'Countries have agency, and even peoples have agency. This was never the case under colonialism.'
?
They had slavery.
Until the colonial era.
So I'd say a lot of locals had a lot less agency pre- than during the colonial era.
'There is hardly any common, national history—because there is no agency'
And pre colonialism, which African territories can be termed 'nations' the way the author (and we) understand(s) the term? And which pre colonial era African nations (Ethiopia?) actually wrote their own history? Apart from religious works, Portuguese explorers and, especially, Arab slavers, what is there to read?
'What empires do to colonies is to-dehistorisize them. Not only by destroying the knowledge of the history there was, but not creating a new one'
I'm thankful for Tacitus' descriptions of what now is the Netherlands and the tribes living there. For my ancestors did...nothing.
'Even the worst dictatorship in an independent country implies shared agency of citizens'
What a relief. But typically agency seems to be distributed rather unevenly.
So I'm not sure ALL 1970s Ugandans would have preferred Idi Amin over Victtorian rule.
Absolutely', his tribal supporters and ethnic allies would have said.
His victims however...
PS. Many Indonesians are very aware that the Dutch colonial empire in the east massively expanded the Indonesian core territory of a few rival states on the island of Java into a nation the size of the width of the Atlantic ocean.
And despite the war of independence they hold no grudge. Perhaps because they understand very well that they as well - like basically every state or peoples on earth capable of it - had their expansionist era(s).
And perhaps because they remember how the Suharto regime murdered between 500.000 and 1.5 mln communist sand Chinese Indonesians in 65’.
<i>And pre colonialism, which African territories can be termed 'nations' the way the author (and we) understand(s) the term? And which pre colonial era African nations (Ethiopia?) actually wrote their own history? Apart from religious works, Portuguese explorers and, especially, Arab slavers, what is there to read?</i>
I am not sure how to interpret "'nations' the way the author (and we) understand(s) the term". That polities as small as Andorra and San Marino are members of the UN, or using the somewhat higher bar of EU membership, Malta, I would be surprised if we did not find numerous "nations" in the list, especially in the second column, and especially in West Africa
*actually the number of rows shown, so likely a bit of an overcount for the number of polities.
Interesting on the point about blood sacrifice and the purity of violence that the Nazis and Fanon supported. Irish nationalists are also very attracted by this concept of purity in death and it was best articulate in the hunger strikes in the early 1980s where the provisional IRA greatly encouraged the hunger strikers to sacrifice themselves for the struggle against the British.
I am not sure which welfare function you are implicitly using in reaching your conclusion that former colonies may be materially poorer and worse governed than under colonial rule but they are still better off being independent.
Aren’t you moreover somewhat a-historically applying that ultimate European idea - the nation state - to societies that may be simply unable to function in those terms?
Don't fell bad for not understanding Fanon. Nobody does.
Those post-modern intellectuals and theorists are all pseudo-science. Nowadays, they mainly survive as inspiration for art theory (incl. literature) and other obscure areas of the Humanities. Their only source of legitimacy is the sudden end of the USSR in 1991 - of which none of them predicted and none of them can explain.
I am not too expert on Algeria, but it seems to me that Fanon was too angry, too much impressed by the suffering of his patients, when he wrote about violence. He wrote it with his emotions, not with his brain.
Violence is a very sensitive thing in politics. One can use it only under very particular circumstances. Mostly, governments can command much more violence than insurgents can, and have thus an unreasonable advantage. Insurgence can sometimes be better at politics, though.
The reason why de Gaulle, with his keen sense of power, opted for Algerian independence was that at his visit to Alger every single Arab house flew the liberation flag. De Gaulle understood that Algeria simply was untenable to reasonable cost. It was mobilization, not violence, that won the independence.
And I believe the independence had been better if it had mobilized less with violence and more with politics, if that had been possible (which I don't know, of course). As it was, most local resistance leaders and most local leaders in general were killed and the whole initiative went to exiles. And exiles are usually corrupt, it's their only way of survival. Independent Algeria, its leaders, that is, is happy exporting oil to France so that its leaders can live a good life while not bothering too much about living standards of the population in general. If people in general had been able to exert more initiative in the liberaltion struggle, I believe this had been different.
On this issue I am a Gandhian. And Gandhi was no pacifist, he was quite happy to support the Quit India campaign, which was violent. Because then, violence was no obstacle to the mass movement that had been mobilized by less violent means and was able to resist English suppression attempts, by sheer numbers.
Well, Branko here you have got me interested in you again (I doubt you are much interested in me but its a free press you know, and I do not like paywalls because I am POOR... but middle-class in origin!!!!# So now I have you back again!)
