by Jocelyn Coldrey
Alice
Cherki, a trained psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked under Fanon at both
Bilda and in Tunis, was also an active comrade in the Algerian wage for
independence, gives personal insight into fragments of Fanons life as well as
the contemporary relevance his work and way of thinking (Cherki, 2006 and Martin,
2004: 165). The book gives a representation of Fanon as a person, exposing his temperament
in a textual portrait. Cherki does not write a meticulous biography of Fanon’s
life but rather draws to light certain experiences and ways of the world which
enable the Fanonian reader to historically contextualize not only what he was
exposed to at the time of his writing but also his mode of being in reality. She
claims that it is “important to reconstruct the journey if one is to rein in
the profusion of attributes that have been imputed to Fanon” (2006: 1). In
harnessing her personal interaction with Fanon, and what she found out from
other people, she places particular importance on the parallels between the way
Fanon viewed psychiatric patients and colonized subjects. Ultimately her portrayal of Fanon’s life
remains true to his belief that “[o]ne must not relate one’s past but, but
stand as a testimony to it” (2006: 1).
Fanon the Human Being:
In
the preface Cherki writes that Fanon’s, persona has become “synonymous with
decolonization and the Third Worldism” (2006: ix). My initial encounters with
Fanon which have been very minimal, in comparison to the colossal amount of
Fanonian literature available, have lead me to idealising him as an omnipotent
literary hero who shared deep prophetical insight into the process of
decolonization and the inequalities of the world. Needless to say, when embarking
on this week’s reading I was curious to find out about Fanon the human being whom
embodied the persona which lives on through interpretations of his writing.
Cherki’s clear admiration for Fanon, made this a harder task than anticipated,
as time after time it becomes increasingly evident that Fanon may have been human
but an exceptional one who visibly had a “profound talent for life” and manage
to do remarkable amounts on very little sleep (2006: 3 and 92). In a similar
manner to my idealization of Fanon, Claudine Claudette compares Fanon to a
classical hero, similar to Jesus or Aristotle. Nevertheless, Cherki is quick to
disagree and asserts that he was “much too human , put too much effort into
trying to identify with others, and most of all he could not bear being alone”
(2006” 161).
Cherki
makes it clear, more than once, that Fanon was not an open person, and seemed
to only share what he found important. This could be the result of the fact
that he had to grapple with the injunction of a public life, which could result
in a casual conversation about his experiences having bigger political
consequences than what they deserved
(2006: 101). On the other hand, and perhaps more plausibly, Cherki claims that Fanon’s reluctance to talk
about the past could be a result of the fact that he “lived in the immediacy of
the moment, with an intensity that embodied everything he invoked” (2006: 1).
The
manner in which Cherki affectionately talks about Fanon expressively
personifies Fanon By saying things like, “I can only smile when I think how
those two would have gotten on each other’s nerves” (2006: 149), or the fact
that she never noticed that he was black because she was so absorbed “on the
sparkle in his eyes, of a brown so clear as to seem transparent, on the
expressiveness of his elegantly dressed person” (2006: 3).
Fanon’s
exceptional faith in human kind made him more of an idealist than a realist,
but the fact that he wrote about his own reality could suggest that notions of
him being an idealist are in actuality his optimistic attitude towards a
“prospect that is human” (Fanon, 1963: 205).
Fanon,
intrinsic faith in humankind resulted in him having very high expectations of
people, and was disappointed when they did not achieve what he expected them
to. Cherki claims that Fanon
“[i]dealized and demanding expectations for what a human should be”, which must
have stemmed from the universal importance he placed on human dignity (2006:
117). It could be said that Fanon’s
excellence was often received with dismissal because of his skin colour ignited
in his desire to see the human excellence in everyone, especially those who
were dismissed. He believed that the process to decolonisation would only be
successful if it included ordinary people. Which could be why he held his
patients and those who worked under him accountable to what they were capable
of. Cherki claimed that he was “demanding and relenting with those students who
were less gifted or lazy” (2006: 80). In a similar manner Fanon’s attitude towards
his patients Fanon “could be very demanding, often impatient and at times, even
intrusive in his interactions with the mentally ill. He did, after all, prize
their dignity as men and women above all else wanted to hold them to it” (2006:
23).
The
emphasis in which Fanon places on action in his writing, makes it very
plausible that the manner in which he practiced psychiatry would embody his
political agendas. In a letter in which he wrote home to his parents whilst fighting
he stated that “whenever human dignity and freedom are at stake… I will fight
it to the end” (2006: 10). Furthermore, he was a diligent believer in the fact
that every aspect of life is politicised and every single being carries their
politics in their bodies (2006: 135).
Psychological unconscious
trauma of being oppressed:
Fanon was
obsessed with the connection between human beings
and the bonds which could quash all difference (2006: 61).
The
parallels between the way Fanon approached his psychiatric patients resonated “as
a spring board for colonial theories” (2006:1). This was presumably always
evident in Fanon’s way of being, but in Bilda-Joinville, known as HPB, it
becomes very apparent that the way the which the chronically insane where
institutionalized echoed the core of Algiers exclusionary. Fanon, claims he was
shocked in the manner in which different racial groups did not integrate and it
was not because judicial legislature but rather the practiced norm imbedded
deep into the unconscious reality of the people (2006: 54). The severity of
Algerian racism was intrinsically encrypted into the bodies of the people (2006:
54). Yet that shock seemed minimal compared to the manner in which the mentally
ill where dehumanized and almost treated like prisoners in the manner they were
restrained and secluded (2006: 62). Fanon’s ability to empathise and respond to
any form of human suffering and the continuous paradoxes which he found in
humanization seemingly aided him in understanding the complexities of a human
being (2006: 23).
