames of reference within which he has had to place himself (Fanon, 1967, p. 110). According to Fanon invisibility of the Black man signifies his existence only in the ontological register of another - the White man. “In the white world the man of 33

ISSAHAKU

color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness” (Fanon, 1967, p. 110). Black and racialized students suffer invisibility within the North American education system. As David Goldberg (1996) explains, visibility and invisibility are heavily inflected by race and carry material and symbolic consequences for those so projected. According to Goldberg (1996) “whiteness” or visibility, has long been characterized in terms of light and learning, blackness in terms of darkness and degeneration. Accordingly, visibility carries with it connotations that tend to be appealing – access, opportunity, ability – in short, power, and invisibility has tended to connote absence, lack, incapacity – in short, powerlessness” (p. 179). Lewis Gordon (cited in Goldberg, 1996) posits a number of ways in which one may suffer invisibility. These include (1) being refused the opportunity to express one’s opinion, or not getting answers for one’s questions, (2) being denied attention in preference for others considered more important in similar emergencies or in a more serious situation, and (3) being denied justice that normally accrues to others for the same or a more serious wrong suffered. By virtue of their race, culture, and history minoritized students are rendered invisible at many sites within the education system; in the classroom, on the school compound, in the hall ways, on the playground, and at excursion sites. These students suffer denial and dismissal from their white peers, they suffer inattention from and are denied the opportunity to express their opinions or have their questions answered by white educators, and are always in the wrong for which they suffer various punishments – so-called ‘disciplinary measures’ – rather than being wronged and have justice done to them in the hands of school authorities (Dei et al., 1997). As Fanon (1967) explained, minoritized students experience all these because their “corporeal schema crumbled[s], its place taken by a racial epidermal schema” (p. 112) as they have been “woven…out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories” (p. 111). In Dei et al.’s (1997) study one minoritized student made this comment: “White people seem to get positive attention, meanwhile we’re getting negative”. Another student lamented over the perception that racialized students are always those who infract rather than being infracted, “…No matter how good you did there was still that part of you, well, you know, ‘He does get in trouble sometimes. If I was a white kid they would overlook that….” (p. 86). And here Fanon (1967) poses an interjection: “What else could it be for me [for the students cited above] but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage…” (p. 112). The invisibility which denies Black and racialized students the opportunity for self-determination should not be confused with the notion of ‘strategic invisibility’ as a defensive or offensive weapon which, according Goldberg (1996, p. 181) explicating Fanon, “can actually be invoked to advance power, personal or political, or as an expression of power itself ”. Fanon observed that in the colonial context “The colonized exerts considerable effort to keep away from the colonial world, not to expose himself to any action of the conqueror” (1965, p. 130). Also, invisibility represented by the veil won by the Algerian woman was interpreted as a defensive or a means of defiance. As Fanon posited, “This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity. She does not 34

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

yield herself, does not give herself, does not offer herself” (1965, p. 44). Further, Fanon (1967) appeals to the inner strength in resistance to invisibility: “Nevertheless with all my strength I refuse to accept that amputation” (p. 140). In contrast to strategic invisibility, the invisibility suffered by racialized and minoritized students in North America’s education system is that of “people not being seen because one “knows” them in virtue of some fabricated preconception of group formation” (Goldberg, 1996, p. 180). This invisibility is the material expression of the ‘epidermalization’ of Blacks’ “inferiority” in which they are fixed, “in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye” (Fanon, 1967, p. 109). As Bernasconi (2001, p. 287) argues, “Those who are most invisible in the public realm, in the sense of being powerless, mute, and deprived of human rights, are often most visible to those who disempower them, silence them, and exploit them”. These ‘invisibles’ are paradoxically rendered visible in the register of the other as in “Look, a Negro” and “Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!” (Fanon, 1967, pp. 111–112). Bernasconi (2001) notes, as an example, that at the height of racial segregation in the United States during which Blacks suffered public invisibility, Blacks were visible to whites who used them as waiters/waitresses, homemakers, as well as errand and garden boys/girls. The regime which subjects to invisibility also ensures that those it invisibilizes have no individual identities or subjectivities. Dottolo and Stewart (2008) report of the experience of a young African-American who suffered police brutality because he was said to be in a coat similar to that won by ‘one guy’ reported to have been snatching purses. Meeks (cited in Dottolo and Stewart, 2008, p. 354) noted a disturbing incident: The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that police officers did not violate the Constitution when they stopped every Black man in Oneonta on September 4, 1992, after a 77-year-old White woman said she had been attacked in her home by a young Black man. This means that blacks as a racialized group have no individual identities, one stands for all and all stand for one condemned. Drawing from the above logic while minoritized students in Euro-American public schools are invisible because they are denied physical space, symbolic recognition, and cultural expression, they are at the same time visible to be disciplined and punished. School disciplinary measures are deemed to be working in as much as minoritized students are there as prey. The invisibility Racial Minorities suffer is, according to Bernasconi (2001), “deliberate or, at least, programmed” (p. 287). Ralph Ellison (cited in Bernasconi, 2001, p. 287) is said to have captured the lamentation of a black man in a white society in the following words: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”. Further explicating this programmed invisibility of the Black, bell hooks (quoted in Bernasconi, 2001, p. 287) had this to say: One mark of oppression was [is] that blacks were [are] compelled to assume the mantle of invisibility, to erase all traces of their subjectivity during slavery and the long years of racial apartheid, so that they would be better, less threatening, servants… 35

ISSAHAKU

The programmed invisibility that minoritized bodies suffer is predicated on prejudice and discrimination underwritten by racism whose goal is to symbolically, culturally evict those against whom it is directed. This invisibility also issues from stereotypes, fabrications constantly manipulated and canonized as “Truths” and widely circulated for consumption. Akamatsu (cited in Mishna & Bogo, 2007, p. 536) explains that “the biases embedded in the dominant discourse are hidden by their very ordinariness and this sense of ‘normality’ functions to preclude questioning”. Akamatsu’s analysis gains much intellectual and discursive purchase when linked to Bernasconi’s (2001) argument that “Even when whites have not gone to the extreme of explicitly denying the humanity of Blacks, they have frequently found numerous ways, institutional and personal, in which to demean Blacks” (p. 284). It is also as John L. Jackson, Jr. (cited in Hond, 2008, p. 15) says: “…as overt expressions of racism have been shamed from the public square, racist sentiment has gone underground, deep into people’s hearts instead of on their sleeves”. From the preceding discussion, therefore, it is difficult to see how and what kind of strategic invisibility will advance the cause of racial minority students within a racist school system. Strategic invisibility cannot be a viable option. Only decolonization of the system should be proposed. Violence of the School System Racialized and minoritized students suffer racial violence within the Euro-American public school system. As Fanon (1963) points out, it is violence which rules “over the ordering of the colonial world [and the colonizing school system], which has ceaselessly drummed the rhythm for the destruction of native social forms and broken up without reserve the systems of reference … the customs of dress and external life…” (p. 33). The violence minoritized students suffer consists of many experiences, negative and dehumanzing treatment, labeling, segregation, physical violence, and a ‘void’ curriculum. Fanon (1967, p. 183) points out that this treatment of racialized students is predicated on the “manicheism delirium” of this racist system. This Manichean violence, according to Fanon, does not only dehumanize its other but at times turns him into an animal. The North American literature in this area shows that Black and minoritized students suffer negative – differential and adverse – treatment from their white peers, white teachers, and racist school administrators. Racialized students are the victims of being refused recognition for feats that accord recognition and applause to white students, while at the same time being subjected to condescending and inferiorizing evaluations (Dei, 2008, Dei et al., 1997). Being segregated in the classroom, being ‘picked on’ by teachers, or being stereotyped and labeled ‘troublemakers’ constitute other dimensions of the violence visited on minoritized students in the school system. Some Black students have described their schools as hostile places characterized by racial tensions, where they suffer name-calling, derogatory remarks, and/or physical attacks (Dei et al., 1997). Some teachers and school administrators have worsened the plight of Black and minoritized students by pretending to be ‘color-blind’ or simply by ‘denying’ the issue of race while 36

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

racial violence is continuously being enacted against these students in the classrooms, hall ways, and cafeterias. Teachers’ and administrators’ behavior is in consonance with Memmi’s (1965) description of the colonizer who “must adapt himself to his true situation and the human relationships resulting from it” (p. 51). Memmi adds that nobody dare question this order of things, “especially not the colonized” (p. 76). Black and minoritized students are also reported to have been unduly burdened, oppressed, and controlled by the authority and power structures in their schools (Dei et al., 1997). In a life performance on his song track ‘No truth in the world’, Lucky Dube1 captured a sentiment that resonates well here. According Dube, ‘every time when things are happening, it’s only the poor man who feels the pain’. In Dube’s anthology the ‘poor man’ is a metonym for the Black man, for the Rasta man, and for all oppressed peoples. Another violence that racialized/minoritized students are exposed to within the school system issues from the culture of “streaming”. Streaming students, as noted by Dei et al. (1997, p. 115) is “the process by which stereotyping and labeling become formalized by the education system”. This practice of assigning students to predetermined academic levels (e.g., general, advanced) “has real implications” for their education and career opportunities. Generally, minoritized students are ‘incarcerated’ or ‘ghettoized’ in the ‘basic level’ streams of low social status, characterized by vocational, technical, and commercial courses, as compared to their counterparts in the ‘advanced’ level streams who can aspire to, say, the practice of law or medicine (Dei et al., 1997). By such streaming, racialized students are being trained to continue their historical status of docile and domesticated bodies at the service of their white masters. Cesaire (1994) makes a point that Eurocentric education aims to manufacture “subordinate functionaries, ‘boys’, artisans, office clerks, and interpreters necessary for the smooth operation of business” (p. 177). This enables, between the colonizer and the colonized, relations of domination, forced labor, intimidation, theft, rape, and degradation. As a result, Cesaire (1994) posits that contrary to the logic that European culture is a metonym for civilization, the colonization it engenders equates to ‘thingification’, it makes ‘things’ of its others as factors of production for the material advancement of Europe. Fanon (1963) preempted this streaming when he spoke of compartmentalization. According to Fanon: The native is a being hemmed in, apartheid is simply one form of the division into compartments of the colonial world. The first thing which the native learns is to stay in his place, and not to go beyond certain limits. This is why the dreams of the native are always of muscular prowess…[I dream that I am bathing an old White woman]. (1963, p. 41, My emphasis) The school curriculum, whose content has little that racialized students can psychologically and spiritually identify with, is another site of violence. In particular, the curriculum has next-to-nothing to offer racial minority students on their own cultures and histories which will help them understand their current social location vis-à-vis the dominant group. The curriculum is shaped by the dominant group with its ‘mono-cultural focus’ and in which the history students 37

ISSAHAKU

are exposed to is Eurocentric, a history which is always already about Europeans on their civilizing (colonizing?) and rescue mission in ‘primitive’ territories, and championing the course of ‘progress’. According to Fanon there is nothing more violent, alienating, and dehumanizing than the attempt to erase the history and culture of a people. This is what colonialism does: It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say with the help of the army and the police force, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil. Native society is not simply described as lacking in values…but also the negation of values. (Fanon, 1963, pp. 33–34). Alienation among Black and minoritized students is characterized by feelings of isolation, neglect, discredit, and devaluation of their culture by peers and teachers and this inhibits their participation in school activities – academic and extra-curricular. This is often aggravated when schools fail to “present enough materials linked to student’s heritage – class, culture, ethnicity, or gender” (Turner, 1993, p. 12). We also draw on Cabral (1994) to understand “that imperialist domination, by denying the historical development of the dominated people, necessarily also denies their cultural development. It is also understood why imperialist domination….for its own security, requires the cultural oppression and the…liquidation of the essential elements of the culture of the dominated people” (p. 55). Freire and Faundez (1989) argue that “The dominant culture, associated with economic and political power, tends to impose its “superiority” on the other cultural expressions. That is why the much-vaunted cultural pluralism of certain societies does not, strictly speaking, exist” (p. 74). According to Freire and Faundez, “for there to be genuine cultural pluralism, a certain unity in diversity”, which “presupposes mutual respect between the various cultural expressions making the whole”, is indispensable. Thus, the disavowal of the histories of Blacks and other Racial Minorities within the curriculum is a symbolic violence that does considerable damage to racialized students’ psyches, spirits, and souls. On this point, Loomba’s (1989) work is illuminating. She characterizes EuroAmerican education as a ‘hegemonic ideology’. According to Loomba (1989, p. 19) “A central feature of hegemonic ideologies is their projection of the dominant viewpoint as universally true, transcendentally valid and non-political. In this way, they claim to represent all humanity and fix their ‘others’ as inferior and finally non-human”. Such a hegemonic educational ideology advances a pedagogy whose goal is “to project the English literary text [and science and technology] as an amalgam of universal value, morality, truth and rationality” (Loomba, 1989, p. 10). This is ‘epistemic violence’ perpetrated through the public education system. Furniss (1999) does not mince words on the fact that all the history that the average Canadian student is exposed to is a ‘selective’ history, of values and identities, of a ‘tradition’ that celebrates European superiority through exploration, settlement, expansion, and industry. Furniss further notes that: Histories commemorating the arrival of early explorers, settlers, missionaries, and industries in the remote regions of Canada constitute the master narratives 38

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

of Canadian nationalism….a partial vision of history that provides the official story…a story produced and communicated in the most significant of public domains, ranging from public schools and national museums to ceremonies of state, and a story that plays a vital role in rationalizing past and present social institutions and structures of political authority. (p. 53) These myths and fabrications of an Official Canadian History, continuously propagated in the public school system, on the altar of which other histories are discredited, silenced, or altogether erased, are part of the agenda to continuously legitimize the process of colonization and subjugation of racialized groups. One clear example that Furniss points out is the silence of ‘Canadian history’ on the role of Aboriginal Peoples in the construction of the place called Canada today. While celebrating the processes of European expansion, Furniss notes that high school history textbooks render Aboriginal Peoples “invisible or grossly caricatured in either romantic or demeaning stereotypes” (p. 56). This is where Loomba’s (1994) intervention becomes more illuminating. According to Loomba: It is not entirely surprising that the neglect of histories surrounding native insubordination either devalues or romanticizes the latter, or worse, tends to read colonized subjects through the linguistic or psychoanalytical theories which remain suspiciously and problematically shot through with ethnocentric assumptions whose transfer to all subalterns is unacceptable. (p. 307) The violence perpetrated through Euro-epistemic canons embedded in the school curriculum is now reaching a crescendo. From the foregoing analysis we can describe the current education system as colonizing because, like colonialism, it amounts to the ‘systematic organization of the deprivation of freedom’ of the minoritized student. The consequences that racialized students suffer as a result of the violence and invisibility they experience within the school system are monumental. Besides the psychological and spiritual damage, practical consequences include poor test scores on reading, writing, vocabulary, and math, grade retention, and a high probability of dropping out of school (White & Kaufman, 1997, Dei et al., 1997). Grade retention gives cause for concern because it is highly correlated with dropout and, students at risk of repeating a grade are also at risk of eventual dropout or disengagement. School dropout is a serious issue because it predicts or portends failure to enter college, poor long-term employment, occupational mobility and economic wellbeing, a high probability of welfare dependence, low self-esteem, and poor psychological wellbeing (Tillman, Guo & Harris, 2006). Murnane and Steele (2007) analyzed wage levels of American workers from 1973 to 2003 and found significant disparities. They note that while the wage fortunes of college graduates and advanced degree holders significantly appreciated over the period, real hourly earnings for ‘high-school-only’graduates stagnated. According Murnane and Steele high school dropouts fared worse, their real wages plummeted by a magnitude of 14 percentage points over the thirty-year period. From this standpoint we see that dropout becomes an intergenerational problem; it leads to low socio-economic status (SES) which, itself, is a significant predictor of children’s school achievement 39

ISSAHAKU

(Glick & White, 2003). A good number of racialized school dropouts also become incarcerated, as adults, for various charges, thereby exposing their children to poverty, foster care, and all the Eurocentric state disciplinary and control measures. DECOLONIZING THE SCHOOL SYSTEM

A good number of educational reforms or changes have been undertaken in North America all indicating that what we have now is not the best that we could have. But from the standpoint of a student of Fanon educational reforms are merely stop-gap and recycling measures or administrative reorganization, they are not transformative in the sense of decolonization. Indeed, it is not the gun that kills but the one who pulls the trigger and educational reforms do not go for the triggerpullers. All processes of schooling, including curriculum administration and delivery and classroom pedagogical culture, which “create unequal outcomes, particularly for racialized students, as well as those from working-class backgrounds” (Dei et al., 1997, p. 5) are colonizing and must be countered through a process of decolonization. Why is it that school failure, low achievement, ‘fading-out’, disengagement, or drop-out in America are largely problems among Black and minoritized students? The current Eurocentric system, which is predetermined and imposed on all, is unacceptable to and does not serve the needs of Black and racialized students. The system of education that minoritized students are subjected to is like the Colonial Church which, according Fanon, “does not call the colonized to the ways of God, but to the ways of the white man, to the ways of the master, the ways of the oppressor” (1963, p. 34). Rather than an education that enables them to develop their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual potentials as whole humans, racialized students are exposed to a type of “EuroAmerican” education that depersonalizes, dehumanizes, and subjugates to white European ideals. These students are being trained to be labor for capital and servants for the white bourgeoisie. Fanon argues that most European models, including education and lifestyles, are injurious to man. “When I search for man in the technique and style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders” (1963, p. 253), murders, especially of the racialized other. Fanon is not just talking about physical murder but, more so, about psychological, spiritual and cultural damage done to racialized others which engenders a sense of hopelessness, feelings of being less than human, or of living a dead-end existence. It is by doing so that, according to Fanon, “For centuries they [Europe] have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience [or in their own glory]. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration” (1963, p. 252). Following from the above the call to decolonize the education system is predicated on the need to end the enslavement and subjugation of minoritized students, and to end the further ‘stifling of their humanity’. Decolonization is a change or transformation process. According to Fanon: The need for this change exists in its crude state, impetuous and compelling, in the consciousness of men and women who are colonized. But the possibility 40

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

of this change is equally experienced in the form of a terrifying future in the consciousness of another “species” of men and women: the colonizers (1963, p. 29). For oppressed people decolonization is a serious business which, in Fanon’s words, “is willed, called for, demanded” (p. 29). The process of decolonization is an open prosecution and amounts to interrogating, challenging, and subverting the status quo by those so colonized. This is what Fanon says: Decolonization never takes place un-noticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms spectators crushed with their inessentiality into privileged actors, with the grandiose glare of history’s floodlights upon them… Decolonization is truly the creation of new men… the “thing” which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it liberates itself. (1963, p. 30) Fanon describes decolonization – the substitution of one species of mankind for another – as a violent encounter, a face-to-face confrontation between two antagonistic forces – the colonizer and the colonized- which leads to true transformation. To subvert the status quo, to overturn the regime of privilege and oppression so as to create the new man, there is bound to be opposition and resistance. The colonizing regime has been established and imposed through violence and is sustained by violence. We read in Fanon that “Colonialism throws all the elements of native society into confusion. The dominant group arrives with its values and imposes them with such violence that the very life of the colonized can manifest itself only defensively, in a more or less clandestine way. Under these conditions, colonial domination distorts the very relations that the colonized maintains with his own culture” (1967, p. 130). Further, Fanon observes that the colonizing regime “is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence” (1963, p. 48). Fanon’s explication is buttressed by Austin (2006) who notes that “violence and colonialism go hand-in-hand. Violence is not only used to subjugate colonized peoples, it conditions their very existence because it is held in reserve, for when the natives get out of hand” (p. D.1). During decolonization the canon fire and bayonet of the colonizer meet the counterforce of the colonized’s improvised bombs, handmade grenades, machetes, bow and arrow, and, if possible, arson. Fanon observes that decolonization can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course, violence. This is what he says: The native [colonized] who decide to put the programme into practice, and to become its moving force, is ready for violence at all times. From birth it is clear to him that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence. (1963, pp. 30–31) In this passage we deduce from Fanon that the violence of decolonization should be commensurate with, if not disproportionate to, the violence of colonization. In the Euro-American school system the violence of the colonized manifests in 41

ISSAHAKU

various forms; violent resistance by racialized students to racist disciplinary measures, including physical and verbal confrontation, attacks on racist educators by students and their communities to demand fair treatment and accountability, minoritized students’ violent takeover of school spaces hitherto declared offlimits to them, and violent protests and demonstrations against racist educators, accompanied by requests and petitions for their dismissal or transfer. Additionally, the violence of racialized students is expressed in the form of boycotts of school and school activities to protest against oppressive decisions and unfair treatment, and in the form of ‘gang’ activities aimed at subverting racist school practices or dismantling oppressive structures. In recent times a powerful subversion of the Eurocentric public school system, which also serves as a rallying force for the decolonization process, is agitation for and the materialization of Afrocentric schools and other such alternative school spaces (see Dei, 2008). While decolonization is not calling for Afrocentric schools, these schools are a powerful rallying force because they will provide the political education and the conscientization to ask the crucial questions needed for decolonizing the whole edifice. However, on a rather sober note, the violence of most racialized students is internalized and directed at the self. Hence we have black-on-black violence, illegal use of harmful substances, and committal of acts that put these students in trouble with another racist juvenile justice system. Alternatively, other students gradually disengage from school or altogether drop out and take to the streets. We can draw on Fanon to understand these students’ situation. According to Fanon (1963) “Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: in reality, who am I” (p. 203). That is why violence is said to be a ‘healing’ or ‘cleansing’ force at the individual level. When it is properly directed against the oppressive system to dismantle it, violence becomes regenerative. Dei (2008) in paraphrasing the words of Fanon succinctly puts it this way: The violence of the colonized subject is in fact ‘counter violence’, violence in reaction to the settler/colonizer/oppressor. When embarked upon by the colonial subject such violence is a ‘cleansing force’. It is violence intended to restore the subject’s humanity, self worth and respect, to deal with his/her inferiority complex and cast away any repressed anger and resentment of the oppressor/settler. Such violence is an expression of the oppressed collective consciousness. It is suppressed fury that must find an outlet. When unleashed it is the colonial subject recreating himself/herself. We can interpret the violence of decolonization in the following sense: Any change, transition, or transformation process, which calls for taking away or giving up something entrenched and deeply cherished, always involves a violent struggle between the contending forces, the status quo and the desired future state. Even natural death involves a violent struggle to give up the ‘ghost’. Also, purifying a thing which has been contaminated or adulterated is a violent process: gold passing through the furnace, crude oil going through the refinery, and dirty clothes passed 42

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

through the laundry machine. Further, a surgical procedure or the administration of drugs to fight alongside the body’s immune system for the cure of disease is a violent process. Moreover, for two chemical substances to dissolve into each other to become one there is first a violent struggle between them. From Fanon’s perspective, therefore, nothing changes from the old to the new, from the before to the now, without there being an intermediate period of a necessary violence. Fanonian violence in its right perspective is violence which issues from and is shot through with action toward liberation, toward new birth. Along this grain of representation, Austin (2006) warns that Fanon should not be portrayed as an ‘apostle’, as an ‘avatar’ of random and dehumanizing violence. According to Verges (1996) “The colonizer’s violence was not a hereditary trait but the result of the psychological and material violence of the colonial relation” (p. 91). Therefore, the violence of decolonization is that associated with “a social revolution”. As noted by Verges, “Memmi, like Fanon, thought that a social revolution was needed to accomplish decolonization. “Only the complete liquidation of colonization permits the colonized to be free”, but this liquidation was “nothing but a prelude to complete liberation, to self-recovery”” (p. 92). The violence of decolonization eats up racism which, according to Verge’s, citing Memmi, is a “consubstantial part of colonialism”, the “highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of colonialism” (1996, p. 92). An education system that disarticulates the values, mores, and culture of racialized students must be decolonized. A type of Eurocentric education oriented toward the corrupting and corruptible materialism of human nature must be replaced ‘for Europe, and for us’. It should be transformed into something akin to what Fanon made of his hospital and its psychiatric and medical practices. According Verge’s (1996, p. 94) “The hospital was transformed into a “society with its multiplicity of relations, duties, and possibilities so that patients can assume roles and fulfill functions””. Black and minoritized students need an education system in which they actively pursue their destinies and get treated with respect and dignity rather than as materials in a mass production line. A decolonized system of education will be an emancipative system for minoritized students, a system among others that offers them political and social emancipation to fulfill their destinies. In decolonizing, we call for the following: (1) the replacing of a curriculum oriented toward Euro-capitalist ideals with one that is more human-centered and which gives equal weight to other knowledges, values, and ways of being in the world. Schooling policies, practices, and the social organizational life of schools must be reborn. We call for a critical national conversation devoid of racist emotionality and ‘rationality’ to work this through. (2) We ask for change of names of schools, school buildings, and parks from those that constantly remind the ‘other’ that s/he is a patron to European ‘civilization’, for pulling down, in the schools, those ‘uncanny’ monuments of the ‘Generals’ of European violence, of the ‘Pioneers’ of territorial dis/possession, and of the ‘Saints’ of spiritual alienation. (3) We also call for the dismissal and replacement of all racist teachers and school principals, all who can not see but only through the ‘white’ eye. Substantiated complaints of racism against teachers and administrators should be grounds for their firing while background checks on racist sentiments should be incorporated 43

ISSAHAKU

into the hiring protocol. In their professional preparations, we ask that teachers and potential principals go through a process of ‘unlearning’ and ‘undoing’ racist beliefs and practices. All the above is informed by Fanon’s call on us to “shake off the heavy darkness in which we were [have been] plunged, and leave it behind”, and that we must be “firm, prudent and resolute” (1963, p. 252). THE NEW SYSTEM

The new system of education that is envisioned aims at engendering “mutual enrichment between written and spoken cultures”, especially in North American society characterized by cultural diversity. As Freire and Faundez (1989) capture it, “the educational and political challenge confronting nations with rich cultural diversity is not simply to create a new politics, a new conception of power, but also to create….a new conception of education itself ”, which, to all intents and purposes, “should be regarded as a process, a process of self-transformation” (pp. 76–77). Freire and Faundez further explain that following decolonization, there is “rediscovery of society and with it the rediscovery of education” such that: The class character of the former educational system, which served the interests of the dominant class by discriminating against the popular masses, and was apparent not only in the authoritarian form of the curriculum, but also in the practice of an elitist education, must come to an end. Its contents and methods must be replaced with a view to the new society to be created. (p. 77) Further, a decolonized system of education creates room for the ‘pedagogy of asking questions’. Freire and Faundez (1989) posit that “all knowledge begins from asking questions. It begins with….curiosity. But curiosity is asking questions” (p. 35). In contrast, under the current regime of education, students, particularly minoritized students, experience what Freire and Faundez refer to as “the castration of curiosity”. The castration of racialized students’ curiosity about their history, culture, and humanity leads to their ‘amputation’ and estrangement from such histories and cultures which form the core of their humanity. In most instances it is the castration of curiosity embedded in curriculum and classroom racist and authoritarian practices which engenders the feelings of inferiority, low selfesteem/confidence, and of being second-rated among racialized students. A decolonized school system will be a win for all. Decolonization itself does not call for a reversal of the social order in favor of formerly oppressed peoples but to the decimation of the oppressor. According to Fanon the goal of decolonization is the creation of ‘a new humanism to the dimensions of the universe’. In a transformed system of education, all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or any other such identities, will enjoy their rights – human rights – in the humane and humanist sense of rights. Human rights in the Fanonian sense are always already collective, collaborative, cooperative, and communal rights whereby the rights of one are tethered to and enhance, promote the rest of humanity. This is captured in what Fanon refers to as ‘a new humanism to the dimensions of the universe’. It is not the Eurocentric notion of competitive, contestatory, individualistic, 44

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

and legalistic rights in which one’s rights are asserted in disregard to injury to others. It is based on this flawed conception of self-centered rights that whites, as a group, assert their humanity to the disarticulation and effacement of other peoples’ humanity by every means possible including the current system of education. In the decolonized school system, the curriculum, teaching personnel and school administrators, both white and nonwhite, school policies and regulations, students – minority and majority alike, – and parents are transformed. According to Fanon, decolonization does not result only in the disappearance of the colonizing regime, but also in the disappearance of colonized man. In the process school teachers and administrators shed off their racist thinking and behavior which are prejudicial, stereotypical, biased and discriminatory, racist school policies, rules and regulations are discarded, and so is the racist curriculum, which occludes other histories and cultures discarded. More importantly, students, supported by their families and communities no matter their backgrounds, will be liberated to pursue and fulfill their destinies. In the new system teachers and students share a common humanity: Teachers teach because there is something worth teaching to which they give their time and commitment, and students engage in learning because it gives them meaning. Knowledge in this environment is co-created and shared by teachers and students and every one feels validated. In the new system teachers and principals use their ‘power’ and ‘authority’ responsibly to facilitate learning rather indiscriminately to oppress any group. The culture of labeling, streaming, and judging performance only by Eurocentric models will not be part of the new system. Finally, in the new system all cultural expressions gain articulation in the curriculum so that our differences are appreciated in light of our common humanity. The Role of Intellectuals It is important to note the significant role of intellectuals, especially Black and minoritized anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression intellectuals and educators and, of course, their few white sympathizers, in decolonizing the education system. Fanon underscored the role of the intellectual among the colonized/ oppressed, that they apply themselves to the service of the people and become the driving force behind the decolonization process. According to Fanon (1963, p. 122) anti-colonial intellectuals must put themselves “to school with the people: in other words to put at the people’s disposal the intellectual and technical capital that it has [they have] snatched when going through the colonial universities” (my emphasis). Further, according to Fanon, to bring about the new system, intellectuals must work with the people to “invent” and to “make discoveries” (p. 255). Freire and Faundez (1989) liken decolonization to revolutionary action and advocate that the process “requires of revolutionary educators imagination, competence and eagerness to take risks” (p. 77). In the process intellectuals are called upon to encourage the ‘popular classes’, the oppressed groups, to “participate actively alongside professional educators in the reconstruction of education”. Intellectuals and educators should also work to dismantle “the old authoritarian 45

ISSAHAKU

inflexibility” within the education system, “which, despite the educative power of the struggle, does not immediately disappear” (Freire & Faundez, 1989, p. 77). Further, Freire and Faundez propose that intellectuals lead the way in articulating a vision of the future to which all ‘practical action’ is directed. They must be able to create an image of the future – ‘just’ – society and commit themselves and their compatriots to bringing this to reality through education which is inherently a political undertaking. CONCLUSION

Education, as a form of socialization in the public realm, is an inherent aspect of humans’ sociality. Education helps us to organize our lives, to reason, think, and act in conjunction with others as interactive, interdependent, and coextensive beings. The ideal type of education frees the unfathomable human curiosity and learning potential to explore their identities and pursue individual and collective destinies. However, as I have argued in the preceding pages, the current North American school system is found wanting by the standard of education envisioned here. I have done so using my unique location –as a colonized and minoritized body – as a position of power to diagnose a social system. The current schooling regime is racist and colonizing as it subjects racialized/minoritized students to invisibility and violence. Racialized students are familiar more with negative and discomfiting experiences than they are with positive and elevating experiences within the school system. The invisibility and violence experienced by these students are characterized by differential and adverse treatment by teachers and administrators, segregation, name-calling and racist slurs, stereotyping and negative labeling, and ghettoization or incarceration to low-status academic streams. Another violence I have pointed out is that the curriculum has next to no offering on minoritized students’ heritage – history and culture. This leads to ‘amputation’ and cultural estrangement among racial minority students. Among other consequences, the colonizing nature of the education system leads to racialized students’ overrepresentation in grade retention, low achievement, school failure and eventual dropout rates. And unless an intervention is initiated this trend is passed on from one generation to the next. This explains why I have called for an agenda of decolonization. Following decolonization, or in the process, racist thinking and behavior, racist school policies, rules and disciplinary measures, and the racist curriculum are all discarded. This will not be another reformed or ‘recycled’ system, it will be an altogether new system in which, without recourse to race, ethnicity, class, gender, or any other identitarian articulations, the learning success of any student is already bound up with the learning success of his/her peers. Black and minoritized anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression intellectuals have a daunting task to prosecute the decolonization of the education system. It is a difficult but a possible task. We need to know that decolonization is not a one-off event but a process, a process which needs commitment, patient impatience, positive anger, humility, and the taking of risks. Decolonization is such 46

DECOLONIZING THE EURO-AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

a costly and time consuming undertaking that many have grown weary and given up or fallen along the way. But for the sake of the ‘Wretched of the Earth’, for the sake of the ‘new man’, ‘a new humanism’, it is worth undertaking. In the new system teachers and students share a common humanity, committing themselves to a mutually fulfilling education, and co-creating and sharing knowledge. In the new system teachers and principals use their ‘power’ and ‘authority’ responsibly to facilitate learning rather indiscriminately to oppress any group and, the culture of labeling, streaming, and judging performance only by Eurocentric models is left behind. Finally, in the new system all cultural expressions gain articulation in the curriculum so that our differences are appreciated in light of our common humanity. NOTES 1

Lucky Dube until his sudden death in 2007, was a reggae superstar and native of South Africa

REFERENCES Alcoff, L. M. (2001). Toward a phenomenology of racial embodiment. In R. Bernasconi (Eds.), Race (pp. 267–283). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Anderson, S. E. (2003). The school district role in educational change: A review of the literature. ICEC Working Paper, #2, 1–18. Austin, D. (2006, October 23). Frantz Fanon’s diagnosis: Fanon did not prescribe violence, he diagnosed it. Toronto Star, p. D.1. Bannerji, H. (1997). Geography lessons: On being an insider/outsider to the Canadian nation. In L. Roman & L. Eyre (Eds.), Dangerous territories: Struggles for difference and equality (pp. 23– 41). New York: Routledge. Bernasconi, R. (2001). The invisibility of racial minorities in the public realm of appearances. In R. Bernasconi (Eds.), Race (pp. 284–299). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Bhabha, H. (1994). Remembering Fanon: Self, psyche and the colonial condition. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory (pp. 112–123). New York: Columbia University Press. Cabral, A. (1994). National liberation and culture. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory (pp. 53–65). New York: Columbia University Press. Cesaire, A. (1994). From discourse on colonialism. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory (pp. 172–180). New York: Columbia University Press. Dei, G. J. S. (2008). Racist beware: Uncovering racial politics in the post modern society. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Dei, G. J. S., Mazzuca, J., McIsaac, E., & Zine, J. (1997). Reconstructing ‘Drop-out’: A critical ethnography of Black students’ disengagement from school. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Dottolo, A. L., & Stewart, A. J. (2008). “Don’t ever forget now, you’re a Black man in America”: intersections of race, class and gender in encounters with the police. Sex Roles, 59(x), 350–364. Driscoll, A. K. (1999). Risk of high school dropout among immigrant and native Hispanic youth. International Migration Review, 33(4), 857–875. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1965). A dying colonialism. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Freire, P., & Faundez, A. (1989). Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation. New York: Continuum.

47

ISSAHAKU Furniss, E. (1999). The burden of history: Colonialism and the frontier myth in a rural Canadian community. Vancouver: UBC Press. Gates, H. L., Jr. (1991). Critical fanonism. Critical Inquiry, 17(3), 457–470. Gibson, N. (1999). Thoughts about doing fanonism in the 1990s. College Literature, 26(2), 96–117. Glick, J. E., & White, M. J. (2004). Post-secondary school participation of immigrant and native youth: The role of familial resources and educational expectations. Social Science Research, 33, 272–299. Glick, J. E., & White, M. J. (2003). The academic trajectories of immigrant youths: Analysis within and across cohorts. Demography, 40(4), 759–783. Goldberg, D. T. (1996). In/Visibility and SuperVision: Fanon on race, veils, and discourses of resistance. In A. Lewis, R. Gordon, & T. D. Sharpley-Whiting (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 197–202). Oxford: Blackwell Critical Readers Series. Grubb, W. N., & Flessa, J. J. (2006). “A job too big for one”: Multiple principals and other nontraditional approaches to school leadership. Education and Administration Quarterly, 42(4), 518–550. Hond, P. (2008). Politics for grown-ups: Revisiting Richard Hofstadter’s “Paranoid Style” in the age of Obama. In The Magazine of Columbia University, Winter 2008–09 (pp. 12–17). Columbia Alumni Association. Kao, G., & Thompson, J. S. (2003). Racial and ethnic stratification in educational achievement and attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 417–442. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D., & Mascall, B. (2002). A framework for research on large-scale reform. Journal of Educational Change, 3, 7–33. Loomba, A. (1994). Overworlding the ‘Third World’. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory (pp. 305–323). New York: Columbia University Press. Loomba, A. (1989). Gender, race, renaissance drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Mishna, F., & Bogo, M. (2007). Reflective practice in contemporary social work classrooms. Journal of Social Work Education, 43(3), 529–541. Murnane, R. J., & Steele, J. L. (2007). What is the problem? The challenge of providing effective teachers for all children. The Future of Children, 17(1), 15–43. Portelli, J. P., Shield, C. M., & Vibert, A. B. (2007). Toward an equitable education: Poverty, diversity, and students at risk. OISE/U of T: The National Report. Robinson, C. (1993). The appropriation of Frantz Fanon. Race & Class, 35(1), 80–91. Suleri, S. (1994). Woman skin deep: Feminism and the post-colonial condition. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory (pp. 172–180). New York: Columbia University Press. Tillman, K. H., Guo, G., & Harris, K. M. (2006). Grade retention among immigrant children. Social Science Research, 35, 129–156. Turner, C. R. (1993). Factors that put students at risk of leaving school before graduation. Scarborough Board of Education. United Nations. (2000). Millennium declaration. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly. Retrieved December 5, 2008, from http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm Verges, F. (1997). Creole skin, black mask: Fanon and disavowal. Critical Inquiry, 23(3), 578–595. Verges, F. (1996). To cure and to free: The Fanonian project of “Decolonizing Psychiatry”. In A. Lewis, R. Gordon, & T. D. Sharpley-Whiting (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 85–99). Oxford: Blackwell Critical Readers Series. White, M. J., & Kaufman, G. C. (1997). Language usage, social capital, and school completion among immigrants and native-born ethnic groups. Social Science Quarterly, 78(2), 385–398.

48

NATACHA NSABIMANA

4. DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS Pedagogical, Social and Psychological Possibilities

“Intellectual decolonization is a prerequisite for the creation of successful political decolonization and cultural reconstruction strategies. Europe’s political imperialistic success can be accredited not so much to superior military might, as to the weapon of culture: The former ensures more immediate control but requires continual physical force for the maintenance of power, while the latter succeeds in long-term dominance that enlists the cooperation of its victims (i.e., pacification of the will)… Culture carries rules for thinking… If you could impose your culture on your victims you could limit the creativity of their vision, destroying their ability to act with will and intent and in their own interest. The truth is that we are all “intellectuals,” all potential visionaries.” –Marimba Ani INTRODUCTION

As Frantz Fanon often reminded us, colonialism is violent. It is physically, psychologically, culturally, intellectually and emotionally violent. With European imperialism/colonialism of Africa and The Americas, the colonists set up and institutionalized an unprecedented maelstrom of dehumanizing practices and ideological currents that still plague many societies today, despite the official ending of colonialism. Among many crimes of European imperialism/colonialism, the most insidious has been the colonization of the imagination. By colonization of the imagination, I mean, the internalization of destructive racist ideologies. This paper will deal specifically with the ways in which the colonial education system colonized Indigenous people’s imaginations. This, of course, did not happen overnight, it has been an ongoing process for centuries now. From Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas, Indigenous people underwent constant violent indoctrination. Colonial education, despite the illusion of independence and decolonization, however, is not a relic of the past. I will also examine critically the education system today which still serves similar colonial/imperial purposes, albeit disguised in less recognizable forms. Additionally, this paper will address perhaps one of the most virulent forms of education colonizing our imagination in contemporary western society: the media, popular culture and the entertainment industry. News coverage, Hollywood film production and television programs generally reinforce a very similar message to that of the missionaries and colonists G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 49–62. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

NSABIMANA

of the past. These messages, like colonial education, as Marimba eloquently notes, violate, distract and “limit the creativity” of people’s “vision” and thus hinder the possibility of an alternative discourse of decolonization and liberation. To decolonize imaginations and minds, as many have stated, requires an understanding of the past and its connections and continuities in our present situation. I will also identify key areas that need reforms and suggest/reflect on few ways this could be done in the Canadian context. These reflections could be extended to North America as well as other part of the world which still practice an inherited colonial education system. SITUATING THE SELF

I was born in Bujumbura (Burundi) and raised in Kigali (Rwanda). Both countries, very similar culturally, had been officially independent for more than two decades yet the education I received still very much reflected the colonial system we inherited from Belgian colonialism. We valued French more than our own Indigenous languages. In private schools, which I attended, this was worse. Everything centered mostly on Europe and sometimes North America. The history of France, World War I and II and the Holocaust, among other things mattered more than Rwandan or Burundian history, geography and culture. We were reprimanded for daring to speak Kirundi or Kinyarwanda on school property. I immigrated to Canada nine years ago and encountered a similar situation in the education system. Indigenous people of this land were rarely mentioned in my classes. If they were, it was always in victimized paternalistic ways. I consider education a powerful tool for indoctrination as well as countering indoctrination, colonialism and propaganda, the issues raised and discussed in this paper are not mere reflections and intellectual exercises. Many people I know, as well as myself, live with the consequences of having our imaginations colonized and our “visions limited” emotionally, psychologically and politically (Ani, 2007, p. 1). This discussion is then an attempt at unlearning and deconstructing in the hope of transforming and creating the “new humanism” Fanon strived for (Fanon, 1967, p. 45). COLONIAL EDUCATION: “BABYLON SYSTEM BUILDING CHURCHES AND UNIVERSITIES”

During colonialism, the education system set up by the colonists was violent and psychologically destructive on multiple levels. First, it denigrated Indigenous knowledge and culture and turned the gaze of the natives toward Europeans as the bearers of humanity, beauty, civilization and intelligence. Thus, for example, as Fanon (1967) describes, “the black schoolboy in the Antilles, who in his lessons is forever talking about “our ancestors the Gauls” identifies himself with the explorer, the bringer of civilization, the white man who carries truth to savages: “an all white truth” (p. 147). The colonized were thus transformed, ultimately into barbaric, savage sub-humans in desperate need of “civilization” and “truth” and this could only come from Europeans. The pernicious effect of this psychological tsunami destroyed Indigenous institutions and structures. Indeed that was the intent for if for the schoolboys in the Antilles, as Fanon demonstrates, knowledge, truth and 50

DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS

education only stemmed from the White teachers and Europe, simultaneously the students dismissed and devalued anything from their own cultures. Their parents and the systems of knowledge emanating from their societies could not teach them anything. This process separated the students/children from their parents by shifting parental and cultural education to the colonists. Second, and perhaps most importantly, colonial education also alienated the colonized students from their own selves. For a “black schoolboy” to imagine his past and ancestry as French is psychologically alienating and extremely damaging. This involves self-hatred and self-denial simultaneously. The colonized students are taught to hate themselves and what they represent because it is an incessant reminder of inferiority, barbarity and savagery. Anything approaching indigenous cultures is despised and carefully avoided. We have, Fanon (1967) recounts, cases of “Antilles negroes” returning home from France who answer only in French and often pretend to “no longer understand Creole” (p. 23). Or worse, upon setting foot in their native country would remark “I am so happy to be back with you. Good Lord, it is hot in this country, I shall certainly not be able to endure it very long” (p. 37). Self-hatred, a denigration of anything Indigenous also engenders self-denial. It requires veiling reality, putting “White Masks” on one’s own “Black Skin.” With “Whites Masks” the Black/colonized mimic the White, whether through mastering French language, evoking “our ancestors the Gauls” or commenting on the unbearable Antillean sun (Fanon, 1967, p. 147). There is another troubling dimension to mimicking White subjects which furthers self-alienation and psychopathology both individually and collectively on the colonized. Because the colonized have been stripped of their humanity with colonization and because the White man has been superimposed as the sole bearer of humanity and civilization, the colonized mimicking is, in a twisted way, attempting to regain his/her humanity. This, for people whose imagination has been corrupted and limited, becomes the only available option. Thus, the White Mask, that is mimicking European institutions and values, appear to confer some humanity. This type of behavior, as psychologist Eric Fromm (1980) put it, “to submit to and identify with a person or group having power, with this symbolic participation in another person’s life, men have the illusion of acting, when in reality they only submit to and become a part of those who act” (p. 31). But the irony and inevitable reality is that one can never fully attain such humanity, because fundamental to the tenets of colonial education and propaganda, such status is reserved for the White man. Fanon’s (1967) examples in Black Skin White Masks are revelatory. Charles-Andre Julien, a French historian, introducing Martinican poet Aime Cesaire for example noted, here is a “great black poet… a Negro poet with a university degree” (p. 39). Andre Breton was even more explicit: “Here is a black man who handles French language as no white man today can” (p. 39). Breton, as Fanon writes, may be in fact “stating a fact” but the reasons “why there should be any paradox, anything to underline, for in truth M. Aime Cesaire is a native of Martinique and a university graduate,” point out the racist subtleties in those statements (p. 40). “Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression,” as Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire (2008) noted, was also an essential aspect of colonial education (p. 72). The residential school system established in 51

NSABIMANA

Canada is an excellent example of such an ethos. Colonial officials in Canada already noted in 1905, that “to be successful the colony must be under school and missionary supervision… the problem of the Indian race” they continued, “is similar to that of the Negroes in US, Hindoos of India, or natives races of Africa” (Miller, 1997, p. 188). Like the Antillean schoolchildren, the residential school system was a “systematic assault” on Indigenous people in Canada (Miller, 1997, p. 205). Aboriginal cultural practices were brutally suppressed, students were constantly forced to “kneel down and pray” so that their “people would change,” that is forget themselves and mimic European ways (Miller, 1997, p. 206). For students, the messages of the White teachers and missionaries were clear: “If you participate in your rituals…If you stay Indian you’ll end up in hell… You went to heaven if you were white” (Miller, 1997, p. 191). The schools reinforced “the message of Native inferiority” vis-à-vis Whites (Miller, 1997, p. 178). The native students, like those in the Antilles, as Fanon describes, also slowly became alienated from their society as well as themselves. The aim, James Miller (1997) clearly explained, was to “have the Indian educated out of them” (p. 151). Furthermore, the residential schools were places not only of cultural and psychological assault but physical and sexual abuse were also rampant. Upon arrival the students were shaved and washed, to strip anything Indigenous that might be lingering on their bodies. The task was to “kill the Indian and save the man” (Miller 1997, p. 178). They were constantly physically beaten for the smallest excuse. It is not difficult to imagine the emotional impact of being forced to “kneel down and pray” for the sins of one’s ancestors, parents and nation on any human being let alone children (Miller, 1997, p. 205). Many students were also sexually abused, something that had rippling effects on the following generations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 2008 specifically deals with the disastrous consequences of residential schools on Aboriginal People in Canada. As Nursey-Bray (1980) explains, “it is impossible to enslave men without first making them inferior or sub-human” (p. 136). Colonial education represented just that. As a colonial tool, along with other physically forceful tools, barracks, armies and policemen, it “destroyed the creativity” of colonized people’s vision, Marimba Ani (2007) eloquently states, by “destroying the ability to act with will and intent and in their own interest” (p. 2). Colonial education reinforced the binaries of European racism and colonial/imperial endeavors. It created a world of White colonists and colonized others where White equaled enlightenment, beauty, truth and civilization and non-White equaled inferiority, savagery and barbarity. In Fanon’s (1967) words, the colonized people’s consciousness was lactified (whitened) thereby creating the “internalization or better the epidermalization of inferiority” (p. 11). This “racial anthropology,” the denigration of Indigenous peoples, their cultures and societies, part and parcel of the colonial enterprise as demonstrated, had its intellectual roots in White supremacist scientific racism (Chrétien, 2000, p. 249). Human evolution and civilization were hierarchical, pyramidal: Whites reigned at the top epitomizing the latest stages of development and all other people were graded underneath. “Part of what it means to be constructed as white,” philosopher 52

DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS

Charles Mills (1997) writes, “is a cognitive model that precludes self-transparency and genuine understanding of social realities” (p. 18). It is to live in “an invented delusional racial fantasyland” of “white mythologies, invented Orients, invented Africas, and invented Americas… colonial reports, scholarly theory” (Mills, 1997, p. 19). It is a “cognitive and moral economy psychically required for conquest, colonization and enslavement, a structured blindness and opaciy in order to establish and maintain the white polity” (Mills, 1997, p. 19). European colonial ethnographers, explorers, teachers and historians did not, could not understand the world they found themselves in because they already had deeply entrenched preconceived notions about the people they were encountering. Moreover, colonial education did more than dehumanize colonized peoples’ societies. Parts of the “white mythologies” of “invented Orients, invented Africas and invented Americas” also pitted the colonized against each other. Using the classic divide and rule tactic, the colonists favored some natives at the expense of others and this was clearly reflected in the educational system. In Rwanda and Burundi, for example, the “Hamitic Hypothesis” fabricated by colonial historians and ethnographers explained the genesis of the population and was actively indoctrinated into students in colonial schools. This myth stipulated that a section of the Burundian/Rwandan population—the Tutsis—was in fact foreign, not really African/Negro/Bantu, but rather closer to Europeans because descendants of Ham (Chrétien, 2000, p. 250). Ham was one of Noah’s sons, who had dared look at his father naked. Ham’s descendants were supposedly cursed to be dark and expelled from Israel (Chrétien, 2000, p. 251). Thus, according to colonial, imperial scientific racism, Tutsis were more intelligent, more beautiful and more civilized. “The tall and thin Batutsis do not resemble the short stocky Bahutus with wide noses and thick lips typifying the Negroes properly speaking,” wrote colonial ethnographers (Chrétien, 2000, p. 246). The Hutus were “slave-like in characters under their Hamitic despots” (Malkki, 1995, p. 29). The Tutsi had arrived and the Hutus had “patiently bowed themselves in abject bondage to the later arrived yet ruling race, the Tutsis” (Malkki, 1995, p. 28). The “Wahutus,” being the true natives of the region, had lived in Burundi/Rwanda from time immemorial” (Chrétien, 2000, p. 57). As a result, just sixty years ago, an academic Journal by university students of the University of Astrida, the colonial university for Burundi/Rwanda, published academic writing by students which referred to the Tutsi as the “Black Europeans” or “Aristocratic Negroes” (Chrétien, 2000, p. 247). These “Aristocratic Negroes,” the students asserted, had nothing in common with the other Bantu/Negro race but were rather of “Caucasian type” (p. 247). This type of education, which both countries inherited, even after independence, was internalized by the population and played an important part in the violence that has plagued both countries ever since. A people which has much in common—language, religion and culture—is now solely imagined in terms of those invented binaries, the “invented whites mythologies” which Mills stresses (Mills, 1997, p. 19). What is more, this is not particular to Burundi or Rwanda. The same ideology was perpetrated throughout the world. In Algeria, Paul Silverstein documents, the same divide was reified between Kabyles and Berber populations. French colonists 53

NSABIMANA

naturalized what seemed like cultural differences between Arabs and Berber groups and transformed them into antagonistic biological ethnic divisions. The Kabyles were re-imagined as closer to Europeans. “The Kabyle Myth,” Silverstein (2004) notes, portrayed Kabyles as “barbaric peoples” with a potential to be civilized. “Beneath the Muslim peel, one finds a Christian seed,” wrote colonial military ethnographers (p. 54). These mythologies, as will become apparent in the following sections, are alive and well. They have yet to disappear. Colonial education became institutionalized and helped tremendously in the production of these mythologies. These same mythologies still plague North American societies and they are particularly virulent in the education system. NEO-COLONIAL EDUCATION: “THEY SCHOOLS DON’T EDUCATE, ALL THEY TEACH THE PEOPLE IS LIES”

The words above taken from a song released in 2000 by the African-American hip-hop group, DeadPrez, echo those of an Aboriginal student describing the residential school system more than fifty years prior to that. Asked to comment on the importance or relevance of the schools, he noted: “We didn’t learn anything, the only thing I know is how to survive and my dad and the old people taught me that” (Miller, 1997, p. 182). In fact, DeadPrez continues, “they schools aint teachin us what we need to know to survive” (DeadPrez, 2000). DeadPrez are not alone in expressing those sentiments towards the education system today. The high rates of Black and Aboriginal students who today do not finish high school and never get to the post secondary level reflects the feelings of both DeadPrez and the residential school survivor fifty years ago. The curriculum content rarely “includes anything relevant to their experiences,” George Dei and a team of researchers (Dei et al., 1997) demonstrated in a 1997 study about Black youths’ disengagement from school (p. 138). The students, contrary to popular belief are not “drop-outs,” as Dei explains, but rather “push-outs…outside forces conspire to force individuals out of the schools” (p. 47). And even when the students struggle to stay, they are too often slowly “fading out,” there “in body but not in spirit” (p. 48). The forces pushing the Black students outside of schools are located both within and outside the school system. Inside the schools, most teachers carry the colonial mentality akin to the missionaries and colonial teachers of the residential schools, colonial Africa or the Antilles. Black people are imagined as less motivated, less endowed, incapable and not encouraged one bit. Aisha, a grade 12 student in Toronto, remarks: “I see a lot of brilliant Black students, who teachers tell ‘Maybe you shouldn’t take advanced. No it’s really, really hard” (Dei et al., 1997, p. 118). There are three levels of courses in the high school system in Canada: basic, general and advanced. The advanced level is the one required for university entrance. Aisha’s comments reflect the “labeling and streaming” Black students undergo in the school system (Dei et al., 1997, p. 115). Those exact same words were uttered to me when I immigrated to this country seven years ago. A guidance counselor convinced me and my brother, despite our insistence on going to university, that the advanced level course were too difficult for new immigrants. It was best to stick to the basic level or the general at best. We were puzzled because 54

DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS

nothing really justified her analysis. We had both been tested and scored highly. Our tests results qualified us to be in Grade 12. It was not a language issue, for this was a French high school and coming from Burundi, we had been studying in French from the age of 3. I lasted 3 months in the school, just in time to realize that the advanced level courses—supposedly too difficult for us—seemed reserved for White students only. The classroom levels were definitely divided along color lines. Another brother, who arrived in Toronto four years after me, underwent similar experiences. Guidance counselors insisted he was not fit for university. He switched to another high school. He is now in university. These are only small illustrations of Black students’ treatment in the school system. My brother was somehow privileged. We knew and told him. What happens to those who don’t? The content of the curriculum itself also plays a significant part in pushing the students out of the classrooms. Not only does it not comprise anything pertinent to the Black or Aboriginal students’ experiences, but it is also filed with propagandist nationalist myths that perpetuate a colonial/imperial ideology. As a grade 12 student describes: “It’s like you’re learning about somebody else’s history. You’re learning about when they [Euro-Canadians] discovered America… Everything it’s the White man that did” (Dei, 1997, 138). First, the contribution of African people to the Canadian society is erased, ignored and avoided and this obviously affects the Black students. But second, the celebration of Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America (a land already inhabited) and the denial of genocidal acts perpetrated by the settlers against the Indigenous people perpetuate the lies of an active nationalist propaganda. These lies are certainly detrimental to Aboriginal students as well. These purposeful historical omissions are nothing new, they have permeated the Western imagination for centuries now. Fanon (1963) outlined the situation some 50 years ago: “Colonialism is not content merely to impose its law on the colonized country’s present and future” he stressed, “colonialism is not satisfied with snaring the people in its net or of draining the colonized brain of any form or substance. With a kind of perverted logic, it turns its attention to the past of the colonized people, and distorts it, disfigures it and destroys it” (p. 149). Senegalese historian, Cheikh Anta Diop (1974), also pointed out this dynamic: “the West has not been calm enough and objective enough to teach us our history correctly, without crude falsifications” (p. xiv). The “cliché that Africans had no history,” Diop (1974) stresses, is bogus (p. xiv). Diop demonstrated that Egyptian civilization, so admired by Europeans for its great accomplishments—indeed the very foundation of Western civilization—was in fact a “Negro civilization” (p. xiv). Archeological and historical evidence support this fact, yet it has been almost completely obliterated from academia and the education system. Instead Egypt has been distanced from anything African, appropriated and connected to Europe. Similarly, American archaeologist, Ivan Sertima (2003) has presented conclusive evidence illustrating an African presence in the ‘New World’ prior to Columbus’ infamous voyage. Again, this is conveniently and arrogantly ignored or dismissed. What a difference it would make for those students to learn that history. For Africans to learn that their history in this part of the world did not begin only with slavery, that their accomplishments and contributions to civilization has been both 55

NSABIMANA

plentiful and invaluable. To learn that the pyramids were constructed by Africans, that peoples of Ancient Africa knew, perhaps traded with Indigenous peoples of the Americas, centuries prior to European ‘discovery’ of the so-called New World. Moreover, imagining the students as stupid, unable to handle the advanced level courses, calling them ‘drops out’ and not questioning the ideological, political and economical causes behind such actions, is in line with the mentality and practices of colonial education. What is more, the very fact that both Canada and the United States were largely built on the backs, sweat and blood of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans is not only conveniently forgotten but, according to bogus pseudo scientific racism, projected onto the very same exploited people as somehow emanating from their own self-deficiencies. Fundamentally, the experiences of these students do not differ from the example provided by Fanon (1967) of the Antillean schoolboy speaking about “our ancestors the Gauls” (p. 147). Like the students Fanon discusses, the content of the curriculum has no “relevance” to the lives of these students (Dei et al., 1997, p. vii). It does not address any of their needs and does not really help understand their social histories and present experiences. They do not see themselves in the curriculum and too often not in the staff and teachers as well. Additionally, these experiences are not limited to inside the classrooms. There are series of “school and off-school experiences” which culminate in “students’ disengagement” (Dei et al., 1997, p. 144). The “general conditions of school life, the climate and tone… the overall Whiteness of the school system” all contribute to “pushing out” non-Whites students outside of school (Dei et al., 1997, p. 144). It is precisely for these reasons that programs like the Transitional year Programme are created. The Transitional Year Programme (TYP), created thirty years ago, specifically targeted students marginalized in the education system because they were rare in post-secondary institutions, the founders realized (Brathwaite, 2003). They initiated TYP in the hope of alleviating such problem. In its first years, it exclusively recruited Black and Aboriginal students who “for reasons beyond their control” had been “pushed-out” of high school but wished to pursue post-secondary education (Brathwaite, 2003, p. 11). In this program, still operating for more than thirty years, students undergo a transitional year of preparation, a bridge between grade 12 and first year of university. If they successfully complete the program, they are guaranteed university entrance into first year at the University of Toronto. Needless to say, students come pouring in and many turn out to be brilliant young adults, just overlooked by the mainstream system. The TYP’s curriculum, as opposed to the one students leave behind, also actively reflects the students’ experience. Students are engaged in a wide range of Aboriginal, African-Canadian, and working class authors. Their social and life experiences are valued and incorporated in the program (Brathwaite, 2003). The instructors themselves reflect the diversity of the students. The program comprises Aboriginal, African, Jewish and Euro-Canadians instructors. This program not only rejects the stereotypes ascribed to Black students, it is also actively involved in decolonization practices. The curriculum content interrogates the status quo and pushes the students to question many of their assumptions, assumptions they have acquired through the mainstream education system as well as popular culture at 56

DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS

large. Evidently, TYP has been fighting to stay in operation, vacillating between almost closing and barely sustaining. In fact, as I write, it is again under threat. There is talk of altering its structure and size, something that will drastically affect its students. TYP succeeds because it shifts the logic of blaming the individual student to “interrogating the structures of schooling and society which produce the dynamics of disengagement” (Dei et al., 1997, p. 222). Why undercut such an effort? Why is such an alternative to the problematic status quo not supported and encouraged? ON POPULAR CULTURE EDUCATION AND THE “IDIOT BOX”

Outside of the classroom, perhaps one of the most pernicious areas to propagate and perpetuate colonial ideology and colonize imagination in the North American context is mainstream media and popular culture, particularly the Hollywood entertainment industry. Given the omnipresence of these forces in people’s daily lives, these media, in a very real way, also play an educative role. If education is defined broadly, both inside and outside the classroom, then the media supposedly there to inform us about the world and our surroundings (including television—the idiot box—) are definitely schools in their own right. Both television and popular culture also reinforce the racist/colonial ideologies Fanon diagnosed. Many of the Black students surveyed in George Dei’s study in 1997 felt that most of the teachers’ apprehension of Black male students was directly connected to mis-representation from the media. Too often, Black men in mainstream media are nothing else than “violent, criminal, troublemakers” that need to be locked up or put under close surveillance (p. 116). Thus, the teachers bombarded by such propaganda, judge the students according to preconceived notions. Recall, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. Thousands of people, predominantly African-Americans were left to die after the levees broke due to the floods. The American government showed its true face and ignored its own citizens failing to provide any relief. Meanwhile, some New Orleans citizens in an attempt to safeguard their lives—i.e., eat—grabbed whatever food, or other needed items, they could get from available stores given that government relief was nowhere to be found. Many people and non-governmental agencies were outraged by the government’s late response. These include hip-hop artist, Kanye West with his famous words: “Bush doesn’t care about Black People” (CNN 2005). West was right! The inertia of the American government to act certainly illustrated that. The media repeatedly reported on these examples of survival and protection as “looting” (Thompson, 2006, p. 2). These New Orleans residents, American citizens, were defined as “looters and thugs, gang members marauding through the Superdome” and the streets of New Orleans by the mayor of New Orleans himself, Mayor Ray Nagin (Thompson, 2006, p. 2). Meanwhile, one section of New Orleans, Algiers Point, largely White, “got off relatively easy,” journalist A.C Thompson points out (Thompson, 2006, p. 3). The “levees ringing Algiers Point withstood the Mississippi’s surging currents,” he 57

NSABIMANA

continues, thus “preventing flooding” (Thompson, 2006, p. 3). This fact made Algiers Point a potential safe evacuation site for the thousands of stranded New Orleans residents. As news spread among the largely White residents of Algiers Point, concerns about the potential “influx of refugees” also spread and fear of the inevitable “crime that would arrive,” from these “gang members and looters,” also grew extensively (Thompson, 2006, p. 4). A group of fifteen to thirty White men, in defense of their neighborhood, “stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs” (Thompson, 2006, p. 4). They were looking for “thieves, outlaws or anyone who didn’t belong,” they claimed (Thompson, 2006, p. 4). Thompson’s research indicates that “at least eleven people were shot and in each case the targets were African-American men” (Thompson, 2006, p. 4). This “newly formed militia” didn’t go unnoticed in the media. But instead of being “gang members,” this was “the ultimate neighborhood watch” (Thompson, 2006, p. 4). Not one of the crimes committed by the Algiers Point gang has ever been punished (Thompson, 2006, p. 6). Why the double standard? How is this kind of language and perception about African-Americans different from the ‘barbaric’ ‘savage’ ‘Negroes’ stereotypes of colonial times? Similarly, a newly released Hollywood film, Defiance, recounts the true story of Jewish men and women in Byelorussia who, facing extermination by the Nazis during World War II, retreated into forests and successfully resisted. Twelve hundred of them survived at the end of the war (Facing History, 2008). These men and women, for self defense, sometimes had to kill their enemies, the soldiers and accomplices of fascist Byelorussia (Facing History, 2008). Whether they were right or wrong is not the concern here, although most probably they were right, given their circumstances. They were, after all, under attack. What is troublesome, however, is the double standard, the fact that some people are allowed to defend themselves by all means necessary and others ought not. The Jewish resisters called themselves “partisans” and the movie replicated that. What makes them partisans, the White militia in Algiers Point a “neighborhood watch” group and the African-American “looters” and “gang-members”? Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, African-American men in New Orleans are not the only people redefined to their disadvantage in media coverage. Palestinian people, men in particular and Arab men more generally, have also been redefined as terrorists especially since the attacks on the twin towers on September eleventh eight years ago in New York. Arab men are now almost all suspicious “radical Muslims” and stories of illegal arrests and many other forms of illegal assaults and violations on them abound. The case of Maher Arar in Canada is only one example among many. Since then, in the name of democracy and combating “terrorism” the American government has invaded and occupied two sovereign countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, fabricated false evidence and lied to the United Nations to facilitate and legitimate its invasions. Thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians, men, women and children have perished and those left live in atrocious conditions. Who’s the terrorist, the criminal, the looter, many ask? These messages reinforced daily through television inform the way people view the world and the people around them. The point is that, like education, they colonize and “limit people’s 58

DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS

vision” so that how and what we see is twisted upside down and we, in turn, perpetuate the same stereotypes and too often people pay a high price for that: their own lives (Ani, 2007, p. 1). Likewise, the current media coverage of the situation in Gaza also illustrates this masquerade of reality. Although this conflict is certainly very complex and multifaceted, certain things nonetheless are clear and that is the obvious pro-Israeli penchant of mainstream media and the demeaning manner in which they portray a people under occupation, blockade and attack, the Palestinian people of Gaza. The lack of historical context and analysis, the use of language (Palestinians victims are invariably ‘militants’) none of this is purely accidental—as always it is to somebody’s benefit. DECOLONIZING MIND/SPACES

Decolonization, as Fanon (1963) clearly described in The Wretched of The Earth, is a historical process (p. 15). It starts with the “basic claims of the colonized” (Fanon, 1963, p. 1). It is the ability “to ask new and critical, destabilizing questions,” as pedagogue George Dei succinctly puts it (Pers. Comm. 2008). It is to “demand human behavior from the other” and to dismantle the mythology of the White world and White supremacy (Fanon, 1963, p. 229). “There is no White World, there is no White ethic, anymore than there is white intelligence” Fanon writes, “there are in every part of the world men who search” and question the established colonial/racist status quo (Fanon, 1963, p. 229). Decolonization, however, is a violent process, because the reality of colonialism is violent. The colonial world is a “Manichaean world with barracks and police” (Fanon, 1963, p. 15). It is a “compartmentalized” world of colonizers on one end and the “wretched/colonized” on the other end. “This world,” Fanon continues, “brings violence in the homes and minds of the colonized. It is a petrified “world of statues, crushing with its stoniness the backbones of those scarred by the whip” (Fanon, 1963, p. 4). The colonized are displaced from their homes and land and made servants to the colonial order. They are constantly harassed, whipped and beaten by the colonial police. They live in a state of fear, surrounded by barracks. They are dehumanized and denigrated as sub-humans, at the mercy of the colonizers. Most importantly, the colonial order is also emotionally and psychologically violent. “Confronted with the colonial order,” Fanon (1963) notes, “the colonized is in a permanent state of tension” (p. 16). The colonized, in constant muscular tension and in need of relief unfortunately unpacks his muscular malaise on his “fellow countryman” (p. 16). Colonized people act this way because they cannot, yet, face the colonizers. “The last resort,” for the colonized, Fanon (1963) explained, “is to defend his personality against his fellow countryman” (p. 16). This internal violence among the colonized is in direct relation to that of the colonizer. “Violence among the colonized will spread in proportion to the violence exerted by the colonial regime” (Fanon, 1963, p. 46). Decolonization in this context is, not surprisingly, inevitably violent. First of all, the colonizers are not interested in rupturing the privileges endowed by the colonial order. “The eventuality of such a change is experienced as a terrifying future in the 59

NSABIMANA

consciousness of the colonists,” Fanon (1963) clarifies (p. 1). But decolonization is more than blind physical violence. It is not only the complete destruction of the colonial regime but especially, it is the attempt to create a “social fabric that has been changed inside out” (Fanon, 1963, p. 1). Through decolonization, the colonized are reclaiming their humanity, a humanity that has been denied humiliated and damaged by colonialism. It is a healing process. Decolonization is also a historical process, a process which wants to “put an end to the history of colonization and the history of despoliation in order to bring to life the history of the nation, the history of decolonization” (Fanon, 1963, p. 15). Violence in this sense is catharsis. Furthermore, because the colonial world is a divided/dialectical world of “us versus them,” decolonization is understood in those terms as well. From the point of view of the colonized which initiates the process of decolonization, “it’s them or us,” and this is not a “paradox,” Fanon (1963) explains (p. 43). Thus “violence can be understood as the perfect mediation... the colonized man liberates himself in and through violence” (Fanon, 1963, p. 44). However, Fanon (1963) cautions, “the immediacy of muscles is a mirage,” knowledge and political education are necessary components of the decolonization process (p. 176). Violence can also be understood and defined broadly, and, simultaneously, decolonization as well. On an individual level, colonialism and decolonization are violent processes because, as discussed previously, the colonized’ humanity has been denied, and s/he is imagined and classified as inferior, sub-human. Decolonizing oneself, that is unlearning and unpacking such dehumanization and conditioning is extremely painful. To decolonize the education system requires, in the words of Frantz Fanon (1963), a “change of social fabric inside and out” (p. 1). Using Fanon’s methodology, a diagnosis of the problem—the Euro/colonial ideology of the education system— is the first step. Second, a specific identification of the historical and systemic roots of such ideology should follow. Finally, the conceptualization and creation of a “new species” or system is necessary (Fanon, 1963, p. 1). The “Black Focus School” proposition is an illustration of a “new species” (Fanon, 1963, p. 1). It proposes a complete transformation of the current education system. It wants to incorporate African and Indigenous Knowledge currently being silenced by the Euro-dominated curriculum (Dei, 1995). But, not surprisingly, like Fanon, this idea has been mis-read as segregationist, racist and reactionary. Additionally, this experience of colonialism/racism creates a shared history among the people who experience it, a certain embodied knowledge (Gines, 2003, p. 25). This type of knowledge is not fixed by biology but rather by cultural and social practices. The Black students being labeled and streamed in the education system, experiencing racism daily acquire an embodied form of knowledge that is not only shared but extremely relevant in combating such oppression and in the fight for decolonizing people’s imaginations. Knowledge exists in their bodies and in cultural practices and memories because they live it, so to speak. Discussing this type of knowledge rooted in the body is not to fall prey to an essentialist discourse but it is to recognize that the history of racism and colonialism relies heavily on the body for its demarcations, divisions and representations. 60

DECOLONIZING IMAGINATIONS

Thus, in education for example, to reiterate Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire’s (2008) suggestions, there is a need for “authentic reflection of people in their relations with the world” (p. 81). The education system as it is today not only keeps the “invented White mythologies” alive but as Freire (2008) described, it is a “banking concept of education” (p. 72). The locus of knowledge is the school site and knowledge is a gift bestowed by the teacher onto the ignorant students. “A pedagogy of the oppressed” takes the marginalized students as the center, and as the “central question: how can the oppressed participate in their own pedagogy of liberation” (Freire, 2008, p. 45)? To do this is to place the students’ experiences at the core thereby breaking the problematic hierarchical teacher/pupil relationship embedded in this “banking education concept,” where like depositing money into an account, the teachers deposit misguided information into the students (p. 72). It is also to broaden the definition of education and include other types of knowledge not generally recognized, Indigenous Elders knowledge, for example. To do this definitely entails a teaching method less focused on the classroom but on external sites as well. Furthermore, the teachers must themselves interrogate their own position, that is where there are situated in the sea of “Whiteness” which encompasses the education system at large (Dei et al., 1997, p. 144). Moreover, as Philip Howard notes, the “classroom must also provide the space for each learner to understand both her privilege and oppression, and to develop effective resistance to domination” (Howard, 2006, p. 48). We are all implicated and complicit—differently depending on our location and subjectivities—in this racial world and we need to acknowledge that and act on it. This is becoming extremely difficult to do in todays ‘postcolonial’ world and ‘global’ world. Instead, “notions of hybridity, the third space” are more fashionable (Howard, 2006, p. 47). Despite Obama’s victory and the dream of a world beyond imperialism and racism, the situation very much looks like what Fanon diagnosed many decades ago. “The distribution of privilege has remained alarmingly stable” and thus it is still relevant to speak of a “Manichean world, a compartmentalized world of colonizers” and the “wretched” (Fanon, 1961, p. 15). CONCLUSION

Decolonizing our imagination is possible. It is a historical process that people like Fanon and many more have grappled with for centuries. It is an arduous task, a task which must focus primarily on deconstructing the myths embedded in the education system’s curriculum, the colonial mentality of the instructors which replicate an ideology akin to colonial missionaries and teachers of past centuries. Decolonizing imaginations, however, must also be taken outside of the education system and academia and must engage people’s social experiences. A spotlight on western media and the entertainment industry is definitely necessary because, like schools, the central primacy of these areas in conditioning people’s understanding of the world is unquestionable. Consequently, in the words of Frantz Fanon himself at the conclusion of Black Skin White Masks, our “final prayer: O my body, make of me always a man who questions”! 61

NSABIMANA

REFERENCES Ani, M. (2007). YURUGU: An Afrikan-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. Washington, DC: Nkonimfo Publications. Brathwaite, K. (Ed.). (2003). Access and equity in the University: A collection of papers from the thirtieth anniversary conference of the transitional year programme. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. CBC News. Toronto. Retrieved January 10, 2008, from www.cbc.ca Chrétien, J.-P. (2000). L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Deux mille ans d’histoire. Paris: Champs Flammarion. CNN. CNN News. Retrieved January 10, 2009, from www.cnn.com DeadPrez. (2000). “They Schools” taken from the album Let’s Get Free. SONY BMG. Dei, G. (1997). Reconstructing dropout: A critical ethnography of the dynamics of black students disengagement from school. Toronto: UT Press. Dei, G. (2008). Racists beware: Uncovering racial politics in contemporary society. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Dei, G. (2008, November 14). Personal Communication to SES 3999S: Frantz Fanon and education: Pedagogical possibilities class. Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Diop, C. A. D. (1974). The African origin of civilization: Myth or reality. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. Facing History and Ourselves. (2008). Facing History with Edward Zwick on the making of defiance. Retrieved December 28, 2008, from http://www.facinghistory.org/about/who/ profiles/zwick Fanon, F. (1967). Black skins white mask. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Fromm, E. (1980). The heart of man. New York: Harper Collins. Gines, K. (2003). Fanon and Sartre 50 years later: To retain or reject the concept of race. Sartre Studies International, 9. Howard, P. (2006). On silence and dominant accountability: A critical anticolonial investigation of the antiracism classroom. In G. Dei & A. Kempft (Eds.), Anti-colonialism and education: The politics of resistance (pp. 43–62). Rotterdam: Sense Publisher. Malkki, L. (1995). Purity and exile: Violence, memory, and national cosmology among Hutu refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, J. R. (2006). Shingwauk’s vision: A history of native residential schools. Toronto: UT Press. Mills, C. (1997). The racial contract. New York: Cornell University Press. Nursey-Bray, P. (1980). “Race and nation: Ideology in the thought of Frantz Fanon. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 18(1), 135–142. Sertima, I. (2003). They came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America. Toronto: Random House. Thompson, A. C. Katrina’s hidden race war. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http:// www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/thompson

62

HANNAH DYER

5. THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANTZ FANON On Claire Denis’Beau Travail and I Can’t Sleep

In July of 1995, The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London organized an exhibit entitled: Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference, and Desire. The exhibition displayed a collection of visual media that was, in some way, indebted to the writing of Frantz Fanon. The Mirage exhibit showcased Fanon’s impact on artistic production and was testament to the multi-disciplinary and diffuse legacy of his politics and poetics. This paper explores Fanon’s influence on the fields of cinema and visual representation. It insists that pedagogical tactics are deployed within and beyond formal sites of schooling, and suggests that education be understood broadly, so that it might encompass a myriad of sites and encounters through which we learn our place in the world. I isolate film as a medium that can provoke or constitute such an encounter. In a commissioned essay that accompanied the Mirage exhibit, Kobena Mercer wrote, Artists working at the interface of the social and emotional to unravel the contradictions of the ‘inner worlds’ of migration, exile, and diaspora have revitalized the way in which Fanon is read as their work itself has had a major impact on the direction of theoretical debates… Once we locate the transnational interventions of postcolonial artists within the global context that differentiates their critical relationship to the visual ecologies of race and representation in popular culture, we find the social field of fear and fantasy is never finally fixed. (1995) The work displayed in the Mirage exhibit did not always directly reference Fanon, but rather created “the space of a mutual dialogue, through which Fanon’s writings have returned in all their force and fluidity as an indispensable resource for making sense of the psycho-politics of the multicultural social body” (1995:16). Mirage sutured the work of cultural theory and artistic practice, it galvanized a constellation of educators, theorists, artists, and community practitioners invested in the contemporary relevance of Fanon’s thinking. The art exhibit had attendant film screenings and a conference that put theorists such as Homi K. Bhabba, Stuart Hall, and bell hooks in conversation with artists Isaac Julie, Mark Nash, and many of their peers. The conference proceedings were published in an edited collection entitled, The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation. The dialogues captured in this collection have been integral to the development of this essay. The title of the ICA’s exhibition, Mirage, was meant to signal the imaginative and chimerical underpinnings of race that drive racism. The body of work shown, including films, installation pieces, and photography, destabilized circuits of G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 63–73. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

DYER

looking and seeing that draw cosmopolitan encounters between the self and the other. Many of the pieces confessed the residual impact of colonial histories on ‘post-colonial’ times. The art that was showcased in Mirage, and the literature and visual representations that it engendered, explore the visual and tactile grammar of the senses that Fanon so eloquently addressed. In Black Skin, White Masks he described the gaze, seeing and looking infused with power and discipline, as being necessary to the maintenance of colonial relations. In his chapter on “The Lived Experience of the Black Man”, Fanon conceived of a poetics with which to treat the objectifying white gaze that locks the black body into a relation of Otherness. He writes: Locked in this suffocating reification, I appealed to the Other so that his liberating gaze, gliding over my body suddenly smoothed of rough edges, would give me back the lightness of being I thought I had lost, and taking me out of the work put me back in the world. But just as I get to the other slope I stumble, and the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gestures and attitude, the same way you fix a preparation with a dye. I lose my temper and demand an explanation… Nothing doing. I explode. Here are the fragments put together by another me.1 The oft-cited moment of summation in which the white child lays eyes on Fanon and says, “Maman, look, a Negro, I’m scared!”, betrays a ‘racial schema’ that ‘epidermalizes’ his supposed inferiority and monstrosity. In seeking the destruction of this objectifying gaze, Fanon details some of the anecdotes, diagnoses, anatomical data, novels and geographical coordinates that have imagined blackness as inferior. In asserting that the ‘juxtaposition of the black and white races has resulted in a massive psycho-existential complex”, he explores what happens when blacks return the gaze, and reorganize the body that was reflected back onto him as “spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning on [a] white winter’s day (93). In the conclusion to his Mirage composition, Mercer writes: “For Fanon the theatrical space of cinema becomes the site of subjection to a complex bombardment of images, looks and ideologies, which disorient black subjectivity, impeding notions of autonomous black identity. The cinematic experience that Fanon reproaches is one authored by white Hollywood. Film theorist Mary Anne Doane explains, Fanon’s ‘white mask’ would be most fully in place in the cinema theatre up until the moment of unmasking accomplished by the gaze of the others. Fanon is extremely sensitive to the psychical impact of the representational field of race-relations- children’s stories, comic books, films. But because the oppressiveness of black cultural identity is so intimately connected to the anguish and anxiety of the visible, of the epidermal schema, the cinema would be a prime site for the corroboration of such an identity.2 The collection of art and literature that composed of and came out of Mirage is fundamental to my ability to understand how artistic practice might be shaped by Fanonian thought. The films showcased in the exhibit highlight the potential for 64

THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANTZ FANON

cinematic space to be re-organized, film becomes a device for re-positioning the white gaze: “now the black subject’s gaze addresses the identity of the white subject”.3 Unlike the epidermal schemas authored by dominant Hollywood that Fanon speaks to, Mirage’s visual representations destabilize the white gaze and emphasize the white psyche as one which is also alienated. This paper brings the filmic work of Claire Denis into conversation with the interventions that Mirage made. I do not argue that Claire Denis’ films seek to properly reverse the scene of the gaze, or that she is capable of doing so, but that in the ambivalence with which she treats her (post)colonial characters, and with her refusal of many of the traps of colonial linguistic formulas, she has created pieces of art that speak with Fanon’s postures on the psychic toll of colonialism. The filmic work of Claire Denis and its acknowledged debt to Fanon’s writing, specifically its citations of Black Skin, White Masks, stages an encounter between Fanonian thought and cinematic production. The corpus of Denis’ work, and the biography of the white, French subject in the colony and post-colonial city that resurface in her films, offers a selfreflexive and honest account of the development of the white psyche that Fanon reproaches. Claire Denis was born in Paris in 1948. The eldest child of a French colonial official, she spent her childhood in African colonial outposts, against the backdrop of independence movements and the anxiety that they provoked in communities of white imperial governance. Returning to France at the age of eighteen, Denis struggled to make sense of her home and the messy borders that she witnessed it carve and fight to have tenure over, on African soil. Film would provide her with a medium through which to explore the legacies of French colonialism in Africa and on the black subjects who would ‘come home to roost’ in France. Denis is also keenly interested in the contemporary white psyche in the ‘post-colonial’ metropolis, and the ‘social fields of fear and fantasy’ that discipline it. I address the corpus of Denis’ work, but privilege two of her films as texts that detail the “psychological damage wrought on many colonial peoples—and the colonizers who oppress them” that Fanon so poignantly describes. Denis’ second feature film, No Fear, No Die (S’en fout la Mort, 1990) most pointedly cites Fanon’s influence, but I am more interested in how his poetics and politics shadow I Can’t Sleep (1994) and Beau Travail (1999). Like much of the work in the Mirage exhibition, Fanon’s postures on the psychic structures of colonial subjects and the relationship between the European metropole and the colony dwell in these films despite lack of formal citation. Mia Carter describes Claire Denis’ films as representing the, Psychic experiences of marginal citizens and subjects: the sans papiers4undocumented immigrant workers, first and second generation Franco-phone, Arab and Caribbean citizens, Eastern European Exiles, the working classesthe other whose fates and futures are being anxiously discussed as the European Union plot its becoming an economic force in the new age of global capitalism. The stories are told in silences and gaps—hers is an unromantic poetry of alienation, loss and longing. The contemporary spaces in the European set films are represented as racially-ethnic fraught, if not more so than the social and domestic spaces of the colonial era. 65

DYER

Denis’ films explore the incomplete project of decolonization, through stylistic methods of intertextuality she allows the colonial to seep into the post-colonial geographies of the French metropolis. She exposes how, despite a reorganization of flesh and bodily relations in post-colonial encounters, the “social fields of fear and fantasy” that organized colonial sociality persevere. In Denis’ directorial debut, Chocolat (1998), she used the landscape of Cameroon- against which she moved through much of her childhood—to craft a complex portrait of the disavowal and supervision of multi-racial desire in colonial regimes. The protagonist in Chocolat, a white woman who bares the overdetermined first name France, returns to Cameroon to revisit the geography of her family home. France’s father was a colonial officer in the French African outpost in the 1950s, and the film uses the mechanism of a flashback to depict an imperial childhood, and the white, female domestic space as one that is just as invested in the maintenance of colonial relations as public space underwritten with masculinity. Dialogue and language are thin in Chocolat, it is here that Denis’ audience is first witness to her use of body, skin and flesh as discursive space. Instead of dialogue, shots are filled with layers of skin-on-skin, in many cases black skin on white skin. These layerings test the regime of fleshy encounters that is to govern Cameroon under French rule. Her viewer gets the impression that words cannot account for the messiness and non-sense of colonial relations under the reign of the French government. Language and dialogue cannot adequately describe the dialectical relation of desire and discipline that detail black and white relations in the colonial encounter. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon spends a lot of time thinking-through the power of language in racist economies. He insists that, “To speak means being able to use a certain syntax and possessing the morphology of such and such a language, but it also means above all assuming a culture and bearing the weight of the world” (1). He continues to purport that the possession of a language “poses as an indirect consequence the world expressed and implied by this language” (2). In many ways Denis destabilizes what it means to possess a language, she gives up on language and instead uses flesh and bodies as discursive space on which to explore relationships between her characters. Judith Mayne explains Denis’ career as being characterized “less by ‘deconstructing’ identities than by watching them take shape through individual bodies, relationships between bodies, and their movements across space”. Most of her characters do not possess language, but are possessed by the skin they are wrapped in. Language is emptied out of many of the relationships that her films capture, in its place close-ups and long-shots of flesh and skin alert spectators to the disciplining of “epidermal racial schemas” that Fanon explored. Martine Beugnet has acutely observed that Denis’ work captures the “constant tyranny of racial appearances: the impossibility of escaping skin as signifier…”. Chocolat is the first installment of a triptych of films that take the psychological toll of colonialism and its alienated psyche as its theme. The second installment, No Fear, No Die (S’en Fout la Mort) is set in Rungis, on the outskirts of Paris, and characterizes the lives of two black immigrant men, Dah and Jocelyn, who train roosters for cockfighting. No Fear, No Die, flaunts Denis’ most pronounced debt to Black Skin, White Masks. She has publicly proffered the film as an expression 66

THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANTZ FANON

of Fanon’s work: “I understood something in the book that touched me immensely…Fanon described a special type of neurosis—colonized people feeling psychologically defeated even though they are physically free to determine their future”.5 Fanon’s theoretical saliencies underpin Jocelyn’s character. Through this subject Denis again explores how a choreography of flesh and body might communicate the presence of an alienated psyche to her audience. Rarely does Jocelyn speak, “rather he expresses himself in the choreography of the training of the birds”.6 It is possible to read his silence as a refusal of entrapment within the confines of French language that Fanon warned against. Cockfighting is a violent sport, its movements and rules depicted graphically through camera work and soundtrack in the film. In addressing Fanon’s influence on No Fear, No Die, Denis has stated: “I still don’t think social inequalities can be solved by nonviolent means”.7 Through cockfighting the violence of the colonial encounter is symbolically represented. Denis has forged long relationships with the actors, writers, and cinematographers that work on her films. Isaach de Bankole appears in both Chocolat and No Fear, No Die, Gregoire Colin in both Nenette and Boni and Beau Travail, cinematographer, Agnes Godard and screen writer, Jean-Pol Fargeau have collaborated with Denis on almost all of her films, Richard Courcet, who plays the role of Camille in I Can’t Sleep, was not a professional actor but someone long invested in the project of the film. The community of players that work on these films do not necessarily circulate around Denis, she is quick to assert that a script is only a skeleton until the actors flesh-out, embody, and ultimately determine its rhythms. In relation to No Fear, No Die, she explains: “Jean-Pol and I worked on the screenplay, but when it was embodied by actors…Beatrice Dalle said it better than I could: ‘What was written on paper became flesh’. All of a sudden, the violence on the paper became something very different. The day we began to film, there was desire, as if all of the different elements of the film had come into place”.8 This repetition of actors and technicians allows characters and styles to return to haunt other films. Colonial scenes and personalities from Chocolat turn up in No Fear, No Die’s post-colonial Parisian back-drop. The reoccurrence of bodies and styles allows a melding of geographies and temporal periods, toying with the iterative nature of colonialism. I CAN’T SLEEP: PATHOLOGY AND THE CITYSCAPE

Post-colonial artists have returned to the scene of colonial psycho-sexuality which Fanon revealed with such clarity of insight. But this time, the psychic knots of sex and violence rolling through ugly expression of misogyny and homophobia from within the broken heart of what George Nelson calls ‘postsoul’ culture, demand that an unflinching gaze be directed to examine the way the emotional tie of identification often turns up on the ‘wrong’ side, where it is least expected….9 Released in 1990, J’ai Pas Sommeil (I Can’t Sleep) is the final segment of Denis’ triptych on home, exile, and the lingering effects of violence on the colonial 67

DYER

psyche. The film opens with a scene of two white men, encased in the belly of a helicopter, soaring over the Parisian cityscape. Their bodies shake as they yield deep, booming chortles. The audience is not privy to the exact source of their laughter, but it soon becomes obvious that the men are police officers flying a route of surveillance over the city, gathering a panoptical view of the scene on which the film’s drama will unravel. The power of the film is Denis’ refusal to give into a dramatic characterization of the events it records. I Can’t Sleep takes on a risky subject, one that might easily slip into a seamless echo of the racist and homophobic cultures of fear that the original events roused. It flattens the racist and homophobic edges of the case of the “Granny Murderer” that caught the attention of the Parisian public in 1987, troubling any definition of the individual criminal so that an infinite number of violences are harangued. The film is loosely based on a string of murders committed by Thierry Paulin and his lover, here named ‘Raphael’. Dubbed ‘The Granny Murderer’ by the press, the commentary on the case preyed on an imagined ‘murderous drive’ that lay latent in queers and people of colour, and subsequently tempered their invitation into the rites of French culture. Thierry Paulin was a black, queer, Martinican, and many accounts of the murders used these identifications to explain his ‘monstrous’ predisposition to criminality. Fanon might explain Paulin’s epidermal schema as being used to author ‘an explanation of the psychic structure’ of his subjecthood. The film’s rendition of the events does not draw a portrait of a queer, black, pathological subject- but a city of relations that abets the alienated psyche that Fanon writes, and Denis so eloquently and consistently bequests with a visual grammar. The film refuses to concretize or give-into the seduction of drawing a medico-biological reduction of the murderer, and only represents his HIV-positive status in abstracted, ambiguous and fleeting ways. I Can’t Sleep derails any solid sense of identification that might make its personalities into stable, categorical caricatures. Despite its languid pace, its characters quickly transgress the identities and roles they are expected to convey. This is not a story about Paulin, it is the story of a cast of characters each negotiating the differential rules and regulations of incorporation into Parisian life. It is the story that circulates around Paulin (here named ‘Camille’) that is of interest: of the police officers that demand to see his papiers, of his brother Theo’s longing for Martinique and the sanctity he finds through his violin, of Theo’s white wife Mona, their young child, and her extended absences from their home, of the buildings that mark the 18th district of Paris, a residential neighbourhood where the film’s events take place, of Diaga, a Lithuanian immigrant who has just arrived in Paris and shares the same dwelling as Camille. Martine Beugnet offers a powerful reading of the film’s expression of the racist anxieties that pervade Paris in the summer of 1987. She expounds: The racism evoked in this film noir is not so much that of overt violence as that of the hidden, institutional racism that permeates the language and social structures. The presence of the criminal couple, Camille and his white lover, renders tangible a malaise, the complexity of which can only be suggested through the experiences of a multitude of other characters.10 68

THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANTZ FANON

The first visual encounter the audience has with the work of the “Granny Murderer” is the discovery of a corpse in an apartment suite. Leaking through the front door of the flat is the smell of death, a stench that alerts other residents to the crime. Beugnet reads the deceased body of the white woman as an “iconic representation of an ossified postcolonial society on the defensive, haunted by its past and threatened by the multiple presence of the Other” (101). What is frightening in I Can’t Sleep is not the individual criminal capable of murder, but the banal dullness of the violence. The violence is dispersed and deflected onto the oeuvre of relations captured in the film. It is never spectacular, instead it is a small fissure in the everyday violence that epitomizes life in the city. In the first scenes of the film we are introduced to a young Diaga, driving through the streets on the cusp of dawn. She shares the time of her arrival with the time of Camille’s return home after a night spent in bars and clubs. Diaga and Camille are both perpetual strangers to France. Despite Camille’s long-term residency and possession of the French language, he has a tenuous relationship with the terms of citizenship. With the contrast of daylight and darkness, Denis imparts a textured critique of the elasticity of whiteness. Camille is mostly filmed against the night, in the dark he socializes, makes the most of his income, and traverses the city. Diaga is captured in daylight hours, enveloped in the light of the sun. The light becomes symbolic of spaces bound by white authority, and unlike Camille she exists within their parameters. Judith Mayne adeptly addresses the filming techniques used to depict Camille, Theo (Camille’s older brother who longs to return home to Martinique), and Diaga. Diaga is most frequently represented through the use of the tracking shot. Cinematically, the ‘tracking shot’ is often associated with surveillance of a subject. The camera is hoisted onto a moving dolly and follows the subject or object of the film. A ‘tracking shot’ surveys Diaga as she walks or drives into and within the city. These wide, moving shots are juxtaposed with tight, cramped shots of Theo in his small apartment. Like the juxtaposition of nocturnal and diurnal backgrounds that define Camille and Diaga against and through each other, cramped shots of Theo remind the spectator of his longing to leave the confines of the city, and Diaga’s desire for integration. The tracking shot is pointedly deployed on the night that Camille is arrested. He has spent his evening watching Theo and his band perform and then exits out of the venue and into the Parisian night. Two policemen lean out of their car windows and watch him walk down the street. A slow tracking shot is used to suggest their surveillance of his movement. The police then abruptly park their cars, demand to see Camille’s papiers, and subsequently arrest him for the murder of twenty elderly women who resided in the 18th arrondissement. BEAU TRAVAIL: MASCULINITY, POST-COLONY, AND THE FRENCH LEGION

“If Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, and I Can’t Sleep are a kind of voyage” through colonization, immigration, and uneven assimilation into a post-colonial society, Denis’ “three most recent films mark a movement away from the ways in which French identities are haunted by the specter of former colonies that have become both images of another space and a kind of imaginary black screen upon which 69

DYER

to project fears, fantasies, and desires”.11 Released in 1999, Beau Travail is one of Denis’ later films. Although not officially part of her triptych treatise on (post)colonial haunting of psyches, its visual and narrative address stages another encounter between France and Africa. Languid, the film is void of a progression of plot that might comfort its audience. Its pace is slow and refractory, as much about the host of intertextual references and citations it deploys as it is about its own exegesis. The film’s characters and landscapes are more abstracted than those in Chocolat and I Can’t Sleep, here Denis has perfected her use of flesh and bodily movement as effective dialogue. Beau Travail is a choreographed dance of the colonial relationship in an occupied country. Narrated by a French Legionnaire, the film resuscitates events recorded in his journal. We might never be able to trust the accuracy of his memory- know when historical events bleed into fictive accounts- but his journal entries are the myth of the French Legion writ large. The Legion plays a large role in the French Nation State’s imaginary. A collective of masculine bodies, divisions of Legionnaires have been dispatched all over the world to supervise French colonies and influence subsequent governments in ‘de-colonized’ and post-colonial countries. The Legion’s recruitment practices bolster France’s image as a ‘progressive’ and multicultural nation, but Beau Travail exposes the fragility and illusion of such claims. “In principle”, all recruits “leave their past behind. Their bodies are reshaped through training and identically clothed in uniforms. The film’s visual address repeatedly plays to us this process of fusion that is able to metabolize even the marks of ethnicity”.12 Dances and movement pieces are distributed throughout the script, melding a sundry assemblage of masculine bodies through synchronized action. Beugnet points out that the film “echoes Fanon’s depiction of the postcolonial subject as ‘individuals without anchors, without horizon, colourless, stateless, roofless- a race of angels’.13 But rivalry between members, and a palpable racism directed onto some black Muslim recruits, expose the racialized, hierarchal underbelly of the ‘universal’ Legionnaire. Intrinsic to Beau Travail’s production was the employment of Bernardo Montet’s choreography. Not an addition to the script, but part of the film’s development from the beginning, his movement pieces capture the dualities of stasis and motion, progression and retreat that characterize the Legion’s place in the post-colony. On the skin, torsos, bodies moving over and between the geography of Djibouti and Marsailles, the film’s spectator is audience to a mostly visual study of race and masculinity. The film opens with a shot of a battle scene painted on a cement wall in a French military training camp in Djibouti. Layered atop this visual scene are the sung lyrics of a Legion rallying song: Under the burning African sun, Chochin-China, Madagascar, a mighty phalanx hoisted up our banners, its motto, ‘Honor and Valor’, makes for brave soldiers. Its flag, that of France, is a sign of glory. The film’s first extended scene takes place on a beach. A Benjamin Britten operatic score plays as the camera hones in on a black torso and then pans out to reveal its place in a circle of topless soldiers, all eyes closed, stretching arms toward ‘the burning African sun’. The camera moves between shadows of young speechless 70

THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANTZ FANON

soldiers, sun refracting off their bodies while they move in unison. The lens glides over individual body parts- skin, eyelids, popping veins snaking over tanned skin, and then pulls back to reveal a community of men, their bodies related through synchronized exercise. Following this scene we are introduced to Galoup, second in command on the military base. His wool sweater and icy breath in sharp contrast with the climate and bare torsos of the previous scene. Galoup is back in France, having been discharged from the service of the Legion, and is reflecting on his time in the military. A voice-over pronounces for the audience the words he is scribbling in his journal. The second line of his diary, “I have time to kill now”, is a repetition of the last line in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat (1963). Godard’s film tells the story of Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), a French intelligence agent entangled in a conflict with the FLN. Denis recasts Subor, here again playing Bruno Forestier, thirty years later, defected from the French intelligence and commanding a division of the Legion. In recasting Subor she also recasts the Algerian war, a struggle Fanon addressed in The Wretched of the Earth (1963).14 This intertextual reference gives a palimpsestic feeling to the film, writing a continuous transition between various French colonial occupations. In his narration Galoup hints at a secreted past that mired Forestier’s reputation after the Algerian war. Galoup adores Forestier. His voice-over confesses his admiration: I feel so alone when I think of my superior. I respected him a lot. I liked him. My commandment. A rumour dogged him after the Algerian War. He never confided in me…I admired him without knowing why. He knew that I was a perfect Legionnaire, and he didn’t give a damn”… Forestier is deemed a father looking out for his sons. He looks out over his heirs and proclaims, “If it weren’t for fornication and blood we wouldn’t be here”. Beau Travail underpins the romance of the French Legion with homosocial and ambiguous relationships between its men. There is a latent queer desire between Forestier and Galoup, and Forestier’s attention on a new recruit- Gilles Sentain, casts him as Galoup’s rival. Galoup’s involvement in Sentain’s eventual abuse results in his exiling from the Legion. Later, a barely audible lilt, the pulse of what sounds like Galoup’s tenor, faintly repeats the legion song heard in the first scene. This time the lyrics in their entirety are sung: “…Above all is discipline in the Legion. Loving one’s superior, obeying him, that’s the essence of our tradition.” The song is now the soundtrack that keeps the rhythm of young men, chiseled and sinewy, as they make their way through a constructed obstacle course. In the spaces between the song’s lyrics are the sounds of boots crushing on rocky sand, calloused palms hoisting sighing bodies over cement walls. Not far away four Djoubitian women watch, their commentary is not translated, but it is obvious that they are laughing and mocking the military exercise. The military dances are not the only choreographies that bring Beau Travail’s characters to life. There is also a collection of club scenes that use dance to portray the Legionnaire’s ambivalent relationship to the community in which they are 71

DYER

stationed. Djoubitian women smile and dance, and soldiers in crisp white uniforms move around the edges of their movements- grinding and bopping, but never fully integrated into the nucleus of the songs, perhaps symbolic of their inability to wholly integrate into the nucleus of the country. Leaving the club, into the dawn, the men move in silence against dim lit arcades. Their dance moves bleed into the steps of nightpatrol and their crisp and white uniforms now appear yellow and disheveled. The aesthetic beauty of these small details, careful shots of the men ironing uniforms and doing morning stretches, baking birthday cake and cutting onions, write a visual grammar of the masculine, military psyche in the African post-colony. CONCLUSION

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon insisted that the cinema contributed to the thousand details, anecdotes, and stories “that the white man wove him out of”. Fanon contended that the cinema was a site of pedagogy. His attentiveness to how cinematic treatments of race might have the power to reify white supremacy exposes film’s concomitant potential for destabilizing it. Cinema might manage encounters that discipline a subject in normalcy and seek to stabilize their understanding of where they ‘fit’ in relation to others, but it might then also teach or inspire new ways of being in and relating to the world. Like Fanon’s desire for a perpetual questioning, Claire Denis’ films are a cycle of interrogations into the mundane regeneration of colonial bodily schemas. Pedagogically, Denis is not interested in seducing her audiences, or lulling them into any resolution, instead she makes a slow, almost backwards survey of the locations where colonial relations leave an impression on post-colonial geographies. Her flat, prosaic treatment of themes of sexuality and race substantiate the persistent, everyday violence that lingers after colonialism’s formal demise. Denis’ stylistic methods of intertextuality, iteration, and citation provide a framework for understanding how colonialism’s endless play continues to co-author the psychic life of post-colonial cities and landscapes. NOTES 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

72

Page 89. As cited by Mercer, page 100. Ibid, 101. In 1997 Denis was one of a fleet of filmmakers who actively campaigned against the introduction of stricter ani-immigration laws that targeted sans-papiers. In Reid (1996:69), as cited by Mayne, 52. Mayne, 50. In Mia Carter, 77. Mayne, 143. Kobena Mercer, 36. 98. Martine, pg 20. Ibid, 72.

THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANTZ FANON 13 14

108, Fanon citation from 1963:176. Wretched of the Earth and La Petit Soldat were released at the same time.

REFERENCES Carter, M. (2006). Acknowledged absences: Claire Denis’ cinema of longing. Studies in European Cinema, 3(2), 67–81. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove. Gibson, N. (2003). Fanon: The postcolonial imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gilmore, M. T. (1998). Differences in the dark: American movies and the english theater. New York: Columbia University Press. Kaplan, A. E. (1997). Looking for the other: Feminism, film, and the imperial gaze. New York: Routledge. Martine, B. (2004). Claire Denis. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mercer, K. (1996). Decolonisation and disappointment: Reading Fanon’s sexual politics. In A. Read (Ed.), The fact of blackness: Frantz Fanon and visual representation. Seattle, WA: Bay Press and London: ICA. Mercer, K., Ugwa, C., & Bailey, D.A. (1995). Mirage: Enigmas of race, difference and desire. Institute of International Visual Arts, Institute of Contemporary Arts. London, England. Mayne, J. (2005). Claire Denis. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Powerie, P. (Ed.). (1999). French cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

73

MEREDITH LORDAN

6. MEETING FANON IN THE KASBAH Reading the Wretched of the Earth through the Cinematic Lens of the Battle of Algiers – Personal and Pedagogical Reflections

INTRODUCTION

We must occupy the Kasbah 24 hours a day. We must continue our work here, without respite. – Commanding Officer from the French Army, Battle for Algiers Steep, winding stairs reveal passage way upon passageway. Mosques, shops, homes, cafés, and schools come into view as the camera pans up. Sunlight floods the darkened steps, contrasting with the whitewashed buildings. The locals know how to navigate the Kasbah. But, you, the viewer, are left to wonder about the architectural – and cultural – puzzle as you remain outside of its intricacies, separated by the cinematic void. Life unfolds: children go to school, vendors set up their stalls in the market, women gather together, men join each other for tea, and there are calls to prayer. It is a life that is both familiar and different. The black and white footage reminds one of the early age of cinematography. The compelling and contrasting images are present in their immediacy, but absent in the distance, time, and antique quality of the black and white footage. We, like the Commanding Officer, come to – or attempt to – occupy the Kasbah through the act of viewing. We are the interlopers in this community, the ones attempting to impose meaning. I met Frantz Fanon for the first time when he was evoked by the beautifully shot footage of Gillo Pontecorvo’s film the Battle of Algiers (1964). More precisely, the storyline, themes, and shades of black, grey, and white recalled the spirit and writings, if the not the actual person, of Fanon. Having seen Pontecorvo’s film prior to reading Fanon as a young student of Politics and Sociology, I return to it now via this meditation on the power of image to enact theory. Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, having been published close to the release date of the film, a film banned in France until 1971, enacts a subtle and silent presence in the film – an anticipatory knowing – by giving theoretical voice and justification to the liberation struggle it depicts. Not intended as an historic overview of the Algerian liberation movement, nor as a survey of Fanon’s theoretical contributions, in seeking to unite cinematic and theoretical analyses, this discussion reveals some of the first tensions emerging for this new – and now more mature – student of anti-colonialism upon meeting Fanon. Drawing from these early recollections, the discussion offers a selection of pedagogical ideas for critical engagement of G.J. Sefa dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 75–81. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

LORDAN

anti-colonialism via self-reflexive learning, critical media analysis, and how to support students as they link the ideas and images found in the theoretical and artistic realms to real-world contemporary issues and events. LOOKING BACK AT THE VIEWER: TORTURED VIEWINGS OF THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

Algiers, 1957 A white tiled room contrasts with the dark army fatigues. A French soldier rubs the back of an Algerian suspect, one who is dressed only in a towel and physically smaller than all of the other men in the scene. He is naked from the waist up. The seemingly gentle, reassuring strokes belie the preceding torture. Soldier: Couldn’t you have talked sooner? It would’ve gone easier for you. Soldier [Addressing the Commanding Officer]: He finally came clean. Commanding Officer: Give him some coffee. Don’t worry. Drink this. You’ll feel better. Don’t take it so bad, fella. Here, put this on. [He offers army fatigues to the scantily clad man.] The man looks at the Commanding Officer, making eye contact for the first time, to register his unease. He tries to run. Successful, he offers a fleeting glance of resignation. Commanding Officer: It’ll suit you fine. The camera pauses to note the single tear streaming down his left cheek. This description, referring to the opening scene of the Battle of Algiers, a study of the Algerian War (1952–64), and its dominant images raise uneasy tensions for the viewer, implicating her as colonial voyeur. Perhaps intrigued and disturbed by the allusions to torture made in the dialogue, the “uneasy time” the suspect had, coupled with the shackles, clamps, handcuffs, and knives lining one of the walls in the shot, the viewer is invited to reconcile the gentle touching of the prisoner with torture. A contrasting civility/brutality binary is on exhibition as an editorial statement by the filmmaker. The scene also reveals the violent and derisive limits – and limitlessness – of colonial power. There is the mental manifestation of the screams, ululations of pain, denigration, control, powerlessness, and resignation. I feel the need to resist this opening scene of the film as simply an homage to violence, abuses of power, and interrogation methods. Of course, these issues are all too applicable to the realities and legacies of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons and their role in the war on terror orchestrated by the United States. The film captures a fundamental power imbalance. The silent suspect is devoid, literally and, in the larger colonial sense, figuratively, of a voice. Unable to speak, 76

MEETING FANON IN THE KASBAH

and fatigued by unseen but still palpably felt torture, he is powerless. Denied his own clothes, having been removed to provide increased bodily access for torture, he is forced to wear French army fatigues. Reluctant to wear the uniform of the enemy, he resists. Dressed by the officers, he is crowned, not as one of them, but as a source of derision: the defeated colonial – a racialized and emasculated – “Other” who wears the garb of the colonizer. He is not one of them, but one conquered by them. The supremacy of white values is stated with such violence, the victorious confrontation of these values with the lifestyle and beliefs of the colonized is so impregnated with aggressiveness, that as a counter measure the colonized rightly make a mockery of them whenever they are mentioned (Fanon, 1967, 8). Able to dress him as they please, the soldiers claim victory over the racialized (Arab) body, a spoil of the colonial presence. The singularity of the colonial context lies in the fact that economic reality, inequality, and enormous disparities in lifestyles never manage to mask the human reality. Looking at the immediacies of the colonial context, it is clear that what divides this world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to (Fanon, 1967, 5). This act of racialization, the removal of the Arabic vestments of the local settler and the imposition of foreign French military uniform, reveals the triumph of the invading force. Clothing serves as an extension of race, culture, and identity. In a futile attempt to flee, one occurring within a closed room and surrounded by officers, the suspect is caught and reminded of the ever-present threat of torture, should he become uncooperative. “The first thing the colonial subject learns is to remain in his place and not overstep its limits” (Fanon, 1967, 15). Here, the suggestion of additional torture within a colonial machinery supportive of and complicit in the provision of human rights abuses, renders the suspect passive. The only permissible resistance, also connected to his emasculation, is the appearance of a single tear. “It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject” (Fanon, 1967, 2). In this scene the fabrication of the suspect as object of ridicule happens as a result of the troops’ power to name and define him. The use of actual fabric further emasculates him. Unable to dress him self, the suspect is denied the agency of voice and autonomy. The absence of racial reflexivity by the French forces, itself an expression of racial dominance, is furthered by the power claimed and exercised by them. “In the colonies, the official, legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizer and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or the soldier” (Fanon, 1967, 3). Later in the film, as the French army is closing in on the FLN (refers to Algerian liberation group), the denigration continues: Commanding Officer: Any of you ever suffer from tapeworm? It’s a worm that can grow infinitely. You can destroy its thousands of segments but as long as the head remains, it builds and proliferates. 77

LORDAN

Commanding Officer [At the end of the film, after Ali La Point and his allies, leading members of the FLN [a liberation group], are killed by an explosion set by the French army, the Commanding Officer makes this comment to a superior]: The tapeworm’s headless now. Just as the ability to torture, undress, and then dress a suspect reveals institutional power, here, the ability to name is implicated. The power to name – or rename – reduces the humanity of the struggle by invoking the imagery of disease and foreign occupation of the body. “As if to illustrate the totalitarian nature of colonial exploitation, the colonist turns the colonized into a kind of quintessence of evil” (Fanon, 1967, 6). The eradication of the FLN – freedom fighters or terrorists, to echo current debates – is a civil duty, not an abuse of power. VIOLENCE AS PRAXIS

Narrator: National Liberation Front (FLN). Communiqué No. 1: People of Algeria, our combat is directed against colonialism. Our aim: independence and restoration of the Algerian state in accord with Islamic principles and the respect of basic liberties, regardless of race or religion. To avoid bloodshed, we propose that the French authorities negotiate with us and recognize our right to self-determination. The clear iteration of the FLN’s mandate and demands appears to be almost too simplistic: the freedom fighters versus the colonial oppressors. Indeed, Fanon sees violence as an means to achieve the liberation. “The colonized subject discovers reality and transforms it through his praxis, his deployment of violence and his agenda for liberation” (Fanon, 1967, 31). However, the good/bad binary is destroyed by the mounting pressure of an attempted assassination of a police officer and a series of deadly bombings of civilian targets in the film, including an Air France ticket office and race track, that raise questions about the morality of this form of resistance. When the Algerians reject any method which does not include violence… they know that such madness alone can deliver them from colonial oppression. A new type of relationship is established in the world. The peoples of the Third World are in the process of shattering their chains, and what is extraordinary is that they succeed (Fanon, 1967, 34). The culture of violence also infuses and implicates both sides. As arrests and convictions of FLN members increases in the film, prisons become home to many. The resistant calls, offered up while an Algerian prisoner is led to the guillotine, an allusion to the revolutionary fervor of France in 1789, fill the cavernous prison. The condemned man shouts: “Allah is great. Long live Algeria.” These words are echoed by his fellow prisoners. These final statements of agency – the religious and political identities of the condemned man – are silenced by the violence of the execution. Neither religion nor politics offer final refuge.

78

MEETING FANON IN THE KASBAH

FANONIAN PEDAGOGY

From contextualizing historic and contemporary anti-colonial struggle to placing the self in relation to Fanon’s work, Fanon offers may pedagogical challenges and possibilities. The first-century student may not have first-hand experience with colonialism or anti-colonial struggles. At the same time, it is this student who functions within subtle colonial structures predicated upon hierarchies. Consider the role of the self-reflexive viewer. A useful starting point to consider is the social location of the student. I suggest creating safe, but intellectually demanding, spaces within which a student may come to see Fanon as a site for theoretical reflection, critical engagement, and action. First, let us begin with the pegadodgical possibility of creating spaces for students to look reflexively at their social locations, ones mediated and informed by race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, age, and culture. This is a first step in critical engagement with colonial and anti-colonialism. Invite students to consider the following questions, whether individually, with a partner, or in a small group: – Who are you? List all of the identities you occupy or claim as important to you (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, age, culture). – What are some advantages that come from these identities? – How do you use these advantages in daily life? – What are some disadvantages that come from these identities? – How do these disadvantages affect your daily life? – How are you expected to act (e.g., the gender, race, sexuality roles we are expected to play by society, family, friends)? – How might these expected roles also be forms of colonization is your own life? Since these questions require personal information, it is important to take time to build community and trust in your class. Second, the Battle of Algiers raises the issue of the significance of critical media viewing. Inviting students to become active and critically engaged viewers assists with the development of their own analytical skills. Revisit the above questions, but with a focus on the film. Responses may be presented as a seminar discussion, debate, essay, website, or photo essay: – – – – –

Who are the dominant group(s) in the film and how do we know? Why are they presented as dominant? Who are the marginalized group(s) in the film and how do we know? Why are they presented as marginalized? What are some advantages that come from being a member of a dominant group in the film? – What are some disadvantages that come from being a member of a marginalized group in the film? – Write in role as two or more characters. Provide contrasting perspectives about the events of the film. 79

LORDAN – –

– – – –

Research the Algerian War. How accurate is the film? Why might there be some inaccuracies? How does this film try to persuade us? (A review of cinematic techniques, including the use of lighting, camera angle, and music will assist students with their analyses.) Is there justice in this film? Explain. How do the themes in the film relate to our own lived experiences with injustice? What does the film reveal about the themes of colonialism and decolonization? How might these themes relate to current events?

Third, encourage students to connect their personal and curriculum-based learning to real-world politics. Regular discussions about political issues and student-led seminars about politics in the news foster globally aware learning spaces, while respecting the ethno-cultural diversity and interests of students. As part of their reflective and critical practice, ask students to respond to the following prompts after reading and discussing the news: – Summarize, in your own words, the political issue you have selected. Why did you select this issue? – What is your position on this issue and why? – What is the key conflict? – Who has power and why? – Who are the key players, noting the dominant and marginalized ones? – Write in role as both sides of the issue. – What is your response to the issue? – Compare news coverage of the issue. After finding at least one other news report, how do the news stories compare in terms of how the story is told? – What colonial or anti-colonial story, if any, is being told by the news reports? While not intended as an exhaustive list of pedagogical ideas, these prompts offer useful starting points for instructors and their ongoing engagement with the student-as-self and the larger social themes of power, identity, and social justice. –

CONCLUSION

At the end of the film, France, paralleling the real-world leadership of de Gaulle, retreats in response to the organized resistance and pressure exerted by Algerians. Reflecting a period of widespread decolonization, Algeria gains independence in 1962. The film depicts the Kasbah as vibrant, unsettled, and wounded. While the film ends with the optimistic start of independence, there is the proverbial lesson of France winning the war of Algiers, the focus of the film, but losing the battle for Algeria. While cinematic images from a fictional movie do not constitute history, they do capture a way of seeing, critically interrogating, and reclaiming 80

MEETING FANON IN THE KASBAH

anti-colonialism within contemporary contexts. The lessons from the young student can help other students, along with the more experienced scholar, to see and re-see theory as praxis, Fanon as cinematic revelation.

REFERENCES Cesaire, A. (1972). Discourse on colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Dei, J. S., & Kempf, A. (Eds.). (2006). Anti-colonial thought, education and politics of resistance. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers/Peter Lang Publishers. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press. Memmi, A. (1969). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Pontecorvo, G. (1967). The battle of Algiers. Rizzoli Productions.

