Hey guys! welcome to chapter two of the Wretched of the Earth! Here is the summary and analysis we will be using for this book, feel free to use this to follow along if you cant complete the reading or need help catching up.

Chapter two is one of my favorites. It paints a wonderful painting of the colonized society and its potential paths and pitfalls to revolution. The key to this chapter is understanding the different players involved in a colonized society and the tensions between each other.

Some (optional) discussion questions:

1.Who is the lumpenproletariat? Why are the essential to a revolution, why is discounting their potential a mistake?

  1. Who are the urban proletariat? what kind of positions do they have? why do they represent the "bourgeoisie fraction of the colonized population"?

  2. Who are the rural masses, why are they often a hindrance to revolutions in the past, why are they also crucial? What role do witch doctors and tribal chief play in the lives of the rural masses?

  3. Where will the political education of the masses come from? Why is it important?

  4. What is the weakness of spontaneity?

Bonus: Try to tie in the concepts from chapter two to a real life countries, such as the events in Niger or Haiti (who is the lumpenproletariat, what are they doing ect).

feel free to ignore the discussion questions if they dont serve you, and just comment any thought, questions, and critiques you have of the chapter! also due dates are not conducive to a real education people! always go at your own pace you don't have to comment today.

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

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Some quotes that I've highlighted in my previous reading:

    The peasant who stays put defends his traditions stubbornly, and in a colonized society stands for the disciplined element whose interests lie in maintaining the social structure. It is true that this unchanging way of life, which hangs on like grim death to rigid social structures, may occasionally give birth to movements which are based on religious fanaticism or tribal wars. But in their spontaneous movements the country people as a whole remain disciplined and altruistic. The individual stands aside in favor of the community.

    What is the reaction of the nationalist parties to this eruption of the peasant masses into the national struggle? We have seen that the majority of nationalist parties have not written into their propaganda the necessity for armed intervention. They do not oppose the continuing of the rebellion, but they content themselves with leaving it to the spontaneous action of the country people. As a whole they treat this new element as a sort of manna fallen from heaven, and pray to goodness that it'll go on falling. They make the most of the manna, but do not attempt to organize the rebellion. They don't send leaders into the countryside to educate the people politically, or to increase their awareness or put the struggle onto a higher level. All they do is to hope that, carried onward by its own momentum, the action of the people will not come to a standstill. There is no contamination of the rural movement by the urban movement; each develops according to its own dialectic.

    I actually didn't highlight a whole lot in this chapter, and part of it is because the chapter is about a process of obtaining national liberation. A lot of passages only make sense when viewed within the context of the entire chapter. Likewise, this chapter has to be read alongside the following chapter. This chapter is the "the party form is good and centralization is good actually" while the following chapter is the "the party form is bad and centralization is bad actually" chapter. This contradiction makes sense once you understand that Fanon is a dialectical thinker. The party form makes sense within a given stage of revolutionary struggle but once that stage has been passed and the party form has outlived its usefulness, it starts to become malformative. It's like how a butterfly has to grow from a caterpillar with an intermediate pupa. A caterpillar, pupa, and butterfly all have different needs and priorities they have to fulfill. You can't just jump from a caterpillar to a butterfly or feed a caterpillar nectar because that's what butterflies eat. Each stage of development has to be taken on its own terms. Prefigurative politics is essentially feeding caterpillars nectar and thinking it'll somehow become a butterfly.

    There's a reverse problem where the stages of development are taken to be immutable and must be rigidly followed. Going back to the butterfly example, the caterpillar stage has different molts called instars, and for some species, some instars can be skipped depending on material conditions. They can't skip the entire caterpillar stage, but they can skip instars so that the caterpillar stage is fast-tracked. Whether a stage could be skipped or not can only be answered through praxis. It's not something you can just theorycraft.

    • Othello [comrade/them, love/loves]
      hexagon
      ·
      10 months ago

      I really love the caterpillar metaphor! I think your right about this chapter seeming somewhat contradictory at times until he gets to the end of the chapter. I like the quotes you chose especially the second one, its important for us to acknowledge that different struggles require different dialectics.