• wrecker_vs_dracula [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Yo I’m reading the wretched of the earth now and I’m having trouble understanding something. Fanon refers to colonizers repeatedly as “manichaean”, and I don’t understand why. The only meaning I know for that word is in reference to a now extinct central Asian religion. Are you able to help me understand better what Fanon means when he uses this term?

    • edwardligma [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      i cant remember specifically with fanon, but people generally use manichean to describe very black-and-white thinking about good and evil (which i guess was one of the big parts of that religion)

      • wrecker_vs_dracula [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Oh wow thank you! Now I have to go back and read the first few chapters again with that knowledge. It comes up a lot.

    • Foolio [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      edwardligma is exactly right. "Manichean" as Fanon describes it refers to the colonizers tendency to portray their exploitation in humanitarian term - they are bringing the light of "civilization" to the savages (the people being colonized).

      Franky, it's a point that comes up a lot in Settlers that really makes a lot of American leftists rage, but it's fact. A lot of historical "change" movements in the US have been dominated by crazy Puritans/"Progressives" who treat colonized and oppressed people as abused children who need to be saved via morality. Not a coincidence that the early-20th century Progressive movement was rabidly opposed to Socialists - who were largely continental Euros or non-white people as opposed to good founding stock Americans.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Manichean generally refers to a great struggle between fundamentally opposed forces - Good and Evil, light and dark, pepsi and coke.