81

NJOKI WANE

7. READING FANON DIFFERENTLY Black1 Canadian Feminist Perspectives

The warriors, the mothers, the servants, the truck drivers, the children – these are not ghosts, they are not specters, and they are not images in our heads. These are bodies, Black bodies, bodies of Black men seen as inherently criminal, bodies of Black women unseen, commodities of exchange, objects, things, toys, subjectless receptacles, children seen as already damned and irredeemable”. – Harris & Johnson, xvii, 1996. INTRODUCTION

Colonized subjects, past and present, have exhibited dominant imagined values in various ways, consciously or unconsciously. Harrison & Johnson’s quoted above provides a snapshot of the world’s interpretation of Black bodies. Since the beginning of western colonization, Black bodies have been commodified and labeled in ways that the world chooses to. The bodies have become spectacles for display, yet within the same breath, made invisible. This is the ‘imagined’ psychology of what Black bodies represent to the world that Fanon’s work tries to wrestle with in Black Skin White Masks. In this book, Fanon has taken up the issue of colonization and its psychological and social impact on colonized subjects to show how colonial subjects become engulfed in the colonial project and how embodiment of whiteness becomes part of their everyday struggle. Fanon (2008) highlights the struggles of colonized subjects to resist colonization in every way possible because its consequences are too costly and are easily transferable. He provides examples of men and women who have either succumbed to the jaws of the colonial beast or those who vehemently fought against it. In particular his work explores the psychological violence this binary relationship has had on both Black and White people by providing extensive details of the impact of colonial language, interracial marriages, politics of color line and the longing for acceptance and recognition of non-Europeans by Europeans. It is notable that Fanon’s (2008) work on anti-colonial thought and practice, physical and psychological violence and collective engagement is extensive. The paper limits itself to Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks, in particular, the issue of colonization and decolonization. In addition, themes on language, interracial marriages, politics of color line and psychological violence which are all outcomes of colonization, are examined. I would like to state from the outset that, although G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 83–105. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

WANE

Fanon’s (2008) engagement with the issues of Black women or racialized minoritized women is puzzling, even problematic, this will not be the focus of this paper. The way he engaged with Black women’s issues made it obvious that Fanon had “the most intriguing personality, [and] he was a man full of apparent contradictions” (Hansen, 1974). It is important to note that this paper is not a review of Black Skin White Masks but an engagement in a dialogue with some of the issues Fanon raises in the book and how they speak to Black women’s narratives. The paper offers a different reading of Black Skin White Masks. Nevertheless, my reading of Black Skin White Masks may leave more questions than answers and this is to echo Fanon’s quest for questioning noted in his final word in this book – “My final prayer: O my body, always make me a man who questions” (206). For example, was Fanon trying to make sense of his own colonial life? In Black Skin White Masks, he clearly states: My life must not be devoted to making an assessment of black values…. I am not a prisoner of History. I must not look for the meaning of my destiny in that direction…. I am my own foundation. And it is my going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom (2004–2005). Was he then trying to unravel his own personal crisis by marrying a White woman then turning round and stating he knew nothing about Black women? Or was it that Black women were not interested in him? What does it mean when you read Fanon using a Black Canadian feminist framework? The paper employs a few quotes from my research on Black Canadian Feminisms among women of African ancestry in Canada2. As a Black Canadian feminist, one of my commitments is to expose and lay claim to the vast contributions that Black women have made to this world. There is, in this commitment, an undivided focus and it is because of this focus that I re-read Black Skin White Masks to initiate a dialogue on the applicability of Fanon’s work on theorizing Black Canadian feminisms. This paper then, employs Fanon’s work to analyze four themes, namely: language, interracial marriages, the politics of color line and psychological violence. Hence, the goal of this paper is not to argue whether Fanon engaged with the issues of Black women, rather, it explores how Fanon’s work is applicable to the analysis of Black Canadian women’s lived realities, realities that constitute their feminist theorizing. Just as bell hooks (1996) noted in her article, Feminism as a persistent critique of history in relation to Fanon work: Returning to Fanon after almost 20 years of keeping his words at a distance, I seek to find again that moment… wherein his words touched the longing for freedom… and called me into that continuous state of mental revolution: where strategies of resistance can be imagined, where theories of liberation must be endlessly invented and reinvented to speak directly to the lived experience of the moment. (82) bell hooks goes on to explain that what she wants is to think “critically about intellectual partnership” (80) and create possibilities where men and women can talk and work together. To that end, this paper is divided into three sections: the 84

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

first one provides a brief overview of the four themes as well a brief section on my research, section two explores a Black Canadian theoretical framework and how it speaks to the four themes identified in the women’s narratives in relation to Fanon’s work in Black Skin White Masks, and section three provides an analysis using Fanon’s work. Such analysis is interwoven with Black feminist thought which encompasses diverse and often contradictory meanings. Nonetheless, there is still a common ground, a connective tissue which runs throughout its multiple readings and boundaries, hence, my reason for situating my analysis on Black feminist theory. FEMINIST SCHOLAR’S TAKE ON FANON’S WORK

I am also acutely aware of many critiques on Fanon and his take on Black women and in particular his patriarchal and sexist tendency in Black Skin White Masks (Sharpley-Whiting, 1996). I am also fully aware of Fanon’s limitations on feminism, his masculine language, over-sexualization of Black bodies, and his acknowledgement of his lack of knowledge of racialized minoritized women. As a Black feminist scholar, it is hard to believe that Fanon had no knowledge of racialized women, despite writing about them. However, I am not exploring Fanon feminist analysis but reading him from a position of scholar who appreciative his contributions to the anti-colonial discourse. Sharpley-Whiting (1996), for instance, states that Fanon’s work marginalizes and makes women and in particular Black women erased and disparaged (155), and he takes “the male as the norm (Gwen, 1995). Gwen has issues with Fanon, because of his use of “masculine universal which refers not to humankind generally…but to actual men” who are studying in Paris and displays great desires for “White women, and who compete with White men for intellectual recognition” (77). In other words, Gwen feels that Fanon is very aware of his masculine language. It is interesting to note how Sharply-Whiting somehow disagrees with Gwen’s observation on Fanon when she states that her (Bergner) “observations are not only flawed, but reductive” and demonstrates a “blindness in her crusade to uncover Fanon’s sexist-patriarchal, invisibilizing penchants” (156). However, Gwen (1995) does acknowledge that Fanon’s work is crucial to his formulations of raced masculine subject formation despite the absence of feminine subjectivity in Black Skin White Masks (80). Kobena Mercer (1999), another critic of Fanon, points out how lesbian and gay cultural theorists problematize the pervasive presence of homophobia in Black Skin White Masks and how a close reading of Fanon by Lola Young (1996) demonstrates very clearly that Fanon’s sexual politics were deeply problematic. According to Mercer, Fanon missed the point when he identified sexual equality as a “reasonable, desirable and necessary goal for black liberation” (123). Young herself states that, in Fanon’s writing, “there is evidence of a deep seam of fear and rage regarding Black women” (88). Young (1996) further explains that any reference to Black women by Fanon depends on the autobiographical account of Mayottee Capecia. Young problematizes Fanon’s analysis of Black women by posing the following questions, “Why does Fanon select three largely fictionalized 85

WANE

accounts…to extrapolate theories on Black women and their relation with White men? And why does Fanon see Black women as the ones that are threatening the stability of racial order of the Black race?” According to Young, “For Fanon, sex for Black women is about effacing blackenss and gaining power and wealth, whereas for White women it is sexual experience with the phobic object which is desired” (95). This point is taken up by Gwen whose observation is that in Black Skin White Masks women are considered as subjects almost exclusively in terms of their sexual relationships with men, feminine desire is thus defined as an overly literal and limited (hetero) sexuality” (77). Bergner (1995) also notes that Fanon’s frame of reference left out Black women and especially when he asks “what does a Black man want” (77). She notes that feminine subjectivity deserves broader description than what is provided by Fanon. Sharpley-Whiting, on the other hand, acknowledges Fanon’s honesty in Black Skin, White Masks as brutal and should not be seen as brutalizing. Fanon’s liberatory discourse and the question of women is expounded by Elia Nada (1996) when she makes reference to insurgent women and their desire to participate in power sharing in quarters that are traditionally associated with masculinity. For Elia, Fanon’s work is pushing women to be creative and fully independent of the oppressor. This is well articulated when she quotes Fanon, “lets us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which are themselves inspired by Europe. Humanity is waiting for something from us other than such an imitation, which would be almost obscene caricature….we must invent and we must make discoveries” (168). Elia concludes by stating that it is this “Creativity, this complete novelty that women must seek to achieve, since a duplication of masculinity cannot be liberating…if we are genuinely seeking to move away from the oppressive effects of racism, sexism, homophobia and other divisive systems of exploitation and silencing, we must not allow ourselves to duplicate these systems, just as we refuse to be and sometimes cannot be, defined through them”. (168) Echoing the sentiments of Sharpley-Whiting (1997) who contends that there is a need for feminists to renew their commitment to feminist activism, my re-reading of Fanon and my interpretation of Black Canadian women’s narratives using his work, is my form of feminist renewal. According to Sharpley-Whiting, re-reading Fanon “provides an important frame of reference for a liberatory feminist theory and praxis and for women existing under guises of colonial and neo-colonial oppression and sexist domination within their own countries and communities” (Sharpley-Whiting, 9). She continues to explain that although there are feminists conflicts with Fanon, there are ideological conflicts among feminists as well. bell hooks’ reading of Fanon engulfs her because she heard a new history spoken – the history of decolonization, resistance and freedom. This she eloquently captures in the following quote: “It (Fanon’s book – The Wretched of the Earth) articulated a yearning for freedom that was so intense and a quality of emotional hunger that was so fierce that it was overwhelming. Dying into the text, I abandon and forgot 86

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

myself. The lust for freedom in those pages awakened and resurrected me. In that moment of recognition, gender had no meaning… No wonder then that I was not disturbed by Fanon’s patriarchal standpoint.” (80) bell hooks connects her praxis of resisting as being the conduit to pay attention to Fanon’s work when she states: “It was the practice of being a resisting reader that enabled me to hear in Fanon’s theories of decolonization, paradigms I could use constructively in order to liberate myself” (81). She goes on to state that Fanon’s work is concerned with issues of healing which he situates within a “discursive framework that deflects it, making the primal insight one which suggests that the mind needs to be well in order to be vigilantly engaged in a liberatory process” (82). Yet in his quest for freedom from the colonial yoke, Fanon’s (2008) work concentrates on Black women’s obsession with Whiteness. BLACK FEMINIST THEORY

As stated elsewhere (see Wane, 2009), I acknowledge scholars of color who have contributed to the development of black feminist theory in the Diaspora such as African-American feminists Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Barbara Smith and Christian Smith, Black British feminist Heidi Safia Mirza, and Black Canadian feminists, Sylvia Hamilton, Annette Henry, Agnes Calliste, Linda Carty, Dionne Brand, to name a few. In the U.S., Black feminism identifies multiple oppressions, yet the context within which it defines itself differs. The American perspective on black feminism is outlined and discussed in Patricia Hill Collins’s “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought”. Collins (2000) identifies the political context within which Black feminism has developed. She cites the marginalization of Black women and labour, the loss of franchise or liberty, and stereotypes that suppress and subordinate Black women while protecting and promoting White male interests. Under such expansive webs of oppression, Black women have struggled and resisted these injustices. Collins identifies the feminists’ commitment to attaining justice for all African American women as a collective and for similarly oppressed groups (9). As a result of racial segregation, Black women could work and exchange ideas collectively whilst extending and sharing their collective wisdom (9–10). Their segregated environment provided the opportunity for their ideas to emerge as a collective voice and to develop their activism. Collins (2000) identifies early Black feminists who were often illiterate but were articulate to express their opinions and pass their ideas orally (14–15). Early Black American feminists included nineteenthcentury Sojourner Truth whose famous “And Ain’t I a Woman?” articulated the oppressions – class, race, and sex – that shackled a woman of that period. Music by working-class Black female blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s expressed early Black feminist thought. Filomina Chioma Steady’s “African Feminism: A Worldwide Perspective” provide a historical context for the rise and development of African feminism and emphasizes its humanistic inclusiveness or orientation. Rawwida BakshSoodeen’s “Issues of Difference in Contemporary Caribbean Feminism” examines 87

WANE

the development of Caribbean feminism within a historical context. All these feminist scholars who have contributed in building of black feminist body of thought provide the bedrock from which I articulate my understanding of black Canadian feminist theory. Although the polarities of thought on black feminism by scholars and lay people alike suggest more differences than commonalities, closer examination reveals the intersections that traverse the differing perspectives. Theories that intersect provide a firmer foundation for a collective and united understanding of Black feminism. One of the fundamental themes, which continuously arise in these writing, is the multiple oppressions that Black women face. Multiple oppressions due to race, sex, class, and culture crush the voice and spirit of Black women until survival becomes their only escape. Race, a socially constructed term, restraints people as social norms and values are ascribed to a person’s skin colour or hair texture. Black Canadian feminist thought has been conceptualized as a theoretical framework that illustrates the historical, social, political, cultural, and economic experiences of Black Canadian women (Wane, 2002, 2007 and 2009). Most writers would agree that lay people and villagers, not intellectuals or academics, sowed the seeds of black feminism. Black Canadian feminism has therefore been slowly emerging alongside mainstream feminism. Much of the literature informing Black Canadian feminisms, however, originated in the United States and Europe (mainly the United Kingdom). Black feminist writers have defined black feminist thought as an activism that is grounded in Black women’s common histories such as colonialism, slavery, imperialism and neocolonialism. As a theory that places Black women’s experiences and ideas at the centre of analysis (Collins, 2000), it is a feminism that confronts the intersections of oppression. There is a complexity to black feminist theory that resists blanket analyses because our interpretations and conceptions always run parallel to the fluidity and dynamics of location, experiences, culture and history. Bearing in mind these multiple dynamics, the interrogation of Black feminisms speaks to the complex and often contradictory concepts, issues, views, values and needs of women of African ancestry. Black feminism is a theory and an epistemology, it is action oriented and it is the struggle and the lived stories of Black women and their Black communities. It is Black people’s agency and how they resist oppression to survive in a world that seeks to exploit, denigrate and dehumanize their very existence. It seeks to explain how positive and negative factors have been influenced by the intervention of Black women in their social structures (Wane, 2007). Furthermore, it is also a tool that has assisted Black women to critically examine themselves, as subjects of oppression and as racialized labor whose subordinated status has been exploited and marginalized in the expansion of capitalist states (Steady, 1989). In essence, Black feminist thought challenges the hierarchy of power…with an eye towards insurgency and social change. In addition, “black feminist thought” is not simply “a term” for feminists/activists, rather, it is a lived theory which places Black women at the centre of analysis (Collins, 1990, Steady, 1981, Hooks, 1980, Davis: 1983, Ogundipe-Leslie, 1994, Wane, 2007, 2009) and simultaneously speaks to the various realities of Black women’s lives. 88

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

Black women and other marginalized groups have been accused of being incapable of producing the type of interpretive and objective analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West (Henry, 1998). As Black women of African descent whose experiences are informed by neo-colonial education, housed in institutional structures founded and governed by patriarchy, it is important to start with acknowledging our experiences (Wane, 2004, 2007). This includes an acknowledgement that these experiences are an outcome of a history and its rootedness in African philosophies. One cannot theorize or discuss Black feminist epistemologies without evoking or making central the marrow of what informs this framework – African knowledge systems and survival strategies that have been passed down generation after generation (Wane, 2009). Black feminist thought therefore operates from a site of critical location. It is a paradigm that is situated in Black peoples’ experiences with the intent of rupturing and collapsing the in/visible divides that have kept Black women and Black people in general in the periphery. Black women’s voices on self-definition, agency, resiliency and self-determination are central to their scholarship. The following discussion examines how Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks’ takes up these issues when he writes on colonial language, interracial marriages, the politics of the color line and psychological violence. Fanon narrated painful stories of Black women in the Antilles and Martinique, how has the reading of these stories energized Black women’s revolutionary way of thinking to develop their liberatory discourse or to engage in the process of decolonization? These questions among others are taken up in my research on Black Canadian feminist thought and the few narratives selected for this paper speak to them. AN OVERVIEW OF BLACK CANADIAN FEMINIST RESEARCH AND BLACK SKIN WHITE MASKS

The aim of the study (feminist theorizing among women of African ancestry in Canada), from which I draw few narratives from four women3 for this paper, was to bring together the many strands of black feminist thought emerging across Canada by examining the historical, cultural and ideological factors that have influenced Black Canadian feminist theorizing (Wane, 2009). My interest is to use a few quotes from this extensive research to make a case for re-reading Fanon. The selected narratives are interwoven with Fanon’s ideas in his book Black Skin White Masks and this goes to demonstrate the relevance of Fanon’s work almost half a century after his death. Black Skin White Masks provides an illustration of the binary structures that both Black women and men are caught in as they explain who they are, what they aspire to be or how they have articulated their subjective locations as is eloquently stated by Fanon (2008): “It is understandable that the Black man’s first action is a reaction, and since he is assessed with regard to his degree of assimilation, it is understandable too why…he speaks only French [or English]: because he is striving to underscore the rift that has occurred. He embodies a new type of man whom 89

WANE

he imposes on his colleagues and his family. His old mother no longer understands when he speaks of his pj’s, her ramshackle dump, and her lousy joint”. (Fanon, p. 19) Many scholars from racialized groups have engaged in responsive discourse or writing back to explain their relationship with colonizers (see Malidoma Some, 1994, Aime Cesaire, 1992, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 1985, Edward Said (1979), bell hooks (1984), Linda Smith (1999), Vanda Shiva (1995), Stuart Hall (1989), just to name a few). From the above quote, Fanon seems to suggest that in their pursuit there is a disconnect from the immediate reality and a distancing from what is familiar. Fanon therefore seems to suggest the need to pay attention so that we are not caught in reactive and responsive discourses but to try and move beyond and find new ways of re-inventing the self. As a researcher and Black feminist scholar, I wonder what impact the women’s narratives, their coping strategies and Fanon’s work has on the reader? How can a re-reading of Black Skin White Masks and interweaving it with the four women’s narratives be used as tool of resistance, transformation and pedagogy? Although Fanon’s chapters on “The Woman of Color and the White Man and The Man of Color and the White Man” provides no glimpse of resilience or resistance, writing these two chapters is a form of resistance. Fanon spoke of what many may not have been comfortable speaking about. However, in Black Skin White Blacks, Fanon provided us with many texts with which to engage and fill the gaps in our history books or social analysis of the situation of the colonial subjects. Re-reading the women’s narratives, I am more aware of how much they responded to Fanon’s nagging questions on the psychological impact of colonialism. Fanon’s examples of the struggles of Antillean women as colonial subjects, speaks to the Black women that participated in my study. Although Fanon’s examples show Antilleans’ women’s obsession with Whiteness, my analysis may also be engaging with the unspoken stories of the majority of the women of Martinique – hence, the narratives of my respondents can redirect constructions of women – not as victims but as resistors and survivors of oppression and injustice. Additionally, participants’ narratives could play a role in deconstructing and reconstructing my own and the participants’, as well as the readers’, consciousness, self-knowledge, knowledge of the personal world and the world at large (Wane, 2009). In other words, personal, social and political imagination can begin by reflecting on these narratives as analyzed through Fanon’s (2008) work. Furthermore, re-engaging with the participants’ narratives has revealed how their stories can challenge the existing power structures and biases that are deeply embedded within the dominant spaces which maintain the privilege of the western educational canon. This is despite the fact that, invariably, the participants in my research engaged knowingly or unknowingly with the impact of colonization and almost everyone articulated in their response, a reaction to some aspect of their colonial life as demonstrated by Nancy: I do not need to justify to anyone why I wear a blonde weave or why I sent all my children to private schools here… or why I do not date Black men any more.. I love my Black brothers, but. ummm ….. I am comfortable in who I am, 90

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

and I am comfortable with my brothers mmmm…. I am proud of my race, my history. I do not apologize for what I do or wear, or provide for my children. If we are to break this myth of whiteness, we have to know their values, but not at the sacrifice of my African values….do I make sense to you…as for my children, I wanted them to have what I did not have –a good education… acquire the best values… this is both a physical and psychological sacrifice…it is sacrifice but at least both my children are economically independent and are very Black in every sense of the word… what I do… does not take anything away from my activism and or my feminism…. Many times I have argued that we need to differentiate between reality and abstract thinking. You need tools to tackle the cannons. Different women employ different methods… my husband and I choose education and networking among all groups of people. I can still remember my reaction to Nancy’s conversation. Initially I thought she was another lost sister however, as she continued to explain the reasons for her way of being, it became increasingly clear that Nancy’s life style was a form of resistance, despite the contradictions. Nancy does not need to justify her choices in life. Juxtaposing Nancy with Antillean women, there are similarities in what they aspire to in life. They want to attain some form of whiteness. The fact that they live and articulate their desires is a form of resistance. Nancy’s blonde weave is a symbol of ‘I am my own woman and I can do what I like, I am a free independent thinker’. She is telling the world that blonde hair is not meant to be an exclusive right for one race. She could be saying, I do not have to be like you. This brings out the complexity in human psycho-social interaction. However, while Nancy is making an individual choice, which gives her a sense of being in control within the context of politics of skin color by wearing her white mask, she cannot hide her black skin, her identity. Fanon, himself while advising one of his patients who dreamt that he was white, said: The Black man should no longer have to be faced with the dilemma ‘whiten or perish’, but must become aware of the possibility of existence... if I see in his dreams the expression of an unconscious desire to change color, my objective will not be to dissuade him by advising him to keep his distance… my objective will be to enable him to choose action. (80) Nancy, similar to Fanon (2008) lives in a contradiction between articulating black values and identity while adorning and outwardly reflecting white values/culture. As such Nancy articulates her rationale for taking in totality the White women physique. When Nancy says she sent her children to private schools so that they could acquire the best values – is the best symbolized by mainstream western values? Nancy wants to recreate herself and her children. She is aware of the debilitating Black bodies at every level – psychological, social, economic – and by retelling her story she has managed to reinvent herself in her own way. Nancy, like the Antillean women, has to accept the elements of whiteness and incorporate them in her life. This notion is taken up by Fanon when he states: I am not a prisoner of History… I must constantly remind myself that the reality leap consists of introducing invention into life…. My life must not be 91

WANE

devoted to making an assessment of black values…In the world I am heading for, I am endlessly creating myself… I show solidarity with humanity provided I can go one step further… I am a Black man, and tons of chains, squalls of lashes, and rivers of spit stream over my shoulders. (p. 204) This form of speaking in itself is a form of resistance. It is a way of going against the grain. In addition, this form of resistance can lead to creating weak spots that will lead to cracks in the mask and in this process, disintegrate the mask. In addition, this speaks to both Nancy and Fanon, though they lived almost fifty years apart, both have a common thread of thought in analyzing their ways of moving beyond the history of oppression that has weighed heavily on the minds of racialized people. Fanon further explains: We are convinced that it would be of enormous interest to discover a black literature or architecture from the third century before Christ. We would be overjoyed to learn of existence of a correspondence between some Black philosophers and Plato, [however, Fanon does] not see how this would change the lives of eight-year-old-kids working the cane fields of Martinique or Guadeloupe… it is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom. (p. 205) While Fanon advocates for Black people to know their past, he suggests a different engagement with that past. It should not be for esthetic reasons, but to find ways that the glorious past will speak to current situations facing Black people and Black youth in particular. As a Black feminist educator, the words of Nancy and Fanon, among others, challenge us to engage in a feminism or activism that is not always reactionary but action filled. In this way, we can build on the accomplishments of our ancestors. For instance, Nancy, a very successful business Black woman, who appears comfortable but when I asked her to explain why she dates non-Black men although she was previously married to a Black person, she responded: I have lived in this country for over thirty years. I have witnessed how our Black men have been racial targets either in public schools, on the streets or even at their homes. I do not think I have the stamina to see the degeneration of another Black man…yes, I have three great boys… I think that is enough for me… when we migrated here my husband had just completed his internship as a medical doctor. Yet, he was not qualified enough to work in any of the hospitals. He had to do his exams all over again. He had a great medical practice… but he was not happy. He regretted why he brought us here…he worried a lot over his boys… thank God they are doing well. What then, is Nancy’s reason for deciding not to date Black men? Is it that she has been let down in the past or is it a similar situation to what Fanon has noted when describing the woman from Martinique studying in France who says that she would not go back to Black men. She stated: It’s not that we want to downplay the credentials of the Black man, but you know it’s better to be White… There is a White potential in every one of us, 92

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

some want to ignore it or quite simply reserve it. Me, I would never marry [a Black man] for anything in the world. (p. 30) Fanon (2008) comments on her assertion stating that, “[t]he Black woman has only one way open to her and one preoccupation – to whiten the race” (p. 40). Fanon also expressed concern about such attitudes when he states, “in a few years time this Martinican woman will graduate and return home to the French Antilles to teach. It is not hard to guess what will come from that” (30). Fanon (2008) provides a further analysis of the dilemma faced by the women of color who crave for whiteness. At the same time, it is interesting to note Fanon’s explanation for a Black women’s rejection of him: There is an affective exacerbation in the Black man, a rage at feeling diminished, and an inadequacy in human communication that confine him to an unbearable insularity…. For him there is only one way out, and it leads to the white world. Hence his constant preoccupation with attracting the white world, his concern with being as powerful as the White man, and his determination to acquire the properties of a coating….the Black man will endeavor to seek admittance to the White sanctuary from within. (33–34). This is in contrast to the way in which he portrays Mayotte Capecia’s4 fascination of the white world. According to Fanon (2008), Mayotte’s 202 page book on her life has the most ridiculous ideas proliferated at random. Fanon notes, “Mayotte loves a White man unconditionally… She asks for nothing, demands nothing, except for a little whiteness in her life” (25). I would not like to draw any conclusions that Mayotte’s fascination of whiteness was not just to ‘whiten the race’ but what the whitening would bring to one’s life. However, what message was Nancy trying to communicate in her narratives? Was she trying to rupture the status quo and find ways of coping with the dominance of whiteness? Or was she dealing with issues of the inferiority complex that Fanon (2008) points out in the following quote? “It is because the Black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world” (p. 41) or it is because the Black man declared his desire for whiteness after the many years of bondage when he could not look at White women without being lynched, let alone hope to be admitted to white social networks? What has driven some Black women (although in the minority) to turn their backs on their Black men – Is it because the Black man has some work to do “to liberate himself” (Fanon, 2008, xii)? At the same time, Nancy’s spouse worked very hard, he had a successful business and his children had done ‘well’ – or did Nancy see beyond the material aspect of doing “well” to the psychological turmoil that drove her husband to his demise? Is Nancy hiding something behind the blonde weave and her dating patterns? Or is it because some Black men have been caught in the struggle to “whiten [their] race” (ibid.) and hence, have no time for their Black sisters? Or it is because both Black men and women are locked in their Blackness and the way to get out of it is to be white, because according to Fanon (2008) “there we are [Black people] in a hand-to-hand struggle with our Blackness…in a drama of narcissistic proportions, locked in our own particularity, admittedly with a few glimmers of hope from time to time…” (28). Fanon (2008) 93

WANE

further states “The black man wants to be white” (xii) despite the fact that, it is impossible because, he cannot shed his skin even if he wore white masks of assimilation or acculturation. COMPLEXITIES OF RELATIONSHIP AND POLITICS OF COLOR LINE

As I concluded my interview session with Nancy, I was keenly aware of the importance of theorizing how Black women’s experiences of dating men of European descent or wearing European hairstyles are not by default but by design. When Nancy stated that she does not date Black men, does she understand the implication of her statement or is she so caught up in her struggles with Blackness that she rejects Black men not because she does not love them, but because she hates herself? Could this be the self-hatred that Fanon (2008) talks about which is portrayed in his quote “as painful as it is for us to have to say this: there is but one destiny for the Black man. And it is white” (xiv)… and the fact that Black men according to Fanon (2008) are double faced – because they behave differently when they are with White people and when they are with Black men. Fanon (2008) question in his introduction is most befitting at this juncture: “How can we break the cycle?” (1). According to Fanon (2008), Nancy’s behavior reflects a lack of self-esteem especially when he describes Jean Veneuse’s situation on the feeling of abandonment: “This lack of self-esteem… keeps the individual in a state of profound inner insecurity, as a result of which it inhibits and distorts every relation with others. (57). Elsewhere, Fanon (2008) describes this behavior as: “Deep down, they (women) want to change, to “evolve”. They were denied this right. In any case, they were robbed of it…forbidden values” (41). Embedded in my reading of Fanon in relation to Nancy’s and Antillean or Martnician women’s struggles is the idea of liberation and its complexities. We need to speak and name those struggles in order to “to liberate the Black woman/man from the arsenal of complexes that germinated in a colonial situation” (14). Nancy is confronted head on with the outcome of colonization of which she is a part. How then do we deal with what Fanon (2008) refers to as “the product of a psychological economic structure… that does not get us anywhere” (18). It is clear that interracial relationship is not the answer because according to Fanon “authentic love remains impossible as long as this feeling of inferiority or ….this overcompensation that seems to be indicative of the Black Weltanschauung, has not been purged” (25). How do we purge Black Weltanschauung? Is it by adopting the following creed and if so, is that enough? “I am Black, I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos…. I am Black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth” (Fanon, 2008, 27). W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous statement that the problem of the twentieth century is still the problem of the color line, confronts the color line itself as a task and a 94

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

responsibility from which none of us are exempt. Fanon devoted great amount of energies explicating the psychology of color line and its implications. Similarly, Kawash notes: It is imperative to resist any reductive or simplistic view of the color line as some sort of error…. The color line is absolutely real, both as a source of power and as a condition of material effects. The problem in grasping this reality lies in its complexity: the reality of the color line is split and doubled between the color line as historical product and the color line as ontological ground. Its modalities, forces, and locations shift with time and circumstance, and it is produced and reproduced at several levels. At the macrosocial level, as it emerges between social groups, the color line can be seen to be the product of complex relations of power, conquest and exploitation. At the microsocial or individual level, the color line is produced and reproduced through various social technologies of embodiment, identification and representation….the power of the color line derives from its appearance as timeless, immutable and utterly natural (Kawash, 1997, 13) When we discuss the notion of color line “is not simply a limit to thought or action that can be recognized and traversed. The persistence of the color line in representation and experience is not a problem of false consciousness or anachronistic thinking, rather, it indicates the power and continuity of the cognitive, discursive, and institutional work of the color line” (Kawash, 1997, 6). The politics of the color line, therefore, are crucial to our understanding of civilizational, societal, institutional, overt and covert racism. This is because, as Kawash states above, the ‘color line is …real, both as a source of power and condition of material effects”. In order to tackle this problem, I advocate that it is crucial to start with a critique of self in terms of how much we know of the history of race and how the dislocation of “color line lies in uncovering the uncertainty, the incoherency, and the discontinuity that the common sense of the color line serves to mask” (Kawash, 1997, vii) and the fact that “color line has always been a property line, whiteness that could own and a Blackness that was defined in terms of its status – as property” (Kawash, 1997, viii). As noted by Golderg , “Fanon’s corpus is concerned primarily with interrogating the interface of colonialism’s various expressions and resistance to them and thus overwhelmingly with the shifting and complex questions of “the color line” (179). Golderg also notes that Fanon’s work “seems as fresh now as it did at the height of its intellectual and political impact in the 1960s and 1970s” (180). For the longest time, throughout the colonial and neocolonial history, skin color has been used as an oppressive, destructive and divisive tool to separate Europeans and non-Europeans and racialized people including Black women. The resulting internalized racism may often lead to self-hate, anger, rage and injustices directed at each other rather than the oppressive forces that created such hurt and abuse in the first place (Hooks, 1984). Black women are lifelong victims of what Patricia William has so aptly called “spirit murder”. For most Black women, spirit murder consists of hundreds, if not thousands, of spirit injuries and assaults, the cumulative 95

WANE

effect of which is the slow death of the psyche, the soul, and the persona. This spirit murder affects all Black women, whether we are in the depths of poverty or in the heights of academe (Wing, 1997, 28). It is any wonder then, that Fanon devotes so much thought to the politics of the color line in order to find the solution to this spirit murder of racialized people because of skin pigmentation? LANGUAGE AS A COLONIZING TOOL

Not only does the psychological violence affect the way Black people see themselves but also how they speak. What is deemed European enough to be accepted by the dominant culture? Fanon (2008) points out that: “In the French Antilles the bourgeoisie does not use Creole, except when speaking to servants. At school the young Martinican is taught the dialect with contempt. Avoid Creolisms. Some families forbid speaking Creole at home, and mothers call their children little ragamuffins for using it” (4)…. The Black man entering France reacts against the myth of the Martinican who swallows his r’s. He’ll go to work on it and enter into open conflict with it. He will make every effort not only to roll his r’s but also to make them stand out….Anxious not to correspond to the Black man who swallow’s his r’s, he makes use of a great many but doesn’t know how to divide them out” (5). Why are we obsessed with being anything but who we are? If we believe that this is absurd, and that only the generation of the sixties behaved in this way, then we are mistaken. The need to sound British or Canadian was well articulated by Natalie, a respondent in my study: “When I arrived from the Caribbean, my mother sat down with me and instructed me very clearly, from now on, you will practice to speak proper English, role your r this way (demonstrating)… no more this patois… you will not be like them (Canadians) if you do not speak like them…. And this was made worse by the school system that separated me from the other children and I was placed with special needs children – just because I spoke differently … that was twenty something years ago … but this has not changed as the research done by Prof Dei indicates… or even to be closer to home, this morning my mother was trying to correct me … when I said something to my daughter in patois – she said, you cannot do that to my grandchild. She is Canadian and do not corrupt her Canadianness….. This was not the first time I have had this argument with my parents, you either get a child with a White man to whiten the race or strive to be White in every way possible…it gets to be hard… it gets tiring… I just want to be me… Black and African… but then who can blame my parents when all that they know or knew was doing everything possible to ‘work out things’ that would enable them to be successful.… ” (interview, 2006). Fanon (2008) sums up this absurdity clearly, “There is a psychological phenomenon that consists in believing the world will open up as borders are broken down” (8). There is a mistaken notion that by changing the way we speak and by whitening 96

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

our race through intermarriage, we will become accepted by the White society. There is a problem here and it is not that the Black woman has nothing in common with Black men, on the contrary, she has a lot in common. They are both striving to attain something that they do not have and both are unwilling to admit it or even have a non-confrontational conversation about it – and that is self love. There is a need to have a conversation which was initiated by Fanon in 1952, when he wrote Black Skin White Masks, he asked: “Where does this change of personality come from? What can this new way of being be ascribed to?” (8) Although this comment was made in reference to Martinicans returning from France, Fanon states that, “this same behavior can be found in any race subjected to colonization” (9). That is, the need to be White. In the process of wanting to be White, there is clear articulation of an inferiority complex as noted by Fanon (2008): “that the feeling of inferiority by Black is especially evident in educated Black man who is constantly trying to overcome it…[either through]… The wearing of European clothes;… adorning the native language with European expressions, using bombastic phrases in speaking or writing a European language…” (9). Similarly, Linda Smith (1999), Ngugi Wa Thio’ngo (1985), George Dei (1996), Patrice Malidome (1994) among others, have echoed Fanon in their writings on the various and more subversive ways in which peoples’ minds were colonized. These authors suggest that discipline, inculcation of an alien culture, foreign language and education were, and still are, ways in which minds were/are colonized. Superiority established the level of knowledge prosecution, discipline and conformity. For Fanon (2008) being colonized by a language had larger implications for one’s consciousness. He argued that: “To speak… means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization” (17–18). Speaking French for Fanon, meant he was coerced into accepting the collective consciousness of the French, which identifies Blackness with evil and sin. And as such, embracing another person’s language was the highest form of colonization. This is because one is denied what is of essence to one’s cultural growth. Fanon, like Du Bois before him, advocated the use of text as a liberating tool. His book, Black Skin White Mask has become one of those central documents for decolonizing the mind. This book has influenced anti-colonial writers such as Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Zimbabwe’s Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Senegal’s Ousmane Sembene. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1985) suggests that, in order for African people to liberate their economies, politics, cultures and education from the colonial based stranglehold, they have to revisit their creative initiatives in history. One of the choices he advocates is language which is necessary to define a people in relation to their natural, social environment, and entire universe. According to Fanon (2008): To speak a language is to appropriate its world and culture. The Antillean who wants to be White will succeed, since he will have adopted the cultural tool of language……It should be understood that historically the Black man wants to speak French, since it is the key to open doors … which …still remain closed to him. (21)

97

WANE

What this means is that the more Black people speak a foreign language at the expense of their African languages, the more alienated they are from their culture. Yet, knowing that is the case has not motivated us to emphasize the need to teach our languages in our schools. Currently, more than 150 African languages are nearing extinction and, according to the University of Cologne’s Institute for African Studies, they are being replaced by major regional languages such as Hausa in Nigeria and Swahili in East Africa as well as the colonial lingua franca. Every language is the custodian of its speakers’ cultural experiences, which are often the result of their many centuries of interactions with their physical milieu, inter- and intraethnic contacts, and relations with the supernatural world (Batido, 2001, 312). Therefore, the loss of a language is the loss of knowledge and wisdom. The open spaces and multiplicities of possibilities found in decolonizing methodologies (Smith, 1999) are more urgently needed and time sensitive when the loss of language is imminent and the push of westernization extreme. DECOLONIZATION AND THE EVOCATION OF A GENDERED CONSCIOUSNESS

Decolonization could mean seeking to go against the status quo and questioning Eurocentric paradigms that dominate the world educational thought. This requires our being aware of how we live our lives and how our thoughts, beliefs and interactions with others are shaped by systems that create universal norms. This awareness is the first step in creating a consciousness to transform systems, which is a true essence of creating a decolonizing epistemology (Wane, 2008). Elsewhere (Wane, 2009) I have stated: A decolonizing project may mean a myriad of things to different people. It may mean questioning one’s education and the acquisition of knowledge, such as questioning what we learn in schools, who writes history, whose story is legitimized and how power plays a role in the production of knowledge (Smith, 1999, Mohanty, 1990, Dei, 1995, Willinsky, 1998). It can mean rejecting the compartmentalization of knowledge in terms of disciplines such as biology, psychology, and philosophy and thinking of all knowledge forms as interconnected and intersecting (Willinsky, 1998). Decolonizing may mean dismantling the use of binaries (such as East and West, First World and Third World, etc.) and questioning how these binaries are constructed and how they have affected the delivery of what is learnt in school globally. (171) There are myriads of examples of decolonizing projects. As I have stated elsewhere (Wane, 2009): the work of Edward Said on Orientalism, a study of the politics, literature, and culture of the Middle East, or the work of George Dei on school dropout in Canada, or Ali Abdi’s work on African philosophical systems are great examples of raising consciousness and at the same time showing the need to “pay attention to the history of the people, and how that history got 98

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

interrupted through the spread of Western European modes of thought” (Wane, 2009, 171) and how these western ideas create a permanent scar in the psyche of the colonized subjects. In evoking centrality of African women’s self-determination, resilience and agency, I am advocating how Black women have been engaged in decolonizing efforts amidst the countless oppressive obstacles encountered (Nnamaeka, 1998). African women activists are accurately aware that politics of power and privilege, as well as the power of self-definition and self-determination are fundamental to our liberation. Ogundipe-Leslie (1994) poses a question on empowerment which she eloquently answers: What does empowerment mean to us Black women of Africa and [our] African Diaspora? It means social recognition and dignity just as, most of all, it means space to speak, act and live with joy and responsibility as it has always meant for our ever so responsible foremothers wherever they were in history. Our work, writings and exhortation as women in various forms and media show that we want to end our silences and speak our truths as we know them. We wish to have power which positively promotes Life in all its forms, power to remove from our path any thing, person or structure which threatens to limit our potential for full human growth as the other half of Life’s gendered reality, power to collapse all screens which threaten to obscure our women’s eyes from the beauties of the world – (1994, 1). Ogundipe-Leslie captures the past, present and future locations of Black women whose experiences, epistemologies and struggles against oppression characterize Black Canadian feminist thought. This is also captured by Felicia, a participant in my study who stated: I have been listening to everybody talk about their oppression either by partners, the systems, the schools, the places of work etc… do not get me wrong, I have been through it all. I have experienced racism since I was two years old… however, I am at a point where I have said, enough is enough. I have listened to my parents stories of oppression, as well as my grandparents… the story line has never changed… I would like to suggest that we focus on something else in our discussion… like how do we heal ourselves… however do we move away from this binary them and us? The racism that I have experienced made me strong… I have stopped playing the victim… When I give workshops in our community, I stress on the collective good of Black people. I talk about the need to develop different forms of resistance, I tell people to support Afrocentric schools that Prof. Dei is fighting so hard to have established, I challenge my community to think of different ways of instilling in our children our values, our pride… I stress on the community activism and collective responsibility... we should be asking ourselves how do we increase the success rate of our children in schools? How do we increase representation of Black teachers in our schools… in our universities…that is what I would like to leave with from this focus group…

99

WANE

How might Fanon have reacted to Felicia’s quote above? Felicia wants to engage in transformative politics. She has identified (so it seems) obstacles and challenges facing Black people, yet she does not want to be fixated on the politics of oppression. Felicia challenged all the participants in this focus group and invariably each one of them provided suggestions as to how to articulate politics of resistance in their place of work, relationships, and schools or even on the street. For instance Miga, another participant talked of how she had started an after school program for Black youth which she called “Being Black and Proud”. When I came to Canada from the Caribbean, everyone warned me of how difficult it would be to get my teaching certification. It took me five years, but I got it… it took me another five years to set up Being Black and Proud After School Club, but again, I was determined… in this space, we tell stories, I invite students to share the cultures of their ancestors and out of our discussions I bring about the guiding principles of African people…. Respect, honesty, reciprocity, discipline, sharing, trust, reliability….I could have tried to lecture these young people, but we have worked together. I see results, they are tiny as compared to the bigger picture… but something is happening in my school. Much like Fanon’s (2008) writing about the fundamental question of language in which he stated, “the function of language operates by steps and degrees” (10), so that politics of resistance will operate in incremental steps. This calculated move to decolonize is evident in most of Black women’s engagement with colonialism or slavery. For example, long before the advent of western feminism, the Igbo women of Eastern Nigeria successfully protested the imposition of colonial taxes in the 1920’s. There was General Muthoni, a guerrilla leader who challenged the British in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising between 1954 and 1960. There was Mbuya Nehanda, a Zimbabwean woman who was hung in 1920 for leading one of history’s most remarkable counterattacks against British colonials (Aidoo, 1998, 41). These women were among the generational multitudes of African women activists who recognized the importance of a gendered consciousness and specifically advocated for a Black women’s ontology. In the following excerpts, Aidoo addressed the long-standing gendered consciousness shared and celebrated by many African women: African women struggling both on behalf of themselves and on behalf of the wider community is very much a part of our heritage (Aidoo as cited in NfahAbbenyi, 1997, 10)…. The women’s movement has definitely reinforced one’s conviction about the need for us to push in whatever way we can for the development of women. But I don’t think that one woke up one morning and found that they were talking about the development of women, and one should also join the bandwagon—no. What it has done is that it has actually confirmed one’s belief and one’s conviction. Our people say that if you take up a drum to beat and nobody joins then you just become a fool. The women’s movement has helped in that it is like other people taking up the drum and beating along with you (Aidoo in 1986 interview as cited in Nfah-Abbenyi, 1997, 7–8). 100

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

Aidoo’s African-centered analysis speaks to Black women’s resistance. In placing Black women’s gendered consciousness at the centre, Aidoo responds to an already vibrant and vital African tradition – collective responsibility. She sees Black women as the drummers, the initiators of a movement that in many ways has been in existence from time immemorial. Both Miga and Felicia want to evoke the gendered consciousness as a liberatory creed. Nevertheless, it is important to note that while naming the racism, sexism or any form of oppression is very important, it is not enough, naming must be accompanied by activism. While the feminism in the West celebrated equal pay, educational opportunity with their male counterparts or daycare facilities for working women, Black women’s involvement in political activism and politics of resistance never ceased (Wane, 2004). They have continued to fight for their rights not only as women, but as members of an oppressed people, overtly challenging all forms of exploitation and the denial of material and/or social opportunities. FANON AND BLACK WOMEN’S NARRATIVES COPING STRATEGIES

Many scholars who have read Fanon have reacted in a particular way – either they completely write him off for the gaps in his work, his homophobic comments, his lack of providing a more meaningful engagement with women of color or feminists in general, and his lack of engagement with indigenous knowledge as a form of reclaiming stolen legacies or buried or condemned traditional way of life. It is in between these gaps, omissions and lack of engagement that I search for coping strategies, particularly in relation to Black women, who have always had numerous coping strategies that they have employed in their activism and feminist work. The Black women who were interviewed in my research know that there is a shared body of understanding among many marginalized people and that any form of knowledge, in particular relevant educational knowledge, is really about helping an individual find his or her face. In other words, finding out who you are, where you come from, and your unique character (Cajete, 2000). Many suggested that, most of us must be willing to turn history inside out and upside down, otherwise, the changes are simply superficial (p. 190). Resistance, in addition to reaction and response to colonization has also been central in defining the politics of contact as well as politics of possibility. The questions educators should ask themselves when they read Fanon, is: in what ways can they engage Fanon’s discourse of resistance to create change? In my research the women portrayed various forms of resistance, some of them spoke up during situations where they were expected to be silent, some participated in rallies, some engaged in scholarly work that questioned the status quo. Some created coping strategies that dealt with intergenerational spirit injury. The discourse of possibility is not an exclusive exercise for academics only. Traces of this can be found in tales of colonized subjects who fought from the time of first contact with colonizers and who have continued to fight to the present day (see The Book of the Negroes by Lawrence Hill, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, Of Water and Spirit by Malidoma Some, The Pass Book by Muthoni Likimani, Matigari by 101

WANE

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o). In the continent of Africa as well as the Americas, resistance can and could be found among Indigenous peoples’ ways of collective organizing or their modes of activisms. Although Fanon did not engage in issues of spirituality, his work has provided numerous examples of self-hatred portrayed by both Black women and men. The discourse of spirituality enables us to get in touch with our inner self. The goal is to be self reflective, both at an individual and community level. What is important is to construct a pedagogy that encourages spiritual growth. The challenge of linking spirituality with traditional systems of pedagogy has been an exciting, yet frustrating journey for educators. In order for us as a community to address Fanon’s many challenges, we need to create systems of thought that develop a student’s spirituality and to recognize that every student has an interior depth. Opening spiritual doors opens the doors to understanding the interconnectedness we have with each other and how for instance the binary discourse of Black and White is not an individual challenge but a community endeavor. Linked by this commonality rather than separated by differences, yields lasting results. CONCLUSION

Re-reading Fanon and how his work spoke to women’s narratives provided space to engage in transformative discourse of moving beyond critiquing Fanon’s work. From Black Skin White Masks it is evident that Fanon had a restless spirit, a spirit that had been wounded by colonialism, and a spirit which could not be healed even when he married a White woman. His distrust of White structures is evident when he is unwilling to go for treatment in a country of lynchers. Fanon died in 1961, yet the issues that he struggled to make sense of continue to the present day. This is evidenced by women’s narratives in my research. There is clearly a need for the stories, contributions, struggles and various forms of resistances to oppression that Black women (whether Canadian, American, Caribbean, African or a combination of these) have employed to be acknowledged and recognized. There is a need for the crucially important and liberating potential of self-definition, which is “key to both individual and group empowerment” (Collins, 1990, 34) to be recognized, understood and valued. Black women have held on to hope and faith, and continue to struggle, survive and wage war against the oppressive forces that impact their lives. However, it would seem that the time has come for us to evoke the African philosophies of community and solidarity in order to collectively engage our cultures of struggle, exclusion and rejection. Although we cannot universalize Black experience, we need to make a commitment to forge intellectual and cultural linkages that are grounded in the commonality of origin. Although slavery was abolished in the 18th century, and many African states attained political independence in the 1960s, the prevalence of patriarchy, capitalism, White supremacy and neo-colonialism are all testaments to the fact that Black women have yet to achieve liberation and freedom from subjugation. Yet despite the prevalence of such oppressive forces, Black women have developed coping mechanisms for dealing with the violence inherent in the system, and the oppressive conditions that constitute our lives and our experience. 102

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY

NOTES 1

2

3

4

The term Black has been used politically to include other visible minorities who are not of African ancestry. In this reader, we employ the term with specific reference to women and men of African descent, that is, women from the Continent, Caribbean, The Americas and Europe. In short, this term refers to Black women from Africa and her African Diaspora. Research on Black Canadian Feminisms Among Women Of African Descent has been trying to answer two main questions: (i) what informs Black Canadian feminist thought? and (ii) how do personal experiences, education, work, history, cultural background, and other feminisms influence the basic principles of Black Canadian feminist thought? The three women whose narratives have been weaved with Fanon’s take on different issues represent the voices of the majority of women interviewed. Please note that I am using pseudonyms whenever I make reference to any of the participants in this paper. The participants for this research were recruited from Black communities in Central, Eastern and Western Canada to participate in this study. The sample size consisted of women of five distinct age groups: 20–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, 65+. This broad cross section has allowed comparative analysis of intergenerational perspectives on Black Canadian feminism. The participants have included community activists, academics, and women who work in unions, health care, social work and politics. This research has utilized questionnaire, a combination of face-to-face or telephone interviews and focus group discussions. The research, which has utilized both qualitative and quantitative tools, has created space for Black women to name their understanding of feminism according to their subjective and multiple realities. This is in keeping with the view that feminism can be articulated by women in kitchens, schools, offices, and farms and with the children in the home. Mayotte Capecia is one of the women that Fanon writes about in his book. She is a Martinican woman who is fascinated by Whiteness and who finds out later in her life that her grandmother was White. She wishes her mother had married a White man instead of a Black man, because then, her whiteness would have been heightened. She published a 202 page book that Fanon describes as a “third-rate book, advocating unhealthy behaviour” (p. 25).

REFERENCES Abdi, A., Korbla, P., Puplampu, K. P., & Dei, G, J. S. (2006). African education and globalization: Critical perspectives. Lanham, MD: Lexington: Books. Aidoo Ama, A. (1997). The African woman today. In O. Nnaemeka (Ed.), Sisterhood: Feminisms and power from Africa to the Diaspora (pp. 39–50). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Annette, H. (1998). Taking back control: African Canadian women teachers’ lives and practice. SUNY Press. Baksh-Soodeen, R. (1997). Issues of difference in contemporary caribbean Feminism. Feminist Review (on-Line), 50(1), 74–85. Batibo, H. M. M. (2001). The endangered languages of Africa: A case study from Botswana. In L. Maffi (Ed.), Language knowledge and the environment: The interdependence of biological and cultural diversity (pp. 311–324). Washington, DC: Smithonian institution Press. Bergner, G. (1995). Who is that masked women? Or. The role of gender in Fanon’s Black Skin. PMLA, 110(1), 77–88. Brand, D. (2001). A map to the door of no return. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. Cajete, G. (2000). Indigenous knowledge: The Pueblo metaphor of indigenous education. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision. Vancouver: UBC Press. Callista, A., & Dei, G. (2000). Anti-racist feminism: Critical race and gender studies. Fernwood Publishing. Carty, L. (1991). Black women in academia: A statement from the periphery. In H. Bannerji, L. Carty, K. Dehli, S. Heald, & K. Himmanji (Eds.), Unsettling relations: The University as a site of struggle (pp. 6–13). Toronto: Women’s Press. 103

WANE Césaire, A., & Shakespeare, W. (1992). A tempest: Based on Shakespeare’s tempest: Adaptation for a Black theatre (R. Miller, Trans.). New York: Ubu Repertory Theater. Christian, B. (1985). Black feminist criticism: Perspectives on black women writers. Teachers College Press. Collins, P. H. (1990/2000). The social construction of black feminist thought. In Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed., pp. 1–21). New York: Routledge. Davis, A. (1983). Women, race and class. New York: Vintage Books. Dei, G. (1996). Anti-racism education: Theory and practice. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Elia, N. (1996). “Violent women”: Surging into forbidden Quarters. In L. R. Gordon (Ed.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 163–169). Oxford: Blackwell. Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks (Rev. ed.). New York: Grove. Goldberg, D. T. (1996). In/visibility and super/vision: Fanon on race, veils, discourses of resistance. In L. R. Gordon (Ed.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 179–202). Oxford: Blackwell. Hall, S. (1989). Ethnicity: Identity and difference. Radical America, 23(4),9–20. Hamilton, S., Hamilton, S., & Prieto, C. (1986). Black mother, black daughter. Montreal: NFB (English Program, Atlantic Centre). Video Recording. Hansen, E. (1999). Portrait of a revolutionary. In N. C. Gibson (Ed.), Rethinking fanon: The continuing dialogue. Harris, L., & Johnson, G. (1996). Foreword in fanon: A critical reader. In L. R. Gordon (Ed.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 179–202). Oxford: Blackwell. Henry, A. (1998). Taking back control: African Canadian women teachers’ lives and practice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hill, L. (2007). The book of negroes. Toronto: HarperCollins. hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston: South End Press. hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End Press. hooks, b. (1996). Feminism as a persistent critique of History: What’s love got to do with it? In A. Read (Ed.), The fact of blackness: Frantz Fanon and visual representation (pp. 76 85). Washington, DC: Bay Press. Kawash, S. (1997). Dislocating the color line: Identity, hybridity, and singularity in African-American literature. California: Stanford University Press. Likimani, M. (1985). Passbook Number F. 47927: Women and Mau Mau in Kenya. Connecticut, CT:Greenwood Pub Group. Mama, A. (1998). Sheroes and villains: Conceptualizing colonial and contemporary violence against women in Africa. In M. Jacqui Alexander & C. T. Mohanty (Eds.), Feminist geneologies, colonial legacies, democratic futures (pp. 46–63). Routledge. Mercer, K. (1999). Busy in the ruins of a wretched phantasia. In A. Alessandrini (Ed.), Frantz Fanon: Critical perspectives (pp. 195–218). London: Routledge. Mirza, H. S. (1997). Black British feminism: A reader. Taylor & Francis. Mohanty, C. T. (1990). On race and voice: Challenges for liberal education in the 1990s. In B. Thompson & S. Tyagi (Eds.), Beyond a dream deferred (pp. 41–61). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Nfah-Abbenyi, J. M. (1997). Gender in African women’s writing: Identity, sexuality, and difference. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nfah-Abbenyi, J. M. (1997). (Re)constructing identity and subjectivity: Buchi Emechata, Ama Ata Aidoo and Tsitsi Dangarembga. In Gender in African women’s writing: Identity, sexuality and difference (pp. 35–74). Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Nnaemeka, O. (1997). Introduction: The rainbow. In O. Nnaemeka (Ed.), Sisterhood, feminism, and power: From Africa to Diaspora (pp. 1–35). Asmara: Africa World Press. Ogundipe-Leslie, M. (1994). African women, culture and another development. In Recreating ourselves: African women and critical transformations (pp. 21–42). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

104

READING FANON DIFFERENTLY Rodney, W., & Harding, V. (1981). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sharpley-Whiting. (1997). Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and feminism. Rowman & Littlefield. Shiva, V. (1995). Biopolitics: A feminist and ecological reader on biotechnology. Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, B. (2000). The truth that never hurts: Writings on race, gender and freedom. Rutgers University Press. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books. Somé, M. P. (1994). Of water and spirit: Ritual, magic and initiation in the life of an African Shaman. New York: Tarcher/Putnam. Steady, F. C. (1981). The black woman cross-culturally: An overview. In S. F. C. Steady (Ed.), The Black Woman cross culturally (pp. 7–42). Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Steady, F. C. (1989). African feminism: A worldwide perspective. In R. Terborg-Penn (Ed.), Women in Africa and the African diaspora (pp. 3–24). Boston: Harvard University Press. Thio’ngo, W. N. (1985). The language of African literature. New Left Review, 150(March/April), 109–127. Thio’ngo, W. N. (1989). Matigari. London: Heinemann. Truth, S. (1851). And ain’t I a woman. Speech delivered at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. Wane, N. N. (2004, summer). Black Canadian Feminism thought: Tensions and possibilities. Canadian Women’s Journal, 23(2), 145–153. Wane, N. N. (2007). Black Canadian feminist thought: Imagining new possibilities. In Massaquoi & N. Wane (Eds.), Theorizing empowerment: Black Canadian feminist thought. Toronto : Innana Publishers. Wane, N. N. (2008). Mappping the field of indigenous knowledges in anti-colonial discourse: A tranformative journey in education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(2), 183–197. Wane, N. N. (2009a). Black Canadian feminism thought: Perspectives on equity and diversity in the academy. Journal Race Ethnicity and Education, 12(1), 65–77. Wane, N. N. (2009b). Indigenous education and cultural resistance: A decolonizing project. Curriculum Inquiry, 39(1), 159–178. Williams, P. J. (1997). Spirit-murdering the messenger: The discourse of fingerpointing as the law’s response to racism. In A. K. Wing (Ed.), Critical race feminism: A reader (pp. 229–236). New York: New York University Press. Wing, A. K. (1997). Brief reflections toward a multiplicative theory and praxis of being. In A. K. Wing (Ed.), Critical race feminism: A reader (pp. 27–34). New York: New York University Press. Young, L. (1996). Missing persons: Fantasising black skin, white masks. In A. Read (Ed.), The fact of blackness: Frantz Fanon and visual representation (pp. 86–101). Washinton, DC: Bay Press.