So---okay, Fanon. Now when I was a teen-aged radical, a sympathizer, not a future PhD., I saw to it that I read that book, "Wretched of...." etc. I like it and I thought it was good! I liked that he was a trained psychiatrist. I liked that he witnessed torture. And you know I liked radicals.
So, I thought Fanon was "liberation" and that was, Well---probably very good.
Well, now you know what you are dealing with here. A superficial radical who will have trouble spelling long, unpronouncable names like yours. The first one I like...
So, I didn't read it but that's okay with me. The last thing I did read, not long ago, discussed Fanon's disdain for tribalism. Man, the guy really was not about reviving tribalism. Or should say really disdained it. But what, then? Immediate radical transformation? Well, he is a radical purist. I'll give him that.
So. I think it is that our belief in this kind of human potentiality was very thoroughgoing. We assumed such a liberation could exist (italics on 'could,' please) and, if man had this capacity all you needed to do was get the old conservative tribal oligarchs out and the flowers of enlightenment will bloo and mankind will get back the roots of mankind: which is sanity and reason and compassion and love and kindness and.... Well, everything these lying 'Woke' liberals are always saying nowadays. How very nice they are. And -for Fanon -how very old-fashioned tribalism is.
But the liberation never worked out. And, today the word itself is all that is left. In a political world falling into the hands of 'Woke' morons.
" ...the difficulty of a Black man not only in metropolitan France (even if I could not relate to Fanon’s experience, I could relate to the complex of inferiority that always englobes smaller cultures and could see how it may become all-consuming for Blacks), but elsewhere."
"The third issue I could not fully appreciate" seems to be about the difficulty of a black man all over the world.
Personally, what I am left with is a beffudlement about my former idea of "praxis." I really (please: add the italics here!) liked this word. In the original old days, when it meant not just theory but action. Don't outthink everything. Everything is not going to come from thought. There are limits to conceptual thought. Get out there and DO something. Fanon seems to have been that man as well.
'Countries have agency, and even peoples have agency. This was never the case under colonialism.'
?
They had slavery.
Until the colonial era.
So I'd say a lot of locals had a lot less agency pre- than during the colonial era.
'There is hardly any common, national history—because there is no agency'
And pre colonialism, which African territories can be termed 'nations' the way the author (and we) understand(s) the term? And which pre colonial era African nations (Ethiopia?) actually wrote their own history? Apart from religious works, Portuguese explorers and, especially, Arab slavers, what is there to read?
'What empires do to colonies is to-dehistorisize them. Not only by destroying the knowledge of the history there was, but not creating a new one'
I'm thankful for Tacitus' descriptions of what now is the Netherlands and the tribes living there. For my ancestors did...nothing.
'Even the worst dictatorship in an independent country implies shared agency of citizens'
What a relief. But typically agency seems to be distributed rather unevenly.
So I'm not sure ALL 1970s Ugandans would have preferred Idi Amin over Victtorian rule.
Absolutely', his tribal supporters and ethnic allies would have said.
His victims however...
PS. Many Indonesians are very aware that the Dutch colonial empire in the east massively expanded the Indonesian core territory of a few rival states on the island of Java into a nation the size of the width of the Atlantic ocean.
And despite the war of independence they hold no grudge. Perhaps because they understand very well that they as well - like basically every state or peoples on earth capable of it - had their expansionist era(s).
And perhaps because they remember how the Suharto regime murdered between 500.000 and 1.5 mln communist sand Chinese Indonesians in 65’.
"For my ancestors did...nothing"
I see that you seem to have resorted to their ways again.
Within a few days of the invasion of Baghdad, the Americans had destroyed its ancient library. The barbarians drove tank into it
Book burners by proxy ISIS practice the missionary tradition
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/has-mali-been-able-to-save-its-Ehoii3wKR06pnOOMBfUDqw
<i>And pre colonialism, which African territories can be termed 'nations' the way the author (and we) understand(s) the term? And which pre colonial era African nations (Ethiopia?) actually wrote their own history? Apart from religious works, Portuguese explorers and, especially, Arab slavers, what is there to read?</i>
Many over the centuries. Wikipedia has <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kingdoms_and_empires_in_African_history#List_of_African_kingdoms">a long list</a></b>, organized by region and era. I have done a quick and dirty count of the number of kingdoms and empires listed*, dropping both the earliest and latest periods, as well as North Africa. This gives the following table:
7thC – 12thC 13thC – 18thC
Central Africa 11 112
East Africa 33 170
Southern Africa 1 69
West Africa 84 157
I am not sure how to interpret "'nations' the way the author (and we) understand(s) the term". That polities as small as Andorra and San Marino are members of the UN, or using the somewhat higher bar of EU membership, Malta, I would be surprised if we did not find numerous "nations" in the list, especially in the second column, and especially in West Africa
*actually the number of rows shown, so likely a bit of an overcount for the number of polities.