Fanon
transformed HBP into a space where the mentally ill could recover through the
process of negotiating and language (2006: 73).
He transformed the building into a space which did not incorporate one
dominate ideology or religion, making it possible for people from all walks of
life to feel a sense of belonging. Though he believed that difference could be
quashed, he did discover that treating patients according their cultural
particularity was essential (2006: 69). Similarly he asserted the necessity for
cultural revival if oppression where ever to be entirely eradicated (2006: 88 and 144).
The
similarities between Fanon’s attitude to the mentally ill and his political
work are endless. He saw oppressed people as oppressed people and paved their
way to recognition and human dignity in a similar way. Consequently Fanon’s
text will live on in all instances of social exclusion and inclusion.
The longevity of Fanon’s Text:
A work belongs to its readers,
and each new generation of readers is free to interpret Fanon’s work as it sees
fit (Cherki, 2006: x).
Critics
on literature have long argued the longevity of literary work, in the manner in
which text can become fully “intelligible in terms of its cultural politics,
social location and politics” of that time (Clark, 396). This understanding
enables a specific situation represented in the text to be universally
recognised. Cheriki, on more than one instance, asserts that no one who reads
Fanon remains indifferent (Cherki, 2006: 48). The manner in which Fanon “worked
language and allowed it to work him”, succeeds in the provoking the reader in
to some sort of emotion, no matter the circumstance. Fundamental to Fanons life
and writing exist in in the fact that humans adapt to fit a social situation,
the essentialising of humans and culture is repudiated because they will always
transform in according to the particular epoch surrounding them.
Through
his diligent militancy to an actional way of life, Fanon develops a language
which “arises out of a body in motion” (2006:
184). This seems to echo the bodily experience in which Fanon appropriates in
his writing, the ‘lived experience of oppression’. Yet the process of writing
distances itself away from the body and “[p]erhaps the only way we to overcome
a traumatic severance of the body and mind is to come back to mind through
body” (Hartman, 1995: 541).
Fanon
wrote The Wretched of the Earth with
his comrades in mind, he seemed to guess that what he had to say would enable
the political struggles of the colonized to successfully decolonize (Cherki,
2006: 94). However, his insistence on Sartre writing the forward to his last
book, suggests that if he was not around to defend his ideas, at least someone,
who he agreed with, would be able to supervise the manner in which his book was
to be received (Hartman, 1995: 548). In some ways this suggests Fanon’s
awareness of the limitations of language. The incorporation of Sartre as a
living being into his texts suggests an attempt to avoid the distortion which
exists between the reader, text and author. Hartman (2006: 548) understands
this distortion to be an “epistemological bias- which not only favours a
progressive view of our knowledge, but sees the complex structure of our
coming-to know as the clearing away of subjectivity”.
The
human experience in which Fanon writes about continues to speak to the
contemporary world despite ever changing epistemologies. This is likely because
of Fanon’s understanding that the human subject and experience “cannot be
methodized or reduced to an affirmative structure” (Hartman, 1995: 547). Though
it is textually represented, it will continue to speak to the reader, with the
aim of changing the reader or provoking the reader into action. Cherki asserts
that as long as Fanon’s texts prompts the reader to “reflect and proceed, to
act and think” anyone can relate without understanding the substance of his
work (Cherki, 2006: 203)
Fanon
repeatedly uses metaphors which beautifully embody his views enabling him to
describe reality in manner whereby the images provoked remain judgement free
and text speaks for itself (Cheriki, 2006: 77). Through the use of his
metaphors he is able to “exhibit languages power to represent such intangible [motions
such as decolonization]… through concrete images” (Attridge, 2004: 33). This is
clear through the quote from The Wretched
of the Earth which Cheriki (2006: 176) quotes at length:
If the building of the bridge does not enrich the awareness
of the those who work on it, then that
bridge ought not to be built and citizens can on swimming across the river or going by
boat. The boat should not be “parachuted down from above; it should not be
imposed by a deus machine upon the
social scene; on the contrary it should come from the muscles and brains of the
citizens (TWOE, 160).
Fanon
uses a metaphorical bridge and its construction in order to deploy the manner
in which all people should be involved in the process of decolonization. Though
there is no doubt that Fanon wished to promote action from his text I do not
think they serve as a moral guidance, but rather depicts language’s power to
evoke guilt, to crystallize ethical gaols, to convey the difficulty of choice”
(Attridge, 2004: 22).
In
his autobiographical paper “Africains Antillais”, Fanon grapples with the paradox
of his existence, in the multiplicity of his identity by stating “I am and I am
not there” (Cheriki, 2006: 77). To contextually interpret his statement to the
permanence of his work, Fanon is here and not here every time we read and
respond to his texts and way of thought.
References:
Attridge,
D., 2004, The Singularity of Literature,
London: Routledge.
Cherki,
A, 2006, Frantz Fanon: A Portrait,
Translated by Nadia Benabid, from 1st edt, 2000, Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press.
Clark,
T, “Singularity in Criticism” in the Cambridge
Quarterly, 395-398.
Fanon,
F., 1963, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove
Press: New York.
Hartman,
G., 1995, “On Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies” in New Literary History, 26 (3): 537-563.
Martin,
G., 2011, “Revisiting Fanon, From Theory to Practice: Democracy and Development
in Africa” in The Journal of Pan African
Studies, 4 (7): 24-38.