105

NADESHA GAYLE

8. UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA AND THE BLACK WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE THROUGH FANON

INTRODUCTION

Historical discourses on trauma theory and practice have largely neglected the experiences of Black women (Jackson & Green, 2000). In this paper, I seek to gain an understanding of the Black women’s experience in the Diaspora with racism, sexism and classism, and the failures within Western academy to include Black women in the discourse on trauma. Specifically, I pose the question: How might we begin to understand Black women’s experience with racism through reading Fanon? As conceptual tools, I engage with black feminist thought and an anticolonial framework to situate the experiences of Black women. I am interested in how these theories speak to Fanon’s discussion on trauma. I also dialogue with the work of other anti-colonial writers to better understand the experience of colonization and racism, and also to determine how procedures of imposition become installed in knowledge production within the Canadian milieu. I utilize the following headings to situate my discussion of race induced trauma and the Black women’s experience: Fanon and the Discourse on Trauma addresses the psychological roots of Black people’s trauma in the Diaspora, Racism and the Traumatic, looks at current conceptions of trauma in the West and the Black women’s experience, Current Discourses on Trauma engages in Fanon’s notion of the social impacts of colonization on the colonized subject, Anti-colonial Framework and Black Feminist Thought situate the experiences of Black women through a Fanonian lens, Limitations of a Psychiatric Analysis of Social Experiences attends to the ways in which discourse on colonial psychiatry marginalized racialized groups and women, Black Women’s Experiences with Race-induced Trauma looks critically at the pathology of blackness and the representation of Black women in the Western space, and From a State of “Alienation to Disalienation” speaks to Fanon’s notion of subjectivity and decolonization as a form of resistance. In Les Damnes de la terre, Fanon describes the tyrannous undertaking the colonizers use to subdue the colonial subject mentally and physically: As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation the colonist portrays the colonized a sort of quintessence of evil. The natives are declared insensible to ethics, they represent not only the absence of values but also the negation of values…The customs of the colonized people, their traditions, their myths-above all, their myths-are the very sigh of that poverty of spirit G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 107–132. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

GAYLE

and their constitutional depravity…At times this Manichaeanism reaches its logical conclusion and dehumanizes the colonized subject or to speak plainly it reduced them to the state of animals. (WE 6–7 also see Hayes 1996, 17) FANON AND THE DISCOURSE ON TRAUMA

The psychological roots of Black people’s trauma in the Diaspora came out of slavery, colonialism and deep-seated racism that have lasting effects on the psyches of families and communities. Frantz Fanon saw enslavement and colonization as an organized brutal, violent and racist system that dehumanizes Black people. Black women like Black men suffered unspeakable mental and physical violence, rape, cruelty, starvation, inadequate housing, family fragmentation and lack of health care and education (Hayes, 1996). No wonder Fanon asked “did the black child see his father beaten or lynched by a white man?” (BS, 145) or watched his mother brutalized by a white man? “Has there been a real traumatism?” (145). To this question we must answer yes. The black body is marked by trauma sustained by repeated physical and psychological injuries and alienation that has passed down from generations. Since race is the most obvious characteristic one sees, it affects the psychological and especially the spatial as these processes of racism distances and maintains subordination. For as Fanon states: Racism is never a super-added element discovered by chance in the course of the investigation of the cultural data of a group. The social constellation, the cultural whole, are deeply modified by the existence of racism…Racism, to come back to America, haunts and vitiates American culture. (TR, 36) Consequently, the visibility of race and skin colour becomes an apparatus of trauma that Black women live through on a daily basis. These traumatic experiences Fanon speaks of are maintained and supported by our school systems, media and institutions. Indeed, racism according to Fanon “bloats and disfigures the face of the culture that practices it. Literature, the plastic arts, songs for shopgirls (or schoolgirls), proverbs, habits, patterns, whether they set out to attack it or to vulgarize it, restore racism” (TR, 36). Fanon saw racism as not an accidental or onetime occurrence. Rather, it is endemic, and is interwoven into the social, economical and political fabric of a society or civilization. The “colonial world according to Fanon is a compartmentalized world” (WE, 1963, 3). First, this world is divided not only by physical lines and borders, but it is occupied by the universal body that polices, legitimizes and defends these boundaries in order to extract resources from the colonies. Further, these loyal protectors of the empire are “prepared to manipulate local divisions and fan them into tribal warfare and to play the relatively westernized city folks off against the more traditional country dwellers” (Schmitt, 1996, 45). Second, lies within this “colonial (world) are the economic reality, inequality, and disparities that never manage to mask the human reality” (5). In the colonial context according to Fanon, race becomes the determinant of who is classified as human. He states, “It is quite clear that what divides this world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to. You are rich 108

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

because you are white, you are white because you are rich” (WE, 1963, 5). The colonial world is controlled by this universal human who in turn controls the economic system and racialized bodies it holds captive. According to Fanon, lies within these compartments are a history of “regime of oppression”, racism and the need to defend a White European universal civilization. Therefore, to defend this space, there is a need to use physical and physiological violence to contain the “uncivilized blacks”. Fanon expressed that “black people are oppressed by the Western, white civilization” (Hayes, 1996, 12). Further, “he characterized this civilization as a fundamentally anti black world where the structure of white superiority encouraged the oppression, dehumanizing, exploitation, degradation, and hatred of black people” (12). In fact, Fanon reminds us that the system of colonization is a violent and brutal process that goes beyond simply economical exploitation. While he believed that the enslavement of Africans has led the way for a new and brutal phase in the capitalist system, he saw “color prejudice” at the root of European enslavement, colonization and domination of Black people. For this reason Fanon states: It is nothing more than the unreasoning hatred of one race for another, the contempt of the stronger and richer peoples for those whom they consider inferior to themselves…and the bitter resentment of those who are kept in subjection and are so frequently insulted. As color is the most obvious outward manifestation of race it has been made the criterion by which men are judged, irrespective of their social or educational achievements.” (as cited in Bernasconi, 2001, 88) In Fanon’s view, the ability for Europeans to pass as the universal subject are supported through the “capitalist societies, education, whether secular or religious and the teaching of moral reflexes handed down from father to son” (WE, 3) that transmits colour prejudice and oppression from one generation to the next. Fanon speaks extensively of the prevalent of racism and the degradation Black women and men endured in the colonies, and have linked these experiences to long-term psychological trauma that continues to segregate the black world. Like Fanon, some contemporary scholars have documented Black women’s experiences with race induced trauma and found poor images that are tied to slavery and colonization. In these images, Black women are labeled as sexually available, as mammies and child-bearers, who experience sexual, physical and psychological violence, displacement, and racism in education, employment and legal policies (Collins, 2002, Jackson & Greene, 2000, hooks, 1992, Richardson, 1987, Bristow, Brand, Carty, Cooper, Hamilton & Shadd, 1994, Rodgers-Rose, 1980). “These cycles of oppression leave scars on the victims and victors alike, scars that embed themselves in our collective psyches and are passed down through generations, robbing us of our humanity” (Degruy-Leary, 2005, 4). This cycle of repetitive race induced trauma on the mental health of Black people not only reinforces feelings of nothingness but also what Fanon calls the ‘inferiority complex’ as an outcome of a dual process of social and economical alienation. In his Black Skin White Masks Fanon (1967) used psychoanalysis to describe the effects of colonization on the 109

GAYLE

psyche of colonized people. He spoke of the connections between the structure of the nation and the psychological traumas experienced by Black men and women. Further, Fanon documented that while working as a psychiatrist in Algeria, in almost every case of neurosis, the symptoms were, and “like residues of emotional experiences” (143) which were linked to the traumatic memories of repetitive assault on Black women and men. In his view, traumas and psychosis are not merely a consequence of wars between the colonizer and the colonized, but rather, are symptoms attributed to racism, brutality and ongoing attacks that played out on a daily basis in colonized countries, effects he states are “repressed in the unconscious” minds of the victims (144). Fanon’s analysis and historical accounts of colonial physical and psychological violence and its impacts on the Black race provides an understanding of how some traumatic experiences “can result in distorted attitudes, dysfunctional behaviors and unwanted consequences” (Leary, 2005, 14). Moreover, an understanding of these realities point to the severity and complexities of traumas when experienced repeatedly by Black women. Embedded within these historical events are the traumatic life experiences of Black women linked to racism and mental health, issues that are not taken up in the psychological and sociological literature. Frantz Fanon provides a departure from these limited conceptions of trauma as he delves into the psychology of oppression and the lived experiences of Black people in the West. Further, he advocated for “the world’s alienated, unwanted, and dispossessed masses of black and other people of colour”, for whom racism is a daily existence filled with fear and degradation. It is through the lenses of Fanon, I seeks to gain an understanding of race induced trauma and the Black woman’s experience in the Diaspora. RACISM AND THE TRAUMATIC

Current conceptions of trauma focus primarily on victims of physical and/or sexual abuse, pain, war, torture and danger. For the past two decades, the recognition of these categories of traumas has been included in both psychological and sociological education and training for mental health professionals and educators (Jackson & Greene, 2000). While these categories of trauma have been apart of some Black women’s experiences, other sources of trauma also exist for Black women that came from living with ongoing racism and marginalization. In this regard, Fanon’s take on racism is important as it “points out to us that the different ways in which racism manifests itself all serve the same purpose of objectification” (Schmitt, 1996, 40). Fanon posed the question, “what does racism do to people?”(as cited in Schmitt, 1996, 35). He answered, “Racism objectifies” (35). For Fanon, racism was more than just a set of beliefs, assumptions or fantasies the colonizer held about the colonized, instead, it is violence, and a social disease that destroys the organism that comes within its path. He also states that: All forms of exploitation are identical, because they are all applied against the same “object”: man. Fanon documented the complexities of the colonized world and the physical and mental manipulation techniques the colonizer used to subdue and contain their subjects. Memmi (1965) believed the colonizers search for differences among people 110

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

and give racist meaning to these characteristics. “In those differences, the colonized is always degraded and the colonialist finds justification for rejecting his subjects” (71). Further, the colonizer stresses these identified characteristics that keeps Black women divided among each other, and give the lighter races privilege to revile and dominate the darker race. Fanon adds, “the Negro is made inferior” while the Black woman becomes the embodiment of what she is perceived to be, a sexual deviant and an “unscrupulous animal” (Sharpley-Whiting, 1996). “Racism was a consubstantial part of colonialism, the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of colonialism” (as cited by Verges 1996, 92 also see Memmi 1967, 74–151). Fanon would agree with Memmi that colonial racism is ingrain in all facets of society. It is “a mixture of behaviors and reflexes acquired and practiced since very early childhood, established and measured by education, colonial racism is so spontaneously incorporated in even the most trivial acts and words, that it seems to constitute one of the fundamental patterns of colonialist personality” (1967, 70). According to Verges, “Memmi, like Fanon, thought that a social revolution was needed to accomplish decolonization” (92). “Only the complete liquidation of colonization permits the colonized to be free,” but this liquidation was “nothing but a prelude to complete liberation, to self-recovery” (92). The psychological impact of colonization is so damaging and lasting that a total remake of a person is needed for transformation or decolonization to be possible. In a racist society, the Black woman and the Black man dare to ask for equality, because as Fanon states, “the black man (and woman) is not a man (or woman)” (BS, 8). Collins (2002) would agree with Fanon’s analysis, for in her critique of popular controlling images of Black women, she found that the dominant ideology of the enslaved era fostered the creation of various racist socially constructed images of Black women that are transparent in all spheres of the Western world. These images depict Black women as sexually available, loose, as “jezebels”, unattractive, demanding and mothers of sons who are criminals, deviants and inferior (Jackson & Greene, 2000). These racialized images, Fanon states, are psychologically traumatic to the Black spirit and are embedded within the unconscious only to be aroused in the form of adult neurosis. Fanon states “the books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio-work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs” (BS, 152). Further, these racist practices are played out in various forms in school yards, in books and the curriculum where the “Bad Man” the Loud Man-less, Wicked, and unfeminine Woman, are represented by the “Negroes or Indians” (BS, 146). Children are taught from an early age “to read stories of savages told by white men” (BS, 148), to fear Black men, the “natural criminals”, who are labeled as the “permanent children” (Veerges, 1996), and to disrespect Black women, who are often viewed as the “dissolute breeders” with lower sexual morality. In fact, Fanon reminds us that Black people experience race induced trauma from as early as childhood. He states: It will have been already been noticed that I should like nothing more nor less than the establishment of children’s magazines especially for Negroes, the creation of songs for Negro children, and, ultimately, the publication of 111

GAYLE

history texts especially for them, at least through the grammar-school grades. For, until there is evidence to the contrary, I believe that if there is a traumatism it occurs during those years. (BS, 148) In Fanon’s view, “when the problem is a neurosis experienced by an adult, the analyst’s tasks is to uncover in the new psychic structure an analogy with certain infantile elements, a repetition, a duplication of conflicts that we owe their origin to the essence of the family constellation” (BS, 141). The transmission of psychological torment Fanon speaks of impacts the experiences of Black women from enslavement, from childhood to adulthood. The representation of Black women in colonial times also speaks to how racism is a contributing factor in clinical depression, anxiety disorders and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among Black women (Carter, 2007). Barbee (2002), in her essay on racism and mental health found that racism is one of the leading causes of depression among Black women. Much research has been done on educational, economical, social and political effects of racism (Carter, 2007, Marger, 2003, Jones, 2007), “but less is understood about specific aspects of racism that are directly linked to the particular psychological effects or reactions of its targets” (Carter, 2007, 14). However, psychological distress is very much an everyday experience for Black women, men and children (Dei, Karumanchery & Karumanchery-Luik, 2007). To hear traumatic racial memories” (Jackson & Greene, 2000, 132) of Black women we need to expand the current definitions and categories of trauma to include Fanonian perspective on the psychosocial existence of racism in the lives of Black women in the Diaspora. A FANONIAN ANALYSIS ON TRAUMA CURRENT DISCOURSES ON TRAUMA

“Fanon figured colonization as a process that, while having its sources and structures in the material conditions of the colonial setting, produced effects that extended beyond material conditions to the modest of consciousness they inflect” (Stevens, 1996, 208). To Fanon, colonization veils itself within its dehumanizing and exploitative elements, it takes root and transplants itself in the psyche of the colonized subject rendering the “self” invisible. “Representationally, it seeks to sustain the identity of the ideological or discursive image it has created of the colonized and of the depreciated image the colonized have of itself” (Goldberg, 1996, 184). In fact, “by making the relations and the practices of dominance seen standard, normal, and given, colonialism creates as “acceptable” its central social expressions of degradation and dehumanization, rendering unseen the fact that it makes people what they are not” (184). “Fanon speaks of this as the lie of the colonial situation” (184), but also attest to the powerful effects it has on the consciousness of the colonized Black men and women. In fact, Fanon addresses the psychology of race induced trauma that continues to plague many Black women and men alike. Unlike historically, definitions of trauma that limits its manifestations to emotional and psychological arousals to “mass hysteria”, panic, fear and pain caused by natural disasters, wars, tortures, sexual or physical abuses, or death of loved ones (Stamm, 1999, Cross in Danieli, 1998, Evans-Campbell, 2008). Fanon provided a 112

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

psychoanalysis lens from which to view the social experiences of Black people and other racialized groups. Fanon “saw the black-skin subject as been alienated from a subject position” (Stevens, 1996, 209). He states: The Negro’s behavior makes him akin to an obsessive neurotic type, or, if one prefers, he puts himself into a complete situational neurosis…In the man (or woman) of color there is a constant effort to run away from his own individuality, to annihilate his own presence…Whenever a man of color protests, there is alienation. Whenever a man of color rebukes, there is alienation… (We) see that…the Negro, having been made inferior, proceeds from humiliating insecurity through strongly voiced self-accusation to despair. (BS, 60) Indeed, the anxieties and insecurities Fanon speaks of, reflects the experiences of Black women, a consequence of slavery and colonization. “The slave-owner’s strategy of dehumanization, degradation, and depersonalization is similar to that which colonizers applied in order to construct the colonized Africa as the Other and to legitimize colonial domination and exploitation” (Hayes, 1996, 18). In neocolonial era, the status of Black women might have changed from that of “chattel slaves”, however, the same humiliating colonial power persist in the mass media, education insitutions, legal system and employment. As a Black women, I also experience trauma every time am asked if my hair is real, or having strangers pulling on my hair to feel its texture, asked how many children do I have without even been asked first if I have children or listen to racist black male jokes. Leary (2005) in her book titled Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome provides detailed accounts of the experiences of slavery on African Americans and defines trauma as “an injury caused by an outside, usually violent, force, event or experience” (14). Traumatic events can cause the individual or group enormous emotional stress and if repeated can cause severe trauma that alter not only the individual life, but also the lives of one’s families and communities. Traumas are often conceptualized through the diagnostic category of PTSD. “Although PTSD was developed as a way to understand negative reactions to lifetime traumatic events in an individual, particularly in war veterans, it is nevertheless commonly relied on by” mental health professionals and researchers to assess the multigenerational legacies of experiences and history of events that have been brought upon people (Evans-Campbell, 2008, 318). However, Fanon reminds us that it is necessary to reassess the basic assumptions of not only the field of psychiatry, but also of those who provide diagnosis and treatment of the neurosis of the oppressed (Moore, 2000, Fanon, 1967). Fanon’s work as a psychiatrist and his experience as a Black man in French occupied Algeria and in Europe provide useful insights into the colonial processes and speak to the ways in which blackness is taken up in dominant discourse. Fanon saw blackness as symbolically linked to all things desolate, ugly and impious, images that are embedded in the consciousness of both the oppressed and the oppressor. For as Fanon so rightly states: In Europe, the black man (and the black woman) is the symbol of Evil. One must move softly, I know, but it is not easy...A magnificent blond child-how 113

GAYLE

much peace there is in the phrase, how much joy, and above all how much hope! There is no comparison with a magnificent black child: literally, such a thing is unwonted. (BS, 188–189) THE ANTI-COLONIAL FRAMEWORK

Fanon’s description of the colonial subject reminds us that Black women’s experiences with racism and domination cannot be addressed without looking at the role of colonization and its imposition and degradation on those who are considered less powerful. Anti-colonial framework helps to make sense of the interlocking nature and multiple forms of oppression such as: race, gender, class, sexual orientation, social location and place of origin that Fanon speaks of in some of his work. Anti-colonial framework is vital in the understanding of Fanon’s articulation of the colonial experience of the colonized. “The colonization, having been built on military conquest and the police system, sought a justification for its existence and the legitimization of its persistence in its works’ (DC, 122) through the use of violence and indoctrinations. While anti-colonial framework recognizes that Black people in the Diaspora are ethnically and culturally diverse population with different belief systems, religion, languages and family backgrounds, it also acknowledges that Black people share a history of slavery, colonization, racism and economical exploitation that has left deep emotional scars and trauma. As Dei (1999, 399, also cited in Asgharzadeh, 2005, 64) has argued, colonization should not only be “conceptualized as ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’, but rather as imposed and dominating.” The anti-colonial framework is a theorization of issues emerging from colonial relations, an interrogation of the configuration of power, embedded in ideas, cultures and histories of knowledge production. The anti-colonial approach recognizes the production of locally produced knowledge emanating from cultural history and social interactions/daily experiences. (Dei, 1999, 399, see also Asgharzadeh, 2005). Indeed, Fanon rightly states “the dominant group arrives with its values and imposes them with such violence that the very life of the colonized can manifest itself only defensively, in a more or less clandestine way” (DC, 130). Under these conditions, Fanon states, “colonial domination distorts the very relations that the colonized maintains with his own culture” (130). From an anti-colonial stance, Fanon provides us the tool to critically analyze the various systems of power and domination that were used in colonization to contain Black women, and control their mind, spirit, body and reproductive mechanism. An anti-colonial framework offers a groundwork in which we are able to “analyze the particular controlling images applied to AfricanAmerican (and Black women in North America) women and the ways in which knowledge are reproduced in a national and transnational context (from the time of slavery) to oppress Black women” (Collins, 2000, 72). “The anti-colonial discursive framework realizes the need to go beyond the notion that race and racism are ‘relatively autonomous’ social phenomena” (Asgharzadeh, 2005, 65). Instead, it 114

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

acknowledges that race and racism are tied to class and establishes power to the dominant group who benefit from the privileges their skin colour provide. Although race is an obvious entry point for anti-colonial framework, and the same I believe for Fanon, gender roles for Black women in North America were also shaped and defined during slavery and colonization, roles that continue to define Black women sexuality, work, mothering, self-image and new forms of economic exploitation that are psychologically damaging to Black women. Frantz Fanon (1967) believed that colonial racism is no different from any other forms of racism because “all of them show the same collapse, the same bankruptcy of a man” (86). In this case colonial racism creates the same traumatic damaging effects for Black women as it has for Black men. According to Fanon, “the colonized are dehumanized, their humanity effaced, not simply for the sake of the colonizer’s ego satisfaction but for the purpose of the colonizer’s exploitation” (Goldberg, 1996, 182, BS, 220). Colonialism is calculated both in its intent and delivery, it lurks beneath the surface and render invisible its true purpose all the while inflecting violence and force to maintain its ascendancy. The anti-colonial framework is relevant in relaying Black women’s experiences with race induced trauma because first, “it recognizes the connection between historical and everyday experiences of Black women that Fanon so bluntly speaks of in Black Skin White Masks, and how this legacy of struggle constitutes one of several core themes (intersectionality of oppressions, Black women as mothers, community leaders, intellectuals, activists and the ability to define oneself) from a Black women’s standpoint” (Collins, 2000, 27). Second, rather than being defined by the colonizer, an anti-colonial stance encourages colonized people to define themselves and articulate their own way of knowing not by the images that are created by the dominant group, but by their own realities (Asgharzadeh, 2005). In this aspect, Fanon believes that colonialism is dual, it operates at the “material and the representational” levels. “Materially colonialism seeks to strengthen domination for the sakes of human and economic exploitation. Representationally, it seeks to sustain the identity of the ideological or discursive image it has created of the colonized and the depreciated image the colonized have of themselves” (Goldberg, 1996, 184). During slavery, colonization and in neo-colonial time, the identity of the Black woman is transformed into a fabrication of the dominant groups’ active immigration (Goldberg, 1996). As Fanon states “I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics, and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects, slave-ships, and especially, especially: ‘Sho’ good banana!’” (BS, 112 also cited in Goldberg, 1996, 185). The fact is, Black people have become invisible and are given new identities as the “Negro and the Slave” by the dominant group. According to Asgharzadeh (2005), “anti-colonial discursive framework seeks to provide a common zone of resistance and struggle against oppression and hegemony of imposed order” (67). Despite the differences among Black women in North America (age, sexual orientation, religion, class, region and ability), we encounter racist social practices in employment, education, housing and health care (Collins, 2000). Further, because of “slavery, colonization, segregation, and ongoing racism, the interaction of history 115

GAYLE

and racial trauma in the lives of African American and (and Black women in North America) is littered with many untold stories” (Jackson et al., 2000, 134). For this reason, Asgharzadeh (2005) states: Anti-colonial discursive framework, celebrates certain aspects of indigenous culture and indigeneity as a whole in defiance of colonial paradigms and as means to resist oppression. Further, it encourages the use of alternative knowledges, oral histories, literatures, and cultural products as counterparts to hegemonic forms of knowledge. (68) Colonialism according to Fanon is another form of enslavement. It is one of the most damaging forms of oppression there is because it is the practice and institutionalization of psychological and physical violence. This violence, he claims is entrenched into the economical and cultural fabric of a colonial society. Moreover, Fanon sees religious indoctrinations and the education system as another form of violence that cuts into the psyche of colonized people creating damaging and traumatic outcomes for generations. Anti-colonial discursive framework speaks to the colonial violence and trauma Fanon discussed and the brutality Black women suffered in the process. “Colonialists, through their methods of writing and teaching, as well as through production, validation, and dissemination of knowledge” (Asgharzadeh, 2005, 65), violently and intentionally attempted to rid the colonized people of their histories, language and identities. In fact, “they teach the colonized to internalized the conditions of servitude and bondage” (65). To accomplish their mission, “they enslave the colonized body’s imagination, mental facilities and modes of thinking” (Fanon, 1963, 1964, 1970, Memmi, 1971 cited in Asgharzadeh, 2005, 65). The work of Frantz Fanon is important for the understanding of Black women’s experiences with race-based trauma. In Black Skin White Masks (1963) he examines the psychological effects of violence and domination on the consciousness of both the colonized and the colonizer. Anticolonial framework is an important tool that can aid Black women and other oppressed groups in re-telling their stories and give meaning to their histories, because “that historical accounts and narratives” (Asgharzadeh, 2005, 66) “are shaped and socially conditioned by particular interest, histories, desires and politics” (Dei, 1999, 403 also see Asgharzadeh, 2005). SITUATING BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT INTO BLACK WOMEN EXPERIENCES WITH TRAUMA

I situate race induced trauma and the lived experiences of Black women in North America in Black feminist thought to help us understand their stories, the role of colonization and slavery and its relation to Black women as mothers, othermothers, teachers, and spiritual women. American and Canadian feminist writers such as Patricia Hills Collins (2000) and Njoki Nathani Wane (2007) have written on black feminist thought. Collins has defined black feminist thought both as a tool to enable Black women to interrogate issues of racist and sexist assaults, oppressive treatments, and a framework in which to situate Black women’s community activism and resistance (Collins, 2000). Another dimension of Black feminist 116

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

thought is to critically set its gaze on the intersectionality of Black women’s oppression with racism, gender and class discrimination. Further, one of its mission is to rid the system of the racially charged, controlling images of Black womanhood, as ‘Mammies’ ‘welfare queens’ and as sexually promiscuous, oppressive images that emerged from slavery and colonization and continue to define Black women’s subjectivity (Collins, 2000). Some feminist readings on Fanon as cited by SharpleyWhiting, have interpreted his positioning of Black women’s subjectivity “as a contemptuously erasing blow toward women of color” (1996, 155) especially his portrayal of “fellow female compatriot” Mayotte Capecia in Black Skin White Masks. “One day a woman named Mayotte Capecia, sat down to write a 202 pagesher life- in which the most ridiculous ideas proliferated at random” (BS, 42). Fanon’s take of Black women’s experiences with historical trauma is central in looking at the roles and representation of Black women in contemporary times. In her article titled Who Is That Masked Woman? Or, The Role of Gender in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Mask (1995), Gwen Berger observed that Black women’s subjectivity is defined in terms of their sexual relationship with men and are positioned as sexual commodities and objects of desire in colonialism. She writes: If women function as commodities mediating social and symbolic relationships among men, then colonialism may be contested largely through the ability of black men and white men to control the exchange of “their” women…Fanon’s scathing condemnation of black women’s desire in the second chapter of Black Skin, White Masks “The Woman of Color and the White Man” (“La femme de couleur et le Blanc”), as illustrative, in part, of his own desire to circumscribe black women’s sexuality and economic autonomy in order to ensure the patriarchal authority of black men. (1995, 81) Based on Bergner’s observations, Black women are oppressed and exploited economically and sexually by both white and Black men in colonization, “she has value only in that she can be exchanged” (81). On one hand, Black men are positioned as both subjects and objects of colonization and on the other as Sharpley-Whiting states, “colonialism castrates black men, divests them of all powers and prowess” (1996, 156). Sharpley-Whiting further critiques Bergner’s assertions that Fanon wants to exercise patriarchal power and control over Black women’s “desires”. In Black Skin White Masks, Fanon utilizes psychoanalysis, a theory, to cite Bergner, is “of subject formation based on sexual difference where it accounts for race as one of the fundamental differences that constitute subjectivity” (1995, 76). According to Bergner, “Fanon posed an important question how sexuality and language, the primary constituents of the symbolic, are influenced by race, as well as how they construct categories of race” (76). Fanon uses psychoanalysis theory to not only examine racial identity, sexuality and subject formation that goes beyond the “oedipal phase” of the family dynamic, but link individual experiences of racism to a broader social and economical extension of colonialism. Bergner sees Black Skin White Masks as a “fundamental text for reconfiguring psychoanalysis to account for race but Fanon, like Freud, takes the male as the norm” (76). The “universal” subject describes the colonized male 117

GAYLE

especially when looking at how racial identities intersect with sexual difference. Bergner’s take on Fanon’s positioning of Black women in Black Skin White Masks is of value when looking at the representation of black womanhood and the epistemologies that have come to shape Black women’s self- definition and subjectivity. However, Sharpley-Whiting rightly states that Bergner possibly have missed Fanon’s discussion in A Dying Colonialism on the long standing sexual, physical and psychological abuse and trauma of Black women in Algeria by the hands of French and other European colonizers. In Black Skin White Masks, Fanon uses the term “man” interchangeably to refer to himself, sometimes to men and other times to human beings “the black is a black man, that is as the result of a series of aberrations of effect, he is tooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated” (BS, 8). He writes, “As for the woman of color, I know nothing about her” (BS, 179–180 also see Sharpley-Whiting, 1996). In this observation, there is a nothingness to the Black woman because she is nothing, she is dissolute and invisible, to make herself visible she needs to amputate herself from her blackness and give herself fully and easily to any white man. In the narrative of Mayotte Capecia, Fanon observed: Mayotte loves a white man to whom she submits in everything. He is her lord. She asks nothing, demands nothing, expect a bit of whiteness in her life. When she tries to determine in her own mind whether the man is handsome or ugly, she writes, “All I know is that he had blue eyes, blond hair, and a light skin, and that I loved him.” “I loved him because he had blue eyes, blond hair, and a light skin.” (BS, 42) Although Fanon in Black Skin White Masks is blunt and sometimes troubling, his observation is nonetheless honest. To be valued in the anti-black world that is colonialism means, as Lewis Gordon observes, “to receive value outside of blackness. It means to be valued by a white” (1995a, 100 as cited in SharpleyWhiting, 1996, 157). In a culture where the white male is seen as the universal human being who sets the standard for what to be valued, dejected and abundant Black women like Capecia dare to ask for love and respectability, for she is to be gratified to have some whiteness in her life. For as Fanon states: These women of color in quest of white men are waiting. Possibly, too, they will become aware, one day, that “white men do not marry black women.” But they are consented to run this risk, what they must have is whiteness at any price. (BS, 49) Capecia’s heroine, like many Black women suffers humiliation and trauma because of colonial oppression and its psychological and material outcomes, yet, “black femininity represents bestiality and immorality” (Sharpley-Whiting, 1996, 160), they are the embodiment of the Black women’s stereotypes that are rampant in so many of today’s videos and magazines. In sum, Sharpley-Whiting rightly states, “in an anti-black world, black male and black female bodies are imagined as excess” (161). Black males are “constructed” as overly sexual, criminals, violent and lazy. “And black females, who have been historically traumatized, violated and 118

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

exploited sexually, and consequently rendered more vulnerable to sexual victimization by white and black males, are often solely and more comfortably highlighted as victims of black males” (161). Given these constructions, Sharpley-Whiting states, one can see why Mayotte Capecia’s actions or inactions were so heavily critiqued by Fanon as opposed to uprooting the cause of these issues and linking them to the system of slavery and colonization. Interestingly, I recently read an article by Young 2006 called Missing persons: Fantasising black women in Black Skin, White Masks. In: A. Read, Editor, The Fact of Blackness – Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ICA, who posed two very important questions about the representation of Black women in Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks. She asked: Are black women in or out of the frame in Fanon’s statement which begins, “the black is a black man…? In or out of the frame when Fanon asks, what does a black man want?” (88). My first response to this question is one should read Fanon’s work in its entirety because the way he references gender in Black Skin White Masks is purely contextual. By this I mean that Fanon’s textual representation of the Black man and the Black woman and his approach to the narrative of Mayotte Capecia has occurred in a particular space and time based on his experiences in Martinique. Fanon heavily condemned colonial physical and psychological violence against Black women and spoke of the use of violence as both an agent of control and as a monopoly for socio-economic power. Fanon’s critique of violence is relevant especially that Black women in the Diaspora and how their “experiences as mothers have been shaped by the dominant’s group’s efforts to harness Black women’s sexuality and fertility to a system of capitalist exploitation” (Collins, 2000, 50). In A Dying Colonialism Fanon (1965) gives agency to Black revolutionary Algerian women who survived unspeakable brutality, sexual abuse and racial trauma as a consequence of colonization. In his critique, Fanon saw the veil as both a tool of resistance to European colonization and as a source of empowerment to Algerian women who fought hard alongside their men. He wrote that “in the mountains, women helped the guerrilla during halts or when convalescing after a wound or a cast of typhoid contracted in the djebel” (mountain-translator note) (DC, 48). Indeed, he gives agency to Black women and voices to those who are affected by colonization and its traumatic aftermath, voices that are missing from Western education system. As Sharpley-Whiting states, “we can employ Fanon in feminism or feminist learning and praxis, given the totality of Fanon’s writings on Algerian women, the veil, feminist resistance to colonial exploitation, his usefulness in revealing Capecia’s blackfemmephobia and racial malaise as an attendant response to the colonial enterprise, and his continued relevance for the colonized in the United States (North America) and contemporary black feminist literacy” (1996, 161). LIMITATIONS TO A PSYCHIATRIC ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCES

Black women’s experiences with psychosis or PTSD as a consequence of race induce trauma is not only absent from mainstream feminist scholarships but is missing from the discourse of colonial psychiatry. Some feminist sociologists have made an argument that women experience depression, neurotic disorders and even PTSD due 119

GAYLE

to Western social structure, the disadvantaged position women are placed in, domestic work, and sexism in employment and the education system (Miles, 1988). While this is the experience of many women including Black women, feminist arguments fails to acknowledge or address the problems faced by non-white women especially when it comes to the issue of race and racism. “The writings and practice of Frantz Fanon as a psychiatrist have rarely been assessed against the history of the clinic” (Francoise Verges, 1996, 85), and the ways in which discourse on colonial psychiatry marginalized or “ignore the historical conditions of it formation, posited a fundamental difference between the psyches of Europeans and non-Europeans” (86). We have seen that many Black women and men in North America have exhibited signs of trauma passed down through generations and have “raised their children while simultaneously struggling with their own psychological injuries” (Leary, 2005, 123). “Colonial psychiatry”, according to Verges, “was the heir of the psychologie des peoples, which emerged, in the second half of the nineteenth century, as a discourse whose goal was to define a relation between race, culture, and the psyche.” (87). At first, this discourse set out to study the poor and disenfranchised population of France who displayed “pathology of degeneration” that warranted investigation (Francoise Verges, 1996). However, this model was later used to explore racist and sexist theories that “made a connection between gender and race, arguing that the proof of female inferiority, and of similarities between women and Negroes” (88). This racist and sexist ideology thrived with the expansion of the English and French colonial projects. The colonizers have gone to the colonies not only to study the traditions, languages and practices of the natives, but also with military operation, to exploit them economically and sexually. The colonial psychologists, missionaries and the anthropologist’s interpret the differences between the races as inferior to Europeans and present a portrait of the Black woman and the man as “childlike, sexually deviant, as breeders, “lazy, criminal, and dumb was a construction of the colonizers’ projections and anxieties” (Francoise Verges, 1996, 91). The Discourse of psychiatry has come a long way, however, remanence of unequal colonial relation still lingers that continue to produce racist ideologies about Black women and men. Fanon’s contribution to the history of psychiatry in colonial spaces is important in analyzing the role of colonization in shaping psychiatry and its practices of assumptions and subjugation on colonized subjects. “Fanon was one of the first psychiatrists to apply “social therapy,” or “institutional therapy,’ in the colony” (86). This holistic approach to caring for the sick and the mentally ill was about making the hospital an extension of the community whereby patients were treated with dignity and were given the opportunity to develop socially (Francoise Verges, 1996). As a psychiatrist, Fanon questioned “the history of psychiatry and the role of the French empire, the psychiatrist, missionary and the doctor as an agent of colonization” (Francoise Verges, 1996, 86), and their attempts to impose their culture and language on the colonized, which contributed to their symptoms of neurosis and “inferiority complex” (BS, 100). Fanon states: If the person is overwhelmed to such a degree by the wish to be white, it is because he loves in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a society that derives its stability from the perpetuation of this complex, in a 120

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

society that proclaims the superiority of one race, to the identical degree to which that society creates difficulties for him, he finds himself thrust into a neurotic situation. (BS, 100) As Verges states, “Fanon wanted the psychiatrist in France to help the patient to act in the direction of a change in the social structure” (1996, 86, BS, 100). Fanon relayed many of the social dysfunctions and psychological problems facing Black women and many black communities in North America today as stemming from the colonial process. As Kruks (1996) adds, “From childhood onwards, exposure to the values of white culture induces an inauthentic identification with whiteness particularly in the educated child, such as Fanon himself had been (128): The young black in the Antilles, who in school never ceases to repeat, “our forefathers, the Gauls,” identifies his (or her) self with the explorer, the civilizer, the white who brings truth to the savages-an all-white truth. There is identification, that is to say that the young black subjectively adopts a white attitude. The hero, who is white, is invested with all aggression. (BS, 147 also cited in Kruks, 128) Indeed, Fanon is right, many cases of self-hate and disconnect that are evident among blacks in North America are linked to the process of enslavement and colonization. Still, Eurocentric knowledge within the Western academy and marginalizes the race-based traumas Black women experience on a daily basis. The literature on trauma and PTSD discourse for instance, are reproduced from the same psychology of colonization that distort and exclude the effects of racism on Black women. For instance, “the DSM-IV-TR definition of trauma, which is limited to incidents that are physical in nature, excludes verbal abuse, emotional abuse, resource denial and racist incidents” (Bryant-Davis et al., 2005, 485). Fanon, who wrote extensively about the psychology of racism, believed that the field of psychiatry failed to understand the importance of racism, institutional and social oppression on victims who suffered from psychosis (Moore, 2000). In the Canadian academy for instance, some race specific courses use incorrect data that pathologies Black women without placing them in racial contexts, therefore leading to the miseducation of students. As Bryant-Davis et al. (2005) writes, when we deny the existence and impact of race-based trauma, we are trying to escape from the responsibility of solving the problem (Jackson et al., 2000). Further, the oppressors have a tendency of blaming Black people and other racialized groups for their disadvantaged status as a way of maintaining their own privileged position. As Bryant-Davis et al. (2005) states there is “the belief that broadening the category (of trauma and PTSD) will denote the status of legitimate victims by diluting the definition of trauma” (485). In their article, Bryant-Davis et al., posed a very important question: “is there a hierarchy of trauma?” (2005, 485). I cannot tell specifically whether there is a hierarchy of trauma, but there seems to be less legitimacy given to the claiming of slavery as a trauma. Further, in the Western academy, very “little consideration is given to the coping strategies blacks were able to fashion during slavery” (Cross, in Danieli, 1998, 389). “Slavery was evil, but the plantations were not operated like World 121

GAYLE

War II Germany concentration camps” (see also in Thomas, 1993, 389). I have been in classes where I and other Black students were told that slavery had happened a long time ago, and that it was purely financial and not racial. By minimizing slavery to simply economic terms, the educational system is not only denying the racialized brutality carried out on African people but also dismissing the multigenerational legacies of slavery that persist today. Western academy’s attempts to avoid cultural obscurities and understand “the Other” vary in both intent and impact” (Elabor-Idemudia, 2001, 194). Fanon (1965) for instance, believed that when the “colonizer sends his doctor, schoolteacher, engineer, the policemen and the rural constable” (121) to the colonized, his intention is twofold. First, it is done as a way of maintaining complete supremacy over the colonized, to keep them subdued and second, to erase their memory of history, language, culture, spirituality and even their humanity, and replace it with his own knowledge. Colonialism, as noted by Fanon (1963), “by a kind of perverted logic…turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it” (210). Western knowledge and those who control power from within institutions, “with a similar neo-colonial logic, have been shown to displace other ways of knowing the world” (Battiste & Henderson, 2000, Shiva, 1995, Smith, 2001, cited in Shahjahan, 2004, 8). Old form of colonialism operates within the Western knowledge production systems that distort and disfigure the images of Black women. Although there are no more plantations or cotton fields to break the backs of slaves, racism is an ongoing experience for Black women. Due to the “ongoing nature of racism, and its association with an unalterable, unconcealable physical characteristic, it can be considered a chronic stressor” (Comas-Diaz et al., 1994, 16). Further, race-based trauma “is very much a part of life for the racialized adult who wakes up every morning to a reflection that is the wrong color-a reflection that will inevitably cause her/him to know pain, humiliation and fear” (Dei et al., 2007, 128). For this reason, some of my young Black female students and adolescent Black females at church expressed negative feelings about their self-image and dissatisfaction with their hair, skin colour, lips and body. These women also reported traumatic experiences at school where some White boys make fun of their bodies and label them unattractive and unfeminine. Racial torments in the Canadian school system go unchecked because “historically the topic of race has been a taboo” (Comas-Diaz et al., 1994, 128) in the Canadian academy. For many Black children, the school is the first site of where they experience racial trauma, social exclusion and racial violence, experiences they take with them into adulthood due to their repetitive nature and damaging effects. Black women in the school system further experience trauma when there is a denial that a racist incident has taken place and is often punished for bringing these issues to the attention of teachers or authorities. Often times, Black women are told “you are too sensitive” (Dei et al., 2007, 128). We are one big happy family here or we do not see race. Racism was a thing of the past. This claim of a colour blind system “is a functional mechanism through which our oppressors seek to place responsibility for oppositional/anti-racist moments firmly at out feet” (Dei et al., 2007, 128). But as Fanon observed while working as a psychiatrist in Algeria, the oppressors used tactics such as violence, domination, manipulation and rhetoric to control and 122

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

immobilize racialized people. Colonized people were indoctrinated in all levels of insitutions including schools and churches to obey and accept their positions because this is what God had in mind for them and their ‘wretched’ race. Fanon writes: The relationship between the colonist and colonized is one of physical mass. Against the greater number the colonist pits his force. The colonist is an exhibitionist. His safety concerns lead him to remind the colonized out loud: “Here I am the master.” The colonist keeps the colonized in a stage of rage, which he prevents from boiling over. The colonized are caught in the tightly knit of web of colonialism. The muscular tension of the colonized periodically erupts into bloody fighting between tribes, clans, and individual. (WE, 17). So as history tells us, Black women and other colonized people are trained to turn racist and violent traumatic experiences inward only to impart this on her/his self or against their own people. The force that Fanon speaks of is not only consisting of guns, ropes or machetes, but of racist “hegemonic knowledge that promotes the interest of the colonizer, which obscures its value premises by masquerading as totally objective knowledge” Elabor-Idemudia, 2001, 198). On the surface the colonizer will express “rhetoric of sensitivity” (Dei et al., 2007, 128) to the oppressed and will appear to hold dear, values of anti-racist principles, all the while inflecting insufferable pain and trauma onto Black women and other racialized groups. “Racism in the Canadian curriculum manifests itself in the entire gamut of academic disciplines, from history, literature, and social studies or geography” and the natural sciences (Elabor-Idemudia, 2001, 197). Further, Daenzer and Dei (1994) argued that racist acts against minority students in Canadian schools are direct consequences of biases within the curriculum. Black female and male students are constantly bombarded with racist images of themselves on a daily basis. When internalized, these images diminish their identities and lead to chronic psychological problems in adulthood. As Shahjahan writes, “the academy can be compared to a colonial missionary school that manifests the processes of colonizing our inner cores” (2004, 8). To illustrate this point, Malidoma Some (1994, also cited by Shahjahan, 2004, 8) states: My life had been taken away from me because during the years I was there, this institution (the colonial missionary school) assumed that its goal was my goal. The result was, of course, the slow death of my identity and the understanding that I was in exile from everything I had held dear. (97–98) Colonialism, Fanon claims “is not merely portrayed without as a society without values” (6). In addition, “the native is declared impervious to ethics, representing not only the absences of values but also the negation of values” (1963, 6). Indeed, because colonized people, specifically Black women, possessed little or no values in the imagination of the colonizer they are embodied within the dehumanizing images that are placed upon them, detached from emotional feeling or psychological effects of racism. 123

GAYLE

BLACK WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES WITH RACE- INDUCED TRAUMA

In Black Skin White Masks Fanon looks critically at the pathology of blackness in the colonies, and speaks to the ways in which race is relational to the body, and how the body is represented within a particular space. Fanon’s understandings of the domination and brutality of violence within the colonies lead him to the diagnosis of institutions and social structures as the cause of racialize trauma or neurosis in the oppressed. As Fanon rightly states: In the remotest depth of the European unconscious an inordinately black hollow has been made on which the most immoral impulses, the most shameful desires lie dormant. And as every man (or woman) climbs up toward whiteness and light, the European has tried to repudiate this uncivilized self, which has attempted to defend itself. When European civilization came into contact with the black world, with those savage peoples, everyone agreed: Those Negroes were the principle of evil. He saw trauma as an outcome of violence that embodies histories and memories that negatively affects the psychic of the colonized. (BS, 190) Indeed, as Fanon articulated, the degradation of Black women should not only be viewed simply as foreign and alien. In neo colonial times, embedded in the collective consciousness of the dominant group are racist and sexist ideologies that infiltrate all gamete of North American society. It is beyond anyone’s comprehension how Black women, wherever they may be in the Diaspora, have managed to survive tyranny, racial and sexual trauma. “Black people in Canada have a past that has been hidden or eradicated, just as racism has been deliberately denied as an organizing element in how Canada is constituted” (Bristow, Brand, Carty, Cooper, Hamilton & Shadd, 1994, 1). “From the first arrival in Nova Scotia in 1605” (1), to the in flock of Black female domestic workers in the 1970’s , Black women have struggled to carve out historical, political, economic, social, cultural, spiritual, and emotional spaces for themselves. They have “battled slavery, servitude, sexual discrimination, ridicule and exclusion in education and employment” (1), yet, Black women have managed to survive through generations of hardship. As Bristow et al., (1994) states, “her tenacious spirit have been her strongest and most constant ally, she survives with strong dignity and an admirable lack of self-pity and bitterness” (1). Although Black women have managed to cope and carve out a space for themselves within the Western landscape, they still enter psychotherapy, mental health hospitals, hostels and even churches and temples “with a range of issues including those that evolve from racial incidents and traumatic circumstances” (Green et al., 2000, 127), trauma that Fanon encountered and experienced both as a Black man and a psychiatrist. Now viewed through the historical lens of slavery, colonization and their outcomes, Black women’s experiences with race-based trauma and PTSD can be understood within a different context. With the understanding that racialized trauma is a condition of institutional and social phenomenon, and the fact that slavery was one of the most ‘cruelest’ and vile act ‘ever known to man’, it is imperative to explore its impacts on the 124

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

lives of Black women during slavery, how these experiences come to shape our current conceptions of Black womanhood, and the multigenerational legacies that continue to hunt us today (Rogers-Rose, 1980). During slavery, Africans were “not only forcibly taken from their homeland, but in order to maintain the economic position of white men (and women), the slave was defined as less than human” (18). Both American and Caribbean enslaved people experienced extreme and inhumane violence and were sold in auctions as animals at the market (Rogers-Rose, 1980). Slaves were traumatized on a daily basis and were often made to feel they were from the wrong race. According to Blassingame (1972), “Black women were not treated differently than men” (cited in RogersRose, 1980, 18). They were also subjected to racial insults, public humiliation, sexual, physical and psychological violence (Collins, 2000, Leary, 2005). When Fanon (1967) writes in Black Skin White Masks, that “the Negro symbolizes the biological” he has Black women in mind too because “the slave woman was defined in terms of her breading capacity” (Rogers-Rose, 1980, 18). Just as Fanon (1967) observed, in colonists, it was believed and taught that the ‘Negro’ was trapped within the body, attached to the physical, and had inherent animalistic tendencies that made them suitable for their European subjugation. As Fanon states, “first of all, he (the Negro) enters puberty at the age of nine and is a father at the age of ten, he is hot-blooded, and his blood is strong, he is taught” (167). This sentiment also reflects the image of Black women in slavery and even in our current societies. “The younger the slave women” (Rogers-Rose, 1980, 18), the stronger and the more hypersexual she was. “In this way, slave owners were assured that the woman was at the beginning of her childbearing age and would have many children” (18). “By claiming that Black women were able to produce children as easily as animals, this image provided justification for the interference in enslaved Africans’ reproductive lives” (Collins, 2000, 78). Because Black women were seen as non-human and as reproductive machines, their reproduction and sexuality were controlled and capitalized to support the institutions of slavery. Due to the fact that Black women were forced to bear so many children in such short span of time and received very little or no health care and nutrition, the mortality death rates were much higher compared to their white counterparts (Rogers-Rose, 1980). Black women in slavery were dispensable, and when they were not been violently attacked, raped by their masters, their sons and overseers, they were cooking, cleaning, working long hours in the field and preparing for their own families (Collins, 2000). With each new child that was born in slavery the wealth of the owner was increased, and so did Black women’s constant fear that their children would be sold would add to another layer of trauma (Rogers-Rose, 1980, Leary, 2005). “The sacredness of motherhood and the raising of healthy, happy children was denied the slave woman (and men)” (Rogers-Rose, 1980, 18), and although slave women loved and fought hard to protect their children, remanence of this broken bond between, especially the Black father (in North America) and child in some communities are still evident today. The Black woman was embodied within the body and metaphorically removed from the mind and anything that makes her human with feelings (Fanon, 1967). Fictions written by 125

GAYLE

American and Caribbean female writers Toni Morrison and Yvonne Bob-Smith provide insights into Black women’s experiences with racial trauma and racism often trigger memories of trauma that have passed down from slavery, segregation and colonialism. Black women in the Diaspora emerged from slavery already suffered form traumatic memories, spirit injuries, and displacement of themselves, their men and children, but were also ‘enshrined’ in racialized images held by the dominant group (Collins, 2000). The controlling image of the Black woman as ‘mammy’ is not limited to African Americans, but also to Black women from the Caribbean and Canada including my mother who emigrated from Jamaica in the nineteen seventies and worked for many years as a nanny to White families. These images portray Black women as the “faithful, obedient domestic servants, created to justify the economic exploitation of house slaves and to sustain” (Collins, 2000, 72) Black women’s subordination. Indeed, “by loving, nurturing, and caring for her White children and “family” better than her own, the mammy symbolizes the dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite White male power” (72), and help to elevate White women’s social and economic status. These racialized images of the Black woman are not a figment of our imagination. They are pathologized in North American schools through Eurocentric knowledge production where Black children are taught their history began with slavery, they are from dysfunctional families, and are harassed on a daily basis. As Black women “we learn to live in anxiety because we spend out lifetimes seeing, hearing and feeling these moments-not because they exist in our minds alone, but because they are repeated over and over in our daily lives” (Dei et al., 2007, 132). Moreover, “Unlike the survivors of other traumatic circumstances whose anxiety might recede once removed from the space, place and moment of trauma” (132), Black people’s experiences with racial trauma has been an ongoing narrative because it exists in all spheres of society. Her presence, from the way she speaks, to the way she looks also conjures up images of the overly strong Black woman, who is loud, dangerous, deviant, manless and disadvantaged. Collins (2000) rightly states that the image of the matriarch or the overly strong Black woman is seen as aggressive and assertive and because she embodies what Black women are seen as, they are penalized, abandoned by their men, impoverished, and are stigmatized as being unfeminine. These images are especially traumatizing to Black mothers who are forced to invent creative ways to shield their daughters from these assaults, and teach their sons to value and respect Black women. Sadly, some black people do not understand the historical forces that contribute to the behavioural problems we see today, whether it maybe fathers not supporting their children, women internalizing negative images or black on black violence (Leary, 2005, Fanon, 1967, Rogers-Rose, 1980). Moreover, the absence of Black patriarchy is used as evidence for Black cultural inferiority (Collins, 2000). Black women are often blamed for their children’s “underachievement” within the school and as such, when system fails in its responsibilities, it is seen as appropriate to have Black mothers whose children are labeled ‘deviants’ represent their race, scream frantically, and plead on national television to be rescued by White men. The Black family, especially the poor and 126

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

working class Black family, and the Black mother have been distorted as sites of pathology and oppression (Henry, 1993). The labelling of the black body transcends that of the public space, but is also evident within the academic space where the black body is considered out of place or as Mohanty would say, “an outsider” (Mohanty, 1997). A final factor that contributes to the race-based trauma Black women experience is “the representations of Black female bodies and sexuality which were part of the cultural apparatus of 19th-century racism and which still shape perceptions today” (hooks, 1992, 62). From early in his career as a psychiatrist, Fanon (1967) recognized the power and influence of colonial education and its role in the continuation of racism through Eurocentric knowledge production. He critiques the ways in which the ‘Negro” is portrayed in the media, comic books and magazines, and detests these types of images. He states: In the magazines, the Wolf, the Devil, the Evil Spirit, the Bad Man, the Savage are always symbolized by Negroes or Indians, since there is always identification with the victor, the little Negro, quite as easily as the little white boy, becomes an explorer, an adventurer, a missionary “who faces the danger of being eaten by the wicked Negroes.” (BS, 146) Although this pathology of blackness Fanon speaks of represents North American “specific kind of catharsis”, the same could be said for the ways in which Black female sexuality is presented in popular North American culture. For instance, Sander Gilman (1985) “calls attention to the way black presence in early North American society allowed whites to sexualize their world by projecting onto black bodies a narrative of sexualization disassociated from whiteness” (cited in hooks 1992, 62). According to Gilman, the end of the eighteenth century saw the sexuality of the black female as an icon for deviant sexuality (cited in hooks, 1992). This racialized images of Black women as jezebels and “hoochie is central in this nexus of controlling images of Black womanhood” (Collins, 2000, 81). These images are carried out on television, in music videos and magazines, and are at the heart of Black women’s oppression that derived from of the process of enslavement. In addition to these racialized depictions, Black women are traumatized repeatedly at work and school about their hair textures, body types, skin colour and facial characteristic and more likely to suffer from PTSD due to the repetitiveness of these attacks (Comas-Diaz et al., 1994). Some Black women have internalized this ideal of themselves, and passed the trauma down to their children. It is true that “the legacy of trauma is reflected in many of our behaviors and our beliefs, behaviors and beliefs that at one time were necessary to adopt in order to survive, yet today serve to undermine our ability to be successful (Leary, 2005, 120). While some Black women suffer from PTSD or neurosis as a consequence of racism, others have begun the process of decolonization and re-creating new images of themselves based on their ancestral history.

127

GAYLE

FROM A STATE OF “ALIENATION TO DISALIENATION”

In his article titled Public (Re) Memory, Vindicating Narratives, and Troubling Beginnings: Toward a Critical Postcolonial Psychoanalytical Theory, Maurice Stevens writes that because Fanon saw “Negro pathology” as originating in the process of assimilation and acculturation perpetuated through institutions of language and education, he was specifically concerned with the psychical dynamics associated with the conflict between the “lived-experience of the black” and the linguistic imposition of an “education to whiteness”(1996, 206). Black women, like Black men learned from childhood negative images of themselves passed down through the colonial process “and at the same time taught to identify with the position of positive value constituted with whites” (207). “Fanon figured colonization as a process that, while having its sources and structures in the material conditions of the colonial setting, produced effects that extend beyond material conditions to the colonial modes of consciousness they inflect” (Stevens, 1996, 208). He states “the effective disalienation of the black man entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities” (BS, 11) Fanon states, “the black man’s (and woman’s) alienation is not an individual question” (BS, 11). In his view, “authentic” disalienation requires one to look beyond individual proximity for questions about their rightful places or their subjective position. For Fanon, “there will be an authentic disalienation only to the degree to which things, in the most materialistic meaning of the word, will have been restored to their proper places” (BS, 12) consequently, Stevens adds, “his “sociodiagnostic” emphasized the importance of psychical incorporation as it occurred in the context of social relations” (209). Stevens agrees that even while his (Fanon’s) analysis was psychological in nature, Fanon maintained that “the effective disalienation of the black (entailed) an immediate recognition of social and economic realities” (209). For Fanon, as cited by Stevens, the alienation of the black subject in colonial spaces was not only a matter of the result of her or his work or even the method of production. Rather, “it was also an alienation from a subjection position” (209). Basically, in the sadistic figment of the colonizer’s imagination, the Black woman is transformed into something she is not, “she is reduced to her base corporeal, specifically sexual, functions copulating like an unscrupulous animal with the poor bekes (whites) and the even poorer sale negres” (Sharpley-Whiting, 1996, 160). There is no doubt we need to heal from the historical injuries and personal traumas that have been inflicted on us. Given the profound effects of the race induced traumas experienced in many black communities throughout the Diaspora, we need to redefine what constitute PTSD, traumas and neurosis and possibly turn to Fanon’s concept of disalienation. Disalienation as a form of decolonization is useful as it creates awareness whereby people feel motivated to search for their own racial and cultural history and identity. The process of decolonization according to Fanon is a violent one. Black people must wage war on two fronts. For the process of decolonization to take place, the Black woman needs to turn inward, ‘create a new person’, and externalize racism and negative effects of slavery to regain her identity, spirit, and self worth. Externalizing as opposed to internalizing racism entails holding the 128

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA

oppressors accountable. Since the oppressors committed the assaults, they should bear the burden of enslavement and colonization and its effects. Further, “disalienation therefore implies the urgent” need to work in the collective and “thoroughly challenge the colonial situation” (Fanon, 1963, 2), Fanon states “decolonization cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentleman’s agreement” (1963, 2). According to Dei (Class, 2008) colonization as an encounter does not only involved the colonizers, but also the territorial domination of one culture by another and the diminishing of languages, and that it could not have flourished without imperialism to politically, militarily, culturally and economically supporting it. Further, he adds that colonialism should be understood as not simply ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’ but as ‘imposed’ and ‘dominating’ In fact, Fanon (1963) adds that decolonization involves a historical process, one that requires the colonized to go back to history and differentiate the legitimate past from the fabricated and fragmented one. For many Black women, especially children and teenagers in the school system who suffer from PTSD or race-based trauma due to repetitive racism it is important to have an open dialogue about how they and their families see themselves and point to positive images and representations of their race. As part of the decolonizing process, it is important we provide re-education that is rooted in African studies whereby we utilize a framework of Black identity and unity. As Fanon (1963) explains “national identity” only carries meaning insofar as it reflects the combined revolutionary efforts of an oppressed people aiming at collective liberation. At this point in time such Black liberation is needed to place emphasis on teaching youth and children in our school system positive values and representations of their people that are not taken up in the current textbooks. We may not be able to rid their psyche of internationalized oppression completely due to the long standing history of colonization, but we can teach them to cooperate and live with others and foster positive role models from which they can emulate. CONCLUSION

Knowledge gain from this learning can provide new knowledge about Black women experiences given that over the generations, Black women in North America and the Caribbean have experienced a series of traumatic assaults that have lasting effects on the psyches of families and communities. These series of assaults on Black women’s image “emerged from slavery firmly enshrined in the consciousness” Collins (2000, 72) of the oppressors that have survived across generations to contemporary times. Yet, Black women have managed to survive through generations of hardship. As Bristow et al. (1994) states, “her tenacious spirit have been her strongest and most constant ally, she survives with strong dignity and an admirable lack of self-pity and bitterness” (1). Although Black women have managed to cope and carve out a space for themselves within the Western landscape, very little is known about the repetitive race-based trauma and its long-term effects on people of African ancestry, specifically on the lives of Black women and their communities. Due to racism in psychiatric and some sociological literature, there is a denial of racism as a social construct and reality- based in the 129

GAYLE

lives of Black women, and the lack of legitimacy given to the multigenerational legacies of traumas as a result of slavery and colonization. However, the work of Fanon has provided useful insights into the effects of colonization on the psyche of colonized people. He speaks of the connections between the structures of the nation and the psychic traumas experienced by Black men and women and the need to actively and collectively decolonize the lasting effects of enslavement and colonization. This process of decolonization is a tool which can be used for furthering research and teaching our children in the school systems to take pride into themselves and their communities. REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author. Asgharzadeh, A. (2005). The development and persistence of racist ideas in Iran: Politics of assimilation and the challenge of diversity. Toronto: Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Barbee, E. (2002). Racism and mental health. J Am Psychiatric Nurses Association, 8(194). Battiste, M., & Henderson, J. (2000). Protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: A global challenge. Saskatoon: Purich Publishing Ltd. In R. Shahjahan (2004). Spirituality in the academy: Reclaiming from the margins and evoking a transformative way of knowing the world. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(6). Bergner, G. (January 1995). Who is that masked woman? or, the role of gender in Fanon’s black skin, white masks. Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA) 110.1. 75–88. In SharpleyWhiting (1996). Anti-black femininity and mixed-race identity: Engaging Fanon to Reread Capecia. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (1996). Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Bernasconi, R. (2001). Race. Oxford: Blackwell. Blassingame, J. W. (1972). The slave community: Plantation life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press. In L. F. Rodgers-Rose (1980). The black woman. Beverly Hills, CA and London: Sage Publications. Bristow, P., Brand, D., Carty, L., Cooper, L. P., Hamilton, S., & Shadd, A. (1994). We’re rooted here and they can’t pull us up’. Essays in African women’s history. Toronto Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press Incorporated. Bryant-Davis, T., & Ocampo, C. (2005). Racist Incident-Based Trauma. The Counseling Psychologist: Sage, 33, 479. Carter, R. T. (2007). Racism and psychological and emotional injuries: Recognizing and assessing racebased traumatic stress. Counseling Psychologist, 35(1), 13–105. Class Discussion. (2008). SES3999S: Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Collins, H. P. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Comas-Diaz, L., & Greene, B. (1994). Women of color: Integrating ethnic and gender identities in psychotherapy. New York: The Guilford Press. Cross, W. E., Jr. (1998). Black psychological functioning and the legacy of slavery. In Y. Danieli (Ed.), International handbook of multigenerational legacies of Trauma. New York: Plenum Press. Daenzer, P., & Dei, G. J. S. (1994). Issues of school completion/dropout: A focus on black youth in Ontario schools and other relevant studies. In N. Watson, J. Scano, & G. Bedard (comp.), For the love of learning: Background papers for the royal commission on learning, 2, 363–391 for Toronto Queen’s Printer For Ontario. 130

UNDERSTANDING RACE INDUCED TRAUMA Danieli, Y. (1998). International handbook of multigenerational legacies of Trauma. New York: Plenum Press. Danieli, Y. (1998). Introduction history and conceptual foundations in international handbook of multigenerational legacies of Trauma. New York: Plenum Press. Dei, G. J. S. (1999). Knowledge and politics social change: The Implications of anti-racism. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(3), 395–409. Dei, G. J. S., Karumanchery, L. L., & Karumanchery-Luik, N. (2007). Playing the race card: Exposing white power and privilege. New York: Peter Lang. Elabor-Idemudia, P. (2001). Equity issues in the academy: An Afro-Canadian woman’s perspective. The Journal of Negro Education, 70(3). Black women in the academy: challenges and opportunities: 192–203. Evans-Campbell, T. (2008). Historical Trauma in American Indian/Native Alaska communities: A multilevel framework for exploring impacts on individuals, families and communities. Sage, 23, 316. Evans-Campbell, T. (2008). Historical trauma in American Indian/Native Alaska communities: A multilevel framework for exploring impacts on individuals, families, and communities. Journal of interpersonal violence, 23(3), 316–338. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1965). A dying colonialism. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin white masks. New York: Grove Press. Gilman, S. (1985). Black bodies, white bodies: Toward an iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth-century art, medicine, and literature. Critical Inquiry, 12, 1. Goldberg, D. T. (1996). In-visibility and super/vision fanon on race, veils, and discourses of resistance. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Gordon, L. R., Sharpley-Whiting, T. D., & White, R. T. (2006). Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Hayes, F. W. III. (1996). Fanon, oppression, and resentment: The black experience in the United States. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Henry, A. (1993). Missing: Black self-representations in Canadian educational research. Canadian Journal of Education, 18(3), 206–222. hooks, B. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press. Jackson, L. C., & Greene, B. (2000). Psychotherapy with African American women: Innovations in psychodynamic perspectives and practices. New York: The Guilford Press. Kruks, S. (1996). Fanon, sartre, and identity politics in states. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (1996). Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Leary, J. D. (2005). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injuries and healing. Milwaukie, OR: Uptone Press. Memmi, A. (1965). He colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Memmi, A. (1971). Dominated man: Notes toward a portrait. Beacon Press. Miles, A. (1988). Women and mental illness: The social context of female neurosis. Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books. Mohanty, C. T. (1997). Dangerous territories, territorial power and education. In L. Roman & L. Eyre (Eds.), Dangerous territories: Struggles for difference and equality in education. New York: Routledge. Moore, L. J. (2000). Psychiatric contributions to understanding racism. Transcult Psychiatry: Sage, 147, 37. Rodgers-Rose, L. F. (1980). The black woman. Beverly Hills, CA and London: Sage Publications. Schmitt, R. (1996). Racism and objectification: Reflections on themes from Fanon. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing.