Interesting on the point about blood sacrifice and the purity of violence that the Nazis and Fanon supported. Irish nationalists are also very attracted by this concept of purity in death and it was best articulate in the hunger strikes in the early 1980s where the provisional IRA greatly encouraged the hunger strikers to sacrifice themselves for the struggle against the British.
A scam for sure
I am not sure which welfare function you are implicitly using in reaching your conclusion that former colonies may be materially poorer and worse governed than under colonial rule but they are still better off being independent.
Aren’t you moreover somewhat a-historically applying that ultimate European idea - the nation state - to societies that may be simply unable to function in those terms?
Don't fell bad for not understanding Fanon. Nobody does.
Those post-modern intellectuals and theorists are all pseudo-science. Nowadays, they mainly survive as inspiration for art theory (incl. literature) and other obscure areas of the Humanities. Their only source of legitimacy is the sudden end of the USSR in 1991 - of which none of them predicted and none of them can explain.
I am not too expert on Algeria, but it seems to me that Fanon was too angry, too much impressed by the suffering of his patients, when he wrote about violence. He wrote it with his emotions, not with his brain.
Violence is a very sensitive thing in politics. One can use it only under very particular circumstances. Mostly, governments can command much more violence than insurgents can, and have thus an unreasonable advantage. Insurgence can sometimes be better at politics, though.
The reason why de Gaulle, with his keen sense of power, opted for Algerian independence was that at his visit to Alger every single Arab house flew the liberation flag. De Gaulle understood that Algeria simply was untenable to reasonable cost. It was mobilization, not violence, that won the independence.
And I believe the independence had been better if it had mobilized less with violence and more with politics, if that had been possible (which I don't know, of course). As it was, most local resistance leaders and most local leaders in general were killed and the whole initiative went to exiles. And exiles are usually corrupt, it's their only way of survival. Independent Algeria, its leaders, that is, is happy exporting oil to France so that its leaders can live a good life while not bothering too much about living standards of the population in general. If people in general had been able to exert more initiative in the liberaltion struggle, I believe this had been different.
On this issue I am a Gandhian. And Gandhi was no pacifist, he was quite happy to support the Quit India campaign, which was violent. Because then, violence was no obstacle to the mass movement that had been mobilized by less violent means and was able to resist English suppression attempts, by sheer numbers.
Well, Branko here you have got me interested in you again (I doubt you are much interested in me but its a free press you know, and I do not like paywalls because I am POOR... but middle-class in origin!!!!# So now I have you back again!)
So---okay, Fanon. Now when I was a teen-aged radical, a sympathizer, not a future PhD., I saw to it that I read that book, "Wretched of...." etc. I like it and I thought it was good! I liked that he was a trained psychiatrist. I liked that he witnessed torture. And you know I liked radicals.
So, I thought Fanon was "liberation" and that was, Well---probably very good.
Well, now you know what you are dealing with here. A superficial radical who will have trouble spelling long, unpronouncable names like yours. The first one I like...
So, I didn't read it but that's okay with me. The last thing I did read, not long ago, discussed Fanon's disdain for tribalism. Man, the guy really was not about reviving tribalism. Or should say really disdained it. But what, then? Immediate radical transformation? Well, he is a radical purist. I'll give him that.
So. I think it is that our belief in this kind of human potentiality was very thoroughgoing. We assumed such a liberation could exist (italics on 'could,' please) and, if man had this capacity all you needed to do was get the old conservative tribal oligarchs out and the flowers of enlightenment will bloo and mankind will get back the roots of mankind: which is sanity and reason and compassion and love and kindness and.... Well, everything these lying 'Woke' liberals are always saying nowadays. How very nice they are. And -for Fanon -how very old-fashioned tribalism is.
But the liberation never worked out. And, today the word itself is all that is left. In a political world falling into the hands of 'Woke' morons.
What has happened?
p.s. so what is your article about?
" ...the difficulty of a Black man not only in metropolitan France (even if I could not relate to Fanon’s experience, I could relate to the complex of inferiority that always englobes smaller cultures and could see how it may become all-consuming for Blacks), but elsewhere."
"The third issue I could not fully appreciate" seems to be about the difficulty of a black man all over the world.
Personally, what I am left with is a beffudlement about my former idea of "praxis." I really (please: add the italics here!) liked this word. In the original old days, when it meant not just theory but action. Don't outthink everything. Everything is not going to come from thought. There are limits to conceptual thought. Get out there and DO something. Fanon seems to have been that man as well.