Marxism and Existentialism in the Thought of Frantz Fanon
| Date | 01 June 1972 |
| Published date | 01 June 1972 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1972.tb01067.x |
| Author | Paul Nursey-Bray |
| Subject Matter | Article |
MARXISM AND EXISTENTIALISM
IN THE THOUGHT OF FRANTZ FANON
PAUL NURSEY-BRAY
Queen’s University
of
Berfast
‘.
. .
Marxist analysis should always
be
slightly stretched every time we have to do
with the colonial problem.’l Fanon wrote in his central work
on
colonialism,
The Wretched
of
the Earth.
Indeed, stretch it he did, until Fanon’s Marxism
became a body of teaching that was nothing less than a completely revised and
somewhat incoherent form
of
Marxist-Leninism apposite in his view to the
conditions of the Third World. Another strong element of Fanon’s intellectual
make-up is his commitment to the ideas
of
the existentialist tradition, in particular
to the ideas
of
Jean-Paul Sartre.
As
David Caute has noted in his study of Fanon,
‘The evolution of Fanon’s thought parallels in certain respects that of Marx, and
more closely that
of
Sartre.’2 Indeed, as Caute also notes, the major philosophical
writings
of
Sartre,
Being and Nothingness,
and
The Critique
of
Dialectical Reason,
‘strongly influenced the respective books by Fanon’,’ that is
Black Skin, White
Masks
and
The Wretched
of
the Earth.
Here lies the basis
of
a major problem in analysing Fanon, for in inheriting
elements
of
the Marxist tradition, along with elements
of
Sartre’s existentialism,
he is also the unhappy heir
of
the irreconcilable elements
of
these traditions. It is
not enough to wish Sartre away
as
some Marxist commentators have attempted to
do, nor to accuse him of an ‘hysterical perversion
of
Fanon’s thinking’4 as others
have done. The strong strains of Marxism, in particular Marxist humanism, and
Sartre’s existentialism remain co-existent, as do the tensions between them.
FANON AS
A
MARXIST
Fanon’s Marxist analysis is at two planes, the international or interracial, and
the national. Between the two there are analytical disparities which make clear
interpretation difficult.
It
is
to the international problem
of
colonialism that Fanon directs his attention
initially in
The Wretched
of
the Earth.
The colonizer and the colonized, settler
and native, are opposed as the fundamental antagonistic categories, an antagon-
ism that subsumes the economic antagonisms
of
the class struggle. Aristide
Zolberg has noted that Fanon has not hesitated to stretch Marx ‘in order to
encompass a colonial world where the relations
of
production are themselves
a
superstructure rooted in the relations of colonialism
. .
.’.5
The exploitative
relations of production are, for Fanon, embodied
in
the exploitative, racially
1
Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched
of
the Earth
(New York,
1966),
p.
32.
2
David Caute,
Fanon
(London,
1970),
p.
32.
3
Ibid.,
p.
35.
4
Peter Wonley, ‘Frantz Fanon: Evolution
of
a
Revolutionary: Revolutionary Theories’,
5
Aristide Zolberg,
‘Frantz
Fanon’,
Encounter,
November
1966, p.
60.
Monthly Review,
May
1966, pp.
45-6.
Pdtid
SMW,
Vol.
XX,
NO.
2
(lS2-168)
PAUL
NURSEY-BRAY
153
orientated, relations of colonialism. It is not the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
that stand opposed to each other in Fanon’s world model, but rather, settler and
native.
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
immense difference of ways of life never come to mask the human realities. 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. In the colonies the economic sub-structure is also a super-structure. The cause
is
the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are
rich.’
Race, Fanon is suggesting, is
a
major determinant, if not
the
major determinant,
in the evolution of society, rather than economics. The Marxist categories of
class and class conflict, of social change and revolution, and of dialectical progress
are all present in Fanon’s analysis, but this assertion of the importance of race
marks a sharp break with a classical Marxian stance.
Involved with Fanon’s treatment of the racial antagonisms of the colonial
society is a form of the Marxian concept of alienation. This concept in different
forms is a continuing thread in his thought. In
Black Skin, White Masks
Fanon
was chiefly concerned with an analysis of how individuals of the coloured races
become alienated under the domination of the white colonial culture, which robs
them of their identity. The Negro, lives under the continuing pressure of the
colonial value system which teaches him that all that is white is good and all that
is black is bad. Eventually he is led to an acceptance of this biased value system
himself. The Negro rejects that which is Negro and seeks the goals of an alien
culture. He is turned against himself, dehumanized by the imposition
of
values
that in themselves negate his identity. For no matter to what degree he accepts
the culture of the European, he can never be accepted by them. He remains black,
and blackness, within the value structure he has
so
assiduously adopted, is
construed as bad. In essence he
is
divided against himself, the epitome of alienated
man. This picture Fanon paints of the alienated native can also, of course, be seen
in existentialist terms. This isolated native living in a world of chaotic values,
where he is always the object of the forces that surround him, and in the face of
which he must assert his freedom, is also the author
of
these forces in
so
far as he
turns away from an authentic commitment to liberty and instead seeks to hide
behind a ‘white mask’.
However, although Fanon approaches the problem from the individual,
existential manifestation of the conditions, he places the causation in social
factors.
If there
is
an inferiority complex,
it
is
the outcome of a double process:
-primarily economic;
-subsequently, the internalisation-or, better, the epidermalisation of this inferiority.3
The answer to the problem
is
also framed in social terms. The Negro should not
regard his colour as
a
flaw and seek to achieve status within the white orientated
structures: ‘We shall see another solution
is
possible. It implies a restructuring
of
the world.’3
1
The Wretched
of
the Earth,
p.
32.
2
Frantz
Fanon,
Black
Skin,
White Masks
(New
York,
1967),
p.
11.
3
Ibid.,
p.
82.
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