131

GAYLE Shahjahan, R. (2004). Spirituality in the academy: Reclaiming from the margins and evoking a transformative way of knowing the world. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18, 6. Sharpley-Whiting. (1996). Anti-black femininity and mixed-race identity: Engaging Fanon to reread Capecia. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Shiva, V. (1995). Monocultures of the mind. London: Zed Books. Smith, L. T. (2001). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books Ltd. Some, M. P. (1994). Of water and the spirit: Ritual, magic, and initiation in the life of an African Shaman. New York: Penguin Compass. Stamm, B. H. (1999). Secondary traumatic stress: Self-care issues for clinicians, researchers, & educators (2nd ed.). Lutherville, MD: Sidran Press. Stevens, M. (1996). Public (Re) memory, vindicating narratives, and troubling beginnings: Toward a critical postcolonial psychoanalytical theory. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Thomas, L. (1993). Vessels of evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. In W. E. Cross, Jr. (1998). Black psychological functioning and the legacy of slavery. In Y. Danieli (1998). International handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma. New York: Plenum Press. Verges, F. (1996). To cure and to free: The fanonian project of “decolonized psychiatry”. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Wane, N. N. (2007). Practicing African spirituality: Insights from Zulu-Latifa, an African woman healer. In N. Massaquoi & N. N. Wane (Eds.), Theorizing empowerment Canadian perspectives black feminist thought. Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education Inc. Young, L. (2006). Missing persons: Fantasising black women in Black Skin, White Masks. In A. Read (Ed.), The fact of blackness – Frantz Fanon and visual representation (pp. 88–101). London: ICA

132

ROSE ANN TORRES

9. FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES IN THE PHILIPPINES

INTRODUCTION

Frantz Fanon’s (1963) conclusion in his book, The Wretched of the Earth, states that we should “… consider the question of cerebral reality and of the cerebral mass of all humanity, whose connexions must be increased, whose channels must be diversified and whose messages must be re-humanized” (p. 253). This statement pushes me to look at the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines and my own experience as a woman who finished her degree in this area. Women’s Studies in the Philippines, as stated by Guerrero, Patron, Leyesa (1996), has been criticized as too “Western, anti-male, middle class, etc.” I agree with this contention, since I cannot relate to the Western theory that I learnt when I was doing my degree in this area because it does not speak to my lived realities. Fanon (1963) states that “the proof of success lies in a whole social structure being changed from the bottom up” (p. 27), which means that we can not start liberating women’s condition by excluding the knowledge of Indigenous women. We have to centre our work on Filipino Indigenous women who have been resisting the work of the colonizers. These Indigenous Filipino women have been excluded from the very centre of knowledge production (see Dei, Hall & Goldin Rosenberg, 2002, Wane, 2002, Smith, 1987a) in other context, and this is the time to let them speak and for us to listen to their voices of cultural wisdom. Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925. He died of leukemia in December, 1961. Among his major works were several significant books: The Wretched of the Earth (1963), A Dying Colonialism (1965), Black Skin White Masks (1967), and Toward the African Revolution (1967). He was a proponent of change, and believed that the world was not only for interpretation but also that it was there to be changed. He asserted that knowledge is power, hence, a weapon to reclaim freedom that had been lost because of colonization. Fanon has been praised for his groundbreaking work on anti-colonialism. However, he has been criticized regarding his stake on gender and feminism. This paper points out to some of the criticism against Fanon relating to this analysis on gender and feminism, and sheds light the pedagogical implication of Fanon in Women’s Studies in the Philippines. I do not intend to romanticize Fanon in my paper, but I argue that his works on colonialism and decolonization are significant in the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines. This paper interrogates Fanon’s notion of colonization as an important part of the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines. It aims to capture the G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 133–155. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

TORRES

tremendous impact of colonialism on the Indigenous Filipino women. In this exploratory discussion, I argue that Fanon’s notion of colonization needs to be understood carefully because of its destructive impact on Indigenous gender relations. I explore the critique of Fanon regarding his take on gender and feminism. Within this context, I introduce a re-reading of Fanon as he informs critical studies on women’s experience in the Philippines. Given that my focus on this paper is on education, I thus examine “decolonizing education” in the Philippine context. In so doing, I aim to discuss decolonization as a violent encounter, the meeting of two oppositional forces and the extent to which it ends in true transformation. In exploring the works of Fanon and their pedagogical implication on Women’s Studies in the Philippines, I suggest some teaching tools and strategies. The questions that I grapple with as I write this paper are: What is the significance of Fanon’s work on colonization and decolonization of the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines? Is Fanon’s work relevant in interrogating the situation of Filipino women in the Philippines? How can Fanon’s work be relevant to Women’s Studies in the Philippines, if he has been considered as anti-woman? My reflections are grounded in my experiences as a previous graduate student in Women’s Studies in the Philippines. LOCATING THE “SELF”

I was born in the Philippines during the dictatorship of the late President Ferdinand Marcos. During that time, my family experienced displacement from our own ancestral land. My parents became servants of native bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie used to exploit my parents by letting them work in the field with meagre payment that was not even commensurate to their hard work. It was in this desperation that I was forced to work at a tender age of four. I went to the university through the hard work of my parents. The education system that I went through was not exhaustive enough in explaining the real source of oppression. This was due to the fact that the system itself was an establishment of the colonizer who was an oppressor himself. Based on this, how could an oppressor give out a tool that could be used to bring down his empire? In essence, I did not know the oppressor and it was in this sense that sometimes I was fighting a ghost oppressor – an oppressor that I did not even understand. The education system gave the impression that the Filipino man was the oppressor. However, having journeyed through Fanon’s work I came to realize that this was not the case, but that it was just a pawn that was used to veil the colonizers as oppressors, and to divide the populace along gender lines and hence, to propagate oppression through perpetuation of divide and rule. It was Fanon who brought me to the realization as to who were the oppressors, and the tools that oppressors used to colonize the oppressed. He advised that we should go back to the root cause of oppression. The effects of colonization can be beyond one’s imagination. Jean-Paul Sartre’s justification for why we need to read Frantz Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, saying, “have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame…is a revolutionary sentiment” (Fanon, 1963, p. 13), is true because I realized the impact of colonization in my life when I read this book. 134

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

I had not known who I was, and what I should call myself for a long time. I remember a time when I did not want anybody to call me “Filipino,” because of the profoundly negative impression that Westerners had created and perpetuated about being a Filipino. For example, in one of my classes when I was asked to describe myself, I informed the class that I wanted to be identified as a “feministactivist” and not as a Filipino feminist because I thought that through this I would be recognised. I was not aware of it. It was ingrained in me and it became part of me. I was comfortable in the belly of the beast. It is through having a clear understanding of the economic, spiritual and psychological impact of colonization that I have come to understand who I am. Having undergone this experience, it would be painful to see the same happening to other students in the Philippines Women’s Studies program. I do not want to be judged by history harshly. It is for this reason that I am advocating the inclusion of Fanon’s work in understanding the root cause of Filipino women oppression. FANON AND FEMINISM

I find it hard to write about Fanon and his pedagogical implication for Women’s Studies in the Philippines because most of the literature that I have encountered is focused on “the limits of Fanon’s engagement to gender and feminism” (Moore, 2007, Dubey, 1998, Sharpley-Whiting, 1998, McClintock, 1995, Fuss, 1994, Hooks, 1981). However, “there are some feminist scholars who both critique Fanon for his heterosexism and masculinism, and yet also recognize within his work “… a link between his revolutionary ideology, his love for freedom and people, and their own feminist commitments” (Vasavithasan, 2004, quoted Joy James, Introduction to Sharpley-Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminism, 1998). Further, Vasavithasan (2004) in Feminism(s), nationalism(s) and Frantz Fanon argues that ‘far from being antithetical to women’s liberation, Fanon’s work is important in order to obtain a robust understanding of gender and nationalist identities’ (p. ii). Based on these writings, I find a literature gap that deals with the question of how important Fanon is in the pedagogy of Women’s Studies. This is because I find that they are critical of Fanon stand on the question of gender but with the same breath they recognize the relevance of his works. This is why I am bridging this literature gap. In this section, I am going to discuss some of the criticisms of Fanon regarding his take on gender and feminism. It is through such criticism that I shall bring forth the gender/woman sensitivity of Fanon and thus permit me to bring his work on board as an important tool of decolonization, and hence, as an important aspect of Women’s Studies in the Philippines. Dubey (1998) criticizes Fanon in this manner: In recent years, Frantz Fanon’s writings on Algerian nationalism have been subjected to a number of feminist critiques, most of them focusing on the essay “Algeria Unveiled” (included in A Dying Colonialism), which is Fanon’s most extensive treatment of women’s participation in the Algerian struggle for national independence. These critiques Fanon, like most masculine 135

TORRES

theorist of decolonising nationalism, casts “woman” as a symbolic and epistemological ground rather than as a historical subject of the Algerian nation. (p. 1) Moore (2007) also notes this criticism against Fanon in “‘Darkly as through a veil’: reading representations of Algerian women.” I myself found a wider understanding of how Fanon places women in the struggle and resistance of the colonialists, by recognizing their central role in the fight for freedom. For example, his description of women in the Algerian liberation in his book, A Dying Colonialism, clearly manifests his acknowledgement of the role of women in the revolution. Fanon (1965) states that “in the colonialist program, it was the woman who was given the historic mission of shaking up the Algerian man” (p. 39). Fanon in this statement already counts women in the history, but not as a symbolic subject. In “Algeria Unveiled,” Fanon (1965) has showed women’s participation in the society for future generations to understand and know the important role of women not only as daughters, sisters, mothers and other things, but how they fought for the liberation of their own country. Furthermore, Dubey notes that “Fanon’s most widely known work on the Algerian nationalist movement, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ has received scant attention from feminist critics, perhaps because in this book Fanon does not explicitly consider the role of women within the emergent Algerian nation.” What I see in this critique is that in Fanon’s writing, he did not use both words, “man” and “woman”. However, Bhabha (1994) argues that “Fanon’s use of the word ‘man’ usually connotes a phenomenological quality of humanness, inclusive of man and woman and, for that very reason, ignores the question of gender difference” (p. 123). Moreover, I find Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth, to be an opening to what colonialism means. It is in this book, as a woman, that I realize how colonization dehumanizes every Indigenous person. It is on this account that I fully grasp why women are oppressed beyond our imagination. It was in this book that I started going through the process of decolonisation (Torres, 2007). It came to a point where I hated myself, blaming my own ancestors for why we experienced poverty. Fanon helps us to understand what is happening now in our society. Bhabha (1994) further explains that: …the native, the colonized, deeply woven into the psychic pattern of the West, he [Fanon] offers the master and slave a deeper reflection of their interpositions, as well as the hope of a difficult, even dangerous, freedom: It is through the effort to recapture the self and to scrutinize the self…nobody writes with more honesty and insight of this lasting tension of freedom in which the self-the peremptory self of the present-disavows an image of itself as an originary past or an ideal future and confronts the paradox of its own making. (pp. 121–122) Fanon elucidates the clear nature of colonization. And as a colonized woman, I really need to understand this, because I can imagine how hard it is to move beyond where I am if I am not able to visualize and understand my history. Fanon provides that opportunity for me to return to the history of my ancestors, and in this, he not 136

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

only teaches me how colonization dehumanized and criminalized the Indigenous, but he also teaches me how to reclaim my lost past. As Dei (2006) states, “you cannot talk about the present without looking at the connections with the past and the future” (p. 39). This fundamentally draws me to realization of the fact that we have to reawaken our past since the past will always teach the future. Dubey states another criticism: Fanon does not draw out the implications of his decisively gendered mapping of colonized Algeria, a gap all the more conspicuous because many of the images through which Fanon depicts the colonizer/native polarity-such as the world cut in two, or the native condemned to immobility and excluded for the dynamic sphere of history-are so resonant for feminist analyses of the condition of Algerian and other North African women…Fanon’s failure to make these kinds of connections is clearly an error of omission. (p. 2) It is common knowledge that Fanon would not have wanted to draw a clear divide between a man and a woman because he knew that it will dissect the whole society, and thus a conducive environment for the perpetuation of colonization. He considered them equal in an endeavour for them to realize what they had lost and how to bring back their pride. In using the term “man,” which to him was a human being, he uses it as an umbrella term that connotes the unity of both sexes. He avoids the path that the colonizers used to divide us and instead he ships in this term as a sign of togetherness in the war of reclaiming our lost freedom. He realizes that if he starts on a bad note in his first book “The Wretched of the Earth” then he will not have realized his very goal of uniting the colonized as they soldier on in reclaiming their subjugated freedom. History informs us that gender division is a colonial masterpiece of polarizing the Indigenous. According to Oyewumi (1997) argument that “the colonial process was sex-differentiated in so far as the colonizers were male and used gender identity to determine policy” (p. 122). In his book, A Dying Colonialism, he clearly describes the role of women and their presence in the society. Before we criticize the work of such a writer we have to be open-minded and explore and examine more deeply his written works, to be able to understand how he presents his ideas. We cannot judge Fanon by just looking at one of his books and closing our minds and arriving at a generalization that could be Eurocentric measurements of the norm. The division that has been created between a man and a woman is a tool of the colonizer that has been used to impede the realization of marginalization by the colonized. History tells that the two sexes lived harmoniously in an egalitarian society before the invasion of the colonizer. Agoncillo (1960) argues that “customary laws gave women the right to be the equal of men, for they could own and inherit property, engage in trade and industry, and succeed to the chieftainship of a barangay…(p. 37). I argue that Fanon would not have liked to perpetuate the legacy of the colonizer, which is to divide and rule the Indigenous people, but wants to unify them under the front of “man” for the common cause of freeing them from the bondage of the colonizer. To him, unity is an imperative issue in order to be successful in realizing the objective.

137

TORRES

Finally, according to Fuss (1994, as cited in Vasavithasan, 2004, p. 52), “Fanon’s work is heterosexist, homophobic and sexist (sometimes even misogynistic), and therefore anti-woman and counter-feminist.” Reading Fanon’s work in this manner is to some degree very narrow and Eurocentric (Vasavithasan, 2004). It is a total denegration of a scholarly piece of work which can be self-serving for the critic. In addition, Fanon does not think in a very limited way, as Sharpley-Whiting (1998) quotes Fanon saying that: [we] must guard against the danger of perpetuating the feudal tradition which holds sacred the superiority of the masculine element over the feminine. Women will have exactly the same place as men, not in the clauses of the constitution but in the life of every day: in the factory, at the school, and in the parliament. (n.p.) This statement of Fanon shows that he believes that man and woman should have an equal place in everyday life. Thus, I totally disagree with the above criticism. These are some of the criticisms against Fanon. What I learn from Fanon is that he teaches us to be holistic in focusing issues, but not to be narrow minded when analysing the same. This is important to understand because no matter how we fight for liberation, it would be dangerous if we do not know who we are and what is intrinsically happening in us. This is the sense in which the work of colonization will continue to manifest itself in our lives. This, from Fanon’s perspective, is seen when the colonized native does not know who the oppressor is, and attacks his own people thinking that they are the real oppressor. With the same breath, Fanon claims that the colonizer has embedded in us a Western culture, such that we have forgotten where we come from based on our lost culture. He claims that we are a lost race that needs redemption from the bondages of colonization. In addition, we need to examine how we were colonized and the impact of colonization in our lives, to know how to transform our humanity. This is where Fanon is significant in Women’s Studies in the Philippines, because he explains to us what colonization is, and how colonization affected us physically, psychologically and spiritually. If we wake up and start bringing division among ourselves we will end up watering the tree of colonization, instead of withering it. AFRICAN FEMINIST THOUGHT AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The question that needs to be addressed is how can Filipino women voices be heard in a country like Philippines where they are in the peripheries? How will they make sense of their experiences of oppression in their own developing country and how do they assert themselves in the power-center, based on those experiences? How do they move from the margin to the center-a center that they can theorize from, and their voices be heard? These questions has pushed me to search for a theory that they can relate to or that can speak about their marginalized lives, hence, my employment of African feminist thought. Wane (2002a) argues that “African feminism is a tool that has assisted African women to critically examine themselves as subjects of oppression and as victims 138

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

of gendered labour subordination” (p. 46). In addition, she asserts that, “… African feminist thought confronts Western hierarchy and hegemony” (Wane, 2002a, pp. 46–47). Based on this, I have at hand a framework that can explore and analyze my country as a product of colonialism. It’s in this that Fanon says that for us to understand the root causes of oppression, we have to go back to our history. This will enable us to answer the questions on the meaning of colonialism and its effect to the Filipino woman as well as the rest of Filipino populace. Although we are not of African ancestry, we can relate to African people’s colonial experience. Mikell (1997) explains on where African feminism started and it’s through this route that Filipino women can trek in order to emancipate themselves: African feminism owes its origins to different dynamics than those that generated Western Feminism. It has largely been shaped by African women’s resistance to Western hegemony and its legacy within African culture. Clearly, it does not grow out of bourgeois individualism and the patriarchal control over women within capitalist industrializing societies (Engel, 1972) where prosperity and education followed by cycles of crisis/decline (economic as well as political) have pushed women into more active economic roles, as history suggests may have been happened in the West. (p. 4) The origin of African feminism clearly shows that it emerged out of the work of colonialism that oppressed women because of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and so forth. African feminism came as a defining factor and as a way of survival under the whims of colonialism. A Filipino woman underwent a similar grueling experience of oppression under the subsequent colonial master. For example, Liao (1985) explains “the Spaniards, from the Catholic friars to the encomenderos, took the Filipino women into their fold, a patronage that produced the meek, subservient, sentimental little women of the late nineteenth century” (p. 26). This in itself explains that African and Filipino women do share a common historical experience on oppression on the basis of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, among other forms of subjugation. Further, Terborg-Penn (1989) points out on why we can use African feminism; Using African feminism as a theoretical method for analyzing contemporary as well as past events that focus upon women of … Cross-cultural studies about slavery, colonialism, gender exploitation and women’s resistance against these forces are just a few themes for which African feminist analysis can apply. (p. 61) Similarly, Wane (2002) also articulates how African framework is very useful in interrogating issues that have been a poison to the lives of colonized peoples: This framework emphasizes the saliency of colonialism and imperialism and the continued marginalization of African women. It is a way of rupturing the power embedded in the bodies that produce and validate knowledge. This framework challenges the institutional powers and imperial structures… (p. 50)

139

TORRES

As a Filipino woman, I therefore can use African feminism as an anti-colonial discursive framework because I am fully aware that Filipino women are marginalized, oppressed and exploited by the colonizer and its on-going struggle that they have to face. In addition, Dei (2002) points out that the African feminist thought as an “anticolonial discursive framework is a counter and an oppositional discourse: it is a denial and repudiation of the repressive presence of colonial oppression” (p. 6). There are women in Philippine and African histories who have proved themselves capable of fighting against colonialism. For example, in Africa we have Wangu Wa Makeri from Kenya and in the Philippines we have Gabriela Silang. Through African Feminist Thought, these women’s efforts have been recognized. Thus, African Feminist Thought has come out strongly to inform us where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. It has also helped me to realize the pedagogical implication of Fanon in the Women Studies in the Philippines. OVERVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES IN THE PHILIPPINES

In this section, I give an overview of Women’s Studies in the Philippines, in order to understand why I am proposing to include Fanon’s work on colonization and decolonization. According to Guerrero, Patron and Leyesa (1996), “women’s studies courses and programs were introduced and instated in Philippine colleges and universities in the 1970s” (p. 3). Further, they go on to explain that Women’s Studies programs of the Philippines were created and “significantly influenced by historical and political factors and global developments” (De Dois, 1991, p. 6–7, cited in Guerrero, Patron & Leyesa, 1996): 1. The concrete struggles of the women’s movement in the anti-dictatorship struggle of the 1970s and 1980s gave Women’s Studies its nationalist and democratic character. 2. The poverty situation provided the context for the substance of Women’s studies. Innovative approaches were evolved to reach the poor women, such as popular education, use of the natural language and non-sexist words. 3. The international movement for women’s liberation and the emergence of Women’s Studies in North America in the 1970s inspired local feminists to introduce women’s courses. 4. The United Nations declaration of 1975–1985 as the Decade for Women generated much research and information on Women in Development (WID), and provided “entry and initial involvement for feminizing researchers and academicians.” However, despite these efforts, Women’s Studies programs received criticism. Guerrero, Patron, and Leyesa explain this criticism and the action that has been taken: There are debates…among women academics and practitioners on the utility of a feminist perspective. Too often, feminism has been condemned, belittled, misrepresented and trivialized as too Western, anti-male, middle class, etc.

140

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

This has prompted feminists to issue primers that seek to clarify the concept and the practice and adopt a working definition. (p. 7) Women’s groups adopted the definition of Khamla Bhasin and Nigat Khan to define feminism in the Philippines. This definition states that “feminism is an awareness of women’s oppression and exploitation in society, at work and within the family, and conscious action by women and men to change this situation.” (Guerrero, Patron & Leyesa 1996, p. 6) Moreover, a study that was done by the Women’s Studies Association of the Philippines (WSAP) in 1992 “showed preponderance of Women’s Studies courses in the regional universities with Women in Development (WID) themes and orientation” (Guerrero, Patron & Leyesa, 1996, p. 7). WID’s main goal is to include women in the development. Its aim is to promote women’s participation in the economic, political and social spheres by making women more productive, through education and skills training, income generation and employment opportunities. Further, Women’s Studies in the Philippines have focused their courses generally on women – their status, roles, and actual and potential contributions. Thus, it is in these areas that I will focus my argument for why there is a need to include Fanon’s work in the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines. COLONIZATION IN THE PHILIPPINES: ITS IMPACT ON FILIPINO WOMEN

Gilly (Fanon, 1965) explains that Fanon doesn’t dwell on the torture, the pain, and the sufferings of the Algerian people, rather, he emphasizes their “life and inner strength” (p. 11). This is true because in Fanon’s book A Dying Colonialism, he did not focus on how women were dehumanized, instead he gave an historical account on their strength. Fanon (1965) states in one of his historical accounts of Algerian women’s involvement in the revolution: As a nurse, a liaison agent, a fighter, she bears witness to the depth and the density of the struggle…Side by side with us, our sisters do their part in further breaking down the enemy system and in liquidating the old mystifications once and for all. (pp. 66–67) Based on the above statement, it goes without saying that women have played a pivotal role in bringing to an end the white subjugation of the Algerian rich culture. These are the same women who came out and acted as engineers at the start of the rebellion, and we continue to see them invigorating the men to continue in the struggle for freedom. Without the support of the women this struggle for selfidentity would have been a futile activity. Women are seen clearly giving support, especially to the freedom fighters by taking food to them in the mountain, and even to the extent of being raped by the colonialists. This does not stop their hunger for freedom, but acts as a catalyst for them to go on with their resolve. In the mountains women are seen always giving their men support. According to Fanon (1965), “in the mountains, women helped with the guerrilla during halts or when convalescing after a wound or a case of typhoid contracted in the djebel” (p. 48). The Algerian women have seen their daughters being raped as well as their sons 141

TORRES

and husbands being killed in this war. For Fanon (1965) colonizers were ferocious in their attachment to the Algerian territory (p. 48). Why do we need to understand the nature of colonization in the Philippines? Fanon (1963) states that the nature of colonialism is such that it “is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content…by a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it” (p. 238). Fanon (1963) further explains what will happen to us if we allow this effect of colonization to stay with us: “there will be serious psycho-affective injuries and the results will be individuals without an anchor, without a horizon, colorless, stateless, rootless – a race of angels” (p. 241). Further, Linda Smith (1999) explains how colonization has a tremendous impact on gender relations: Colonization is recognized as having had a destructive effect on indigenous gender relations which reached out across all spheres of indigenous society. Family organization, child rearing, political and spiritual life, work and social activities were all disordered by a colonial system which positioned its own women as the property of men with roles which were primarily domestic… indigenous women hold an analysis of colonialism as a central tenet of an indigenous feminism…colonialism has influenced indigenous men and had a detrimental affect on indigenous gender relations. (pp. 151–152) Smith succinctly justifies why there is an urgent need to study colonization, and in this regard I believe through Fanon’s explanation of colonization we can fully comprehend its impact on the lives of women. In this section, I include the history of the Philippines during colonization, and how it impacted Filipino men and women and how these women fought back against the colonizer. This will show that Filipino and Algerian women’s experiences have commonality with regard to the impact of colonization in their lives and also their involvement in the revolution. Filipino communities had begun to separate from each other by the midsixteenth century. Spanish colonial policy hastened this disintegration and imposed a Europeanized class structure on the emerging class formation (Gagelonia, 1974, p. 38). Males became the intermediaries of Spanish rule in this new system. Hence, it reinforced the local practices in political affairs, which meant that only males had the right to govern. Women had no professional position in public office during the Spanish colonial period. They were not part of the decision making process in the political affairs of the Philippines. They were not given any seat as part of the political administration. In addition, they were not allowed to run for political office or to vote during this time. For the first 100 years, Spain ruled by means of the encomienda, an administrative unit established for the purpose of exacting tributes and taxes from the Filipinos (Gagelonia, 1974, p. 38). Both men and women were required to perform public works. In this capacity, although women were not included in the administration, they were forced to work and meet the quotas of working time. In this way, the government had reason to tax them. Women’s production was 142

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

unrecognized, no matter the value of the labour they rendered. Women rendered free labour services in priests’ residences. This was not an anomaly, as women never received remuneration for the work that they did. Thus, with tribute and draft labour, Spanish colonization gave more importance to men in all aspects of life. Colonization also changed the value placed on land itself and on men’s work on that land, and totally and completely disregarded the existence of women (Eviota, 1992, p. 44). What emerged was that even though both women and men could inherit land and both work on it, land became more closely tied to men because men initiated the labour process, giving them effective control of the land (Eviota, 1992, p. 44). This connection reinforced men as more in control of the economic and political spheres than women. Women became second-class citizens in the Philippines. Consequently, colonialism put women’s lives in extreme misery. According to Liao (1985): While the Filipina of “old” used to exercise leadership and perform important social roles, the “new” Filipina under pain came to be regarded as “her father’s obedient daughter, the Church’s meek servant and a chaste virgin who yielded only to her husband. She was also the target of much abuse, especially from the corrupt friars who used her as church cleaner, maintainer of the household and occasionally, as outlet for his lust. Her main function was restricted to child-bearing and if she had the added misfortune of being born to the poor class, she could be traded off as payment for her family’s debts to the usurious landlord. (p. 26) In addition, Eviota (1992) has given eloquent testimony on how women’s lives changed when the Spanish colonizer came to the Philippines: Religion was to have different consequences for women and men…Women figured prominently in the work and lives of the Spanish friars, too. Because they competed with the clergy’s role as religious intermediaries, babaylanes or priestesses were quickly discredited and were called witches (bruhas)…As colonial exactions increased, women, in towns and cities especially, found it more and more difficult to survive from their productive work … Some became prostitutes, mistresses and vagrants…Undesirable women were either housed in convents or public jails or deported to the frontier region of Palawan where half of the population was made up of soldiers, sailors and convicts…Nonetheless, some friars were known to have sexually abused Filipino women…(pp. 39–40) This is a brief history of colonization in the Philippines. All these works of colonizers have had a tremendous impact on the lives of Filipino peoples. They have affected the Filipino people in terms of physical, material, spiritual, and psychological well-being. According to Fanon (1965): Colonialism obviously throws all the elements of native society into confusion. The dominant group arrives with its values and imposes them with such violence…Under these conditions, colonial dominations distorts the very relations that the colonized maintains with his own culture. (p. 130) 143

TORRES

However, “there were other women, revolutionary heroines who transcended their times in so exemplary a manner no historian could afford to ignore” (Maranan, 1984, 26). Maranan notes the different women who were involved in the revolution: Gabriela Silang carried on the leadership of a rebellion in Ilocos after her husband’s death, and was executed by the Spanish authorities…Trinidad Tecson wielded her bolo courageously against the Spaniards and procured arms for the revolution, inevitably, she bore the weird-sounding sobriquet “babaing lalaki” (the female name) …Gregoria de Jesus, wife of Andres Bonifacio, was a full-fledged member of the revolutionary organization called Katipunan and worked actively in the anti-Spanish underground. Agueda Kahabagan, freedom fighter of Batangas, was a soldier who rose to the rank of a general. There are other women, less known perhaps, but whose vision and valor as women cannot long remain obscured despite history’s unkindness to them. (p. 26) Carbo explains further (2000) that there were other “…women who provided healing, wisdom, and direction for the inhabitants of their barangay (towns) with morality stories, myths, poems, prayers, and chants” (vii). Further, Indigenous Filipino women rose and fought back against the colonizer. For example, Kalaw (1980) narrates how Melchora Aquino unwaveringly supported the revolution: After the meeting of the Katipuneros in Kangkong, Bonifacio and his companions left for Pasong-Tamo in order to escape the vigilance and persecution of the Government officials. In Pasong-Tamo they found full protection in the kindness and patriotism of an old Filipino woman known in the history of the Katipunan as “Matandang Sora.” The old woman hid the leader and his companions in her home, and gave them food and every necessity until they could adequately prepare themselves and organize their forces to engage in the first bloody combats during the last days…The old woman was captured by the Guardia Civil… she was kept as a prisoner…On the third day of her imprisonment, she was deported…For three years and two months, she suffered exile to that island. (p. 25) Fanon (1965) expresses his recognition and belief in the capacity of women to overthrow colonization: “the women could not be conceived of as a replacement product, but as an element capable of adequately meeting the new tasks” (p. 48). Fanon asks an important question, about how we can bring change. Through the inclusion of Fanon’s notion of colonization, it will make us realize that it is important to include the history of colonization in the curriculum of Women Studies in order to fully grasp the root cause of the oppression of women. This could also help us to imagine and create tools that will truly liberate women. However, the history of colonization did not come out clearly during my degree undertaking. Thus, I finished my M.A. Women and Development Studies without clearly understanding why women were oppressed and seeking liberation. 144

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

DECOLONIZING EDUCATION

Given that my focus is on education in the Philippines, in this section I discuss decolonizing education in three different sections: a) decolonization as a violent encounter, b) decolonization as a meeting of two oppositional forces and c) the extent to which decolonization ends in true transformation. I explore these three areas of decolonization to show the relevance of Fanon and his relation to Women’s Studies in the Philippines. Decolonization means to question “one’s education and the acquisition of knowledge, what is learned in schools, who writes history, whose story is legitimized, and how power plays its role in the production of knowledge” (Wane, 2009, p. 171). Using this definition, it is imperative to examine the different parts of decolonization as stated by Fanon. DECOLONIZATION AS A VIOLENT ENCOUNTER

As we all know, colonization has been a violent encounter. History proves this, as Loomba (2000) states that “colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods… it locked the original inhabitants and the newcomers into the most complex and traumatic relationships in human history” (p. 2). This definition shows that the encounter between the colonizer and the Indigenous is not appealing. It is actually a horrible encounter, because when domination and control are involved, violence is also part of it. This is the reason why Fanon talks about decolonization as a violent encounter. Fanon (1963) explains what he means when he describes decolonization as a violent encounter: National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon…The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For it the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists… can only triumph if we use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence…The native who decides to put the programme into practice, and to become its moving force, ready for violence at all times. (pp. 27–29) Since colonization has been brought into the Indigenous life in a violent manner, the only way to counter this act is through violent decolonizing encounter. For example, the Philippines is one of the most colonized countries in the world. For 350 years, the Spanish established their dominion in almost every part of the country. The conversion of the Filipinos to Christianity was a major objective of colonial policy. The evils of the Spanish colonial regime were carried over to the U.S. colonial regime. The way that they shaped the Philippines was a continuation of the work of the Spanish colonizer. Colonizers introduced colonial education not to make the Indigenous peoples intelligent but to make them learn the Eurocentric ways of knowing. Tauli-Corpuz (2006) states how colonial education trained Indigenous Filipino peoples to forget their real identity and see themselves as different: Colonial and postcolonial government use schools to teach us to despise ourselves and our cosmologies, traditions, customary laws, and lifeways. 145

TORRES

They trained indigenous peoples, including my parents and myself, to look at the world through the eyes of the colonizer. Today the promoters of economic globalization, the neocolonizers, use the overwhelming pressure of homogenization to teach us that indigenous political, economic, cultural, and knowledge systems are obstacles to their “progress”. This kind of practice has been carried forward to all our different levels of education from elementary to the university. How can we start the journey of decolonization? For Fanon (1963), “in decolonization, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation” (p. 28). In doing this, it brings back a bad memory to Filipino colonized women. For example, these bad memories are the killing of our ancestors, raping of our grandmothers, taking away of our land, and taking away the voices of the oppressed so that they couldn’t speak of their oppression. According to Tauli-Corpuz (2006), the colonizers used swords and guns to quell our ancestors. Nevertheless, we need to know how we were colonized. An education is the place where we can ask questions and subvert the hegemonic teachings and start acknowledging other ways of knowing and learning. DECOLONIZATION AS THE MEETING OF TWO OPPOSITIONAL FORCES

The Indigenous people realized that they have option and hence, this runs contrary to the wishes of the colonizer. An encounter between the colonized and colonizer is ensues, since each of these groups is driven by an endeavor of realizing a goal. These aims grind against each other and thus this turns to a recipe for a hostile relationship. Fanon (1963) notes: Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature…this world divided into compartments, this world cut in two is inhabited by two different species. The originality of the colonial context is that economic reality, inequality and the immense difference of ways of life never come to mask the human realities, The colonial world is a Manichaean world…At times this Manichaeism goes to its logical conclusion and dehumanizes the native, or to speak plainly it turns him into an animal. (pp. 27–32) On one hand, Fanon describes well how the colonizer treats the Indigenous. It is clear how the colonialists are on a higher pedestal than the natives. In essence, this means that for the colonizer to realize his dreams, the native has to be brought to the colonizer’s knees. This claim is supported by Memmi (1965): To different degrees every colonizer is privileged, at least comparatively so, ultimately to the detriment of the colonized…The colony follows the cadence of his traditional holidays, even religious holidays, and not those of the inhabitants. The colonizer partakes of an elevated world from which he automatically reaps the privileges. (p. 11) This is seen in the way the colonizer takes away the fundamental rights of the Indigenous people, done through denying their ownership of their God-given 146

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

resources such as land. The colonizers utilize this land for their own advantage. Every output is shipped to their metropole country. They use the Indigenous human power to till the land and they do not give them commensurate payment, hence impoverishing them even more. They take in the wives of the Indigenous men as nannies, and they not only underpay them but also use them as sexual objects, to the extent of raping them. This trickles down as not only physical torture on this people, but also psychological. However, a wind of change blows and the Indigenous people rise up from their slumber to realize that their land, liberty, rights and their beloved ones have been taken away. This leads to an uprising of Indigenous in order to restore their pride. We find that in most cases they meet a ruthless arm of the colonizer, and a fight ensues between the two antagonistic forces. A solution has to be established, and such a process will mean the death of many. This is because the journey for decolonization has started, and violence will have to be a visitor to this process. On the other hand, Fanon notes how the Indigenous take revenge: …the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him. In the colonial the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man’s values. In the period of decolonization, the colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them and vomit them up. Thus the native discovers that his life, his breath, his beating heart are the same as those of the settler…Not only does his presence no longer trouble me, but I am already preparing such efficient ambushes for him that soon there will be no way out but that flight. (pp. 33–35) After the way the colonized has been brought down by the colonizer through the crushing of their roots, the Indigenous rise up in order to recover the precious gift that had been stolen from them. They have to uncover the mystery of this colonizer and it is through this demystification that the Indigenous realize that they have the same capability as the colonizer. This is seen when, for example, they leave and go to the world wars where they find that even the colonizer whom they thought was like a god and could not die was being brought down by a bullet. When they go back to their colony, the world war soldiers show their Indigenous people that even they can rise to take back what had been taken away from them. It has to start from a point, which has to be the denial and dumping of all the culture of the colonizer. Memmi (1965) describes how the colonized respond to the colonizer: In all of the colonized there is a fundamental need for change…Those who understand their fate become impatient and no longer tolerate colonization… he will one day begin to overthrow his unlivable existence with the whole force of his oppressed personality…The crushing of the colonized is included among the colonizer’s values…In order to free himself, at least so he believes, he agrees to destroy himself. (pp. 119–122) In decolonization, we need to understand fully where these forces are coming from, their politics and what they want to achieve. These are important to distinguish so 147

TORRES

that we know how to get what we want. In connection with the decolonizing of education, it is relevant to grasp these two forces so that we can critically decide whether the curriculum we are giving to the students is perpetuating the work of colonizer or working towards transformation. As Wane (2009) mentions, “there is a need to pay attention to the history of the people, how that history got interrupted through the spread of Western European modes of thought, and how these Western ideas had an impact on the schooling experiences of students and the community in general” (p. 171). Finally, in Elia (1996, qtd Fanon Dt 367/WE 309310), Fanon writes that the colonized: Ought equally to pay attention to the liquidation of all untruths implanted in his being by oppression. Under a colonial regime such as existed in Algeria, the ideas put forward by colonialism not only influenced the European minority, but also Algerians. Total liberation is that which concerns all sectors of the personality…Independence is not a word which can be used as an exorcism, but an indispensable condition for the existence of men and women who are truly liberated, in other words who are truly masters of all the material means which make possible the radical transformation of society. (p. 165) In this statement from Fanon, for women to be emancipated there is a need to pay attention to history, to question the status quo and to create a new society. And to make sure that the creation of new humanity is guided by Indigenous ways and knowing. DECOLONIZATION ENDS IN TRUE TRANSFORMATION

Philippine being a product of colonization, it has to engage itself in dismantling the colonial order through decolonization in order to find its true transformation. There is a reason why Fanon has explained decolonization in three ways, and we can see their significance to education in the Philippines. Loomba (2000) states that “colonialism reshaped existing structures of human knowledge. No branch of learning was left untouched by the colonial experience” (p. 57). There is a need therefore to consider Fanon’s explanations of decolonization as a violent phenomenon because of how colonization ravages the soul, mind and body of the Indigenous. Through this violence, Fanon calls the Indigenous to rise up and start questioning the power that has been, imposed by the colonizer. As the Indigenous do this, there is only one thing that they want to achieve, that is transformation. According to Fanon (1963): Decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms spectators crushed with their inessentiality into privileged actors, with the grandiose glare of history’s floodlights upon them…Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. (p. 28) Fanon (1963) goes on to explain that “it frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction, it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect” (p. 94). Decolonization is one of the ways of knowing the impact of 148

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

colonization in our lives. It dismantles the notion of colonial mentality, and we begin to appreciate our Indigenous ways of knowing our environment. It helps us to understand the different tools that the colonizers continue to use in order to colonize us. Through decolonization, we become consciously aware of all these tools and how they are used in order to prosper the work of colonialism. Wane (2009) explains the decolonization project as: …being aware of how we live our lives and how our thoughts, beliefs, and interaction with others are shaped by systems that create universal norms, by erasing, deligitimizing, or marginalizing other knowledge and forms of knowing. This awareness is the first step to transform educational system in ways that create an education that speaks to all. (p. 172) It makes us realize who we really are and hence makes us more critical. It is imperative to include decolonization in the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines because it will teach the student to critically think whether they can associate themselves with the curriculum of Women’s Studies and ask critical question on its authenticity . Through these we finally create a new humanity ready reclaim her/his indigeneity. In the decolonization process, a “society of individuals,” according to Fanon (1963, p. 36), is the first thing to disappear because the “native who has the opportunity to return to the people during the struggle for freedom will discover the falseness of this theory” (p. 36). The theory of individualism was established by the colonialist bourgeoisie which means “each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity, and whose only wealth is individual thought” (p. 36). It is imperative to dismantle this individualism because it does not originate from Indigenous people. What we have learned from our ancestors is to be unified so that we can counter the work of colonialism. In line with the Women’s Studies program, my focus has been to establish a system that will be all encompassing with respect to the different forms of oppression based on gender, class, ethnicity, race, sexuality, religion, among other things. Wane (2009) suggests how we can do this: …to decolonize education and honor Indigenous knowledge, it is important to find ways to uncover Indigenous knowledge and its role in the ways of knowing, teaching, learning and researching…Therefore, for any meaningful analysis of educational reforms to take place, it is necessary for educators to rethink and re-imagine how indigeneity may be our starting point in addressing challenges we face today… (p. 172) In addition to the suggestion of Wane, we have to be vigilant about the work of the colonizer because according to wa Thiong’o (1986), the work of colonization continuously has an impact on the Indigenous even today, it controls the politics, the economy the culture and education of the colonized. Wane (2009) suggests also that “a decolonizing pedagogy would also entail a critical analysis of the history textbooks that are provided and a transformation of knowledge by theorizing and politicizing the experiences presented in the text as well as the subsequent learning 149

TORRES

experiences of the students as they engage with these texts” (p. 172). This strategy not only teaches the students to engage critically with the materials that they use in school, but they also learn how to speak from their heart. As Yazzie (2000) states. “we must exercise internal sovereignty, which is nothing more than taking control of our personal lives, our families, our clans, and our communities” (p. 470). Hence, I propose that Women’s Studies should be based on liberating colonized women not just economically but politically, spiritually, culturally and psychologically. This liberation should come from the colonized men and women. The Indigenous masses should be included in the decision making process. Decolonization is an all inclusive activity. TEACHING TOOLS AND STRATEGIES FOR DECOLONIZING EDUCATION

Knowing the history of the Philippines and how colonization dismantled and dehumanized us is not enough. We have two options that Fanon (1963) has mentioned – either to fulfill or to betray our mission of bringing change into our society (p. 166). This is a challenge that Fanon wants us to think about and take seriously. We all know that colonization has silenced us for a long, long period of time. What do we need to do to emancipate ourselves? Fanon writes: …let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions, and societies which are themselves inspired by Europe…Humanity is waiting for something from us other than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscure caricature…But if we want to bring humanity to advance a step further, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries. (Fanon, as quoted by Elia, 1996, p. 168) To connect this statement to the creation of Women’s Studies programs, it is time for us to create our own, and at the same time to use our own devices and not follow or employ the same instruments that colonizers used to invade our communities. As Fanon reiterates, we do not need to follow in the footsteps of the colonizer. Also, Hansen (1997) explains: For Fanon it was not enough to analyse a social situation and expose its undesirable nature. One must also include a programme of action to change the undesirable situation, and actually embark on activities which lead to change. In short he was a man who lived his ideas. (p. 25) This statement shows that Fanon is not only interested in ideas but also interested in achieving change. I argue that Women’s Studies should develop their own curriculum, not by imitating the West, but learning from our ancestors. In addition, it is time to define Filipino Feminism that is rooted from the history of Filipino Indigenous struggle, agency, resistance, spirituality, resiliency and collectivism. In this section, I discuss the following strategies of decolonizing education. These strategies are originated from the Indigenous ways of knowing. I argue that these teaching strategies can be incorporated to the curriculum of Women’s Studies 150

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

in the Philippines because I believe these are one of the ways to interrogate the Eurocentric knowledge as the universal knowledge. We can ask our students to apply these strategies in their teachings, researching, and writing. They can use these strategies as a method or a theory. INDIGENOUS FEMINISM AND ACTIVISM

Feminism and activism existed in our communities before colonization. I therefore suggest that we need to go back to our history and learn from it. This is because our roots clearly show that Filipino Indigenous women have had a record of their work as feminists and activists. Smith (1999) states that: Indigenous women across many different indigenous societies claim an entirely different relationship, one embedded in beliefs about the land and the universe, about the spiritual significance of women and about the collective endeavours that were required in the organization of society. Indigenous women would argue that their traditional roles included full participation in many aspects of political decision making and marled gender separations which were complementary in order to maintain harmony and stability. (pp. 151–152) Indigenous feminism and activism have different history, belief, and ideology that is rooted in our ancestors and not fragmented by colonization. It is important to learn from our ancestors because they articulate hope and possess the knowledge that is free of deception, domination and cruelty. This knowledge was a form of agency against the colonizer, and existed long before the colonizer invaded Philippines. Indigenous Filipino women rose and fought back against the colonizer. Fanon (1965) states that: Revolutionary war… is a total war in which the woman does not merely knit for or mourn the soldier… is at the heart of the combat. Arrested, tortured, raped, shot down, she testifies to the violence of the occupier and to his inhumanity. (p. 66) From the above statement it is clear that Fanon has showed the important work that women have played in revolutionary war, and how imperative it is to recognize their contribution towards resisting colonialism and how centralize their place in this combat. DOCUMENTING AND EMBRACING OUR OWN CULTURE

This strategy is difficult, especially since colonizers distorted the history of our ancestors. However, it is not impossible to go back and document our own culture. We owe our ancestors this responsibility. This responsibility should no be taken for granted because when we do so, then we allow the Western researchers to do our job and the danger of doing this “appalls us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of or ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and 151

TORRES

produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas and seek to deny them further opportunities to be creators of their own culture and own nations” (Smith, 1999, 1). Why do we need to embrace our own culture? What are the different benefits that an Indigenous knowledge can offer us? First of all we need to understand that “as a result of colonial, patriarchal, corporate, exploitative, and often ecologically destructive development models, indigenous knowledge has been underestimated and undervalued” (Dei, Hall & Goldin Rosenberg, 2002, p. 8). These writers continue to explain that “knowledge production has been socially constructed so as to become a near monopoly from which ordinary people are excluded” (Dei, Hall & Goldin Rosenberg, 2002, pp. 8–9). These are the dangers that we have been facing in terms of knowledge production, it is therefore time to interrogate this by breaking through any invisibility, marginalization, domination and so forth. This is the time to assert and affirm that Indigenous knowledge needs to be recognized and valued in the academy and in the whole society (Torres, 2007). We need to expose the ‘taken-for-granted notion’ with regards to Indigenous knowledge. “Indigenous knowledge recognizes the multiple and collective origin of knowledge as well as its collaborative dimensions” (Dei, Hall & Goldin Rosenberg, 2002, p. 7). Who has the right to create or produce knowledge? Wane (2002) explains that “knowledge production is not merely an exercise for the academy but is also for lay people, since knowledge is acquired through our everyday experiences” (p. 54). Moreover, according to Elabor-Idemudia (2002) argues that “the sense of cultural identity and belonging that African peoples thereby acquire has always been central to their survival throughout hardships such as those imposed by slavery, colonialism, and the imperialism exemplified by present-day development programs” (p. 102). This proves that embracing our culture is clearly essential to our existence in this neo-colonialist society. LEARNING TO WALK THE TWO WORLDS

Why do we need to learn to walk the two worlds? What is the connection to the journey to decolonization? How can we do it without reproducing the stereotypes? If we walk the two worlds, is it possible to create an ideology that actually represents the true images of our own culture? Walking the two worlds entails understanding the culture that do exist between diversities and appreciating own culture by not dismissing other cultures. For example, in my research I’m looking at the knowledge of Indigenous women from the Philippines in order to bring forth this excluded ways (Torres, 2008) of knowing into the academy and the society. It is very important to walk the two worlds and be fully aware of what we are doing, to pay attention to our cultural specificity and create awareness in the academy about the culture of our ancestors. In so doing, we need to evoke an alternative paradigm to dismantle the Eurocentric knowledge. Moreover, while walking the two worlds, we have to create a space where we can actually discuss our indigeneity. The importance of being Indigenous in the ways of thinking and acknowledge that knowledge is composed of multiple frameworks. Some (1994) explains that “[with] distances between countries narrowing, we have much wisdom to gain by learning 152

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

to understand other people’s cultures and permitting ourselves to accept that there is more than one version of “reality” (pp. 7–8). For me this journey allows me to be able to comparatively helps me to understand where I am and how I can dismantle this hegemonic culture from the West and bring on board our repressed cultures. It is within this scope that I can share and educate other ways of knowing that can be used to transform our society. CONCLUSION

We have to go back to our roots and it is at this point that we will be able to acknowledge the right tool to use in order to bring down the whims of colonialism. I do understand that this is not an event but a process that is meant to bring on board both the colonized men and women in order to set the pace towards decolonization. However, Fanon contends that decolonization is not the end goal, but it is in the formation of a new humanity that we do realize our goal. Moreover, Fanon as an anti-colonialist teaches us to “resist oppression, assimilation and annihilation by encouraging us to use of alternative knowledges, oral histories, literatures, and cultural products as counterparts to hegemonic forms of knowledges” (Asgharzadeh, 2005, p. 65). We need to be aware of all these things because the colonialist work “through their methods of writing and teaching, as well as through production, validation, and dissemination of knowledge, compels the colonized subjects to view themselves, their cultures, their language, their ancestors, their histories and their identities negatively” (Asgharzadeh, 2005, p. 65). Nevertheless, an anti-colonialist like Fanon “encourages the colonized bodies and communities to defined themselves and to articulate their condition through their own voice” (Asgharzadeh, 2005, p. 66). Inclusion of Fanon’s work in the curriculum of Women’s Studies in the Philippines is imperative in achieving women’s emancipation, because through this we will understand the root cause of their oppression, and thus it will lead to knowing the tools that can be used to liberate them from the entanglement of colonialism. It is also through it that we shall be able to know how colonialism perpetuated our understanding of gender relations and by extension a very Eurocentric view of feminism. The war of liberation should be an all-inclusive activity. We should always remember that it’s out of our repressed indigenous roots that we can find the real self- identity, which can help us to understand where we are and where we are planning to be. If we want to win this war, we should start by understanding the tools that have been used to oppress us. REFERENCES Agoncillo, T. (1960). History of the Filipino People. Quezon City: Garotech Publishing. Azgharzadeh, A. (2005). The development and persistence of racist ideas in Iran: Politics of assimilation and the challenge of diversity. OISE/University of Toronto, Unpublished Thesis. Bhabha, H. (1994). Remembering Fanon: Self, psyche and the colonial condition. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post colonial theory: A reader. New York: Columbia University Press.

153

TORRES Carbo, N. (2000). The other half of the sky. In N. Carbo & E. Tabios (Eds.), Babaylan: An anthology of Filipina and American writers (pp. vii-xii). San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.( Dei, G., & Lordan, M. (2006). Language, linguistic discrimination and polyvocality: Bringing language in discussions of discrimination and racism. In G. Dei & N. Amin (Eds.), The poetics of anti-racism (pp. 31–42). Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Dei, G. (2002). African development: The relevance and implications of ‘Indigenousness’. In G. Dei, B. Hall, & D. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global context: Multiple readings of our world (pp. 70–86). Toronto: University Press. Dei, G., Hall, B., & Rosenberg, D. (Eds.). (2002). Indigenous knowledges in the global contexts: Multiple readings of our world. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Dubey, M. (1998). The ‘True Lie’ of the Nation: Fanon and Feminism. Difference: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 10(2), 1–29. Elabor-Idemudia, P. (2002). The retention of knowledge of folkways as a basis for resistance. In G. Dei, B. Hall, & D. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in the global contexts: Multiple readings of our world. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Elia, N. (1996). Violent women: Surging into forbidden quarters. In L. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Eviota, E. (1992). The political economy of gender: Women and the sexual division of labour in the Philippines. London: Zed Books. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin white masks. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1967). Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1965). A dying colonialism (H. Chevalier, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. Fuss, D. (1994). Interior colonies: Frantz Fanon and the politics of identification. Diacritics, 24(2/3), 19–42. Gagelonia, P. (1974). Philippine history. Rizal: Navotas Press. Guerrero, Patron, Leyesa. (1996). Women studies in the Philippines: An assessment of the Impact of WSAP in promoting the gender perspective. Philippines: Women’s Studies Association of the Philippines, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Diwata Foundadtion and the University Center for Women’s Studies University of the Philippines. Hansen, E. (1997). Frantz Fanon: Portrait of a revolutionary intellectual. Transition, 46, 25–36. hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman? Boston: South End Press. Kalaw, T. (1980). The Philippine revolution. Manila: Manila Book Company, Inc. Liao, N. (1985). Basic conditions of the Filipino women. Paper presented at the Gabriela Symposium. Community Center Broadway, Quezon City. Loomba, A. (2000). Colonialism/postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Maranan, A. F. S. (1984, March 10–11). Do women really hold up half the sky? Gabriela Assembly Proceedings. St. Scholasticas College, Quezon City. McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender and sexuality in the colonial context. New York: Routledge, Inc. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Mikell, G. (Ed.). (1997). African feminism the politics of survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Moore, L. (2007). Darkly as through a veil: Reading representations of Algerian women. Intercultural Education, 18(4), 335–351. Oyewumi, O. (1997). Visualizing the body: Western theories and African subjects. In The invention of women: The making an African sense of Western gender discourses (pp. 1–30). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sharpley-Whting, T. D. (1998). Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and feminism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC.

154

FANON’S PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS Smith, D. (1987a). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press. Some, M. (1994). Of water and the spirit. New York: Penguin Group. Tauli-Corpuz, V. (2006). Our rights remain separate and distinct. In V. Tauli-Corpuz & J. Mander (Eds.), Paradigm wars. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Terborg-Penn, R. (1989). African feminism: A theoretical approach to the history of women in the African diaspora. In R. Terborg-Penn, S. Harley, & A. B. Rushing (Eds.), Women Africa and the African Diaspora (pp. 43–63). Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Torres, R. (2008, November 14–16). Well-being as praxis of decolonization: The healing power of Filipino indigenous women. Paper presented at the 8th Annual Critical Race and Anti-colonial Studies conference. RACE-ING HEGEMONIES, RESURGING IMPERIALISM: Building AntiRacist and Anti-Colonial Theory and Practice for Our Times. Ryerson University. Torres, R. (2007). The fragmented life of a Filipino woman: Decolonizing journey. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Master Research Paper, Unpublished. Vasavithasan, R. (2004). Feminism (s). Nationaism (s), and Frantz Fanon. Unpublished Thesis, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Wane, N. (2009). Indigenous education and cultural resistance: A decolonizing project. In Curriculum Inquiry, 39(1), 159–178. Wane, N. (2002). Indigenous knowledge: Lessons from the elders-A Kenyan case study. In G. Dei, B. Hall, & D. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in the global contexts: Multiple readings of our world. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Wane, N. (2002a). Women’s technologies: Applauding the self, reclaiming indigenous space. Journal of Postcolonial Education, James Nicholas Publishers. 1(1), 45–66. Wa Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Yazzie, R. (2000). Indigenous peoples and post colonialism. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision. Vancouver: UBC Press.

