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Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon Books

Psychiatrist

The Damned

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“It must be clearly explained to the rebel that he must on no account be blindfolded by the enemy's concessions. [...] concessions are the cloak for a tighter rein. [...] colonialism never gives anything away for nothing. [...] Moreover, the native ought to realize that it is not colonialism that grants such concessions, but he himself that extorts them. [...] If need be the native can accept compromise with colonialism, but never surrender of principle.”

FreedomLiberationColonialism
Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“In this connection, I should like to say something that I have found in many other writers: Intellectual alienation is a creation of middle-class society. What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”

Middle Class
Book:Black Skin, White Masks
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“It is at this level that racism is treated as a question of persons. There are a few hopeless racists, but you must admit that on the whole the population likes.... With time all this will disappear. This is the country where there is the least amount of race prejudice. At the United Nations there is a commission to fight race prejudice. Films on race prejudice, poems on race prejudice, messages on race prejudice. Spectacular and futile condemnations of race prejudice. In reality, a colonial country is a racist country. If in England, in Belgium, or in France, despite the democratic principles affirmed by these respective nations, there are still racists, it is these racists who, in their opposition to the country as a whole, are logically consistent.”

Racism And Culture
Book:Toward the African Revolution
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“The native intellectual had learnt from his masters that the individual ought to express himself fully [and that his] only wealth is individual thought. [...] the people during the struggle for freedom will discover the falseness of the theory [...] the interest of one will be the interests of all, for in concrete fact everyone will be discovered by the troops, everyone will be massacred - or everyone will be saved”

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Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too. On the universal plane this affirmation, you may be sure, should on no account be taken to signify that we feel ourselves affected by the creations of Western arts or techniques. For in a very concrete way Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries: Latin America, China, and Africa. From all these continents, under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries toward that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood and exotic products. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialized in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hand on his heart that he must come to the aid of the poor underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves: "It's a just reparation which will be paid to us.”

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Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“Colonialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of under-development and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply.”

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Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“Alla menzogna della situazione coloniale, il colonizzato risponde con ugual menzogna. Il comportamento è aperto coi connazionali, contratto e illeggibile con i coloni. Il vero è ciò che precipita lo smembramento del regime coloniale, è ciò che favorisce l'emergere della nazione. Il vero è ciò che protegge gli indigeni e rovina gli stranieri. Nel contesto coloniale non ci sono comportamenti di verità. E il bene è semplicemente ciò che a loro fa del male.”

Colonialismo
Author:Frantz Fanon
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“The claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the native. Perhaps we haven't sufficiently demonstrated that colonialism 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. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today.”

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Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“Collective guilt is borne by what is conventionally called the scapegoat. Now the scapegoat for white society - which is based on myths of progress, civilization, liberalism, education, enlightenment, refinement - will be precisely the force that opposes the expansion and the triumph of these myths. This brutal opposing force is supplied by the Negro.”

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Book:Black Skin, White Masks
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“Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality-finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.”

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Book:Black Skin, White Masks
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“And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization a simply a question of relative strength.”

FirstsCountryTermLosesPayClassClearViolenceGainsCompromiseRevolutionaryRelativeStarvingPeasantsNothing To LoseColonizationNo CompromiseClass System
Book:Damnés de la terre
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“The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.”

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Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”

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Author:Frantz Fanon
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“When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”

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Author:Frantz Fanon
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“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 -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. 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.”

MenWorldHeartMayHas BeensAbleEarthSongUnderstandingBlackWhiteSunLosingSkinsIntelligentCurseCosmosCaptureCosmicIncapableWhite ManSympatheticCongoAffinityFusionArmstrong
Book:Black Skin, White Masks
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