here is the summary and analysis, feel free to use this to follow along
Im gonna switch it up and say no discussion question this week to try to encourage a more natural dialog socratic seminar style. just talk about what you liked, didn’t like, didn’t understand, and try to respond to one person in the comments! lets just give it a try! English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you’d be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages
English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf
Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf
English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links
soundcloud audio book english https://soundcloud.com/listenleft/sets/frantz-fanon-the-wretched-of-the-earth
Schedule
8/20/23 - pre-face and chapter one On violence
8/27/23- chapter two Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity
9/3/23- chapter three The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness
9/10/23- chapter four On National Culture
9/17/23 chapter five Colonial war and Mental Disorders and conclusion
edited :take your time to respond! feel free to let me know if we should bring the questions back.
bit idea: instead of “q” our leftist equivalent is “f” and we keep talking about “fanon”
i haven’t kept up with the reading but i do keep thinking about chapter 1.
i had a chance to watch that lecture i found two weeks ago: The Tethered of the Earth: Jordan Peele, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida and i enjoyed it. worth a watch for anyone interested in the fanonist themes in peele’s movies. especially the parallels between fanon’s black skin, white masks to peele’s get out, and then the evolution of fanon’s thought process in wretched of the earth in parallel to the evolution of peele’s thought process in us.
@[email protected] the sunken place is the hypnotic prison in get out. what made me think about us while reading the summary of chapter 1 was fanon’s discussion of the “manichean geography” of the colony, where manicheanism refers to a dualist cosmology with an explicit struggle between the forces of light and darkness. so my brain went straight to this from peele’s us:
Once upon a time, there was a girl and the girl had a shadow. The two were connected, tethered together. And the girl ate, her food was given to her warm and tasty. But when the shadow was hungry, she had to eat rabbit raw and bloody. On Christmas, the girl received wonderful toys; soft and cushy. But the shadow’s toys were so sharp and cold they sliced through her fingers when she tried to play with them. The girl met a handsome prince and fell in love. But the shadow at that same time had Abraham, it didn’t matter if she loved him or not. He was tethered to the girl’s prince after all. Then the girl had her first child, a beautiful baby girl. But the shadow, she gave birth to a little monster. Umbrae was born laughing. The girl had a second child, a boy this time. They had to cut her open and take him from her belly. The shadow had to do it all herself. She named him Pluto, he was born to love fire. So you see, the shadow hated the girl so much for so long until one day the shadow realized she was being tested by God.
the tethered are forced to live in this underground prison while their surface doppelgangers get to enjoy their vacation homes and the boardwalk amusement park, unaware of the tethered’s existence until they manage to escape, with the mirror room serving as a gateway between the two worlds.
I am a bit behind still on Chapter 1 busy week, I plan to cram this week. Overall I like it so far. Fanon has a very interesting writing style especially when he goes into psychology in his writings. Looking forward to reading his other works afterwards.
I have a history question. Fanon mentioned establishing giving independence and establishing the CFA Franc to avoid wars like in Algeria and Vietnam. Just quickly looking up all the wars and independence dates this is true except for Portuguese colonies which had long wars into the mid 1970s. Does anyone know why this happened?