155

YUMIKO KAWANO

10. FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND The “Yellow” Colonizer and the Racialized Minorities in Japan

INTRODUCTION

Japanese people were introduced to Western colonial ideology around the 19th century with the intensification of open trade relationships with Western colonizers. At this time, they came to be constructed as racially inferior and less “evolved” in relation to Europeans. Within this context, an elite group, also Indigenous to Japan, justified colonization based on prevalent ideas of the racial inferiorities of other groups in and outside of Japan, and they desired the benefits of “racial superiority.”1 The experiences and circumstances of the Ainu people are particularly close to those of other Indigenous people around the world. Frantz Fanon, an anti-colonial theorist and activist writing in the 1950s, suggests a pedagogy of humanity and respect where the lived experience of the colonized can contribute greatly to their liberation struggle and their decolonization. In the first part of this paper, I will explore the creation of the Japanese “yellow” colonizer from the context of the historical relationship between both the Japanese elites and the Western colonizers, and between those same elites and the Ainu people. Then, I will move to a discussion of the current schooling systems in Japan which have nurtured and perpetuated colonialism by sweeping the inconvenient truths of the Japanese elites under the carpet. Finally, I will explore how both the Ainu and Japanese Indigenous knowledges can play a role in decolonizing the educational systems. Historically, the Indigenous knowledges of Japan and the different ways of knowing within the racialized minority groups have been marginalized in the Japanese schooling system. There is still a question regarding the role that power, in terms of class, economic, social status, gender, race, and ability, has played in this reality, and how Fanon’s arguments of decolonization should be taken pedagogically and translated into the educational field within the Japanese context. ANTICOLONIAL DISCOURSE AND EDUCATION

While still a small area of inquiry2 there is a growing body of literature outlining the pedagogical implications of anti-colonial theory. Those who have written on educational transformation in the colonial context include Dei and Kempf, Loomba, Memmi, Tuhiwai Smith, Wa Thiong’o, and Wane.3 A colonial education system perpetuates colonialism where misrepresentation, misinterpretation, G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 157–175. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

KAWANO

decontextualization, and the fragmentation of Indigenous cultures are taken for granted. Historically, in Japan, Eurocentric ways of knowing have been reinforced by Japanese colonized intellectuals who have been subject to Western education. As Wane states it is most difficult to decolonize oneself due to the fact that most Indigenous people who have been exposed to Western education come to be the 4 ones to reproduce Western ideology. Wa Thiong’o writes about the critical roles languages play as colonial tools. He argues that language plays a significant role not only in forming one’s identity, but it also contains a history and a relationship with one’s environment. Language also helps to reinforce notions of otherness, leading to the inferiority of the colonized, and it is the means by which people experience spiritual subjugation, and the communication and carrying of culture. In other words, language helps people understand themselves in relation to their social, cultural, and natural environment.5 According to Wa Thiong’o, for the colonizer, having power over language is crucial in order to dominate “the mental universe of the colonized” and control the tools of self-definition.6 Colonialism leads to the destruction or devaluing of the Indigenous culture and to the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. But how has language played a role in the context of Western colonization in Japan, given that Western nations did not attempt to make English compulsory to the exclusion of Japanese? While many colonized countries have been forced not to use their own languages, the Japanese language has not been replaced with European languages such as English, French or Spanish. In other words, the Japanese language, especially as a carrier of culture, seems to remain without much huge damage. However, in the case of the Ainu, who did not originally speak Japanese, the government has forced them to adopt the language, and even take Japanese names. I will discuss the Ainu’s situation later in this paper. Similarly, Memmi examines the complexities and tensions of the colonizer and the colonized. More specifically, he analyzes colonizers who perpetuate the colonial system intentionally, as well as those who recognize colonialism as unjust but participate in perpetuating the colonial system. He emphasizes the importance of taking some form of action when one recognizes and refuses colonialism.7 Furthermore, his analysis also leads to the question of the role of power relationships, specifically those who refuse the colonial system, but are not willing to sacrifice their own social, political, and economical position. Regarding resistance to the colonial encounter, Dei states the importance of reclaiming Indigenous pasts and present, which influence each other in anti-colonial thought.8 Tuhiwai Smith also suggests that rewriting colonized history from their own perspective is crucial in decolonizing the academy.9 In an anti-colonial framework, Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous ways of knowing are sources of resistance and agency, which are the keys to bringing “new” humanity into an educational system. Indigenous knowledge along with the wisdom of ancestors accumulated over thousands of years emphasizes harmony and interconnectedness with each other, other creatures, nature, and the universe. This is connected to Fanon’s idea of decolonization which requires a completely different system from the European 158

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

one, as well as a new humanity. He states: “Let us decide not to imitate Europe and let us tense our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us endeavor to invent a man in full, something which Europe has been incapable of achieving.”10 As a way of claiming anti-colonial discourse, we should consider the use of language such as “post-colonialism” in order to cultivate one’s consciousness of historical responsibility and critical awareness of the process of perpetuated colonial education. Dei and Loomba point out that the term “post” negates people’s struggle with colonialism today in that “post” implies a “past” thing, which is not the case here.11 While engaged in anti-colonial discourse, an awareness of the ongoing process of colonial education is necessary in order to liberate, empower, mobilize, and educate oppressed people, and for those who are forced to not engage in dialogues of colonial process in education and historical responsibility, the term “post” can make issues appear less critical. As Loomba states, it is important to look at the big picture of colonial rule and thought.12 There are varieties of colonial situations and relationships with colonial encounters. So, examining the divergence and convergence of colonial situations and impacts at a particular place and time is very important. However, Loomba criticizes the situation in the academy where these specificities are put into an “area of study” which almost ignores the political, economic and cultural inequalities engaged by colonialism.13 Thus, in the context of Japanese colonialism, I would like to examine Japanese colonialism within the anti-colonial framework rather than looking at colonialism in a Japanese context as a regional study. ACADEMIC ELITES BECOME “YELLOW” COLONIZERS

In a recent edition of The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon is quoted in the preface by Jean-Paul Sartre as stating that Europeans, who “never stops talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.”14 Western colonizers’ actions towards the people of Japan are no exception: Japanese people have been persistently studied, labeled and racialized by Western intellectuals since Japan re-opened trade relations after two centuries of self-seclusion to wider European countries in the 19th century. In the context of these new economic relations, Western colonizers applied Darwinian theories of social determinism and evolution in their discourse on the Japanese people. In keeping with Fanon’s description of the process of legitimatizing exploitation, it was necessary to construct these Japanese people as inferior in the face of Western encounters [I] is not possible to enslave men without logically making them inferior through and through. And racism is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization. The racist in a culture with racism is therefore normal. He has achieved a perfect harmony of economic relations and ideology.15 In fact, in the mid 1800’s, Japan became exploited by unequal treaties forced upon it by Western countries, such as the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854 and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858. Western countries inferiorized Japanese 159

KAWANO

people further in order to prevent Japan from gaining economic and military power. Kowner points out many changes in Western attitudes towards the Japanese, he explains that before the opening of trade relations to the wider Western countries, racial approaches towards the Japanese were quite mild compared to, for example, the Indigenous people of Africa and North America. The Japanese were treated as “half-civilized” because of their physical characteristics.16 Unequal treaties nurtured a sense of inferiority in the Japanese, and as a form of resistance, they began to try to “improve” their race.17 Fanon describes in Black Skin, White Masks the dominant notions of inferiority and superiority as being transformed into perceptions of skin colour, racial characteristics, bodies, and culture. In a different but applicable context from that of Fanon’s description, in order to overcome the national sense of racial inferiority and achieve the same intellectual “level” as Western countries, many Japanese students were sent to Western countries including the United States to study in the late 1800s. In keeping with Fanon’s conceptualization of the interconnections between race and colonialism, the Japanese newly-educated elites came to internalize inferiority by accepting the superiority of Western groups, similar to the way in which a Black man in relation to a White man is described in Fanon’s psychological complexities: Is it because the black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world…..Whatever the field we studied, we were struck by the fact that both the black man, slave to his inferiority, and the white man, slave to his superiority, behave along neurotic lines……Black man’s behavior is similar to an obsessional neurosis ….18 In the hope of Japanese liberation from the perception of inferiorities, however, Fanon’s description of native elites whose mentality was caught by colonialism also can be seen: During the period of liberation, however, the colonialist bourgeoisie frantically seeks contact with the colonized “elite”. It is with this elite that the famous dialogue on values is established. When the colonialist bourgeoisie realizes it is impossible to maintain its domination over the colonies it decides to wage a rearguard campaign in the fields of culture, values, and technology, etc. What we should never forget it that the immense majority of colonized peoples are impervious to such issue.19 Within their racializaton, the Japanese government looked to develop European international norms “in the hope that they would be accepted as an equal member of the civilized international community.”20 This intension was named the “Revolution” or “Renewal,” and the movement involved enormous political and social structural change. Part of this project has included sending students abroad, with the slogan of “Bunmei Kaika” (Civilization and Enlightenment) outlining the motivation behind it. The students sent to study abroad, who were impressed by Western “civilized” culture, learned Western languages, adopted their clothes and food, along with the Eurocentric ways of knowing, thinking, and perceiving, and returned to lead the Meiji restoration in 1868, along with government-employed 160

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

Westerners called “Yatoi.”21 Moreover, higher positions in the political, educational, and economic sectors were reserved for those students once they returned to Japan22, these privileged individuals had been influenced by Western ideologies such as Social Darwinism, and they began to apply some of their key principles. But, how did experiences of those students abroad reinforce notions of cultural and racial inferiority? How was their ability to speak European languages racially marked? They might not only have brought what they had learned formally but also what they learned informally, which would affect educational and political policies particularly with their appointment to state positions. By imitating what they thought of as “Western civilization,” these new elites fostered the Westernization of Japanese culture. As the Japanese state developed strategies to build global economic and political competitiveness, there remained largely unquestioned practices of the top-down transmission of culture. This advocacy for Westernization did not emerge from the masses, in Fanon’s terms, it was a top-down dialogue established by the intellectual elite. During the Meiji period, universities that hired Western trained Japanese faculty became centres for the recruitment of new elites who would promote the superiority of whiteness. The universities’ academic prestige and political power increased as their graduates began to emerge as members of the upper elite.23 In addition to adopting Western ideologies, some intellectuals eventually began to advocate for the development of a “whiter body” that could more effectively challenge Western powers under the slogan of “enrich the country and strengthen the army.”24 They argued for the necessity of “improving the Japanese” by “advancing physical education such as reforming clothing styles, diet and abode, as well as debating the importance of selecting good bloodlines, which can become a kind of theory of hygiene as well.”25 Others believed that, “intermarriage with whites should be strongly encouraged as a way of strengthening the body.”26 Having internalized notions of the Japanese as being “half-civilized,” most intellectuals did not challenge the racist status quo. Rather, According to Tajima, Maruyama, for example, argues that their role was to interpret and propagate the superior, more developed Western culture.27 In fact, Tajima argues that it was not the masses but the privileged groups who understood Westernization as aiding them in their quest to retain power.28 Within the elite, there was resistance to Westernization out of respect for the Japanese traditional culture. However, this resistance did not end in recognizing and including aspects of Indigenous cultures, rather it resulted in excluding cultural diversities. Those who resisted Western superiority, asserted the superiority of Japanese culture to all others. This concept of superiority did not liberate them and other oppressed groups, but instead further reproduced their sense of “superiority” and “inferiority,” and justified the colonialization of the Ainu people and of other Asian countries. In fact, when Shigetaka Shiga emphasizes Japan’s commercial relationship with other Pacific countries rather than commercial trade with Western countries as well as Japan’s own cultural uniqueness outside the Western paradigm. He states: In Japan as it is today, with reform being advocated for every aspect of society, my fear that, as these reforms are instituted, scorn will gradually develop for things that are uniquely Japanese. We shall see a tendency to 161

KAWANO

cherish those countries that inspire the reformers, and to neglect our own heritage…..If reformers are the patriots they claim to be, why do they busy themselves only with imitating?29 When Shiga developed this view of “saving others,” he was addressing the European colonialism through voyages to the other Asian countries, his main concern was that in the future these countries would be possessed by the “white race.” He argued that “if the colored races do not now exert themselves, then ultimately the world will become the private possession of the white race.”30 However, through Shiga’s advocacy of Japanese traditional culture, the culture was led towards ultranationalism. This ideology excluded the diversity of other cultures but also imposed Japanese “superiority” upon any other cultures within and outside of Japan. Thus, both groups of elites, who either advocated Westernization or who advocate a nationalist Japanese traditional culture, were still caught within notions of “superiority” and “inferiority.” One way in which the new form of (cultural/ultra)nationalism was disseminated throughout Japan was through the education system. In 1886, the Minister of Education, Arinori Mori, introduced the “Meirokusha” (an intellectual society in the Meiji period) curriculum, which advocated Western ideology and was the new compulsory education system. Although this new system offered many more children an educational opportunity, it also furthered the hidden agenda of the Japanese elites by creating a new national identity which was better suited to political and economic competition in a global capitalist system. Paradoxically, the new national identity was constructed to exclude Western power by willingly applying a Western paradigm rather than learning from the available and rich Indigenous knowledges and exhibiting their unique Japanese identity in inclusive ways as opposed to the ultranationalism described above. As Fanon writes in Black skin White masks “I will try quite simply to make myself white, in other words, I will force the white man to acknowledge my humanity,”31 Whiteness can be seen as an expression of the desire of colonized people, through adoption of a particular physiology, culture and language, to obtain the humanity which had been denied to them throughout history. The Japanese desired to achieve the level of humanity that would allow them to stand on the same stage as the Western countries in political and economic terms, which they had previously been denied. In their own colonizing efforts, however, the Japanese represented their “humanity” as a form of “protection” and a “saving others” mentality directed toward fellow Asians and the Ainu peoples. This new humanity was thought to be what would save those peoples from Western invasion and extinction. In the words of Fanon, the Japanese elites were the “spoiled children of yesterday’s colonialism” who having achieved power began “looting the few national resources.”32 However, in the Japanese context, the Japanese elites looted both within Japanese borders and in neighboring territories. In the case of the Ainu Japanese elites instituted Western colonial/assimilation policies towards them and encouraged the implementation of cultural negation tactics.33 This is clearly seen in the emphasis on homogeneity in Japan.34 According to Howell, the purpose of schooling is to produce “useful citizens” who will 162

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

maintain the status quo.35 Schools also maintain, as Anderson called it, an “imagined community.”36 Thus, schooling in the Japanese system has not allowed for an inclusive space that accepts cultural diversity but is instead a space in which to exclude “obstacles” to the status quo. In fact, truths that are inconvenient for the dominant group are still omitted from the curriculum. The textbooks have been not written from the Ainu’s perspective but from the perspective of the dominant Japanese, with decontextualized descriptions about relationship between Japanese and Ainu or Ainu cultures, the texts, and the curriculum overall, ignore the dynamic intricacies of Ainu culture and the relationships among the Ainu themselves.37 Japanese traditional knowledge has also been marginalized in the educational system, particularly within formal education. In my school experiences, Indigenous knowledge was considered to be “old fashioned.” Now, though, I would insist that it is not so much the Indigenous knowledge itself that has been labeled as “old fashioned,” but rather that the embodied knowledges are easy targets of discrimination in schools. The question to examine here is how the differences in myself, in terms of physical characteristics, gender, age, ability, language and popularity at school, played a role in the way others silenced me by silencing those of my knowledges that were “different” at that particular time and within particular spaces. Furthermore, how have these experiences of targeted discrimination throughout my younger years shaped my identity? Examination of these questions can assist in challenging the process of recreating norms in the school system, which tend to blame and discriminate against the individual, rather than challenge any systematic oppression that occurs when one cannot fit him/herself into the social and cultural spaces in the schools. VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY OF RACIALIZED BODIES AND EMBODIED KNOWLEDGES

We believe the juxtaposition of the black and white races has resulted in a massive psycho-existential complex. By analyzing it we aim to destroy it.38 My school experiences and that of the Ainu Children at Japanese schools mentioned above raises a question regarding the effects of invisibility and visibility on embodied Indigenous knowledge and history in the school system. In the context of Japanese colonialism, the Japanese elites visibilize the Ainu group through racialization in order to make them invisible in terms of power and voices. According to Fanon, invisibility is used both as resistance and as a survival strategy. He suggests that “The colonized exert a considerable effort to keep away from the colonial world, not to expose himself to any action of the conqueror.”39 Along with his notion of invisibility, Goldberg also describes how invisibility can prevent the oppressed from being exposed to colonial violence. He focuses on the value and virtue of visibility/invisibility as being determined contextually, stating that “[T]he colonized effectively are in a position to delimit the power of the colonizer over their lives, from site of invisibility, they are thus able to ignore or resist colonial control.”40 Thus, this cultivated invisibility becomes a means of escaping racial discrimination. This explains the survival strategy of the Ainu 163

KAWANO

people through camouflaging their “inferiority markers” imposed on by the colonizers with “superiority” ones, in order to escape discrimination in their community and the school systems. For example, they invisiblize “Ainuness” and visiblize “Japaneseness,” by taking such actions as their migration to the urban areas, speaking the Japanese language, taking Japanese names, and becoming involved in Japanese cultural practices in order to prevent themselves from further being oppressed. These forms of active self-preservation also explain my own willingness to invisiblize embodied traditional knowledges in public. While Ainu students could indeed prevent themselves from being discriminated against at school, and even further, achieve a higher possibility of gaining access higher education, how effective is their invisibility in this context in the long run? It seems that the source of resistance is taken away at school. In other words, the level of awareness of resistance to the colonial system by the Ainu or of the responsibilities of the children from the dominant group is forcibly undermined. My educational experiences with the visiblizing and invisiblizing of racial minorities within a dominant culture are, I think, typical of many young Japanese today. Individual awareness of our historical responsibility for racialized minorities, and the importance of passing down our own Indigenous knowledges to next generations are systematically hidden, this is done through well-planted colonial agendas. As an exchange student at a Canadian University, I was surprised to find that most students, except for those who were First Nations students or who were interested in aboriginal issues in Canada, did not have knowledge of how the Canadian government has treated, and continues to treat First Nations people. For example, most of them did not even know about the existence of residential schools and how aboriginal children were treated therein. The perceptions that I heard from students around me revealed that they held images of alcoholism and drug addiction as being pervasive within the aboriginal population. I wondered why those students had such stereotypes and why they had not learned more about First Nations history in formal settings such as elementary, junior, and high school. First Nations issues seemed invisible, perhaps even intentionally so, in the public school curriculum. Then, I started asking myself whether I was informed about one of the Indigenous groups in Japan, the Ainu, and their historical relationship with the Japanese government. The answer was, “No, not at all.” I did not even realize that the Ainu were still struggling with cultural, political, and economic issues. As a young person, I had no doubt in my mind that Japan was a “homogeneous nation,” so I easily believed that Ainu people were completely assimilated into Japanese society. Even when I watched Japanese politicians assert Japanese homogeneity on television, I did not question their claims at all. In addition to being absent from academic discourse, the aboriginal voice in public discourse is very limited, and even when it appears it almost never gets much attention. The Ainu have been effectively silenced. Not only have they been strategically silent, but parents, for example, also often do not want their children to know they have “Ainu blood” in them due to their internalization of their inferiority.41 I wonder whether many teachers from the dominant groups in Japan are even aware of, or critical towards, Ainu issues, and if they feel at all accountable for addressing them today. How many of them have avoided these issues because of 164

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

limited instruction time in schools? And, even more importantly, are there safe spaces for teachers to bring Ainu ways of knowing into the curriculum without fear of ostracism or ridicule? Particularly in Hokkaido, homeland of the Ainu, teachers keep resisting the dominant direction that opposes teaching history in relation to the Ainu.42 However, other regions distant from Hokkaido do not take the same kind of approach to this issue, which would imply the need to awaken those people to facilitate collective resistance to the dominant perspectives. Furthermore, how can teachers and parents resist authority in order to implement Ainu culture and history? In fact, some parents may not want teachers to bring these subjects into a classroom, out of concern that the “academic success” of their children can be accomplished only through dealing with exams that are prepared based on normative text books. This attitude could give students, who are busy dealing with competition in school, the sense that it is a waste of time to learn what they do not have to in dealing with the examination.43 It has become clear to me through my school experience that invisibility of Ainu in school curriculum makes it easy to hide inconvenient truths in an exclusive educational system where decontextualized education is common. This is a systematic and intentional operation based on the government’s colonial agenda in our daily life, however, it is also up to us to operate within this system, or to make a choice to change it. In addition to the impact of the Ainu’s invisibility in the curriculum at school, my misunderstandings about the Ainu people’s “successful assimilation” began when I was a child, although I do not remember where or when I first heard about this concept of “successful assimilation.” From what I can remember of my school life, I was never taught about the historical relationship between the Indigenous people and the Japanese government to the extent which I could consider as reflecting “historical responsibility.” Further, anthropological or historical representation of the Ainu in public spaces such as museums also reinforced my notions of how “uncivilized” they were. The displays of Ainu life “long ago,” such as ways of hunting, dressing, and eating, reinforced my misunderstanding of their “backwardness.” My understanding about the Ainu people could not be freed from the time and space in which they were represented as having lived in the distant past. Therefore, when what I had heard in schools regarding the Ainu was combined with what I had seen in displays about the Ainu, my false conception of their culture was clearly visualized and established in my mind. And, even when I began to learn about First Nations issues in Canada, the issues surrounding the Ainu people were still invisible to me.44 It took some time for me to start thinking seriously about the Ainu people, and about my own responsibility to understand their history in relation to the Japanese and any continued oppression. If I had not started thinking about their history, I am afraid that I would not have found the space within which to challenge my own misconceptions. I have since realized that it is the collective responsibility of all adults to help build an inclusive society by creating spaces for young people to challenge our notions about the world. It is not simply the responsibility of school teachers to create these spaces. How does the invisiblizing of the Ainu and their embodied knowledge in the school system perpetuate the silencing of the Ainu outside of school as well as the psychological impact on both the Ainu and the dominant Japanese groups? For 165

KAWANO

example, regarding Ainu people’s names, while some Ainu people use their Ainu name for identification, the majority have not received an Ainu name and do not give their children one either. Although this practice can clearly be attributed to Meiji government policy, it can also be seen as strategic as well as forced invisibility, particularly for those who have fled discrimination and poverty in their homeland of Hokkaido. Selecting a legitimized Japanese name rather than claiming an Ainu name could be useful in making their background invisible. Just as the Japanese adopted a strategy of “Whiteness” to gain what had been denied them through racialization, the Ainu have adopted “Japaneseness” in their desire to obtain the material and emotional benefits associated with being Japanese, including culture, language, and most importantly, the “humanity” which the Ainu have been refused throughout Japanese colonialism. Although the Ainu people make themselves invisible in terms of name or cultural aspects, it may enable them to avoid being discriminated against in terms of educational, work, and marriage opportunities, however, paradoxically, the strategic invisibility in this context seems an unproductive mode of resistance within Fanon’s idea of decolonization. As he mentions, “If from a heuristic point of view one must deny the existence of the constitution, the fact still remains that certain individuals endeavor to enter into preconceived categories, and we can do nothing about it. Or rather, yet we can do something about it.”45 It is not enough to get rid of the colonizer or aspects of colonization, awareness in political education and resistance to the dominant system is also necessary.46 However, within the above situations, what is the role of schooling in informing students from the privileged group of ongoing social injustices, and of the necessity of liberating the Ainu from their struggles? Invisibility of the Ainu in terms of what is included in the curriculum in schools prevents the Japanese people, particularly younger generations, from being “shamed” into taking responsibility for their own role in the current situation.47 Thus the invisibility of the Ainu in the context of education system reproduces Japanese colonialism. VIOLENCE IN SCHOOL SYSTEMS

Cultivated invisibility through negating and ignoring bodies and embodied knowledge is a form of violence. As Fanon sees it, physical and psychological injuries caused by the violence of colonialism are necessary for Europeans to be able to control the colonized, filling schooling systems with violence. There is not only perceivable physical violence, but also neglect, dismissal, and the direction of negativity among students or by instructors. Although directing violent thoughts has not been seen as violence due to its unperceivability, such a form of violence is the same as physical violence. But what is colonial violence? One study done by a Japanese researcher named Masaru Eomoto showed how much these “illegitimatized” forms of violence can have an influence on children.48 This study actually validates one of the Japanese Indigenous knowledges called “Kototama,” which means that words carry our thoughts in their vibrations. These vibrations include both the heard and unheard sounds and the energy we produce by speaking and thinking. In his study, water crystals were shown to change depending on what 166

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

one said or thought towards the water. If the water received a spoken or typed word or suggestion such as “beautiful” or “let’s do it,” the shape and color of its crystal was well-formed or completely formed like a snowflake. On the contrary, when the water received a word or command such as “fool” or “do it,” its shape and color were unfavorable and deformed.49 In another study, rice was put in three bottles. The rice in one bottle was exposed to the words “you are beautiful,” while the rice in another bottle was exposed to the words, “you are fool,” and the rice in the final bottle was just ignored. After one month, the rice that was exposed to the words “you are beautiful” started to ferment and had a mellow smell. Interestingly, although the bottles of rice that were exposed to the words “you are fool” and ignored rotted, the rice that was ignored rotted before the rice that was exposed to the words “you are fool.” Emoto explains that empowering or giving “energy attention to something is a way of giving energy, and the most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.”50 Emoto’s study show how powerful our thoughts are, even without spoken words. Fifty-five to seventy percent of our body is composed of water. Given that fact, from the results of the above study, we can assume spoken and unspoken words and thoughts with their vibrations influence our body, our feelings, and our way of thinking.51 We should continue to ask ourselves and educators how much violence is perpetuated through words, thoughts, and furthermore, neglect within the school system, and how often children whose cultural ways of knowing are being neglected are affected by that. However, when we try to bring these marginalized ways of knowing about violence into the school system, we may be ignored, face ridicule, and aggressive vocal attacks from various fields, even in discussions regarding people’s knowledge and the understanding of violence, we see how once again the embodied knowledge of some is legitimated, while that of others is ridiculed, ignored and rendered illegitimate.Those types of criticisms are from Western ideologies which are limited to the material world, and those critics cannot understand many Indigenous spiritual perspectives.52 In addition, in relation to the Japanese traditional knowledges themselves, the marginalization of Indigenous ways of knowing, as a form of violence, occurs by excluding students from the curriculum or by relegating their knowledge to a “special class” offered only several days a year. Indigenous ways of knowing should not be legitimatized in this way for only a few days in the year. But, how have these limited choices for students, in terms of having the space and time to learn about and from Indigenous ways of knowing to get their own destination, justified students’ academic achievement and performance in schools? Fanon emphasizes that the need for resistance against all forms of violence is imminent, and his description of resistance as applying “violence” against colonialism in order to accomplish decolonization is often understood as a healing.53 Violence, in Fanon’s eyes, is the way to regain “human dignity,”54 self-respect, and empower self-esteem.55 Fanon’s notion of violence as a cleansing force may also represent a natural characteristic of human beings, the oppressors will only come to understand the oppressed and their struggle by having the same experience in a real sense. I would like to interpret Fanon’s “violence” as a call to fight against colonial systems, and not as an advocacy for “violence” itself as a way of liberating 167

KAWANO

the oppressed. Rather, I argue that Fanon understands violence as a need to rock the boat in order to have a dialogue: breaking the silence in order to make unheard voices heard. As Fanon insists, “Decolonization is truly the creation of new man.”56 In the creation of a new humanity dialogue should start in the first place. Fanon describes “old humanism” in his description of the racist Western bourgeoisie: “the Western generally manages to mask this racism by multiplying the nuances, thereby enabling it to maintain intact its discourse on human dignity in all its magnanimity.”57 Thus, Fanon’s old humanism is about a justification to their economical exploitation and colonial practices. Regarding the new humanity Fanon states “For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man.”58 I believe that Fanon’s new humanism is rooted in the Indigenous knowledges in which ancestors’ experiences, practices, and wisdom have been accumulated for thousands of years. This new humanism also focuses on concepts of community, harmony, and balance which are lacking in the Eurocentric points of views. The question is then how can Fanon’s new humanism work in the Japanese schooling system? JAPANESE INDIGENOUS AND AINU WAYS OF KNOWING AS RESISTANCE

The setting up of the colonial system does not of itself bring about the death of the native culture. Historic observation reveals, on the contrary, that the aim sought is rather a continued agony than a total disappearance of the preexisting culture.59 Ainu resistance to the dominant force of the Japanese government has occurred since just after the assimilation policy called “the 1899 Protection Law for Former Natives in Hokkaido” was enacted. According to the Irimoto, in those times Ainu themselves wrote on the need to adapt to the new socio-economic situations as full members of the Japanese nation state. Some of them even stressed the importance of new education, and decided to choose the way of assimilation.60 However, the cultural revitalization of the Ainu, mainly from around the 1960s, has been gradually creating spaces for claiming their background, and joining the movements of Indigenous peoples all over the world concerning political and ecological issues. In fact, CHUA (Cooperation, Hokkaido Utari Association) members travel to connect with other minorities and Indigenous people in China, Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavia;61 their movement has been recognized as the movement of liberation of colonized people.62 There are many people who engage in the mobilization and empowerment of the Ainu people who claim cultural revitalization, and who critically and actively engage in it through cultural rather than academic activities. As many scholars insist, language plays an important role in nurturing and empowering cultural and individual identity.63 Language contains cultural value, and is the manifestation of one’s life, history, experiences, and relationships with others, nature, and the universe. According to Kayano, who devoted himself to revitalizing the Ainu language, the Ainu people have placed a high value on their 168

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

language by saying that “[w]e teach our children that human language is mightier than the sharpest sword or poison arrow.”64 Ainu language schools have been built despite the characterizations of outside academics who have publicly asserted the “death” of the language.65 In addition to their language, the Ainu people emphasize the power of Art by continuing activities as singing and dancing, which speak directly to the heart rather than to rational academia. This approach suggests the inhuman treatment they have undergone by the government and academic “experts”. However, within the Ainu community there have been disagreements between the proponents of this new approach which emphasizes cultural aspects, and those whose racialized experiences have made them wary of revealing their identity in order to protect themselves from continuous psychological and physical violence. A central problem remains regarding how to create safe spaces in formal and informal educational systems, where both “yellow colonizers” and racialized minorities in Japan can begin to unpack the colonial relationships between them together and restore a balance of power. I view myself now as one in the academy who might help to rebuild the relationship between lived experiences and the academy, a relationship that has been dichotomized by focusing on “the others.” My interrogation of my experiences was meant to examine the reasons why I had not been informed until recently about the resistance movements of Indigenous peoples, and their struggles. I would assert that it is not because these movements happened before I was born, but because systematic colonialism has taken away these collective memories in part thinking them “unnecessary,” and also perhaps because these memories were always dangerous to the maintenance of the colonial hierarchy. However, those of us interested in change have to learn about these hidden histories by learning from the history that has been swept as an inconvenient truth under the carpet. As the various anti-colonial scholars claim, I myself am not upset with what I have learned within the Japanese school system, but rather I would complain about what I have not been taught in terms of Indigenous knowledges and my historical relationship with racialized minorities in Japan, so that I have not taken part in any individual and collective responsibilities. While school has been a place in which to perpetuate colonial systems, it is also a place within which to resist the system. In giving the history of resistance by the Ainu as well as my experience, I assert that in order to begin a dialogue, we need to attend to the role of Indigenous knowledge from both racialized minorities and the Japanese. In fact, there are many similarities between Japanese Indigenous knowledge and that of the Ainu in that both emphasize holistic approaches adopted in their daily lives, the power of languages, and harmony with others, other creatures, nature, and the universe. Fanon, in his call to action, says, “[c]ome comrades the European game is finally over, we must look for something else. We can do anything today provided we do not ape Europe, provided we are not obsessed with catching up with Europe.”66 Through working with marginalized knowledges from both sides to create solidarity, and through awakening the consciousness of the Japanese regarding their ongoing colonialism, it is possible to fight against the colonial educational system and the colonial agenda of the Japanese government. 169

KAWANO

The challenge for the implementation of Indigenous knowledge in schooling is the requirement of validation from Eurocentric ways of knowing. Even the Indigenous knowledge from Emoto that I mentioned above requires validation by Eurocentric knowledge sources in order to be taken seriously by many. And, although Emoto’s book could create the possibility of talking about elements of Indigenous knowledge in schools, I think that his study with water may also imply how unacceptable it is for one to believe what he or she cannot perceive until he or she can actually affirm it with at least one of the senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting. However, I would still inquire as to why these knowledges have been dismissed as “irrational” from a Eurocentric point of view rather than valued as a “different way of knowing”. Science, which is basically inclusive only of Western ways of acquiring information, enables us to perceive evidence with data from studies. But our ancestors knew the energies of words and thoughts as part of Indigenous knowledge without using any scientific method to prove it. I would argue that this limitation within Western science is problematic in terms of attempting to decolonize minds. I do not dispute the scientific method itself, but instead the ways in which perception and knowing are defined in particular, exclusive ways. This limited Eurocentric ways of knowing imply the need for “new” ways of knowing which has been undermined. As Fanon emphasizes, “the last shall be first.”67 The call for acknowledging the importance of many different ways of knowing inclusively in school systems is not new from an international perspective. In fact, the need for Indigenous knowledge in the academy has been long discussed by various scholars in North America and other countries. However, in Japan, these arguments can be seldom heard in public discussions today. So how have these different levels of consciousness in terms of the importance of indigeneity occurred? Furthermore, why is the argument still being marginalized in the educational field, particularly in early stages of schooling in Japan? CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this paper has discussed some aspects of the historical relationships between the colonizers and the colonized within the Japanese context. It includes various facets of this colonized/colonizer duality, such as the white fixation, internalized dominant notions of superiority and inferiority, and the treatment of Western-educated Japanese elites and the Ainu within and outside school. I also discussed the need for both Japanese and Ainu marginalized Indigenous ways of knowing to be included in the school system as a way of resistance to the colonial educational system in Japan. I would argue that people may not realize there exists a dominant Japanese group which discriminates against and racializes “others,” or that they themselves have internalized inferiority and superiority in their everyday lives because their education has not either included or legitimized these notions. Colonial education has been reproduced in the current Japanese school system which offers limited perspectives to students in their learning process to get to their own destination. My goal in this paper was to raise the consciousness of dominant Japanese people about this ongoing colonialism in the schooling system, and to call for the unpacking of their own hidden dominant notions of superiority/inferiority 170

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND

relative to both Europeans and other racialized peoples. Without digging up the inconvenient truths buried for the benefit of the Japanese intellectual elites, the Japanese people and the Ainu will continue to internalize dominant notions of inferiority and superiority rather than interrogating systematic social injustice. Fanon’s notion of psychology of the mind, particularly in terms of internalization of inferiority and superiority, enables me to engage in discussions of obsession with whiteness nurtured through experiences as a racialized student in North American academic institutions, as well as discussions of the ongoing colonial oppression in the Japanese historical context, and of Japanese colonizer/colonized duality.68 These discussions, I hope, can serve as the entry point to seriously consider Fanon’s pedagogical implication of a possible “new” humanity. I believe that this “new humanity” that Fanon describes is the recognition of unheard voices from racialized minorities, and of the acceptance of Japanese Indigenous ways of knowing in an inclusive way. I would assert that decolonization requires inner transformation of both the colonizer and the colonized to accomplish transformation in reality. NOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11

It should be mentioned here that this does not mean that conflicts between the Ainu people and the Yamato (later known as the Japanese) emerged only after the door to a wider range of Western countries was reopened. In fact, there had been tensions between the Ainu and the Yamato for a long time before the open door period. The types of ideology used in the various conflicts between the Yamato and the Ainu before the open door period require more research. Nevertheless, I would assert that what has to be mentioned here is the willingness of Japanese elites to apply Western colonial ideology into their policies, and how that desire has affected the Japanese masses and Ainu people. G.J. Dei and A Kempf, Anti-Colonialism and Education: the Politics of Resistance (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2006). G.J. Dei and A Kempf, Anti-Colonialism and Education: the Politics of Resistance, Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom) (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized. Expanded ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991, Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 1999, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: Politics of Language in African Literature. (New Hampshre:Heinemann Educational Books,1986), N.N. Wane, “Mapping The Field of Indigenous Knowledges in Anti-Colonial Discourse: A Transformative Journey in Education,” Race Ethnicity and Education 11 no. 2 (2008):183-97, Wane, N.N. Is Decolonization Possible? In Anti-Colonialism and Education: The Politics of Resistance. Edited by G. J Dei. and A. Kempf , 87106. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2006 . Wane, “Mapping the Field of Indigenous Knowledges in Anti-Colonial Discourse: A Transformative Journey in Education” also see Wane, N.N. Is Decolonization Possible? In AntiColonialism and Education: The Politics of Resistance. Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: Politics of Language in African Literature, 13-15. Ibid., 16. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized. G.J. Dei, “Rethinking the Role of Indigenous Knowledges in the Academy,” NALL working paper, no. 58 (2002):1-24, http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/csew/nall/res/58GeorgeDei.pdf. Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 236. Dei and Kempf, Anti-Colonialism and Education: the Politics of Resistance, 15-16, Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism ,13. 171

KAWANO 12 13 14 15 16

17

18 19 20

21

22

23 24

25

26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33

34 35

36

37

38 39 40

41

Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism,3. Ibid., 4. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, xliv. Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, new ed. (New York: Grove, 1994), 40. Rotem Kowner, “Lighter than Yellow, but not enough”: Western Discourse on the Japanese ‘Race’1854-1904,” The Historical Journal 43 (2000): 103-131. R. P. Anand, “Family of “Civilized” States and Japan: A Story of Humiliation, Assimilation, Defiance and Confrontation,” Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international 5, no. 1 (2003), 1-75. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 41-42. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 9. Anand, “Family of “Civilized” States and Japan: A Story of Humiliation, Assimilation, Defiance and Confrontation,” 70. Yoshio Hara, “From Westernization to Japanization: The Replacement of Foreign Teachers By Japanese Who Studies Abroad,” The Developing Economies 15, no. 4 (2007), 440-61. B.K Marshall, “Professors and Politics: The Meiji Academic Elite,” Journal of Japanese Studies 3, no. 1 (1977), 71-97. Ibid., 78-79. Urs Matthias Zachmann, “Blowing up a double portrait in Black and White: The Concept of Asia in The Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Okakura Tenshin,” East Asia Cultures Critique 15, no. 2 (2007), 345-68. Hiroko Sakamoto, “The Cult of “love and Eugenics” in May Fourth Movement Discourse. Positions,” East Asia Cultures Critique 12, no. 2 (2004), 329-376. Ibid., 334. Atsushi Tajima, “Consuming Racial Others: Caucasianization of Japanese Nation and Nationals,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (2009-0205). http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p14303_index.html. Ibid,.7. Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1885-1895 (California: Stanford University Press, 1969), 56. Shiga’s words are cited in this article. Ibid., 58. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks,78. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 12. Siddle, Richard. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan (New York: Routledge, 1996), Siddle, Richard. “Indigenous People in Japan.” In Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. Edited by Michael Weiner. 2d ed, 17-49.(London/New York: Routledge, 1997), Clammer, John R. Japan and Its Others: Globalization, Difference and The Critique of Modernity (Oregon: Trans Pacific Press, 2001), Yaguchi, Y. “Remembering a More Layered Past in Hokkaido- Americans, Japanese, and The Ainu.” The Japanese Journal of American Studies 11(2000), 109-128. Ian Neary, Human Rights in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), 56. David L. Howell, “Making “Useful Citizens” of Ainu Subjects in Early Twentieth-Century Japan.” The Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 1(2004): 5-29. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London/New York: Verso, 1991). Yuto Hirayama “Challenges in Teaching History of Ainu (Ainushi no Gakushu ni Challenge),” manuscript of a seminar at Sapporo (July 2005), 2, http://www.frpac.or.jp/rst/sem/sem1718.pdf. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, xvi. Frantz Fanon, Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove, 1994), 130. David Theo Goldberg, “In/visibility and Super/vision: Fanon on Race, Discourses of Resistance,” in Fanon: A Critical Reader., ed. Lewis Ricardo Gordon, 179-202 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 181. Toshimitsu Miyajima, History of Ainu and Japan (Ainu Minzokuto Nihon No Rekishi) (Japan: Sanichi press, 1997), 251.

172

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND 42 43

44

45 46 47

48

49 50 51

52

53

54 55. 56 57 58 59 60

61

62 63

Hirayama, “Challenges in Teaching History of Ainu (Ainushi No Gakushu Ni Challenge),” 4. lbid.,4, According to Hirayama, there have been pressures on teachers from the authority in the name of the “guide” not to teach Ainu’s culture and history at school, Moreover, their older colleagues told them it is “taboo” to try to implement Ainu’s ways of knowing. In addition, some of the parents believe that academic achievement is gained only through dealing with what is written in the text and what is questioned in exams. In fact, I was interested in the relations between the government and Indigenous people in North America without ever reflecting on Japan’s own colonial history. This is a clear example of the distance that is created between what we study and our own positionality within social relations: the “objective” way in which social relations are studied in the academy. Within the distance, other can be studied without needing to study one’s self in relation to others. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 61. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 124. As Elspeth Probyn (2005) states in Blush: Faces of Shame, for oppressors, shame is positive and productive in that the “feeling of shame teaches us about our relationships to others” (35). It is one of the ways with which an oppressor can recognize injustice. She also suggests she/he creates boundary between “I” and “We” through emotion. I assume that it is also emotion that creates the space to share experiences and recognize injustice. Within the various kind of emotion, in the Japanese context, it is important to examine how “shame” plays a critical role in both in hiding inconvenient truth and in recognizing social injustice in the process of colonization/decolonization, considering the cultural meaning of shame for Japanese people. Masaru Eomoto, The True Power of Water, trans. Nariko Hosoyamada (New York/London/Toronto/ Sydney: Atria books, 2005), Masaru Eomoto, The Hidden Messages in Water, trans. David A. Thayne (Oregon: Beyond Words Publishing, 2004). Eomoto, The True Power of Water, 52-82. Eomoto, The Hidden Messages in Water, 65. I recognize that complexities of our feelings and emotions, and the various ways of human expression with spoken words. However, it also should be mentioned that a word also embodies the long history, knowledge, and memories of our ancestors. Each word carries this history along with each of our collective thoughts associated with the word as Fanon states “every dialect is a way of thinking” (Fanon, Black skin White masks, 25). Marie Ann Battiste, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge (Saskatoon: Purich, 2000), 36. Gail Presbey, Fanon on the Role of Violence in Liberation: A comparison with Gandhi and Mandela in Fanon: A Critical Reader., ed. Lewis Ricardo Gordon,283-298 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 284. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 9. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 2. Ibid., 109. Ibid., 239. Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 34. Takashi Irimoto, Political Movement, Legal Reformatino, and Transformation of Ainu Identity, in Hunters and gatherers in the modern world: conflict, resistance, and self-determination ed. Peter P. Schweitzer, Megan Biesele, and Robert K. Hitchcock,206-222 (New York.: Berghahn Books, 2000), 210. lbid., 214, Irimoto cites Ota R, Ainui Kakumei Ron: Yukara Sekai Heno Taikyaku (A Theory of Ainu Revolution” Retreat to The World of Yukar) (Tokyo: Shin-sen Sha, 1973), 214. lbid., 212. For example, authors write on that theme: Dei &Asgharzadeh, “Language, Education and Development: Case Studies From The Southern Contexts,” Language and Education 17, no. 6 (2003), 421-47, Battiste, “Maintaining Aboroiginal Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver :UBC press, 2000), 192-208, Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind:Politics of Language in African Literature. 173

KAWANO 64

65 66 67 68

Anderson E Fred and Masami Iwasaki-Goodman, “Language and Culture Revitalisation in a Hokkaido Ainu Community,” in Studies in Japanese Bilingualism, ed. Mary Goebel Noguchi 45-67 (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2001), 52. This Kayano’s words are cited in this article. Ibid., 48-55. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 236. Ibid., 2. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.

REFERENCES Anand, R. P. (2003). Family of “Civilized” States and Japan: A story of humiliation, assimilation, defiance and confrontation. Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d’histoire du droit international, 5(1), 1–75. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities, Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev. ed.). London/New York: Verso. Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom). London/New York: Routledge. Battiste, M. A. (2000). Maintaining aboroiginal identity, language, and culture in modern society. In Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision. Vancouver: Marie Battiste. Battiste, M. A. (2000). Protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: A global challenge. Saskatoon: Purich. Clammer, J. R. (2001). Japan and its others: Globalization, difference and the critique of modernity. Oregon, OR: Trans Pacific Press. Dei, G. J. (2002). Rethinking the role of indigenous konwledges in the academy. NALL working paper, 58. Retrieved from http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/csew/nall/res/58GeorgeDei.pdf Dei, G. J., & Kempf, A. (2006). Anti-colonialism and education: The politics of resistance. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Dei, G. J., & Asgharzadeh, A. (2003). Language, education and development: Case studies from the southern contexts. Language and Education, 17(6), 421–449. Eomoto, M. (2004). The hidden messages in water (D. A. Thayne, Trans.). Oregon, OR: Beyond Words Publishing. Eomoto, M. (2005). The true power of water (N. Hosoyamada, Trans.). New York/London/Toronto/ Sydney: Atria books. Fanon, F. (1994). Dying colonialism. New York: Grove. Fanon, F. (1994). Toward the African revolution (New ed.). New York: Grove. Fanon, F. (2005). The wretched of the earth (6th ed). New York: Grove. Fanon, F. (2007). Black skin, white masks (7th ed.). New York: Grove. Fred, E., & Iwasaki-Goodman, M. (2001). Language and culture revitalisation in a Hokkaido Ainu community. In M. G. Noguchi (Ed.), Studies in Japanese Bilingualism. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Goldberg, D. T. (1996). In/visibility and super/vision: Fanon on race, veils, discourses of resistance. In L. R. Gordon (Ed.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 179–202). Oxford: Blackwell. Hara, Y. (2007). From westernization to Japanization: The replacement of foreign teachers By Japanese who studies abroad. The Developing Economies, 15(4), 440–461. Hirayama, Y. (2005, July). Challenges in teaching history of Ainu (Ainushi no Gakushu ni Challenge). Manuscript of a seminor at Sapporo, 1–5, Retrieved from http://www.frpac.or.jp/rst/sem/ sem1718.pdf Howell, D. L. (2004). Making “Useful Citizens” of Ainu Subjects in early twentieth-century Japan. The Journal of Asian Studies, 63(1), 5–29. Irimoto, T. (2000). Political movement, legal reformatino, and transformation of Ainu identity. In P. P. Schweitzer, M. Biesele, & R. K. Hitchcock (Eds.), Hunters and gatherers in the modern world: Conflict, resistance, and self-determination (pp. 206–222). New York: Berghahn Books. Kayano, S. (1993). Ainu ethnic and linguistic revival. In N. Loos & T. Osanai (Eds.), Indigenous minorities and education: Australian and Japanese perspectives of their indigenous peoplel, the Ainu, Aboriginies and Torres Strait Islanders (pp. 360–367). Tokyo: Sanyusha Publishing Co. 174

FANON’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND Kowner, R. (2000). ‘Lighter than yellow, but not enough’: Western discourse on the Japanese ‘Race’ 1854–1904. The Historical Journal, 43(1), 103–131. Marshall, B. K. (1977). Professors and politics: The Meiji academic Elite. Journal of Japanese Studies, 3(1), 71–97. Maruyama, M. (1987). Bunmeiron no Gairyakuwo Yomu [Reading Outline of Civilization]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Memmi, A. (1991). The colonizer and the colonized (Expanded ed.). Boston: Beacon Press. Miyajima, T. (1997). History of Ainu and Japan (Ainu Minzokuto Nihon No Rekishi). Japan: Sanichi Press. Neary, I. (2002). Human rights in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. London/New York: Routledge. Ota, R. (1973). Ainu Kakumei Ron: Yukara Sekai Heno Taikyaku (A Theory of Ainu Revolution” Retreat to The World of Yukar). Tokyo: Shin-sen Sha. Presbey, G. M. (1996). Fanon on the role of violence in liberation: A comparison with Gandhi and Mandela. In L. R. Gordon (Ed.), Fanon: A critical reader (pp. 283–298). Oxford: Blackwell. Probyn, E. (2005). Blush: Faces of shame. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pyle, K. B. (1969). The new generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of cultural identity, 1885–1895. California: Stanford University Press. Sakamoto, H. (2004). The cult of “Love and Eugenics” in may fourth movement discourse. Positions. East Asia Cultures Critique, 12(2), 329–376. Siddle, R. (1997). Indigenous people in Japan. In M. Weiner (Ed.), Japan’s minorities: The illusion of homogeneity (2nd ed., pp. 17–49). London/New York: Routledge. Siddle, R. (1996). Race, resistance and the Ainu of Japan. New York: Routledge. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books. Tajima, A. Consuming racial others: Caucasianization of Japanese nation and nationals. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Retrieved April 15, 2009, from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p14303_index.html Thiong’o, W. N. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational Books. Wane, N. N. (2006). Is decolonization possible? In G. J. Dei, S. Kempf, & A. Rotterdam (Eds.), Anticolonialism and education: The politics of resistance (pp. 87–106). Sense Publishers. Wane, N. N. (2008). Mappping the field of indigenous knowledges in anti-colonial discourse: A tranformative journey in education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(2), 183–197. Yaguchi, Y. (2000). Remembering a more layered past in Hokkaido-Americans, Japanese, and the Ainu. The Japanese Journal of American Studies, 11, 109–128. Zachmann, U. M. (2007). Blowing up a double portrait in black and white: The concept of Asia in The writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Okakura Tenshin. East Asia Cultures Critique, 15(2), 345–368.

175

FOUZIA WARSAME

11. “THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”: Nationalism, Decolonization and “New Humanism” Somalia – a nation in waiting, a state in the making

INTRODUCTION

In modern history, nationalism has become a movement in which recognition as a nation-state is regarded as paramount for the realization of a people’s economic and cultural aspirations. Nationalism is characterized principally by a feeling of community based on common descent, language and/or religion (Smith, 1995). Prior to the eighteenth century, when nationalism emerged as a distinct movement, states usually were based on religious or dynastic ties—citizens owed their loyalty to their church or ruling family. In the formation of the modern nation-state, as a political substitute for traditional feudal systems, the nation is brought decisively into the equation of the sovereign, territorial state, thereby constructing a new source of legitimacy. The nation has become the body of citizens whose collective sovereignty constitutes them as a state. Since these elements are not ready-made ingredients of a nation, and since states have had to prove their legitimacy with reference to heterogeneous groups, nationalism has become the ideological tool used both by the states to create nations and by the citizens that composed them. The contemporary global community exists at a historical crossroads, however, where the interaction between nations has a significant impact on how nationalism operates. Recent decades have witnessed two emerging developments: on the one hand, a trend towards more globalism, multilateralism, and internationalism— largely supporting interdependence, solidarity, and rule of law, and on the other hand, a tendency towards growing instability and insecurity. Recognizing the implications of shifting global arrangements, Jones (2005) notes that “World order, over recent decades has developed spaces for a range of concerns—human rights, gender, ethnic relations, peace, refugee” (4)—yet no concern is more perplexing than the issue of “failed states.” The calamities of instability and insecurity have particularly stalked the African continent, mostly in the form of intrastate wars. Africa has “suffer[ed] by far the largest number of major conflicts during the 1990s, with more than 40% of the [world] total” (Novelli & Robertson, 2007, 2): genocide in Rwanda, “ethnic cleansing” in Sudan, diamond wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and rebel-anarchy in Congo and Uganda, to name a few. But the poster child of twentieth-century intrastate conflict is the former Republic of Somalia—what has been called “the planet’s foremost ‘failed state,’” (Bay, 2008). G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 177–195. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

WARSAME

A discussion of the dynamics of the Somali “failed state” must include an examination of notions of nationalism, decolonization, and nation building. I consider these concepts in light of the implication that violence affects social transformation, as prefigured in the new humanism of the influential writer Frantz Fanon. As much blood as has been spilled in Somalia’s twenty-year civil war, much more ink has been spilled by academic and policy discourses to pathologize and dehumanize the Somali people: Yesterday we were “warlords,” today we are “pirates,” and tomorrow for sure we will be demonized in a new way, as Fanon wryly noted, “the European seldom has a problem with figure of speech” (1963, 7). Consequently, I aim to trouble the reductionist narrative on Somalia and its people that is mired with cultural essentialism, social anomaly, and perplexity. This narrative, fraught with assumptions that have been constructed, conceptualized, and imbued with various meanings though historical circumstances, demarcates both society and its cultural heritage. The Somali ‘failed state’, with its extension of violence, has been used to shape a belief system about the social and political organization of its people. The collapse of the state has not only challenged the Somali people’s identification with their nation-state, but has also negated their humanity among and equality with other peoples of the world. FANON’S SIGNIFICANCE IN CONTEMPORARY SOMALIA

Fanon’s contemporary urgency is thoroughly bound up with the way his memory—precisely in its menaced and even contested character—represents for us the state of specifically cultural emergency in which we find ourselves. (Mowitt, as cited in Pinar 2008, 40) Somalia, once heralded as the only true nation-state in Africa, is now nothing more than a “crude, empty shell.”1 Once envied for its ethnic homogeneity, Somalia is now condemned for its ethnic differences. Once portrayed as a nation bound by primordial ties, it is now exposed for the primacy of its divisive disposition. This drama of human life, replete with strife, that transpires in Somalia—from Baydhabo to Boosaaso, from Marka to Mogadishu2—is the curse of the African nation-state, the land is referred to as hostile, lawless, and brutish, and the people are mere gangs, warlords, and militia.3 Therefore, any acts of violence are ascribed to inherent nature and proclaim neither historical circumstances nor impelling necessity (Makura, 2005). The profound crisis engendered by arrested decolonization in post-independent Africa underlies our enduring fascination with Frantz Fanon’ prophetic writings about the trajectory of colonization. With hindsight informed by fifty years of “trials and tribulations,” observers witness African nations’ failure to resolve the conflict between state and nation and see such failure as the condition of decolonization that is the result of the retardation of national consciousness and the inadequacy of nation building. The curse of the African nation-state can be explained by examining the historical misalignment between state and nation, whereby “the post-colonial state has [either] failed to make the nation, or nations have descended into ‘tribalism’ in the 178

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

process of carving out a state,” as succinctly explained by Groves (2008). In present-day Africa, this conflict between nations and states has converged into what Mazrui, in a 1995 issue of World Policy Journal, calls an “institutional implosion and humanitarian crisis” (30). This paper draws on Fanon’s theoretical framework of decolonization, with its extension of violence, to analyze the profound crisis of the present-day African nation-state, exemplified by Somalia. Homi Bhabha, however, reminds us that invoking Fanon allows us to use “the dismembered past to make sense of trauma of the present” (cited in Pinar, 2008, 41). Bhaba says that Fanon’s engagement with colonial world of violence becomes, for us who try to understand the violence of such worlds as Somalia, “a process of intense discovery and disorientation.” The premise and the contributing analysis of my essay, therefore, are the pedagogical possibilities that Fanon’s theories offer to the nation-state of Somalia, and especially to the struggle of pursuing true decolonization. Moreover, dialoging with Fanon not only helps us “face the present in its moment of danger” (Pinar, 2008, 40), but more important, it opens up different philosophical possibilities. For Pinar and countless others in the diaspora, that “moment of danger” is of course explicably tied to the present crisis of a beloved homeland—in this case, Somalia. The perplexing phenomenon that is Somalia has generated extensive discourse since the early 1990s. Central to this discourse is contestation over why, how, and who is accountable for state failure. This failure, as propagated by dominant discourses, precludes external structures of domination and exploitation both in the past and in contemporary times. In his discussion of the myth making of the African “failed state,” Dolek affirms that state failure has hence been discursively conceived and subsequently perceived as the result of natural and internal problems or even of characteristics inherent in the African nation, thus the notion that “Africa is underdeveloped because it is already underdeveloped and because it is Africa.” Being of Somali descent, such rhetoric naturally implicates me—either implicitly or explicitly, or both. I am the problem, and so must be responsible, due to what Dolek identifies in the modern myth as my “brutish, irrational, uncivilized and backward” tendencies (2008, 3). Akin to previous hegemonic paradigms, this discourse functions first and foremost to legitimize imperialistic agendas through which Somalia is subjugated, exploited, and dehumanized time and again. It does this by fragmenting and redefining the entire social fabric of the Somali nation—land, language, culture, faith, and history. One of the outcomes of dominant discourses is that persons and their communities are ascribed identities that embody universalized inferior status. Somali identities have thus been deconstructed, re-worked, and re-produced to emphasize what Gibson describes as “a Manichean personality split between rage and stupor” (2003, 103). Consequently, the lived experiences of the Somali nation can be summed up whereby those Somalis in Somalia constitute warlords and a frenzied mob, while those in the diaspora subsist between the trance and the trauma of perpetual statelessness. Although identity is neither fixed nor innate, Abdi (1999) asserts, it is for all intents and purposes constructed from the subject identity. In other words, once identified, the subject becomes the source of that identity. As a Somali-Canadian, 179

WARSAME

although born and raised in Somalia, my identity has been inexplicably linked to the “failed state,” as if I only came to “be” after 1991, when the state collapsed.4 My history and cultural heritage and my membership in humanity were essentially nullified by the collapse of the political state apparatus. I was no more than the political arrangements that legitimized me as a citizen and as an individual, that is, I am (or was) a Somali as long as there is a Somali government. Today, while my acquired hyphenated identity relegates me to invisible space, I nevertheless cannot escape the “gaze” of dominant discourse. This gaze locates me either as an inherently dysfunctional being incapable of autonomy, or as a starving refugee needing ‘humanitarian’ intervention. As part and parcel of hegemonic practices, ascribed and deformed identities are products of a “cultural situation”5 of sheer violence that permeates the mind and amputates the sense of selfhood, resulting in dehumanization. Understanding the prescription of hegemony, however, “does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination, [it] shows them up and puts them into practice” (Fanon, 1963, 38). Yet the distinction of the violence in Somalia as the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa and the word’s uttermost failed state is real, and Fanon urges us to attend to this calamity in search of immanent outcomes and to understand what it might address. Could this violence be a painful re-conceptualization of what constitutes decolonization? Is this violence predicted on Fanon’s conception of absolute decolonization? Is this violence dismantling the fallacy of “pseudo-independence”— the changing of guard on Independence Day, the raising of flags, and the singing of national anthems? Has Somalia finally embarked on a collective and conscious eradication of the lingering and protracted colonial institutions and structures represented by both the ideology of nationalism and the polity of the state? “THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”: NATIONALISM (NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS) AND DECOLONIZATION

With a large number of present-day African countries perceived, from Western standards of statehood, to be at a precipice of state failure, the implications of Fanon’s ideas for contemporary African polities and the myriad and contentious processes of decolonization are as relevant today as they were in 1963 when his seminal book The Wretched of the Earth was published. Half a century ago “decolonization” was misguidedly equated with national liberation. It was widely believed that independence from colonial rule would usher in a period of vibrant and viable self-governing nation-states in Africa. Yet as early as 1961, Fanon’s had been a dissenting voice in the chorus of optimism following “flag independence” and was one of the earliest to decipher the limits of such independence. With critical insight Fanon anticipated the fallacy of what he called “pseudo-independence” and was severely skeptical that national independence would lead to the genuine decolonization of the new African states. In a sense, as Taiwo remarks, “it was an independence that left the colonized with many superficial manifestations of self-rule—their own flag, national anthem, law making bodies—but without any real control over the land and its people” (1996, 257).

180

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

Moreover, in Wretched of the Earth Fanon wrote that the independence movement of the 1960s was nothing more than “the substitution of one species of mankind by another” (1), a simple changing of guard. Just before his death in 1961, Fanon concluded that there had been no effective liberation because there had been no authentic decolonization. The struggles for liberation, he lamented, have not made their impact sufficiently felt to achieve true decolonization. A distinction must be made between liberation, “the departure of the colonizer,” and decolonization, “which sets out to change the order of the world,” resulting in the complex transformation of both colonizer and colonized (Fanon, 1963, 2). It is a distinction between Fanon’s conception of absolute liberty and the reality of post-colonial Africa. It is the difference between the granting of independence and gaining new humanism, between partial liberty and total. Decolonization is not the antithesis, opposition, or reaction to colonialism, but rather the total and absolute destruction of colonialism that in turn eradicates both colonizer and colonized. Decolonization as a revolutionary praxis must be concerned with both the need of individuals to attain a consciousness of freedom as well as the removal of the material constraints on their actions. Of the relationship between national consciousness and political struggle in the process of decolonization, Fanon concluded that the test of successful decolonization would lie in the degree of “people’s perception and consciousness of nationalism” (Gibson, 2003, 178). National consciousness is thus required to further the anti-colonial struggle, which requires a common identity, a national identity that would enable the colonized to reject the colonizer’s efforts to dehumanize them. Nevertheless, in an anti-colonial struggle, nationalism is not only a political doctrine, nationalism also has to translate itself to political, economic, and social consciousness. The pitfalls of national consciousness, Fanon noted, lie in not being translated into social and economic realization, that is, nationalism has to be a collective social movement against poverty, dehumanization, oppression, and injustice. As Fanon has prescribed, the mobilization of the masses, born in the anti-colonial struggle, must induce into the nation’s consciousness the ideas of a common cause, of a national destiny, and of a collective history, whereby the minimum demand is that “the last shall be the first” (1963, 2). MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE: COLONIAL AND THE POST-COLONIAL STATE

Political analysts of the African nation-state once assumed that Somalia was unique on the continent, since the nation and the state nearly overlapped. The state had legitimacy and was sure to be viable given that the nation virtually shared such common social and cultural traits as language, mode of economic production, and religion. Thus it was quite a revelation when in the 1990s the state disintegrated and the entire nation was overcome by a civil war of all against all. Contrary to popular belief, however, the “ethnic” strife that ensued did not begin with the collapse of the state. The present-day Somali predicament has its origins farther back, in the arrival of European settlers and the creation of the “colonial-state.” I argue that the imposition of the state—the colonial as well as the post-colonial variety—has irrevocably undermined and distorted Somalia’s “shared cultural and social values” (Samatar, 2001, 641). 181

WARSAME

Prior to colonialism, Somalia was an “acephalous society,” to use Hashim’s term for the Somali indigenous society (Hashim, 1997), whose peoples formed tight bonds based on extended family, kinship, and clan. The traditional and egalitarian nature of the pastoral life was well suited to provide the foundation for a vibrant political society of the twentieth century and beyond. What has happened instead, as Abdi observes, is that now “Somalia, in today’s interdependent, technologically advanced and selectively post-industrial world, is no longer a state, no longer a nation, no longer a nation-state” (1997, 34). This contemporary calamity is primarily the result of the imposition of colonial rule and, later on, the maladaptation of successive governments to the Western state model and their inability to nurture this social resource. THE COLONIAL-STATE(S)

If we had been interested enough…(and if the world had been sensible enough), all the Somalis…might have remained under our administration. But the world was not sensible enough, and we were not interested enough, and so the only part of Africa which is radically homogenous has been split into such parts as made Caesar’s Gual the problem and cockpit of Europe for the last two thousand years. And Somaliland will probably become a cockpit of East Africa. (Lord Renell Rodd, cited by Laitin & Samatar, 1987, 54) The crisis facing the contemporary Somali nation was set in motion by the peculiar character of colonial occupation in Somalia and by the nature of the resistance that the occupation provoked. The colonial state and its institutions have been the most significant interruption to Somalia’s way of life and social organization. By 1900 the Somali peninsula6 was divided five ways, “into British Somaliland, French Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, Ethiopian Somaliland (the Ogaadeen), and, for good measure, what came to be known as the Northern Frontier District of British Kenya” (Laitin & Samatar, 1987, 53). Consequently, the entire map of the Somali peninsula was redrawn and redefined to constitute new political structures, and “Somaliness become a hyphenated identity: British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, French Somaliland, Ethiopian Somaliland” (Nuraddin Farah, cited in Abdi, 1997, 40). The sheer force of colonialism shattered the social, economic, and political organization that had sustained the Somalia people for a millennium, irrecoverably damaging the entire social fabric of the Somali people. Socially and culturally, the Somali nation was divided for administrative purposes in a way that “mutilated kinship units into bewildering fragments … [and] cut off entire clans from their traditional sources of water and/or pasture for their herds” (Hashim, 1997, 49). Political exploitation came in the form of centralizing what was otherwise a decentralized, traditional political structure by vesting all effective power in the hands of colonial administrators and appointed local chiefs. This process emasculated indigenous political organization, based on family ties and kinship relations, by weakening traditional obligations and 182

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

responsibilities. Economic ascendancy was administered by commercializing the subsistence economy, particularly livestock, that had been the material backbone of the traditional way of live: The imposition of colonial capitalism ushered the Somali economy into relations of production based on commodification and monetarization of livestock. The relations inherent in the process of production and distribution changed radically in the new environment of world capitalism. This process gradually weakened Somali society as there was increased exploitation of the pastoral producer by a powerful mercantile class of traders. (Hashim, 1997, xiii) All in all, the pervasive nature of the colonial conquest was not lost on the average Somali. The ferocity of land-grabbing and vigor of exploitation not only perplexed the Somalis, but they perceived it “in apocalyptic terms,” as conveyed by these words of the Somali poet Faarah Nuur: The British, the Ethiopians, and the Italians are squabbling. / The country is snatched and divided by whosoever is stronger. / The country is sold piece by piece without our knowledge. / And for me, all this is the Teeth of the Last Days! (cited in Latin & Samatar, 1987, 54) POST-COLONIAL STATE

The post-colonial Somali state was in effect not the supplanter but the successor to colonial regimes. Rather than restoring traditional social and political structures, the newly independent state preserved state structures that the colonizer had founded. This adherence to the colonial blueprint, Abdi (1997) explains, resulted in the material and social disparities between regions, ethnic groups, and social classes, further undermining national unity and de-legitimizing state authority. After the unification in the 1960s of the former colonies of Italian Somalia and British Somaliland, post-independent Somalia had a promising start to ‘modern’ statehood. However, the euphoria of national independence was short-lived, as the new Somali civilian state was deposed in 1969 by military coup d’etat, beginning a twenty-year reign of a repressive dictatorial regime. The state, with its ruthless use of power and tactics of sheer force, imposed a strong central authority that did not take into account the needs of its pastoral society. The harsh brutality of state policies and the callous manipulation of clan politics to divide and rule “created an environment in which unrestrained violence flourished” (Hashim, 1997, 13). In addition, the self-serving state politics did not foster citizens but only further alienated and disenfranchised the people. In reaction, the populace engaged in violence that not only matched the state’s sheer force but surpassed it, as was demonstrated after the total collapse of the Somali nation-sate in 1991. The contemporary Somali region—for it can no longer be called a nation or a state—is afflicted by insecurity, violence, disease, and famine. While conflicts and war have been invariable occurrences of the Somali state from its inception, the 183

WARSAME

civil war that broke out in 1991 is the longest and might very well be the darkest chapter of the Somali nation’s history. The civil unrest, which ultimately threw the nation into a state of anarchy, began in the late 1800s, peaked in the mid- to late 1900s, and continues in the twenty-first century. As Bryden and Steiner note, what “began as a liberation struggle” against colonial domination and later against “the dictatorial rule and corruption of the military regime degenerated first into a murderous pattern of internecine aggression and reprisals, and later into a seemingly aimless stalemate between clan-based militia groups, punctuated only by irregular and unconvincing claims to supremacy by one leader or another” (1997, 2). The descent into a “failed state” began long before the nation disintegrated into rival domestic factions and the state lost authoritative legitimacy. The violent overthrow of the military regime in 1991 was only the culmination of a longterm breakdown of law and order and the total collapse of state institutions. It would be an understatement to say that the Somali nation has been shaped and affected by colonial and post-colonial states. Somalia was never truly a state to its pastoral-based and egalitarian nation but simply a relic of colonialism and pawn between Cold War superpowers. For the majority of the Somali nation, the state only represented violence, alienation, and subjugation. Thus, the dynamics of the Somali ‘failed state’ and the consequent humanitarian crises can only be contextualized by analyzing the historic and developmental misalignment of nation and state within the Somali peninsula. VIOLENCE: IN SEARCH OF IMMANENT OUTCOMES

In Wretched of the Earth, Fanon stresses that the struggle for power in colonized states can only be resolved through violent struggle because colonial states were created and maintained by power relations that utilized violence and threat of violence. Thus, violence has an indispensable utility in reversing these power relations. Yet it is more than a simple shifting of power or a taking of a position of responsibility, for the process of colonization has been more than one of simple physical domination. Instead, as Fanon notes, this physical domination has been accompanied by a well-executed psychological offensive on the history, culture, and sense of being of the colonized. Fanon prescribes that the multifaceted nature of violence on the colonized can only be countered through the process of decolonization—which is always “a violent phenomenon.” Decolonization, Fanon theorizes, is a “cleansing force” that “frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction,” leaving him fearless while restoring his humanity (Fanon, 1963, 94). Fanon provides us with an understanding of violence based on the specificities of the colonial encounter, stressing that the process of colonialism was realized by violence and that the colonial world was a “Manichean” one in which the colonized is reduced to permanent inferior status. Paraphrasing Fanon, Gendzier expresses his notion of the cathartic effect of violence that “decolonization could only occur successfully where the colonized not only seized their freedom through the liberation struggle, but participated in violent action to individually expunge themselves of the colonial heritage of inferiority and submission” (1974, 198). 184

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

Violence, according to Fanon, is not intended to provide some sort of irrational catharsis, on the contrary, it is precisely this violence that brings to light the full meaning intended in Fanon’s idea of the “creative necessity” of violence to cleanse and detoxify the colonized. This violence, he says, signifies the struggle against “all forms of exploitation and alienation of man” (Gibson, 2003, 107). What this violence does for the colonized is to cleanse their minds, spirits, and bodies of the vestiges of colonialism—its “terrible and obdurate effects” (Makura, 2005, 2). This detoxification produces “the kind of tabula rasa which from the outset defines decolonization” (Fanon, 1963, 1). In this traumatic process the oppressed regain their dignity and humanity, since it infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power: The “thing” colonized becomes a man through the very process of violent struggle. (2) Violence, as an organized force, is the absolute form of praxis for oppressed peoples, on an individual level, it is the indispensable means by which revolution is experienced. The individual violent act is part of one’s transformation, for it implies the participation of the natural struggle for freedom (Mostern 1994, 264). Thus, communal violence is a strategy for not only engaging people in their own freedom, but more importantly, in reconstructing human relations and so producing a new society: The violence which governed the ordering of the colonial world, which tirelessly punctuated the destruction of indigenous social fabric, and demolished unchecked the system of reference of country’s economic, lifestyles, and modes of dress, this same violence will be vindicated and appropriated when, taking history into their own hands, the colonized swarm into the forbidden cities. To blow the colonial world into smithereens is henceforth a clear image within the grasp and imagination of every colonized subject. (Fanon, 1963, 6) Yet Fanon appreciated the inherent contradiction of violence. On the one hand, violence is an essential step in the search for a humanized world. On the other hand, it is not violence that would establish a world free of exploitation, since for such a world violence must be discarded when decolonization occurs, for violence is dehumanizing. Moreover, Fanon saw that violence exploits. Gibson, exploring Fanon’s views on the effects of violence, finds that colonialism was (and still is) a condition that encourages the internalization of violence and assures the internal redirection of frustration and aggression of the colonized populations: “Part of the political project of creating the native is to channel the violent reaction to colonial violence inward, to areas where this disruptive energy can be ‘released’ without affecting the colonial set-up or status quo [and] the native’s energy is directed or rather deflected toward the self ” (2003, 103). That is why the hegemonic discourse of ‘failed state’ is so effective in mystifying the nature and root causes of violence within societies. The ‘containment’ policy notwithstanding, this narrative is staged around the African state and nation, “Africanizing” the crisis, and so deflects responsibility and thus accountability. 185

WARSAME

PROBLEMATIZING (ANTI-COLONIAL) NATIONALISM

Theories that attempt to explain African nationalism are preoccupied with what Asha Sen calls “Euro-centric privileging of modular socialism” (1996, 3). Accordingly, African civilization began with European contact7 and African philosophies and modes of thought are byproducts of European culture, from which they extrapolate the European underpinning of African nationalism. Moreover, such philosophies and ways of thinking pay particular attention to the role of the colonial state in creating and cementing African nationalities. Scholars of African nationalism, however, refute the assumption that African nationalism and nationformation is a distorted reflection of European precedent. They instead emphasize the unique quality of the African context and the incomparability of this ideology in Europe and Africa. Markakis, for example, accepts the existence of a dichotomy that differentiates European and African nationalism (1999). African nationalism, Markakis says, is concerned with decolonization, independence, and development, whereas European nationalism aspires to power and prestige. In addition, European ideas regarding the nation-state have little or no basis in African social and cultural conditions or political traditions (Neuberger, 2000). The process of state-formation in Europe has long been based on the acknowledgement by ethnic communities of their common history and cultural identities. In Africa, however, this process was inverted and essentially diachronic. As Chatterjee (1993) points out, colonial states were created within artificial borders that hardly coincided with the limits of traditional politics. Social affinities or long-standing feuds and various communities whose cultures, traditions, and languages differ considerably were brought together, irrespective of their historical past, for the purposes of facilitating colonial administration. Often such colonial ‘curving’ led to situations where boundaries divided homogenous ethnic communities. The colonial state became the ‘proto state’ within whose limits African peoples had to forge a new sense of belonging and solidarity, creating a complex problem of national integration that today is the most serious political challenge to the survival of African nations. In Nationalism and the State (1982), John Breuilly writes that “nationalism is, above all else, about politics [and] politics is about power. Power in the modern world is about the control of the state, the central task, therefore, is to relate nationalism to the objective of obtaining and using state power” (1). There are states in Africa and there is nationalism, and an established historical relationship exists between the two. Markakis (1999) claims that there is nothing obscure or mystifying in this relationship, as proposed when Smith (1995) asks “[d]oes nationalism create nations or do nations form the matrix and seedbed of nationalism?” (3). The modern state appeared in Africa first in its colonial guise, when it became the incubator of a nationalism whose aim was to obtain and use the power of state created by colonialism. Nation building became a priority for the African nationalist, thus confirming Gellner’s view that “nationalism invents nations where they do not exist” (1983, 169). The aim of this nationalism, Gendizier contends, has since been defined variously and contradictorily “as a wholesale return to the 186

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

‘organic’ values and assumptions of pre-colonial Africa, the progress of Africa out of the dark ages of traditionalism into the era of modern technology, the hegemony of an ethnic group over the others, or the transcendence of these very ethnic differences as a way of countering the imperialist depredations of Europe in Africa” (1974, 198). The general characterization of nationalism in Africa as a reaction of the colonial situation, however, is misleading because it exaggerates the scope of the nationalist movement and draws attention from its social composition to the character and the nature of the post-colonial state. In the process of decolonization, the objectives of the nationalistic fervor were limited and concrete. Far from seeking to dismantle the ‘colonial state’, nationalists aimed to safeguard it. This explains the preservation of the economic structures created by colonialism, as well as endurance of the state structures that the colonizer founded. Adherence to the colonial blueprint meant that the material and social disparities between regions, ethnic groups, and social classes (such disparities had appeared during the colonial period) subsequently widened and became a source of political conflict that undermined all nationalist regimes in Africa, leading to the collapse of such states as Somalia. Fanon had anticipated the coopting of the rhetoric of national consciousness by the nationalist elite that today is attributed to unfinished nature of decolonization. He wrote, Instead of being the coordinated crystallization of the people’s innermost aspirations, instead of being the most tangible, immediate product of popular mobilization, national consciousness is nothing but a crude, empty, fragile shell…. As we shall see, such shortcomings and dangers derive historically from the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie [and its] apathy, its mediocrity, and its deeply cosmopolitan mentality. (Fanon, 1963, 97–98) The emptiness and superficiality of such nationalism has resulted in comatose consciousness and dormant decolonization. (MIS)APPROPRIATING SOOMALINIMO8

In July 1960, the northern and southern parts of the area merged to form the independent Somali Republic. Independence, in the words of an anonymous Somali poet, has proved a “bitter harvest” for the Somali people (Laitin & Samatar, 1987, 67). The newly independent republic faced a broad agenda of problems that required immediate attention. Chief among them was the repatriation of Somalis living in the three regions of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. The creation of the new state excluded those Somali nationals living in the other three mini-lands under foreign rule. The situation thus confronting the newly formed Somali state in 1960 is best described in the Prime Minister Abdirashid’s inaugural speech: Our misfortunate is that our neighboring countries, with whom, like the rest of Africa, we seek to promote constructive and harmonious relations, are not our neighbors. Our neighbors are our Somali kinsmen whose citizenship has been falsified by indiscriminate boundary “arrangements”. They have to move across artificial frontiers to their pasturelands. They occupy the same terrain 187

WARSAME

and pursue the same pastoral economy as ourselves. We speak the same language. We share the same creed, the same culture, and the same traditions. How can we regard our brothers as foreigners? Of course we all have a strong and very natural desire to be united. The first step was taken in 1960 when the Somali Protectorate was united with Somalia. This act was not an act of “colonialism’ or “expansionism or “annexation”. It was a positive contribution to peace and unity in Africa. (cited by Lewis 1980, 178–179) Thus, in addition to the formidable task of nation building common to African states in the wake of independence, the Somalis have inherited what they see as a dismembered nation, three of the essential constituent parts are missing: Ogaadeen, NFD, and Djibouti. One of the features of Somali society that strikes the eye of even the most casual observer is the homogeneity of Somali culture. In contrast to the vast majority of independent African states whose challenge has been to forge out a plethora of ethnic groups a common national consciousness within boundaries departed colonials, the Somalis essentially constitute a one-nationality state (Laitin & Samatar, 1987). As such, one of the nation’s major post-independence predicaments has been, ironically, to create a larger state whose boundaries embrace those of the entire nation. What imbues Somalis with a sense of common national identity, notwithstanding a history of nearly one hundred years of colonial partition, is their long-term occupation of nearly 400,000 square miles of arid semi-desert in the eastern Horn of Africa: a common language, a way of life that is predominantly pastoral, a shared poetic corpus, a common political culture, a profound Islamic heritage, and a deeply held belief that nearly all Somalis descend from the same source and are therefore drawn together by emotive bonds of kinship and genealogical ties (Lewis, 2004). This fervent sense of belonging to a distinct national community with a common heritage and common destiny is rooted in a widespread Somali belief that all Somalis descend from a common founding father, the mythical Samaale to whom the overwhelming majority of Somalis trace their genealogical origin. According to Sheik-Abdi (1977), Somali nationalism inculcates in Somali consciousness a sense of distinct community with a common past and a common destiny. That sense of national self-awareness fuels Somali patriotism and the yearning for national political unification. Furthermore, Hashim (1997) maintains that reinforcing the powerful appeal of Somali nationalism is the reality of economic necessity. The Somalis live in a desert environment where centuries of experimentation and social adaptation have established a fragile balance between people and their natural environment. Any disruption of that balance can trigger economic, political, and social instability and set off a crisis. The fragile interdependence fostered by both Somalia’s ecology and Somali ethnic/nationalistic particularism compels Somalis into an almost obsessive concern with the fate of their “lost brethren.” This concern underlies the central fact of the Somali society, although organized on the basis of clanship and kinship ties, the Somalis nevertheless are drawn together by highly “emotive supratribal bonds” of nationhood (Laitin & Samatar, 1987, 68).

188

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

Early proponents of Somali nationalism, led by such prominent figures as Sayyid Mohammed Abdille Hassan,9 showed acute sensitivity to this social cohesion, recognizing the need for cultural sovereignty and the preservation of human dignity. Those early nationalists galvanized the Somalis by appealing to their common culture and creed, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the pitfalls of foreign rule. Sayyid, commenting in verse on the path taken by Somali leaders, wrote that had they followed his lead, They would not have consented to babble in a beastly tongue. / They would not have carried back-breaking loads for the Hindus in Berbera. / Nor would their shoulders be marked by running sores from the burdensome load. / Nor would they have envied those who husband only worthless coins. / Or coveted what belongs to the Hell-bound infidels. (translated by Sheik-Abdi, 1977,660) In his famous letter to the colonial powers, he strips their motivation for rule in Africa to one of greed: I have no forts, no houses. / I have no cultivated fields, no silver or gold for you to take. / You gained no benefit by killing my men and my country is of no good to you. / The country is jungle. / If you want wood and stone, you can get them in plenty. / There are also many anti-heaps. / The sun is very hot. / All you get from me is war. / If you wish peace, go away from my country to your own. (cited in Laitin & Samatar 1987,58) Such poetry, as the medium of national consciousness, was not only a formidable weapon of resistance and propaganda against colonialists, but it also had such strong cultural and religious dimensions that it transcended existing tribal rivalries among the Somali. Accordingly, in the late nineteenth century, the Somalis, though not under a single political system, were culturally and religiously united. While the concept of Somali ‘national consciousness’, based on an awareness of homogeneity, preceded the development of modern nationalism, Lewis (2004) nevertheless argues that there was no tradition of political unity, no statehood based on Somali culture. Thus nationalism formed from nation to state rather than from state to nation, as happened in most African nations. What modern nationalism did was to politicize an existing cultural phenomenon where, as Lewis observes, “cultural nationalism became political nationalism” (493). The “ethno-cultural” nationalism or traditionalism that sought a vision of national grandeur in the mind of the Somali peoples, as Mahadallah notes, was limited “in terms of source and inspiration as anti-colonialism” (1998, 29). Characterizing both “isms” as “counter” movements, Mahadallah, however, articulates the distinction between traditionalism and anti-colonialism: By traditionalism we mean popular attachment to ancient institutions and social ideals, whose perpetuation people feel necessary for their survival. [On the other hand,] anti-colonial nationalism refers to a popular reaction to the destructive effects of colonialism—i.e. political oppression, economic exploitation, and cultural domination. (29–30, footnote)

189

WARSAME

Cultural homogeneity might have inspired Somali nationalists to pursue aspirations of “Greater Somalia,” however, as Deng (1996) has observed colonialism, as it did elsewhere in Africa, was the fundamental framework from which modern Somali nationalism developed. The Somali nationalism of recent times, Lewis says, “tends to be segmentary in character, as the clan divisions of the nation tend to unify reactively in response to external pressures, and to disassociate when these disappear” (2004, 493). This tendency to segmentation was exemplified first during the struggle for independence and later, after the collapse of the state, where diaspora communities are vested in sentiments of nationalism and the idea of Somaliness. Yet the segmentary lineage system is where self-identification is constructed and a sense of belonging is cultivated, but has been misappropriated and has become a “divisive deadly undertow” that has hindered national unity and nation building. As Lewis describes elsewhere: Genealogy therefore constitutes the heart of the Somali social system and is the basis of the Somali collective predilection to internal fissions and internecine sectionary conflicts as well as of the unity of thought and action among Somalis…. The result is a society so integrated that its members regard one another as siblings, cousins, and kin, but also so riven with clannish fission and factionalism that political instability is the society’s normative characteristics. (1980, 30–31) This system of the Somali genealogy which organizes Somali society on the basis of clans, lineages, and families and regulated by traditional norms, is on one hand the basis of personal and social identity. On the other hand, such a system is the source of the unity of thought and action among Somalis. That idea of a central genealogy has been reproduced and manipulated first to facilitate colonial control on a divide and rule basis and later “exploited conflictually by [the postindependent state] and subsequently by the warlords in the current conflict” (Deng, 1996, 53). Such proclamations assume that there is an absence of traditional political institution or that Somali political culture is solely marked by conflict. Categorically refuting the fundamentality of segmentary clannism as the Somali way of life, Samatar (1992) was one of the earliest scholars to challenge “the centrality of kinship in understanding contemporary politics and its tendency towards fragmentation and anarchy” (626). In the haste to pathologize the Somali cultural basis, the essentialist thesis stressed by Lewis (among others) does not account as to why the very system that has sustained Somalis for millennia has not lead to “nihilistic fratricide” until now (629). In addition, Samatar believes that the logic of that misguided thesis underscores the dynamics of political and economic colonial imposition while negating the fabric of Somali society, or Xeer: In pre-colonial Somali tradition a set of rules and norms, known as Xeer, was socially constructed to safeguard security and social justice within and among Somali communities…. [Since] pre-colonial Somalia was an egalitarian society…[w]hat gave this Xeer staying power in the absence of centralized coercive machinery was the voluntarism associated with the absolute 190

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

necessity of relying on one’s labour/livestock rather than exploiting others. Such an ethic prevented and restrained centrifugal tendencies in the lineage system. This means that lineage in/of itself does not have any inherent causal power, and that its effects on community relations are contingent rather than necessary. (Samatar, 1992, 630–631) Over the last century, colonial and post-colonial state impositions have mutated this organized indigenous agency with far-reaching implications for the past, present, and future progress of Somali society and its nation-building efforts. This misappropriation of Soomalinimo in recent history has materialized into Fanon’s prophecy of young nations “switching back from nation to ethnicity and from state to tribe” (Fanon, 1963, 97). Nevertheless, the ideology of a common descent will continue to make it agonizingly hard for the Somalis that cut off large segments of Somali-inhibited territories from future Somali nation-state. The idea that some kin must live, against their will, outside of the national fold simply goes against the very grain of the Somalis’ ethnic and corporate world view. The sense of loss and calamity occasioned by the fracturing of the Somali collective existence is cogently expressed in the continuity of lamentation by Somalis everywhere for a united Somalia. Somalia: A Nation in Waiting, a State in the Making As the nation drifts in perpetual statelessness, as it awaits the promises of a state to be fulfilled, the vital concern at the forefront of consciousness is not what is (or was) Somali nationalism, but rather who are the Somali nationalists today: the ‘Clan demagogues’ whose dogma is clan supremacy or the ‘modern intellectuals’, who champion Western hegemony, ‘the ideologues’ who want to fabricate a new social order or the ‘nihilists’ determined to expunge traditional heritages from our consciousness, the ‘Arabized patriots’ who spill domestic blood for global culture wars or the diasporic ‘reactionaries’, whispering Somalinimo from afar? In the years since the collapse of the state, that the supposedly homogenous Somali identity has been shown to be a spurious national identity, based on what one scholar has called the “pastoralist ideology” (Simon, cited in Hashim, 1997, 56). Nearly twenty years after the collapse of the state, Somalia remains the only country in the world without a state. Somalia is still in dire need of national leaders who can build a state that is aligned with the needs of its nation. At this juncture, and for the future, who among them espouses the possibility of a nationalism that will bring Somalia out of its wretchedness? No matter who, the nation deserves the realization of a nationalism that decolonizes and restores its humanity. Fanon’s conception of absolute decolonization is a process derived from the understanding that colonialism, as an inherently violent encounter, and can only be defeated with “greater violence.” Fanon’s thesis of “authentic decolonization” towards “new humanism,” as expressed in his conceptualization of catharsis, is envisaged in this violence. For Somalia, this violence is a painful redefinition of what constitutes true decolonization, can this violence provide insight into the process of Somalia’s detoxification from exploitation, oppression and dehumanization? 191

WARSAME

The epic of anti-colonial struggle in post-independent Somalia is fading. The colonial-state is dying with a torrent of blood and tears. The era of nationalism, with its promises of modernity, nation building, and progress, has ended, its promises sadly unfulfilled. The battle against oppression and exploitation run along the tracks of nationalism, however, as Taiwo observes, “true decolonization is less about creating new nations than it is about creating new modes of being human” (1996, 259). We now know the “pitfalls” of anti-colonial nationalism: it lacked any humanistic ideology that “infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity” (Fanon, 1963, 2). Independence that is “granted,” Fanon bemoaned, does not constitute decolonization, for “in its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives” (3). True decolonization is a complete and decisive victory over exploitation, oppression, and dehumanization. Despite Fanon’s evocation of the “creative necessity” of violence, Gibson stresses that violence is not an ahistoric act, and as such it can neither be allowed to speak for itself nor to have its own meaning. In order to give meaning to the current “crisis,” violence has to be contextualized and its significance articulated. What the seemingly senseless violence in Somalia signifies is a paroxysm attending the process of authentic decolonization of both Somalia and Africa. It expresses decolonization as a total rupture from the vestiges of colonial oppression. We must understand this violence to mean that, at long last, Somalia is at the cusp of Fanon’s vision of a new humanism, prefigured on a world free of exploitation. CONCLUSION: THE PEDAGOGY OF RECLAMATION

The well-scripted and internationally staged narrative of the Somali ‘failed state’ has de facto constituted a new type of colonialism, one re-organized along lines of psychological oppression and domination. For more than two decades the Somali nation has solely been defined and judged by the absence of a centralized political state apparatus, rather than by the historical existence of people in the Horn of Africa. The collapse of the state has nullified the Somali people’s membership as a nation in a universe of self-determining nation-states. Despite the attempt to equate state-failure with the death of the nation, Somali people’s strength and resilience to survive and thrive has perplexed the international community. With their consequence of dehumanization, colonialism and re-organized colonialism have been conquests that imposed such wretchedness upon the Somali people that a pedagogy of re-humanization is now required. Fortunately, Fanon has left us with the hope that “the crisis-prone and oppressed population will achieve a social consciousness” (1963, 12). However, to achieve such a consciousness necessitates the whole work of pedagogy, because pedagogy is ultimately about the reclamation of being human. The most significant achievement for this re-acquaintance, Mostern proposes, requires the restoration of a people’s dignity by a re-evaluation of their history and cultural legacy, which has thus far been exposed to a systemic misinterpretation and debasement (1994). Revisiting history in no way, however, constitutes a regression to a past world of tribal villagers, but rather generates a dynamic society of the present and of the future 192

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”

through the very struggle for humanity. The recovery of one’s negated history and devalued cultural heritages, Fanon would urge, should only be concerned with present and future social transformation. This dynamic interaction between past, present, and future must, of course, entail what Jeyifo describes as “an embrace of the past and the future: a moving outward and forward toward the possibilities of tomorrow as well as a moving inward and backward in time to repossess inherent wisdoms of yesterday” (2007, 138, emphasis added). Envisaging the past is the way forward to self-definition and self-recovery. Now, more than ever, it is imperative to remember Fanon, to invoke his premonitions in order to inaugurate our own philosophical possibilities, to construct our own theories and narratives. Perhaps the most significant legacy Fanon has left us is that “each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity” (1963, 145). Our destiny is decolonization, it is all but inevitable. The betrayal lies in not being cognizant of the process and not deciding on a course of action. Beyond survival, we must be concerned with the praxis that will lead to societal transformation to new humanism. Nevertheless, this praxis is not divorced from Soomalinimo—the principle that binds us, our way of life and our philosophy of being. And so in this moment of history, for a “nation in turmoil” and the “failed state” of Somalia—at this time that Fanon would call a “moment of emergence”—what should be our guiding principle out of this wretchedness staged around our land, our culture and our history? How do we resume our interrupted humanity and fulfill our destiny? If we are mindful of the “trials and tribulations” of our recent history, then we must endeavor to resist the revival of a nationalism devoid of ideology but which assumes pseudo-power “under the watchful eye” of imperialism, and we must also resist the empty rhetoric of a nationalism that “unites one tribe against another.” Instead, Soomalinimo that evokes the truth about who we were, who we are and who are becoming. And so “the last shall be first.” NOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

Fanon uses the term “crude, empty shell” on the chapter “Trails and Tribulations of National Consciousness” of Wretched of the Earth to describe national consciousness at the time of the independent movements in Africa. Some of the cities and towns in Southern Somalia where most of the devastation and atrocities of the civil war had taken place. These references appear everywhere in Western media’s popular imagery and sentiments of Africa, in general, and Somalia in particular. Although the civil unrest in Somalia has been in process for several years and many Somalis fled the country and sought asylum to other countries, near and far, the world only became cognizant of the ‘crisis’ in 1991 when the Western media started broadcasting the darkest moments of the history of the Somali people. The discussion draws upon N. Gibson’s interpretation of Fanon’s understanding and description of hegemony in Black Skin and The Wretched of the Earth The peninsula is a semi-arid land of 400,000 plus square miles extending from the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean westward into the Ogaden in present-day Ethiopia, northward into what is now Djibouti, and southward into northeast Kenya—the Northern Frontier District.

193

WARSAME 7

8

9

Colonial conquest, powerfully expressed by Fanon’s Manicheanism, is atemporal. History is the history of colonization: “This land was created by us says the colonizer, who see themselves as the unceasing cause.” Soomalinimo is a term that constitutes Somali people’s sense of nationalism and/or national consciousness. Sayyid Mohammed Abdille Hassan (April 7, 1856–December 21, 1920) was Somalia’s religious and nationalist leader during the height of colonialism (he was called the “Mad Mullah” by the British). For 20 years he led armed resistance against the British, Italian, and Ethiopian forces in Somalia. Some regard Mohammed Abdullah Hassan as a pioneer of Somali nationalism.

REFERENCES Abdi, A. A. (1997). The rise and fall of Somali nationalism: From traditional society to fragile nationhood to post-state “fiefdoms.” Horn of Africa Journal, 15(1–4), 34–80. Abdi, A. A. (1998). Education in Somalia: History, destruction, and calls for reconstruction. Comparative Education, 34(3), 327–340. Abdi, A. A. (1999). Identity formations and deformations in South Africa: A historical and contemporary overview. Journal of Black Studies, 30(2), 147–163. Bay, A. (2008). Somalia: Planet’s foremost “failed state.” In Strategy Page. Retrieved November 3, 2008, from http://www.strategypage.com/on_point/20020110.aspx Breuilly, J. (1982). Nationalism and the state. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bryden, M., & Steiner, M. I. (1998). Between peace and war: Somali women on the eve of the 21st century. African women for peace series. UNIFEM: Nairobi. Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and post-colonial histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Deng, F. M. (1996). Identity in Africa’s internal conflicts. The American Behavioral Scientist, 40(1), 46–788. Dolek, C. (2008, April 29). The myth of “failed state” in Africa: A question on atomistic social ontology? Journal of Turkish Weekly. Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://www.globalpolicy.org/ nations/sovereing/failed/2008/0429.myth.htm Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Franck, T. M. (1996). Clan and superclan: Loyalty, identity and community in law and practice. American Journal of International Law, 90(3), 359–383. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gendzier, I. L. (1974). Frantz Fanon: A critical study. New York: Vintage Books. Gibson, N. C. (2003). Fanon: The postcolonial imagination. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Groves, A. (2008, June 23). Explaining African state “failure”: Does the state make the nation or does the nation make the State? e-International Relations. Retrieved November 3, 2008, http://www.eir.info/?p=495 Hashim, A. B. (1997). The fallen state: Dissonance, dictatorship, and death in Somalia. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Jeyifo, B. (2007). An African cultural modernity: Achebe, Fanon, Cabral, and the philosophy of decolonization. Socialism and Democracy, 21(3), 125–141. Jones, P. W. (2005). The United Nations and education: multilateralism, and globalisation. New York: RoutlegeFalmer. Kebede, M. (2001). The rehabilitation of violence and the violence of rehabilitation: Fanon and colonialism. Journal of Black Studies, 31(5), 539–562. Laitin, D. D., & Samatar, S. S. (1987). Somalia: Nation in search of a state. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lewis, I. M. (2004). Visible and invisible differences: The Somali paradox. Africa, 74(4), 489–516. Lewis, I. M. (1980). A modern history of Somalia: Nation and state in the Horn of Africa. New York: Longman. 194

“THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST” Mahadallah, H. O. (1998). The origins and essence of Somali nationalism. PhD diss., Tulane University, 1997. Abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International, 58 (11A): 4429. Retrieved from September 29, 2008, from http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/ fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:9816775 Makuru, S. J. (2005). Violence and liberation: Fanon’s political philosophy of humanization in the historical context of racism and colonialism. PhD diss., Boston College, 2005. Dissertation Abstracts International, 66 (03A):1025. Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://gateway.proquest.com/ openurl?url_ver=Z39.882004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_ dat=xri:pqdiss:3167363 Markakis, J. (1999). Nationalism and ethnicity in the Horn of Africa. In P. Yeros (Ed.), Ethnicity and nationalism in Africa: Constructivist reflections and contemporary politics. New York: Macmillan Press. Mazrui, A. A. (1995). The blood of experience. World Policy Journal, 12(1), 28–35. Mostern, K. (1994). Decolonization as learning: Practice and pedagogy in Franz Fanon’s revolutionary narrative. In H. A. Giroux & P. McLaren (Eds.), Between borders: Pedagogy and the politics of cultural studies. New York and London: Routledge. Neuberger, B. (2000). The Western nation-sate in African perceptions of nation-building. In J. Hutchinson & A. D. Smith (Eds.), Nationalism: Critical concepts in political science (Vol. 3). London: Routledge. Novelli, M., & Robertson, S. (2007). The politicization of development aid to education. Retrieved January 23, 2008, from www.bris.ac.uk/education/academicStaff/edslr/publication/ politics_of_disaster Pinar, W. F. (2008). The subjective violence of decolonization. In A. A. Abdi & G. Richardson (Eds.), Decolonizing democratic education: Trans-disciplinary dialogues (pp. 35–45). Rotterdam: Sense Publishing. Samatar, A. I. (2003, December). Review of A modern history of the Somali: Nation and state in the Horn of Africa (I. M. Lewis, Ed.). H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8552 Samatar, A. I. (2001). Somali reconstruction and local initiative: Amoud University. World Development, 29(4), 641–56. Samatar, A. I. (1992). Destruction of state and society in Somalia: Beyond the tribal convention. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 30(4), 625–641. Sen, A. (1996). Towards a national culture? India and its diasporas. PhD diss., Purdue University, 1997. Dissertation Abstracts International, 57(11A), 4885. Retrieved December 3, 2008, from http:// gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation &res_dat=xri:pqdiss& rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:9713598 Sheik-Abdi, A. (1977). Somali nationalism: Its origins and future. Journal of Modern African Studies, 15(4), 657–665. Smith, A. D. (1995). Nations and nationalism in a global era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Taiwo, O. (1996). On the misadventures of national consciousness: A retrospect on Franz Fanon’s gift of prophecy. In L. R. Gordon, T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R. T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

195

NEIL ORLOWSKY

12. THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE Israel, Palestine, and Frantz Fanon

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the world has borne witness to increased blood shed and political turmoil in the Middle East, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the almost daily coverage of Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military offenses. In a historical context, these conflicts are nothing new, though the current turmoil has erupted into a geopolitical nightmare. In essence, the Israel-Palestine conflict is both a physical and psychological one, creeping further into a continuously growing political spectrum which has now seen actors beyond its borders weighing in. Israel and its surrounding occupied territories remains a space sharply divided though rooted in a colonial context, and it is in this context which has forced the region to become a world “cut in two” as famously labelled by the Martinique born psychiatrist Frantz Fanon in his book, The Wretched of the Earth. As Fanon’s words rang true in 1961 referencing the struggle Algerians endured under colonial France, so do they today when attempting to understand the violence, carnage, and hate that exists between Israelis and Palestinians. Fanon’s theories on violence and nationalism inform us of the intricacies peace has on state violence, the role oppression plays in terrorism versus the process of decolonization, and how the establishment of a new humanism through political violence is used as an agent of change and reclamation of national, cultural, and political liberation and identification. In his tenure as a psychiatrist, Fanon developed groundbreaking theories on the relationship between state violence and native resistance as a response to structural oppression, and from this, has been influential in the development of terrorist thought. Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth discusses violence as an omnipresent structural form, advocating the need for an even greater violent response to the violence of colonial oppression, implying that “only through violence could true individual and group expression be found.” For Fanon violence was the unifying force to gain respect with both the self and the other (Franks, 2006, 34). Situating Fanon in a modern context of oppression one better understands the applicability and legitimization of his theories in an era of post colonial hegemony. Stopping short of wearing Fanon as an all encompassing mask to fully comprehend the Israel-Palestine conflict, discussions around the historical roots of it are understood through the colonial history Fanon himself encountered during his stay G.J. Sefa Dei, Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education, 197–226. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ORLOWSKY

in Algeria. Putting his theories on violence in such a context, aid in re-reading him, further engaging conversations about his work, not as anarchistic, but as justifiably and proportionally violent against the “others” aggression. With this being key, I find myself further drawn into the blame game. Is the situation in Israel really that bad? Having been to Israel on four previous occasions, one of which I spent time teaching there, I realized that what I have been feed via media outlets is not how the country really is. This is not to say that there is not violence, terrorism, and soldiers at almost every turn, but it is to say that the violence is isolated and often a tourist, let alone the average Israeli, never encounters such carnage. It is the other side that I want to examine, the violence that surrounds the “occupied territories”1, the root causes for Palestinian uprisings, the rational behind suicide bombings, and the seemingly endless calls by militants for the “Death of Israel” and by a world protesting an end to “Israeli Apartheid.” In framing my attempts to understand the aforementioned questions, I seek not to understand peace, but rather why peace fails, and in efforts to understand this I further dissect the hundred year headache of the Middle East by situating it in a colonial context within Frantz Fanon’s views on violence and empowerment. Geopolitically, as battle lines are drawn and a call to arms is made, the world finds itself further divided into cultures and once ethnic groups, organizing themselves based on their differences as opposed to their similarities. As recognition of this becomes more cognizant, attempts to overcome disadvantages and the striving for equality and progress only become further oppressed by passive victimization and irresolvable grievances (Malik, 2002). Interpretations of Palestinian attacks have varied from a sympathetic construction of a people’s desperation, to a call for Israel to secure its security and survival by deconstructing the social milieu from which this aggression stems. Arguments against Israel equate their occupation to the same apartheid policies South Africans endured under their colonial rulers, while arguments against the Palestinian regime label Palestinian tactics as terroristic, barbarian and savage (Asad, 2006). As is further discussed, such Palestinian violence, labeled savage, becomes further legitimized through particular discursive procedures, namely the use of suicide bombers. The persistence of any culture within these “two worlds” and their striving attempts to establish/reclaim their identity amidst chaos and hate is an expression, in the very least, of nationhood, nationalism and an individual’s realization of self. When these ideals collide, the once land of milk and honey is left a landscape littered with “casualties of war”, an unavoidable bi-product often necessary in efforts to ensure independence (Fanon, 1961, 172). But once the body counts are tallied, are casualties on par, or are claims of a violation towards the principle of proportionality made, or even warranted? How do we define a soldier versus a civilian, a partisan versus a terrorist when a people are indoctrinated that all of “them” are oppressors, and all of “us” are oppressed? As violence escalates and peace accords are brokered and stretched to the brink of collapse, a call by the international community to uncover the roots of the problem ring louder than simple band-aid solutions. Questions like “whose independence?” are asked, “Who has cast the first stone, who should take blame, and whose land are they dying for, 198

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

crying over, and fighting to defend?” These questions are avoided because responsibility and retribution lies in their answers. Collective memories become diluted with inaccurate historical spins while stories entertained for public consumption become manufactured by left wing media interests. Band-aid solutions are the only compromise both sides are willing to sign on to. “Cultural denial… helps spur aggressive behaviour in the colonized. But this pattern of behaviour is a defensive reaction… Colonial exploitation increasingly force the colonized into open, organized rebellion. Gradually, imperceptibly, the need for a decisive confrontation imposes itself and is eventually felt by the great majority of the people. Tensions emerge… International events, the collapse of whole sections of colonial empires and the inherent contradictions of the colonial system stimulate and strengthen combatively, motivating and invigorating the national consciousness” (Fanon, 1961, 172). As tensions escalate and no viable cease fire is brokered, the world recites the same three arguments with no one listening to each other. One recounts the last five thousand years of Middle Eastern history and a biblical claim to the land, another recounts the last one hundred years of history, touching on the fall of the Ottoman Empire, rise of British control over their once colonial lands, the Aliya2 process, the Holocaust, the Nakba3 and the establishment of the State of Israel, while the last argument focuses only on recent escalations as if they are actions/reactions which are isolated from the larger whole. It is the latter argument which is pulled to the forefront of media attention, manufacturing a society around a myopic view of the region and the events they deem oppressive and rooted in terrorism and colonialism. As acts of Palestinian resistance become labeled as terrorism and “the modalities of the spectacle converge”, fear is produced and used as a means to flaunt “indifference to social justice while simultaneously working to distance audiences from any sense of critical engagement” (Giroux, 2006, 25). What the world fails to fully accept is that one cannot derive a peaceful resolution for the present without understanding the (historical) events that became the catalyst for regional tension. Though recent acts of “oppression” and “terrorism” are affected by those events, those (historical) events in turn are not the only reasons for present events unfolding. “(Terrorism) cannot stand alone as simply a general instance of horror since it exists within a larger set of discourses and narratives that are part of an ongoing cultural memory and extended legacy of both Jewish and Palestinian history.” This violence is encompassed as part of the collective “memories that both inform and are activated by witnessing further acts and counter-acts” (Giroux, 2006, 61). Situated in Fanon’s conception of violence and security, this paper also examines the existence of, and escalating tension between Israel and the Palestinian territory, as well as the need for one side to engage in violence as the basis for a reclamation of identity, and the other side to offset this violence through perceivably oppressive means as the basis of ensuring its own national security. As Mahmood Mamdani (2004) writes, “Security trumps rights” and for Israel, this security often comes at the expense of groups stigmatized as terrorists (Mamdani, 199

ORLOWSKY

2004, 217). For the Palestinians, violence and liberation are a means to remove the current colonial state, as they perceive Israel to be. However, the Palestinians, as shall be examined, may in turn force their new state, if one is successfully created apart from Israel, to resort back to the previous colonial apparatus they fought against in order to function (Violence, 2000). Judged against the backdrop of the Middle East and the previous sixty years of violence, one must delve deeper into the situation (e.g., putting it in context, the psychological state of both sides, third party influence, etc.) understanding how these current events, from a political and pedagogical standpoint, relate to the work of Frantz Fanon. This task questions the difference between the spiral of violence in Israel, and the colonial violence Fanon wrote of in Algeria. “Put in other words, is violence… a mark of change or is it of continuity? Is half a century not time enough… to reconsider its reverence for violence?” (Fowale, 2008). With this in mind, the following pages suggest and clarify many of these questions under the classic interpretative categories of colonial studies and the work of Fanon. At the same time however, it must be addressed that Fanon’s revolutionary theories were based on the Algerian struggle against colonial France and not to all former colonies which acquired their freedom through violent struggle, let alone to every colonial struggle “which Fanon apparently intended” (Perinbam, 1982, 2–3). SETTING THE STAGE FOR FANON: THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT

A jumping off point in understanding the roots of conflict calls for an examination of the structural relationship created by the behavior of the different players and how they naturally interact in the given society (Franks, 2006, 69). The last hundred years have been rattled with countless attempts, both regionally and internationally, to broker a two-state solution in hopes of stopping the growing Middle East violence and creating an independent Palestinian state alongside the U.N. recognized State of Israel (Israel: The Alternative, 2003). Though some academics and former cabinet ministers have advocated a less popular one-state solution, whereby all of Israel, the Gaza Strip and West Bank would become a binational state with equal rights for all (Tilley, 2005), contention towards this stems from the level of credibility each side and their respective political parties see in the other’s upholding of basic commitments. Within recent months, the on again off again conflict between the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas militants has generated a wide variety of opinions which serves to highlight the deep divisions existing not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also amongst themselves and their political allies. For this paper, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is understood at the state level as a conflict between the Palestinian people, the established Arab states in the region, and the State of Israel. However “the Palestinians as a nonstate group are viewed as either the proxy agents of the Arab states or as an Israeli internal security issue” (Franks, 2006, 26). As tensions grow, the world seems quick to condemn one side while not offering support, financially and militarily, towards the other. As the conflict further raises the level of violence to insurmountable proportions, casualties have no longer been restricted to the military, with a 200

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

large loss of civilian life on both sides growing. The most recent rift was introduced in 2006 when Palestinians became fractured by a conflict between the two major factions: Fatah, the largest party, and Hamas, a terrorist organization4, resulting in a split of power, Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza strip. Though Fatah has been proactive in more recent years to quell the violence and broker a peace, state-sharing deal with Israel, Hamas, in the words of the U.N. Security Council, “has proved problematic” (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003, United States Department of State, 2006, Council of the European Union, 2005). This label has negated any credible chance of Hamas negotiating within any international forum, and recent attempts to engage in peace deals with Hamas directly, have quickly fallen to the way side by their unwavering anti-Israel agenda. With both sides ultimately calling for peace, June 2008 saw a six-month Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement come into effect (Israel Agrees to Truce, 2008), but history has taught us that nothing, not even peace, is forever. As both sides continued to engage each other, Israel announced in December 2008 that it remained open to the idea of extending the cease-fire, provided Hamas adhered to its conditions (Sofer, 2008). Hamas, angered by continual Israeli border closures and the restrictions put on Palestinian movement in and out of the region, ended the cease-fire agreement with a barrage of rocket attacks against the Israeli town of Sderot, a small Negev town, located only a few miles from the Gaza border (Harel, Issacharoff & Ravid, 2008). Locked in a spiral of blame and in response to Hamas’ claims, Israel announced that due to the constant rocket attacks, Hamas had failed to show signs of cracking down on terror and weapons smuggling, thus border closures and movement restrictions were needed (Israeli Jets, 2008). In the words of Fanon and through the eyes of the Palestinians, their “national culture is born out of the womb of the revolution and takes shape through self-awareness” (Sharawy, 2003). The crucial task facing this region is not peace, but rather how we as the global village and allies of humanity reintroduce man in his totality, into the world, a Manichean world, a compartimalized world, an interdependent world. Furthermore, “There is a widespread belief that it is necessary to use violence against the agents of colonial regimes… and there could be no shift in the structure of power ‘without the use of liberating violence by the nationalist forces, to answer the criminal violence of the agents of imperialism’ (Cabral, 1969, 159). For Frantz Fanon a suppressed people could only undo the effects of colonialism by revolution: an integral part of the process of the regeneration of man and society, of self-liberation and rebirth” (Blackey, 1974, 193, Nkemdirim, 1977, 78). In efforts to understand whether or not this situation can realistically ever come to an end, we turn to Fanon’s chapters within The Wretched of the Earth for a prescription and diagnosis: is there a need for violence? Where does weakness lie in spontaneous rebellion? What are the trials and tribulations of a national consciousness? And how, through violence, can a national culture be created.

201

ORLOWSKY

ON VIOLENCE

In grounding his theory on violence, Fanon refers to one’s usurping of power by quoting biblical passages in this connection, “the last shall be first and the first last” (Fanon, 1961, 37). For this to be possible Fanon is clear in his conviction, “the struggle for power in colonized states will be resolved only through violent struggle. Because the colonized states were created and are maintained by the use of violence or the threat of violence (whether physiological, physical, or both), it is necessary that it will take violence to reverse these power relations” (Fairchild, 1994, 192). “Fanon examined the culture of colonialism and concluded that within this cultural framework violence was a natural state. He suggested that the constant atmosphere of violence inspired only greater violence, which then became a cultural norm” (Franks, 2006, 72). If this is the case, as it appears to be, not only in the Middle East but in other regions once organized under colonization, it is understandable that the process of decolonization is a violent event. What comes to legitimize violence and how is it embodied? Violence and decolonization are key concepts, and accordingly three events mark this process: the violent encounter, the meeting of two oppositional forces, and a neo-humanistic transformation. Fanon indicates that cohabitation between the oppressed and oppressor is extremely difficult, if not impossible, because for peaceful cohabitation to exist, issues of power are replaced with mutual respect. With this absent, violence takes place during the colonial process as one group tries to oppress while the other defends. At the initial encounter with the “natives”, colonists use force to take over the land and establish power and authority, in doing so they (the colonizer) create tension between them and the “others” (the colonized). Fanon writes that any interaction between the two very different cultures “infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity” (Fanon, 1961, 37), illustrating the vast differences between the two people in all aspects of life. This encounter proves difficult for both sides to communicate, and thus violence proves to be the only act understood by all. For Fanon, the endorsement of violence “Is given within the context of an ethical position that requires the person who has decided to resist armed domination by force to recognise the full humanity of the enemy before acting. Even here, where people are perhaps most tempted to collapse into bad faith – killing people is not easy, objectification is very attractive in this context – Fanon insists on the utmost ethical responsibility. If we must recognise the full humanity of the enemy before attacking and possibly killing him then our violence is hardly likely to become gratuitous and we are only likely to carry it out, when to fail to do, would result in more inhumanity” (Pithouse, 2009). If every action breeds a further counter-action/reaction, what happens when the reaction is further suppressed? What happens when those who rally to topple the colonial regime fail or are out matched? Does oppression deepen? From the beginning, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes rooted in competing Jewish and Arab nationalistic aspirations for the region, conflicting promises by the British as 202

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

stipulated in both the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence5 and the Balfour Declaration of 19176, as well as several outbreaks of violence between Jewish and Arab residents in the Palestinian region7. Though most prominently rooted in British colonialism following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the escalation of the conflict has seen the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, “Palestine” came under the control of the United Kingdom through the Sykes-Picot Agreement8 and a League of Nations mandate which stated it was “placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home” (League of Nations, 1922). While overseeing the transition of power and brokering a land sharing agreement between the Palestinian inhabitants and the new Jewish settlers who the British were implanting as right of return to their “biblical homeland”, conflicting promises were made between Arab and Jewish groups which caused an already brewing tension to erupted into physical violence, namely the 1920-1 Palestine riots, the 1929 Hebron massacre, and the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. With violence already on the rise and now aggression turning on the British, attempts to defuse this quagmire were made by introducing The Peel Commission9 and The White Paper10. With the tensions escalating in the region and Britain becoming further involved in World War II, the decolonization and reintegration of people into Palestine fell on the lap of the newly established United Nations. In 1947, the U.N. approved the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine (known as United Nations General Assembly Resolution 18111) into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. It was under this resolution that Jerusalem was to be designated a corpus separatum12 administered by the U.N. in efforts to create equal and peaceful co-habitation amongst both groups and to further avoid conflict over its status (Best, 2003). However from this, “the Palestinians consider themselves in a colonial conflict against an occupier and oppressor and view Zionism like colonialism, as a culture of oppression in Palestine, which like colonialism, will eventually pass to the next form. The natural recourse to this oppression is towards deadly conflict and political violence” (Franks, 2006, 170). According to Fanon, during a period of post-colonization, the lives of the natives change drastically. Here they no longer are capable of living the way that they want, but rather are forced to live in accordance to the colonial rules set out by their now oppressors. As Israel flourished, Palestinians and their neighbouring Arab nations became enraged, calling for the nation’s destruction and aggressively threatening war. Believing that they (Israel) had the casus belli to preemptively strike because of such threats, the end results (e.g., 1948 Arab-Israel War) only fuelled the fire when the U.N. estimated some eighty percent of the Arab population were expelled from the country – thus remaining a major point of contention (Part 3: Partition, 2002, Two Hundred and Seventh, 1949, Reveron and Murer, 2006). As Israel continued to successfully fend off neighbouring attacks in a David versus Goliath show down, further suppression of their “attackers” were performed. Neighbouring Arab belief was that Israel profited off those they “oppressed” and “expelled”, and as they (Israelis) lived comfortable lives in rich and prosperous areas, the Palestinians believed that they, as the colonized, were 203

ORLOWSKY

forced to live in small, cramped, famished sectors. As Fanon writes, the colonized are envious of the colonists and feel that “their cramped world can only be changed by violence” (Fanon, 1961, 3). “Having borne witness to the unspeakable suffering inflicted by the French Army, he (Fanon) came to believe that the revolution contained the seeds of redemption, not only for Algeria but for the entire colonial world” (Shatz, 2001). Accordingly, the colonized world is a world divided in two, on one side the oppressed, and on the other, the soldiers and colonizer who ensure the oppressed do not rise up. In the eyes of the Palestinians, the Israelis “signified syncretically the death of indigenous society, cultural lethargy, and petricifcation of the individual” (Fanon, 1961, 50). For Fanon, violence was a means in which the body (encompassing race, religion, and land) comes to be legitimized. Fanon furthered this by expressing that “the singularity of the colonial context lies in the fact that economic reality, inequality, and enormous disparities in lifestyle never manage to mask the human reality… it is clear that what divides the world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to” (Fanon, 1961, 5). In the Middle East there is a distinction between Israeli and Arab, Jewish and Muslim, and thus individuals are being treated accordingly? In his work, “Fanon underscores the manner in which ‘racialism’ has compartmentalized societies with marked inequality in all aspects of human existence. This inequality is maintained by the use of force, by the denial of education opportunities, and by the forced segregation in living arrangements” (Fairchild, 1994, 192). In the context of Israel, as peace deals are brokered with their once surrounding neighbouring enemies, they gained further control of what became known as “the occupied territories” borders, seaways and airspace. Through concessions made by both parties, Israel was able to obtain and hold onto a tight grip over Palestinian development making it clear who is a have and who is a have not. The longevity of this is ensured through military might or as Fanon would call it, “cannons and machines,” and it is this idea, coupled with the Palestinian perception that Israelis “stole” their land that they engage in violence to destroy the colonial sector, or as Fanon would have it, “burying it deep within the earth or bashing it from the territory” (Fanon, 1961, 6). The work of Halford Fairchild (1994), though pertaining to “Africans” can be applied here whereby he addresses this notion that, “It is more than a simple shifting of power or taking of positions of responsibility. The process of colonization has been more than the simple physical domination… Instead, this physical domination was accompanied by the planned psychological depreciation of one’s self-worth and of the culture and history” (Fairchild, 1961, 192). How does the violence escalate, and how does the oppressed native reclaim his self-worth? What tool does he have that counters the “cannons and machines” of the oppressor? Is there any better tool then human body? Are suicide bombings a viable alternative? Any attempt to understand the drive behind Palestinian suicide bombing and the perceivably irrational tactics terrorist engage in cannot be made from the sidelines as rational thought is fundamentally different from the reality of 204

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

survival. In the eyes of the Western world, the Palestinian militants, through tactics of terror, are quintessentially evil and “impervious to ethics, representing not only the absence of values but also the negation of values… in other words, absolute evil” (Fanon, 1961, 6). Contradicting this notion, Anthony Gerteiny (2007) proposes that one is not born evil and that “violence is only one of the many natural means of human intercourse, a given nationality or ethnic group is not anymore predisposed to engage in it than any other, there are no inherently ‘evil’ people, evil is an environmental and circumstantial hazard” (Gerteiny, 2007, 64). However, whether it is good or evil, the question remains security, and in efforts of ensuring national security, how do you fight an enemy willing to die in a kamikaze like fashion? “The existence of an armed struggle is indicative that the people are determined to put their faith only in violent methods. The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decide to express themselves with force” (Fanon, 1961, 42). When attempting to understand the tactical use of suicide bombings, one must not question why or how do you combat this type of offensive, rather what drives a person to undertake such an offensive? What conditions exist that breed such “extremism”, and is it in fact extremism at all? How does one begin to identify with the notion of suicide bombing and martyrdom as a viable form of violent resistance without questioning the conditions being imposed on the bombers themselves? Does the term ‘“Suicide bombing’ accurately capture either the practice or the motivation behind it… Does not the suicide bomber join both aspects of our humanity, particularly as it has been fashioned by political modernity, in that we are willing to subordinate life – both our own and that of the others – to objectives we consider higher than life? Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism” (Mamdani, 2004, 222). I have previously referred to terrorism and suicide bombings as irrational and as an act of extremism however, “the ‘suicide bombers,’ in the terrorism of national liberation… is undoubtedly fundamentally rational, proud, and sensitive individuals, dehumanized and emotionally crippled” by long standing and deeply rooted “humiliating subjugation” (Gerteiny, 2007, 30) much like that which was proposed by Mamdani, Gerteiny acknowledges that they (the suicide bombers) religiously believe that their sacrifice settles scores and restores their nation’s collective dignity. “Self-immolations to them may not always be an act of despair, it may be judged as a valiant act – a spiritually redemptive Calvary, a philosophical argument asserting the humanity they commonly share with their oppressor, but which is denied to them” (Gerteiny, 2007, 30). According to Fanon, a world strewn with restriction calls for the use of absolute violence, or self-sacrificing violence, to dismantle prohibitions, and the longevity of any lasting peace is directly linked to these restrictions. “Fanon observed how the violence of colonialism engendered violence in the native that, when expressed, prompted government retaliation that in turn fed an escalating spiral of violence and counter-violence” (Sonnleitner 205

ORLOWSKY

1987, 288). By engaging in such terroristic tactics, namely the use of as suicide bombings, acts of desperation are rooted in simple arithmetic: kill and maim as many (colonists) as possible while martyring oneself for the greater cause. Often the oppressed are not readily sensitive to the wisdom of “the end does not justify the means”, particularly in the case of Israel-Palestine, oppression is linked to national security and further dismantling tactics by Israel over Palestinian militants only constitutes the seeds of the savage reaction of the Palestinians. “Thus a vicious cycle of infernal and mutually terrorizing violence develops with seemingly no end in sight” (Gerteiny, 2007, 57). Though suicide is strictly prohibited by the Qur’an, Hezbollah leader Ayatollah Fadlallah13, offered a justification for suicide bombing, “that killing oneself as a means of killing an enemy ‘differs little from that of a soldier who fights and knows that in the end he will be killed’” (Charny, 2007, 27). Highlighting this, Talal Asad (2007) weighs in adding that what is remarkable about the use of suicide bombings is “how jurist of jihad have worked out elaborate circumventions of the absolute Qu’ranic prohibitions on suicide” (Asad, 2007, 73). On the other hand, Edward Said (1979) wrote that every conceivable opportunity to denounce suicide attacks as both immoral and counter-productive must be made. Unfortunately furthering reading of Said uncovers that in the context of Israel-Palestine, they (suicide bombers) are a local phenomenon in response to the abject persecution of the Palestinians by Israel. Quoted in The Politics of Anti-Semitism, Said writes that “suicide bombing is reprehensible but it is a direct and, in my opinion, a consciously programmed result of years of abuse, powerlessness and despair” (Charny, 2007, 27). Like Ayatollah Fadlallah, Gerteiny writes that, “Their action is not the result of an impulse or of despair, rather, it is akin to a heroic ‘suicidal’ military mission carried out in war, it is reasoned, conscious, calculated and courageously executed under order, with deep conviction and irrational courage. Such combined suicides-cum-massacres are carried out in ‘serene piety’ and in utter contempt for the hated “infidels” (Gerteiny, 2007, 31). Furthering Fanon’s “the ends always justified the means”, violent means are necessary in order to achieve certain goals whereas for the Palestinians, it is an “us or them” mentality which plays into the circular paradox of you harm me, I harm you, with no end in sight. Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1972), an Israel philosopher, argued that “occupation of another people’s land destroys the moral fiber of the conqueror, but that still does not mean that suicide bombing is justified in any way whatsoever” (Charny, 2007, 101). “The colonized exist in a state of tension created by their poor material and political status in relationship to the colonizer” (Fairchild, 1994, 193), and as a psychiatrist, Fanon understood that with each act of resistance and terrorism, the psychological stress becomes slightly relieved. “Certainly, the interminable domination of the Palestinians – and the complex of violent measures its sustenance requires – tragically produce the insane state of mind that motivates suicide bombers. Responsibility, therefore, for 206

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

the inhumane and barbaric tactics of the Palestinian kamikaze rests not only with perpetrators, but must be equally shared by Israel and its supporters” (Gerteiny, 2007, 65). For the Palestinian people, the most contentious issue is first and foremost their land, and the reclamation of their dignity from (perceivably) being forcibly exiled off their land and finding themselves in ghettoized refugee camps. In the eyes of many in the region, Palestinians are not equal to that of the Israelis, and equality will only come through their empowerment. Fanon writes that “the armed struggle mobilizes the people, i.e., pitches them in a single direction, from which there is no turning back” (Fanon, 1961, 50) thus there empowerment takes the form of violence, and as Israel engages in every Palestinian act of aggression, the Palestinians see that “the skin of the colonist is not worth more than the native’s.” It is through this blink that their revolutionary assurance is grounded and their struggle justified. The ends justify the means. As the struggle intensifies, they discover the power of the people and the extraordinary productiveness of neighbourhoods to mask the revolution within a collective interest. Unfortunately, this is seen time and again when militants bunker down in crowded streets and school yards (e.g., urban warfare), launch violent offences against their oppressor (e.g., suicide bombing in Israeli nightclubs and café’s, or the launching of rockets into Israeli towns) and in turn draw fire, forcing Israel then to destroy their surroundings, forcing collateral damage and using these deaths as fuel for public sympathy. With this defensive offence, innocent lives are lost, and the world condemns Israel’s aggressiveness, masking the larger picture, and blurring the actual events. If every time a checkpoint is loosened a rocket is launched or innocent (e.g., non-military personal) Israeli civilian lives are taken, eventually the grip will tighten and choke those in its grasp. With this grasp tightening, the Palestinians live more “dead then alive”, remembering broken dreams and histories long past. In their eyes, they will never cease to be anything more than the enemy, and with little to hold onto, they regroup and wait. As time passes and emotions escalate, internal fighting begins as the colonized remain locked in a state of angst (Shatz, 2001). In the geopolitical context of Palestine, internal conflicts between Hamas and Fatah have resulted in the two parties fighting to govern separate sections of the occupied territory. Accordingly, “The colonized subject is constantly on his guard… confronted with a world configured by the colonizer, the colonized subject is always presumed guilty… deep down the colonized subject acknowledges no authority. He is dominated but not domesticated. He is made to feel inferior, but by no means convinced of his inferiority. He patiently waits for the colonized to let his guard down and then jumps on him” (Fanon, 1961, 50). Jumping at the chance to draw the oppressor into a violent act, the oppressed cleanses himself, rids himself of his inferiority complex and passive and despairing attitudes of himself, while becoming his own liberator, paving his own path towards freedom (Fanon, 1961, 51). As the Palestinians continue to see the Israelis as occupiers, they are left with no outlet for their anger other than “bloodthirsty 207

ORLOWSKY

explosions.” As they become more aggressive at their attempts to free themselves from their colonizer, they turn their “symbolical killings and imaginary mass murders” into a justification to the “physiological response to internal tensions that, if not released externally, would result in a high occurrence of self-destructive forms of ‘mental pathology’” (Fanon, 1961 in Sonnleitner, 1987, 290). The relationship between the two sides is one built on tension. Through the constant living in fear of Palestinian violence, Israelis frequently remind the world that they are there to stay, enraging the Palestinian people to a point of periodic violent eruption. At no point is common sense a visible factor in this aggression. One side uses suicide bombers, the other uses missiles to kill gunmen. Both sides throw themselves muscle and soul into this battle, trying to convince themselves that these tactics will work. “This collective immersion in a fratricidal bloodbath suffices to mask the obstacles and postpone the inevitable alternative, the inevitable emergence of the armed struggle… so one of the ways the colonized subject releases his muscular tension is through the very real collective self-destruction… such behaviour represents a death wish in the face of danger, a suicidal conduct which reinforces the colonist’s existence and domination and reassures him that such men are not rational” (Fanon, 1961, 17–18). Rational solutions, though often not effective, still need to be applied to irrational situations, hence the constant attempts to broker peace deals, even after history has shown that each deal will be violated if one side has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Fanon states that, “the starving peasant is the exploited who very soon discovers that only violence pays” (Fanon, 1961, 23), and so third parties get involved and attempts to compromise are made. Before negotiations are made to end the violence, both sides begin to blame each other, excusing their savagery, and distancing themselves from heinous acts previously undertaken. Condemnation on both sides of the table is shared even though both sides excuse their behaviour. With deals temporarily reached, each side walks away remaining bound by the demands of their masses. One side wants their land back at any cost, while the other is willing to ensure its own national security by any means necessary. As artillery shelling temporarily lessens, the Palestinians remain economically dependant on those they detest as peace deals once again mask the larger picture. But where are the Palestinian allies whose battle drums sounded when Israel was first established, the same allies who invaded a U.N. recognized states and fanned the fire of war? Where are the Arab nations who condemned Egypt for signing peace treaties with Israel in 1979? It is often forgotten that Lebanon closed their borders to Palestinian refugees, though groups like Hezbollah came to their aid by shelling Israel from the north. Although Egypt and Jordan have also closed their borders to the Palestinians, the world is quick to condemn the (re)actions of Israel, but not willing to support those in which action was taken against (e.g., Hamas in the Gaza territory). Irrationality prevails, and the violence continues to erupt. Terms like slavery, oppression, and occupation become taglines for the plight of the Palestinians and battle drums roar. What is the demand, a Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel? As Hamas rose to power, their political rhetoric named 208

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

their homeland, gave an identity to the people, formulated demands, rallied their people behind their agenda and raised the hopes of an oppressed nation. But Hamas was not willing to actively dismantle their terrorist infrastructure and instead of open arms, had doors closed to them by a world not willing to negotiate with terrorists. “We are told that ‘he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behaviour, in a sense, he has to become hate’… Yet Fanon also admits that work stoppages, mass demonstration, and boycotts ‘allow the people to work off their energy’ without becoming hate via bloodthirsty explosions” (Fanon, 1953, 55:66 in Sonnleitner, 1987, 291). Words like “We Arabs” and “We Palestinians” are shouted in the streets hoping to gain support from their Arab neighbours, hoping to build partisanship and brotherhood, but none take them seriously. Many of their neighbours brokered peace treaties and by aligning themselves with a political party deemed a terrorist, would not be in their nation’s best interest. Thus constant speeches, rallies in the streets and the burning of effigies all further antagonize Israel and their allies, leaving them no option but to tighten their grip once again, defend their security, and close checkpoints. As crowds become violent masses, and attacks on Israel recur, martyrs are born and Israel is once again the “vicious” enemy. “The colonist who ‘knows’ the colonial subject realizes from several pointers that something is in the process of changing… silence falls when the oppressor approaches. Sometimes looks harden and attitudes and remarks are downright hostile… security is increased and troop reinforcements are dispatched… these demonstrations of military power do not intimidate the people... rather strengthen their aggressiveness” (Fanon, 1961, 32). In efforts to defuse the collection of violent masses, Israel negotiates the release of Palestinian prisoners in what they call “bargaining in good faith.” This is seen as a victory by the Palestinian people who feel that with further violent threats, victory is eminent. Fanon asks, “What in fact constitutes this violence?” The Palestinians “intuitively believe that their liberation must be achieved and can only be achieved by force” (Fanon, 1961, 33), and they use situations like the previous to further their belief. If the Oslo Accords and Camp David Summit both turn administrative responsibilities for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over to the Palestinian authority, then why do they still seek allies willing to support them in their endeavour for land? Though it is true that Israel continues to “occupy” these areas, no physical presence of Israeli occupation is there (e.g., soldiers and tanks), with the exception of Jewish settlements. Can freedom come while the colonizer is still present? Can the Palestinians have an independent Palestine while Israel is still on its soil? Questions like these need to be addressed for peace to be lasting. Is Israel willing to remove all barriers? Are the Palestinians militants willing to dismantle their terrorist infrastructure? Is the world ready to allow the Middle East to develop in the best interest of the Middle East and not in the oil interests of the Western World? Should blame be cast, even if blame turns to ones own ally? What the Palestinian authorities received in 1967 and what they want still differ, but why must an atmosphere of violence penetrate and dominate their national and 209

ORLOWSKY

international politics if they found that through peace accords, concession over land are made? The answer is simple, there is the belief that their (violent) policies (specifically Hamas) have taken them this far and in time, if they do not waiver from their tactics of terror, the entire State of Israel will be back in Palestinian hands. It is hard to imagine what life is actually like for these two groups without living amongst them. Images on television and Op-Ed pieces in international newspapers attempt to shed light on the issues, but in most cases become heavily slanted with bias agendas. The public is led to believe that you are either pro-Israel or pro-Arab, you can’t have it both ways. Though not ideal, “the violence and counter violence balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity” (Fanon, 1961, 46), and though it is hard to identify who cast the first metaphorical stone, violence amongst both spread in proportion to the violence exerted by both. The issue however is as best stated by Fanon himself whereby, “The colonist’s logic is unrelenting and one is only baffled by the counter logic of the colonized behaviour if one has remained out of touch with the colonists’ way of thinking. Once the colonized have opted for counter violence… reprisals automatically call for reprisals by the national forces. The outcome, however, is profoundly unequal, for machine gunning by planes or bombardments from navel vessels outweigh in horror and scope the response from the colonized” (Fanon, 1961, 47). Unfortunately, when it comes to reporting and condemnation, it is this isolated violence, counter violence and perceived disproportionate reprisal that draws the attention of the world, not what caused this violence initially. For Mamdani, “The use of disproportionate power can be sustained only in the absence of accountability and a guarantee of impunity” (Mamdani, 2004, 213), but this counter action is recounted, bitterly reported, and quoted when casting blame and counting bodies. Who is the “Wretched of the Earth”? For the Israelis it is the Palestinians, for the Palestinians, it is the Israelis, each liberating themselves through violence. Violence, for Fanon and as acted out in Israel and its “occupied territories” is central to producing and sustaining the relationship between each other. “It is not an irrational manifestation but belongs to the script of modernity and progress… it was a warning that… we need to think through the full implications of victims becoming killers” (Mamdani, 2004, 9). We turn to Fanon to understand violence and how the “native” turns to perpetrator, who kills to defend his humanity. For Fanon, today’s violence is manifested in yesterday’s victims, for the Jews it was the victimization of the Holocaust, for the Palestinians, it was the Nakba. “The proof of the native’s humanity consisted not in the willingness to kill settlers but in the willingness to risk his or her own life” (Mamdani, 2004, 10). GRANDEUR AND WEAKNESS OF SPONTANEITY

There are a series of axioms that have never, or at least appear to have never been considered by U.N. Resolution 181. Firstly, if one is to uproot a people, even if this was not actually the case, one should not be surprised by any reactionary behaviour 210

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

by those uprooted. Fanon discusses this whereby he identifies the peasant masses (most often forcibly relocated) as being the least politically conscious, having a lack of discipline, fits of rage and often succumb to fits of depression, all of which are ingredients for anarchy. Secondly, if these people are uprooted and forced to relocate into towns not equipped with proper sanitation, electricity, or telephone services, they become destitute by overpopulation and a social structure which is foreign to them, forcing them to remain static with no outlets for defusing their emotion. This “clinging to a rigid context, can of course sporadically generate episodes of religious fanaticism” (Fanon, 1961, 67). The peasant who is now forced to live among an urban population often becomes distrustful of the city dwellers, whose traditions seem more like the colonizer than the native, more heretic, traitor and collaborator then citizen of the nation. With displacement fresh in the mind and enraged by the turn of events, feelings of animosity turn to thoughts of revolution. The relocated peasant questions how they are going to reclaim their land, and anger towards the colonizer turns to anyone who even resembles the colonizer. In this study, Palestinian anger is directed towards the Jewish settlers, not the British government who implanted them initially. As tensions escalate, violence is further directed to anyone in the state, and eventually anyone, internationally, who is either from that state or supporter of the state. In order to gain support for the revolution, and “confronted with an urban party which is beginning to ‘embody the will of the nation’ and constitute a threat to the colonial regime, factions are born, and sympathy turns to newly established parties based along tribal lines” (Fanon, 1961, 70). As parties emerge, they collectively fight to regain that which has been perceivably taken. According to Fanon, the process of decolonization occurs at the moment of colonization. As parties gain growing support, the occupier is content to favour the one party which seems to be the most reasonable, while excluding others from the negotiating table. Understanding the danger in this alignment with the oppressor, the now favoured party attempts to oust, denounce, or outlaw their rivals, and leaving them no option, the now powerless and politically voiceless opposition party takes refuge at the periphery of the interior. Fanon however was adamantly against, “parties that cling to power by declaring other parties illegal… A genuinely revolutionary party should seek to lead by exercising leadership as a result of prestige or hegemony, rather than naked power” (Adams, 1993, 502). While regrouping at the outer echelons of the towns, the ousted party turns to the masses, using the peasant’s primitive, uneducated or poorly educated background to gain further support through the spinning of stories, omission of facts, or use of propaganda and scapegoating to build support. Such “radicals pose the problem of the state at the expense of democracy in society” (Mamdani, 2004, 38). According to Bernard Nkemdirim (1977), “political upheavals, whether rebellions, revolutions, or guerrilla warfare – occur because there is a communication network which encourages political participation by members and helps shape their political consciousness” (Nkemdirim, 1977, 79). At the same time however, this involvement of the masses, especially those easily influenced, needs to be controlled and guided. While their involvement in the revolution may seem 211

ORLOWSKY

therapeutic, Fanon believed that the native’s involvement was only politically useful when it was intentionally planned, not anarchistic and chaotic. Additionally there was a need to decipher between coordinated action or aimless violence, and strategic violence against the oppressive bodies. “Total brutality… if not immediately combated, invariably leads to the defeat of the movement within a few weeks” (Fanon, 1961, 147 in Sonnleitner, 1987, 293). If the peasantry is more militant because of emotional or reactionary behaviour, then they prove the most useful and the most easily manipulated by parties in search of reclaiming that which was taken, however useless because of their reactionary behaviour and undisciplined modes of warfare. This notion allows faction groups to draw people into an internal conflict, linking the now administrative government to that of colonial collaborators. Additionally, this scenario disorients the Israel-Palestine and Fatah-Hamas relations and continues to pose the greatest problem for Israel and for securing a viable peace deal because of the ease of manipulation by Hamas over the masses. Hamas uses these people to sacrifice themselves, calling for them to take back their land and to be soldiers of the struggle. Stories of reclaiming national and individual pride through acts of martyrdom create soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves in efforts to create a better life for their family. Fanon argues in efforts to reclaim a “unified identity, the group thrives on violence causing further conflict. This violence becomes the new source empowerment drawing members of the group into a further cohesive element (Franks, 2006, 83). Here the question is not why such violent radicalism emerged in Palestinian politics, but rather how it evolved from proposal to practice. “Fundamentalism is a resistance to modernity, its critics point out that fundamentalism is as modern as modernity – that it is actually a response to modernity.” Both Israeli’s and Palestinians seek an explanation for the use of political violence and terrorism, while in fact they both are illustrating the differing “sides of the same culturalist argument, which downplays the political encounter that I think is central to understanding political terrorism” (Mamdani, 2004, 61). As Britain felt the wrath of the people in this region during the partition of the Middle East pre-1948, so does Israel today. As the flames of revolution are lit and fanned by faction groups, a once stance of national security taken by Israel shows signs of aggressive dismantling of their aggressor – Hamas. The tanks and planes do not achieve success, but rather bring further barrages of rockets. With violence increasing, “governmental acts of repression precipitated the very rebellion they were ostensibly designed to crush” (Nkemdirim, 1977, 86). As both sides incur damage, internal and external voices speak out about the gravity of the situation. Though drawing conclusions around Africa, the work of Richard Gibson (1972) points out that, “The great rebellions came precisely at the point when the new contenders for power could no longer rely on the ‘normal’ or routine political process to change the operation of their respective governments. By mounting massive guerrilla warfare…were/are hoping to be able to shift the focus of power, and consequently to redefine the criteria of membership within their politics… oppression, victimization, and objective conditions of deprivation and exploitation by minority regimes have helped to fashion a political situation 212

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

which was tense at best and politically explosive at worst. No doubt they have contributed to the rebellious temper of large segments of the population” (Gibson, 1972, 87). As the Palestinians see that they can now resist, even minimalistically, their dreams of a state clean of the oppressor is realized. With this realization, an infiltration on behalf of all Palestinians is waged. As signs of resistance turn to acts of perceived terrorism, the war escalates “into the serenity and grandiloquence of the cities” (Fanon, 1961, 80) of Israel. Without tanks and any sound military force, the Palestinians resort to terrorism as a means to instill fear amongst civilians caused in part on the unpredictability of their attacks, and whose aim to terrify and intimidate civilians is designed to put some civilian groups in fear (specifically Israeli settlers). As Paul Gilbert (1994) writes, “this is not a tactic discernible in all or even most attacks involving heavy casualties among civilians, rather, they are designed to stretch the resources and determination of the state which has a duty to protect its civilians” (Gilbert, 1994, p. 19). In the periphery of the occupation is where the resistance gains steam. As acts of terrorism are undertaken and subsequently increase, troops push deeper into occupied territories in efforts to root out the cause. This act forces the resistance to dig deeper into the bowels of the camps, and deeper into the psyche of the people. As the Palestinian militants see that Israel reacts quicker then they did through political collaboration with a Palestinian administration and the international community (including some Arab states), the resistance loses further faith in the overall political process, and further faith is put into violent revolutionary acts. Every militant Palestinian is called on to arm themselves and take back their land or be suffocated by the “Israeli war machine.” As further militant groups are organized, specifically Hamas, there is one clear doctrine, “We must exist!” As Fanon puts it, “There is no program, no discourse, there are no resolutions, no factions. The problem is clear-cut: The foreigners must leave” (Fanon, 1961, 83). Politics now turns to war, the farmer becomes a militant, the militant becomes a fighter, and everyone is willing to sacrifice their own life for that of their brother, their cause and their nation. “Once the upraising has begun the colonial forces regroup, reorganize and adapt their fighting tactics to the type of insurrection… the enemy launches an attack and concentrates large numbers of troops at the precise locations. Local groups are swiftly overwhelmed, and all the more so because they tend to tackle the fighting head on. The optimism of the initial phase had made them intrepid, even rash” (Fanon, 1961, 84). Unless one can control irrationality and shift reactionary fighting to strategic engagement, one will constantly fail in their offensive. This form of insurrection fills the recent history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but unfortunately, in contradiction to Fanon, this doctrine of impetuous spontaneity does not waver, but rather is ramped up. Suicide bombings coupled with hijackings, hijackings coupled with Qassam and Katucha rockets, rockets coupled with kidnappings and executions, the tactics of terror never end. One thing does differ from their previous attempts to 213

ORLOWSKY

oust the oppressor, militant wings now turn their sights on politics once again in efforts to gather international support and recognition of their struggle. Unfortunately, the militant history and current agendas further label these groups as terrorists, and instead of gaining sympathy from the international community, gain further condemnation. In efforts to reduce the condemnation from the global community, social networks are instituted by these groups, schools and hospitals are built in a sign of good faith, and a once militant discourse is reworded to sound more empathetic and progressive, though their message remains. If the militant soldier fighting for independence believes that overnight a nation can be built and a people empowered, he loses himself in his dreams. If he calls upon the victims of the struggle to wage war, he fails when cathartic feelings set in. “One does not sustain a war… for hatred and racism to triumph. Racism, hatred, resentment, and ‘the legitimate desire for revenge’ alone cannot nurture a war of liberation… this passionate outburst disintegrates if it is left to feed on itself” (Fanon, 1961, 89). Hate is not an agenda for peace, nor is violent resistance. The colonized who took up arms for this reason quickly falls at the hands of the enemy as irrationality and emotion guide them. One’s animalistic tendencies allow for sacrifice, but how many can be sacrificed before there is no one left to fill a nationstate? It is only once the leaders of the insurrection realize this, that true peace can be brokered and maintained. The truth of the matter is that with a lack of political organization due to the deprivation of a true democratic society, the Palestinians are prone to spontaneous uprisings, particularly in the densely populated urban centers. It is in situations like these, which Fanon so aptly wrote about (Sharawy, 2003). At the same time however, Israel has a role to play as well. “The great showdown is not for today or for tomorrow. In fact it began on the very first day, and will not end with the demise of the enemy but quite simply when the latter has come to realize, for a number of reasons, that it is in his interest to terminate the struggle” (Fanon, 1961, 91). THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The Israel-Palestine conflict is fundamentally an old war about the rights of one group, set against an established state’s demand for national security (Gilbert, 2003, 13). History of the area shows that with time, not only the neighbouring countries, but even nationals within the occupied territories begin to align themselves with the policies of Israel. This has been seen in recent years with deals brokered with Egypt and Jordan, as well as with the late PLO Leader Yasser Arafat during both the Oslo Peace Process and the Camp David Summit, and in more recent years with Fatah working towards a sustainable independent Palestinian state. With the election of Hamas in the Gaza strip, and conflict growing between Hamas and Fatah on the two fronts, Palestinian nationalism is being pulled to two extremes: one calling for the eradication of Israel, and one willing to negotiate with them. According to Fanon “Unity, a vague term, but nevertheless one to which the men and women… passionately attached and whose operative function was put to incredible pressure on colonialism, reveals its true face and crumbles into 214

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

regionalism within the same national reality” (Fanon, 1961, 106), though this split and regression towards regionalism, national consciousness begins to fragment, a development which proves detrimental to the peace process as a whole, and the creation of a further unified Palestine. Furthering this, with Israel controlling all movement in and out of the area, so too do they control the economic stability and growth. With few Arab nations financially supporting the Palestinian people, the economy has developed outside of their control. The economic restrictions put in place by Israel has further created obstacles for all levels of the Palestinian government as the administration is forced to address issues of poverty, hunger, and violent revolutionary ideals, but limited as to how to go about it. The method most often enacted by the administration is the constant proclamation that all Palestinian are equally united under their oppression by Israel. However, in the eyes of political opposition, faction or military parties rise to power in order to topple the administration it sees as collaborators with the enemy. “Economically powerless, unable to establish coherent social relations based on the principal of class domination, one chooses what seems to be the easiest solution, the single party system” (Fanon, 1961, 110). Though the Palestinian territories do have two parties, each are equally dominant in its respective area. This domination over its masses does not inspire “confidence, assuring the fears of its citizens and cradling them with its power and discretion, the State, on the contrary, imposes itself in a spectacular manner, flaunts its authority… making it clear to its citizens they are in constant danger” (Fanon, 1961, 111). What must be addressed is the fear generated not amongst each other, but rather against Israel. Fanon continues whereby this form of government, aptly a dictatorship (not so much the case in Palestine though signs of this do exist) shows no signs of longevity because of having no or limited control over its own economic development, thus cannot appropriately provide basic services for its people and forces them to turn to their “economic controller” for a further handout, which in turn forces them to sink deeper into a dominance relationship and even further into stagnation. In order to regress from this stagnation, the administration turns the masses against the controller, forcing a boost in nationalism and erasing the memory from the people that they are in fact pawns in political strategisation, and once again, “the economic channels of the young state become irreversibly mired in a neo-colonial system.” If this continues, if the Palestinian territory cannot find independent methods of producing capital (which it cannot since Israel has ensured its economic dominance over the region), their entire fiscal budget will continue to be funded by a third party, making it harder to fully gain independence. How can full independence for the Palestinian people come about? With the help of Israel and their neighbouring Arab states, the Palestinian territory needs to produce a strong, educated workforce who will act in the best interests of the state and not for their own financial advancement. Too often, politically educated people are entrusted to oversee these interests which, as Fanon writes, “Contributed to the triumph of a dictatorship of civil servants, trained by the former metropolis, who quickly proved incapable of thinking in terms of the nation as a whole. These civil servants swiftly begin to sabotage the national 215

ORLOWSKY

economy and dismantle the national institutions, while corruption, fraud, misappropriation of goods, and black market trafficking set in” (Fanon, 1961, 123). Additionally, the education must be grounded in politicizing the people, to understand the trials and tribulations that have been and will be endured if this fails, as well as an understanding as to why the nation as a whole needs to work for the people and by the people. As long as the nation remains influenced by their oppressor, they continue to reproduce in the following generations the same values they themselves deemed oppressive. Only if this is fully understood, only if there is a conscious effort made on the part of the government and its neighbours to recognize their existence as viable, will the state succeed. The once ethnic, tribal and religious allies need to be dismantled, ethnic groups need to act in the best interest of the whole, not simply to put representative faces in parliament. Educational institutes need to be created to teach, not why we hate the oppressor, but rather why we can succeed, highlighting their achievements and importance. Fanon does not prescribe anarchy, rather he calls for the use of calculated violence in efforts to change the norm. Once a stage of relative equality is established, or at the very least a sense of being recognized is grounded, Fanon further prescribes the need to educate and engage in a dialogue to evolve. If this is not done, if people continue to vote based on religious affiliation or racial/ethnic sameness, they create a secret dictatorship amongst their own people, one that will work against the mandate and the will of the people. This could in turn lead to ethnic empire building, the passing of power to family members, the creation of class based governments and further regionalism and separatism. “For the people the party is not the authority but the organization whereby they, the people, exert their authority and will. The less confusion there is, the less duality of powers, the more the party can fulfill its role as guide and the more it will become a decisive guarantee for the people” (Fanon, 1961, 128). There is a need to collectively progress, not simply progress the will of a few. Fanon cautions the doer not to be weary of the fact that time will be lost in educating the masses, because through that educational commitment, the nation ensures success. By throwing the entire population into an independent state without teaching them what that means or how to ensure the longevity of their independence, means that a people’s consciousness will remain “rudimentary, primary, and opaque” (Fanon, 1961, 135), when in reality they need to be humanized. To humanize the populace, elected officials need to express that everything depends on the people, if the nation stagnates, it is because of the people, if it succeeds then they, as a people, should fully benefit. Power, empowerment, and the recognition of self, come from the structure of the state, its validity in the community and a remembrance of the people’s struggle. It is the responsibility of the state to ensure the creation of new humanistic values, but in turn it is the people who must create the power structure, not the structure which will recreate man. There are no clean hands in this struggle, whether one has martyred themselves or harboured an aggressor, the people must be made to realize that their independence was through their actions. 216

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

This collective national memory of the struggle towards independence is key in rallying the masses and creating a collective national identity. Though nationalism is in excess, an individual’s sense of self may be depreciated. How does a nation shift from the idea that citizens must be physically self-sacrificed, to a paradigm of selfdignity and a sense of national freedom? Fanon writes that “people quickly realized that it was not only the occupier who threatened their dignity… their dignity and sovereignty were exact equivalents” (Fanon, 1961, 139). Once independence comes about, the once fighter must now become the builder, the motivator and progressor. It is he who must enlighten the disenchanted, elevate the consciousness of those who have been born into, or who bare the physical and/or psychological scars of the fight. He who has once fought must take up arms only to defend, not conquer or invade. As Fanon writes, “the army is never a school for war, but a school for civics and politics” (Fanon, 1961, x), and a nation created through struggle, must not seek violent retribution from their once aggressors but rather educate their masses on their nation, their identity, and their history. Through this education, the nation shifts from the now established national consciousness to one of social and political consciousness. “No attempt must be made to encase man, for it is his destiny to be free” (Fanon, 1953, 230) and Fanon evokes the needs to emancipate and develop the nation whereby the creation or reintegration of a national language and development of a unique culture become the foundations of individuality and democratization. Finally there is the need to “establish social freedom, whereby man is liberated by liberating society, thus linking freedom, equality, and development” (Adams, 1993, 507). The now independent nation must tackle issues of poverty, illiteracy, and hunger, whether internally or through the help of third party intervention. Additionally, there needs to be the creation of programs to enrich lives and encourage social interaction on a national and soon an international level, otherwise there is a realization that their efforts were futile and the masses will return to tribalism, aggressiveness and anarchy. ON NATIONAL CULTURE

With conflict in the Middle East increasing almost daily, condemnation comes quick against Israel when they launch offensives within the occupied territories, which in turn further engage the Palestinians into violent reprisal. The notion of who started it, or who is acting in self-defence never soundly enters discussion, but rather attention is drawn to the magnitude of, and the proportionality of reprisal. What is often negated in this debate is the nature of the current struggle and how preceding generations have resisted previous accords paving the way for new conflicts. This paper has not set out to place blame or innocence on one side versus the other, but rather I have attempted to shed light on why these sides cannot resolve their conflict. In more recent years, the international community has called for Israel to both lighten and cease their “attacks” against the Palestinian people and Hamas specifically, but at the same time has placed blame for the current waves of violence on Hamas directly. But this should come as no surprise to the Western World that Hamas would engage in such violence because it is by these 217

ORLOWSKY

means that they (Hamas) have been declared terrorists. In the eyes of many in the west, and founded in recent calls for Jihad, coupled with values founded in colonialism, “Arabs are by nature, barbaric” (Fanon, 1961, 154), often acting as individuals pushing militant agendas that often do not reflect those of the politicians (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, etc.). Whether this is true or not, Hamas has been able to mobilize the masses to join the struggle for land and self-reclamation, and thus has been less concerned with the legitimacy and legality of their attacks. In their own words, they are concerned solely with the daily reality of their people, not the Israelis, and it is in the name of this reality that they strike immediately and forcefully. “The political party may very well speak of the nation in emotional terms, but it is primarily interested in getting the people who are listening to understand that they must join the struggle if they want to simply exist” (Fanon, 1961, 146). It is once the oppressed, in this case the Palestinian’s, realize that the existence of their nation will not be created because their culture, that they align themselves with those who speak of liberation through violent struggles against the forces of occupation. The notion of culture needs to be considered here. To what extent do we weigh an individual’s culture against that of the nations? According to the work of Benjamin Graves (1998): “Frantz Fanon foregrounds the following paradox: ‘national identity,’ while vital to the emergence of a Third World revolution, paradoxically limits such efforts at liberation because it re-inscribes an essentialist, totalizing, fetishized, often middle-class specific understanding of ‘nation’ rather than encouraging a nuanced articulation of an oppressed people’s cultural heterogeneity across class lines. In other words, although the concept of ‘nation’ unfairly characterizes colonized subjects as historically unified in their primitiveness or exoticness, the term’s promise of solidarity and unity often proves helpful nonetheless in their attempts at political amelioration. Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of the nation 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.” (Graves, 1998) However, “when a people support an armed or even political struggle against a merciless colonizer, tradition changes meaning. What was a technique of passive resistance may, in this phase, be radically doomed” (Fanon, 1961, 160). Fanon expresses that any efforts by the colonizer to economically cripple or disarm the national parties would only further build sympathy for the militant political party, which has been the case with both Israel and much of the international community by supporting the decision to withhold budgetary funding (Pan, 2006). Thus Palestinians and their authorities turn to their Arab brothers to be their guiding light and to aid them in this time of need, but “the Arab League shows no signs of that spontaneous solidarity between members of the group” (Fanon, 1961, 152). With tensions rising, blame shifts further from Israel as the aggressor, and more on Israel’s allies in the world, namely America and the European Union. Often, in solidarity to the Palestinian brothers, American, British and Israeli flags are burned 218

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

in both Arab and non-Arab nations, pro-Palestinian protests are organized in front of Western parliament buildings and in other capital cities, and effigies of world leaders are burned with nooses around their necks. “The Arabs do not always manage to forget their common identity when faced with an objective. Their actual cultural experience is not national but Arab. The issue at stake is not yet to secure a national culture, not yet to plunge into the groundswell of nations, but rather to pit Arab and African culture against the universal condemnation of the colonizer. From both the Arab and African perspectives, the claims of the colonized intellectual are syncretic, continental in scope and, in the case of the Arabs, global” (Fanon, 1961, 152). But where is the Arab world now? Blame is quick to be placed, but aid from those nations is slow to arrive. Slow because the last sixty years of struggle between Israel and Palestine has shown that few, if any, surrounding nations are willing to take in those affected by the incursion (Fanon, 1971, 177). CONCLUSION

As a tool for education, Fanon teaches us that though peace may be brokered in ivory towers, it is in the classroom that one embodies it. As much as people are taught how to hate, they need to be taught the tools for change. As we are told, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, one cannot expect former enemies to put down guns and immediately pick up olive branches. As generations are born into peace, the longevity of the plan is cemented in reality. For this, Fanon is paramount in understanding why areas formally colonized remain in a state of turmoil. Fanon, who is often misunderstood as being an advocate of violence was anything but, rather his claim was that violence must be used as a last resort, a means to stop the colonial oppression so as to engage in the reclamation of self on the part of the oppressed. This was not a call for genocide or apartheid, but a tool for empowering the oppressed in efforts to take back that which was “taken” from them, no more and certainly no less. It was believed that any attempt towards non-violent or passive means of protest would only be successful if the colonizer had respected the rights of the colonized, but as previously discussed, in a colonial framework, this is never the case. Without the ear of the colonizer comes the argument that liberation can only be achieved through violent struggles, which Fanon acutely labelled “political violence.” By implementing colonial policies into every facet of the colonized people, the colonizer breeds alienation and dehumanization, and in other words, the confidence and self-esteem of the colonized become destroyed through the “constant reminder of their ineptitude to prevent domination and continued enslavement” (Padmanabhan, 2002). With this being true, Fanon argued, “that any form of protest that recognized the common bond of humanism was bound to fail and hence inapplicable. Hence, violence became the sole option… violence acted as a cleansing agent for the soul… and brought about a catharsis in the psyche. Violence boosted the morale of the oppressed” (Padmanabhan, 2002). 219

ORLOWSKY

As further generations are born into such constrictive situations, and education exacerbates differences, one finds further justification in enacting more trying tactics. When the dust settles and the goals are temporarily met, people wake to a sense of numbness. Though Fanon did not glorify violence, he “felt that violence was the only method to attain freedom from colonial rule. But in the process, Fanon did not acknowledge the upheavals that would result out of a culture of violence” (Padmanabhan, 2002). He who is born out of violence knows of nothing else once the violence subsides. So where does he turn once calm sets in? For this paper to be successful, I had set out to understand why peace between Israeli’s and Palestinian’s seems doomed to fail. In doing so I have found myself attempting to understand and explain the motivation for the violence that surrounds occupation, the root causes for Palestinian uprisings, the rational behind suicide bombings, and how all of this is displayed in the relationships between the Israeli’s and the Palestinians, and the Palestinians and their militant wings. Is this a modern example of colonization as intended by Fanon? Do the Palestinians really represent an oppressed people, or are they a viable threat to Israel’s national security? Will the creation of an independent Palestinian state really solidify Middle Eastern peace - how is peace then understood? Is peace the appeasement of both groups, or is it the giving of concessions? Is peace the revisitation of the atrocities that lead to the State of Israel’s formation, or must the psychological aftermath of both The Holocaust and The Nakba be considered for peace to have longevity? Whatever the case may be and in the framework of peaceful coexistence, a viable and long lasting blueprint for Middle East peace must be brokered. Whether this plan calls for a one, two or ten state solution, the issue remains lasting peace, and “how to base any state on equal citizenship for all those who live in it” (Mamdani, 2004, 228). As Arthur Lewis (1965) writes, the principal problem of new states is that most people living in them “differ from each other in language or tribe or religion or race, some of these groups live side by side in a long tradition of mutual hostility, restrained in the past only by a neutral imperial power” (Lewis, 1965, 66). The creation of a liberated Palestine or an independent state for the Palestinian people would ease this tension but bring forth many more problems, such as their lack of infrastructure, rampant poverty and hunger, and a need to overcome a history of oppression. Doctors and engineers will be in high demand, but who will provide them in the mean time, Israel? Would partnerships between these now two nations be welcomed? Will Israel turn their back on the Palestinians, having the Palestinians take on all the challenges that come with independence? Will “the apotheosis of independence become the curse of independence?” (Fanon, 1961, 54). Will instant peace erase historical tensions? If this is the case, will the curse for the Palestinians transcend to encompass Israel? Will Israel be seen as the once oppressor who is now unwilling to help those they once oppressed? “The current need is to combine optimism with realism while learning from the positive and negative aspects of the democratic experience” (Adams, 1993, 511). On the other hand, as is often the case in developing nations, when all factors of independence are considered, the burden becomes too great and newly established nations turn to newly sought allies, making them once again economically dependent states. Since 220

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE

the signing of the Oslo Peace Process, Israel has reinforced Palestinian dependence by injecting capital into the territory’s fiscal operating budget, though cutting ties when aggression begins. “Now that the colonial countries have achieved their independence the world is faced with the bare facts that makes the actual state of the liberated countries even more intolerable… the issues which blocks the horizon, is the need to a redistribution of wealth” (Fanon, 1961, 55). If this can be achieved, the road to peace is paved in gold. Time has shown that with rational negotiations and realistic compromises, allies can be made and treaties upheld, but this is only possible if both sides are willing. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have blood on their hands, neither side is innocent in this conflict, and what must be avoided at all costs both now and in the future, whether peace is reached today or tomorrow, is the avoidance of pursuing a doctrine calling for radical hatred and the sacrifice of self. Reclaiming one’s identity does not come from suicide bombings and the building of fences, but from civil discussions and the upholding of restrictions that may at times seem oppressive. Hate breeds hate, and terror produces terror. “Terrorists pose a threat that doubles when it is countered in kind. A “fundamental paradox” of the paranoid style… “is the imitation of the enemy” (Buck-Morss, 2003, 27), and until the cycle is broken, no peace deal will last. “The soul cannot be healed overnight” and a whole generation of Palestinians and Israelis steeped in homicidal “psychoaffective consequences” will need to live with the horror and reality of their own and each others legacy (Shatz, 2001). As Michael Sonnleitner (1987) concludes, “although scars of the past might be said to remain forever… if human nature is as malleable as Fanon assumed it to be, there would be nothing logically to preclude a person from being both a terrorist and a loving saint within the same lifetime” (Sonnleitner, 1987, 300). Colonialism has had a lot to do with much of the demise of the once third world, and specifically has been the catalyst for tension and civil unrest in Israel. It is ironic however that the Palestinian people and much of the Arab world has turned their aggressive and violent sights on Israel as a “Jewish State”, when the “Jewish State” is a bi-product of colonial partitioning, namely U.N. Resolution 181. As in any conflict when nations go to war, territories grow and decrease in size, all of which has been witnessed between 1948 and today. Until a peaceful agreement, good faith bargaining on both sides, and sound negotiations between not only Israel and Palestine, but the whole of the region can be undertaken, peace deals will be violated and innocent civilians will continue to be drawn into the crossfire. In a recent visit to the Israeli city of Sderot, only one kilometre from the Gaza Strip, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama saw the remnants of Hamas made Qassam rockets and was quoted saying that “if his two daughters were exposed to rocket attacks in their home, he would do everything in his power to stop such attacks” (Dershowitz, 2009). The morality of democracy cannot be understood by the (ir)rationality of terrorists. “Perhaps the single most important element that glues Fanon’s political thought together is his profound faith in the ability of the ordinary people for self-emancipation and self-rule” (Adams, 1993, 517). If Frantz Fanon has taught us anything it is that violence combats violence, and this violence must only be used as a last resort and not as 221

ORLOWSKY

a means for revenge. As a soldier of the revolution himself, Fanon witnessed firsthand the violent silencing of Algeria by the French. For him, his theories were not simple words, they were his life. NOTES 1

2 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

In efforts to defend itself from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria during the Six-Day War, Israeli troops occupied the strategic vantage points of Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. Though done through a military offensive, the terms “occupied” for these territories has remained highly disputed. Arguments against the term state that since the West Bank and the Gaza Strip did not belong to any other sovereign state under the former Mandate of Palestine, it legitimately falls under Israel’s jurisdiction, therefore being part of the current State of Israel (Gold, 2005). Refers to Jewish immigration into Israel and is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. al Nakba or al Naqba which translates to “disaster”, “catastrophe”, or “cataclysm”, refers to the (contestable) 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled or were expelled from the territories that became Israel in 1948 – 9. The circumstances of these events are still hotly debated among historians and commentators of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (Stern, 2008, Badil, 60, Cleveland, 2004). Both the United States and Canada lists Hamas as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” (U.S. State Department 2006, p. 196, Keeping Canadian Safe, 2009, Tibbetts, 2006), while the European Union lists Hamas among the entities against which it applies restrictions in order to combat terrorism (Council Decision, 2005). Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that “Hamas maintains a terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank, and acts to carry out terrorist attacks in the territories and Israel.” (The Financial Sources of the Hamas Terror Organization, 2003), while Japan stated in 2005 that it had frozen the assets of “terrorist organizations, including... Hamas” (Japan’s Foreign Policy In Major Diplomatic Fields, 2005). Stopping short of calling the entire Hamas organization a terrorist group, the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is the only part of the organization listed as a terrorist organization by Australia (Listing of Terrorist Organizations, 2006), and the United Kingdom (Terrorism Act 2000). A series of letters spanning mid-1915 through to early-1916, concerning the future political status of the Arab lands under the Ottoman Empire. These letters contained hints that the Arab side (encouraged by the British) had been considering the use of violence against the Ottoman Empire which would lead to the demise of the Ottoman Empire (United States Department of State 1969, 7-8). Dated November 2, 1917, this statement of policy by the British government (namely Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild) illustrated that the British government would “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the understanding that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” (Yapp, 290, Balfour Declaration). In a broader geographical meaning, Palestine historically has referred to an area that includes contemporary Israel and the Palestinian territories, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In its more contemporary usage, Palestine refers to the area bound under the boundaries stipulated by the former British Mandate of Palestine (1920-1948) west of the Jordan River (George, 2004). Largely a trade agreement with a large area set aside for indirect control through an Arab state(s) this agreement was forged between the United Kingdom and France, and each defining their respective spheres of influence and control in west Asia after the expected downfall of the Ottoman Empire (Fromkin 1989, 286, United States Department of State, 1969). Proposal of changes to the British Mandate of Palestine following the outbreak of the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. In November of 1936, the first envoy entered Palestine in efforts to investigate the instigating factors that led to the uprising, upon return, its findings recommended a partition though later declared unworkable (The Peel Commission Report, 1937).

222

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE 10

11

12

13

Policy paper issued by the British government in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine was abandoned in favour of creating an independent Palestine governed by Palestinian Arabs and Jews in proportion to their numbers in the population by 1949 (section I). The papers stipulated that a maximum of 75,000 Jewish immigrants would be granted entrance between 19401944, and a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over the same period, would be considered to cover refugee emergencies. Further immigration of Jews would be considered by an Arab majority (section II), who furthered British restrictions on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs (section III) – (British White Papers of 1939). A plan approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 to terminate the British Mandate of Palestine by August 1, 1948, and facilitate the creation of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Though receiving a majority pass vote, the Security Council in March 1948 reached an impasse refusing to approve a resolution which would have accepted the partition plan as a basis for Security Council action. In efforts to further enact this resolution, the United States recommended a temporary U.N. trusteeship for Palestine “without prejudice to the character of the eventual political settlement,” and the Security Council voted to send the matter back to the General Assembly for further deliberation. The General Assembly decided to appoint a Mediator, and relieved their Palestine Commission from any further exercise of responsibility under resolution 181 (II). (United States Department of State Vol. V, Pt. 2, United Nations Security Council Resolution S/RES/ 44(1948) S/714, United Nations General Assembly A/RES/186[S-2]). Refers to a proposed internationally administered zone including Jerusalem and the areas encasing Bethlehem and Ein Karim. The U.N. Partition Plan of Jerusalem was motivated “in view of its association with three world religions” to be “accorded special and separate treatment from the rest of Palestine and should be placed under effective United Nations control” (United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/AC.21/7, United States Department of State: Vol. V, Pt. 2). According to Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, Ayatollah Fadlallah is Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, though his affiliation is denied by both him, and Hezbollah as they have reserved this title for Ayatollah Khomeini (Phillips, 2008).

REFERENCES Adams, H. M. (1993, October). Frantz Fanon as a democratic theorist. African Affairs, 92(369). Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society. Asad, T. (2007). On suicide bombing. New York: Columbia University Press. Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. “60 Nakba Campaign Resources.” Bethlehem, Palestine. Retrieved April 4, 2009, from, http://www.badil.org/ Publications/badil-nakba-60-info-packet/index.html Balfour Declaration. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007. Retrieved January 3, 2009, from http:// www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/50162/Balfour-Declaration Best, A. (2003). International history of the twentieth century. United States: Routledge. Blackey, R. (1974, June). Fanon and cabral: A contrast in theories of revolution for Africa. The Journal of Modern African Studies. Cambridge. XII, 2. British White Papers of 1939. (2008). Yale law school Lillian Goldman law library. Retrieved January 12, 2009 from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp Buck-Morss, S. (2003). Thinking past terror. London: Verso. Cabral, A. (1969). “Practical problems and tactics,” Revolution in Guinea: Selected texts. New York. Charny, I. W. (2007). Fighting suicide bombing. United States: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. Cleveland, W. L. (2004). A history of the modern middle east (3rd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Cockburn, A. & St. Clair, J. (2003). The politics Of anti-semitism. Oakland, CA: AK Press. “Council Decision” Council of the European Union. (2005, December 21). Council of the European Union. (2005, December 21). Council decision. Retrieved January 7, 2009, from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/

223

ORLOWSKY Dershowitz, A. (2009). Israel’s actions are lawful and commendable. Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Information Department. Fairchild, H. H. (1994). Frantz Fanon’s the wretched of the earth in contemporary perspective. Journal of Black Studies, 25(2). Fanon, F. (1953). Black skin white mask. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1961). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fowale, T. (2008, June 7). “Frantz Fanon’s thesis of violence: What relevance for odern Africa. American Chronicle. Retrieved October 9, 2008, from http://www.americanchronicle .com/articles/64280 Franks, J. (2006). Rethinking the roots of terrorism. New York: Palgrave MacMillian. Fromkin, D. (1989). A peace to end all peace: The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern middle east. New York: Owl. George, F. A. (2004). Is palestine a state? Expert law. Retrieved May 9, 2009, from http:// www.expertlaw.com/library/international_law/palestine.html Gerteiny, A. G. (2007). The terrorist conjunction. United States: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. Gibson, R. (1972). African liberation movements: Contemporary struggles against white minority rule. New York. In B. A. Nkemdirim (1977, March). Reflections on Political Conflict, Rebellion, and Revolution in Africa. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 15(1). Cambridge University Press. Gilbert, P. (1994). Terrorism, security and nationality. New York: Routledge. Gilbert, P. (2003). New terror, new wars. Glasgow: Edinburgh University Press. Giroux, H. A. (2006). Beyond the spectacle of terrorism. Colorado: Paradigm Publishing. Gold, D. (2005, August). Legal acrobatics: The palestinian claim that Gaza is still ‘Occupied’ even after Israel withdraws. Jerusalem Issue Brief - Institute for Contemporary Affairs founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation, 5(3). Retrieved May 9, 2009, from http://www.jcpa.org/brief/ brief0053.htm Graves, B. (1998). Fanon on national culture. Brown University. Retrieved February 21, 2009, from http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/fanon/fanon2.html Harel, A., Issacharoff, A., & Ravid, B. (2008, December 21). Hamas declares end to cease-fire, Israeli gov’t sources fear violence is unavoidable. Haaretz. Retrieved January 3, 2009, from http: //www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1048055.html Israel Agrees to Truce with Hamas on Gaza. New York Times. June 18, 2008. Retrieved December 28, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?fta=y Israel: The Alternative. (2003, October 23). The New York Review of Books, 50(16). Retrieved January 7, 2009, from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16671 Israeli jets target Gaza tunnels. BBC. December 28, 2008. Retrieved December 28, 2008, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7801662.stm Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2003, July 30). The financial sources of the hamas terror organization. Retrieved January 8, 2009, from http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/7/ The%20Financial%20Sources%20of%20the%20Hamas%20Terror%20Organiz Japan’s foreign policy in major diplomatic fields. Japan’s Diplomatic Bluebook 2005. Keeping Canadians Safe, Public Security and Emergency Preparedness Canada, National Security, Listed entities. Retrieved May 2, 2009, from http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/ns/le/cle-en.asp#hhi18 League of Nations: The Mandate for Palestine, July 24, 1922. Modern History Sourcebook. Fordham University. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/ 1922mandate.html Lewis, W. A. (1965). Politics in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Listing of Terrorist Organisations, Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department. (2006, January 27). Retrieved May 5, 2009, from http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/agd/www/ nationalsecurity.nsf/AllDocs/95FB057CA3DECF30CA256FAB001F7FBD?OpenDocument Malik, K. (2002, May 28). All cultures are not equal. Spiked. Retrieved October 17, 2008, from http://www.marxist.org/subject/africa/malik/not_equal.htm Mamdani, M. (2004). Good muslims, bad muslims. New York: Random House. Nkemdirim, B. A. (1977, March). Reflections on political conflict, rebellion, and revolution in Africa. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 15(1). Cambridge University Press. 224

THE HUNDRED YEAR HEADACHE Padmanabhan, S. (2002). Truth and non-violence – means or ends. Tampa: USF. Retrieved October 9, 2008, from http://www.cas.usf.edu/philosophy/amfitan/papersamfitan2002/ Padmanabhan%20Paper.htm Pan, E. (2006). Hamas and the shrinking PA budget. The Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved May 9, 2009, from http://www.cfr.org/publication/10499/ Part 3: Partition, war and independence. The Mideast: A Century of Conflict. National Public Radio. October 2, 2002. Retrieved 2009-02-28 from http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/ history3.html Perinbam, B. M. (1982). Holy violence, The revolutionary thought of Frantz Fanon: An intellectual biography. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press. Phillips, J. (2008). Death of a terrorist: Imad Mugniyah. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved May 9, 2009, from http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm1815.cfm Pithouse, R. That the tool never possess the man: Taking Fanon’s humanism seriously. Retrieved February 21, 2009, from http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/afphil/docs/pithouse1.pdf Reveron, D. S., & Murer, J. S. (2006). Flashpoint in the war on terrorism. New York: Routledge. Said, E. (1979). The question of palestine. London: Vintage. Sharawy, H. (2003). Frantz Fanon and the African revolution, revisited at a time of globalization. This paper was drafted and presented first at CODESRIA Seminar on “canonical works” – Accra – September 2003. Finally it is revised and selected for CODESRIA 30th Anniversary conference – Dakar 10-12, 2003. Shatz, A. (2001, September 2). “Frantz Fanon: The doctor prescribed violence. Race Matters. Retrieved October 15, 2008, from http://www.racematters,org/doctorwhoprescribedviolence.htm Sofer, R. (2008, December 17). Israel in favour of extending Gaza lull. Ynetnews. Retrieved December 27, 2008, from http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3637877,00.html Sonnleitner, M. W. (1987). Of logic and liberation Frantz Fanon on terrorism. Journal of Black Studies, 17(3). Stern, Y. (2008, May 13). Palestinian refugees, Israeli Left-Wingers Mark Nakba. Ha’aretz. Retrieved April 7, 200, from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982390.html Terrorism Act 2000. United Kingdom Home Security Office. Retrieved May 5, 2009, from http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_1 The Peel Commission Report. (1937). The League of Nations Mandates Palestine – Report of the Palestine Royal Commission. Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the United Kingdom Parliament by Command of His Britannic Majesty (July 1937). Distributed at the request of the United Kingdom Government. Retrieved January 13, 2009, from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/History/peel1.html Tibbetts, J. (2006, March 30). Hamas is listed as a terrorist group in the Criminal Code of Canada. The Montreal Gazette. Tilley, V. (2005). The one-state solution. Michigan, MI: University of Michigan Press. The Financial Sources of the Hamas Terror Organization. (2003, July 30). Retrieved May 5, 2009, from http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/7/The%20Financial%20Sources%20of %20the%20Hamas%20Terror%20Organiza Two hundred and seventh plenary meeting. United Nations 1949-05-11. Retrieved February 12, 2009, from http://domino.un.org (dead link) United Nations General Assembly “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem:1917-1988: Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine,” A/AC.21/7 as well as GA/PAL/2, GA/PAL/3, GA/PAL/4. United Nations General Assembly A/RES/186 (S-2), 14 May, 1948. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/db942872b9eae454852560f6005a76fb/a9a8da193bd46c54852 560e50060c6fd!OpenDocument United Nations Security Council Resolution S/RES/44 (1948) S/714, 11. April 1. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/181c4bf00c44e5fd85256cef0073c426/1b13eb4 af911 8629852560ba0067c5ad!OpenDocument

225

ORLOWSKY United States Department of State/Foreign relations of the United States. (1948). The Near East, South Asia, and Africa (in two parts) Vol. V, Pt. 2. United States Department of State. (1969). International Boundary Study No. 94 – December 30, 1969. Jordan – Syria Boundary. Washington, DC: Office of the Geographer – Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Retrieved January 13, 2009, from http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/ IBS094.pdf United States Department of State. (2006, April). Country Reports on Terrorism 2005. Retrieved January 8, 2009, from http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/65463.pdf United States Department of State/Foreign relations of the United States. (1948). The near East, South Asia, and Africa (in two parts) Vol. V, Part 2. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http:// images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1948v05p2/reference/frus.frus1948v05p2.i0008.pdf Violence and the State. Promethea.org. May 20, 2000. Retrieved October 15, 2008, from http: //www.promethea.org/Misc_Compositions/ViolenceandTheState.html Yapp, M. E. (1987). The making of the modern near east 1792–1923. Harlow, England: Longman.

226

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

George J. Sefa Dei is Professor [and immediate past Chair] of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). His teaching and research interests are in the areas of Anti-Racism, Minority Schooling, International Development and AntiColonial Thought. He has published extensively on race, anti-racism, minority youth schooling, and anti-colonial thought. In 2008 he published Racists Beware: Uncovering Racial Politics in Contemporary Society. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publisher, and ‘Crash’ Politics and Anti-Racism: Interrogating Liberal Race Discourse. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. [co-edited with Philip Howard]. His forthcoming book is: Teaching Africa: Towards a Transgressive Pedagogy. New York: Springer. Hannah Dyer is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at OISE/University of Toronto. Her interests include queer and feminist theory and organizing, historiography, and thinking about sites where art and pedagogy meet. Nadesha Gayle completed a Bachelor of Social Work at Ryerson University, a Bachelor of Education and a Masters in Social Work at York University. Currently, Nadesha is a full-time student in the PhD programme in Education: Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University Of Toronto. Her research Interest concerns the Impact of History on Identity and Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma on Women of African Ancestry in the Diaspora. Paul Alhassan Issahaku holds a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree from Columbia University in New York, NY and is currently a PhD student and Research Assistant at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has several years of community development practice experience from Ghana, West Africa. Yumiko Kawano is a MA student in the Department of Sociology and equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. She is a research assistant at the Center for Integrative AntiRacism Studies (CIARS) at OISE/UT. Her research interest includes Indigenous knowledges, anticolonial thought, and antiracism education. Meredith Lordan holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She works with at risk programming at the Toronto District School Board and the Steps to University Program, University of Toronto. Forthcoming publications include a study of Education & Jobs: Exploring the Gaps in The Growing Gap: Workers’ Learning, Job Requirements and Mismatches in the Information Age, (Dr. David 227

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Livingstone, Ed.), Broadview Press. Research interests include critical pedagogy, teachers as learners, challenging the at risk label, and access to education at the local and international levels. Natacha Nsabimana immigrated to Canada in September 2001 from Burundi. She is a graduate of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto (2003-2004). She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2008 with a Bachelor Degree with a focus in Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Aboriginal Studies. Natacha is currently enrolled in a Masters Program at the University of Toronto in the Anthropology Department. Neil Orlowsky is the Department Head of, and senior level high school Politics and International Issues teacher, as well as a Ph.D. candidate in both the Sociology and Equity Studies, and the Comparative International Development Education programs at the University of Toronto’s OISE campus. His area of research includes ethnic and racial conflict, colonialism, genocide, and Middle East peace, and most notably has been named the secondary school educational consultant at the Canadian Centre for Genocide Education. Rose Ann Torres is a Ph.D. candidate at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies with a collaborative program in Women and Gender Studies. She holds two masters degree: Masters degree in Education from the University of Toronto and Masters of Arts in Women and Development Studies from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. Her areas of interest include Indigenous knowledges, healing, spirituality, indigenous feminism, anti-colonial theory and anti-racist education. Njoki Nathani Wane is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racist Research Studies (CIARS) at the University of Toronto, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. For the last ten years she has been researching and teaching in the areas of Black feminisms in Canada, African feminisms, African indigenous knowledges, anti-racist education in teacher education, African women and spirituality, and ethno-medicine. She has published widely in journals and anthologies in the areas of African women and Indigenous knowledge, Black Canadian feminisms, African women and spirituality and anti-colonial thought. Fouzia Warsame is currently a PhD candidate at OISE/UT’s department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (SESE). Her research interests span across various interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary fields including International and comparative education, Post-conflict reconstruction of education, Critical Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. At SESE, Fouzia’s studies are focused within the areas of Anti-Racism and Anti-Colonial Studies in Education, Indigenous Knowledges and African Knowledge Production. Her doctoral thesis centers on State – Education – Social Capital nexus in the Horn of Africa.

228