Postcolonial 2021

Week 4: Violence

The theme this week is violence.

Fanon writes about the structures that French colonizers

“Man produces himself through violence” in what contexts? Is it the agency to do violence that makes humanity?

The other piece by Fanon is a shorter argument for decolonization, showing that any occupation relies on systemic violence and therefore all colonies must be completely liberated. This relies on arguments used by any abolition movement: no ‘bad actors’ committing violence independently, the system sanctions and relies on violence to exist, and that current people in power consciously ignore this because they are benefiting from the structure upheld by violence and can tell narratives of national honor to hide behind.

Definitions for violence:

  • Violence as individual acts (abuse, torture)
  • Violence as organized force (military/police, revolutionary groups, etc)
  • Any more?

<expand on Can the Subaltern Speak?>

Themes:

  • By attempting to dehumanize natives, the colonizer dehumanizes himself
    • The native knows he is not an animal, and will eventually assert his humanity through violence
  • Colonization relies on systemic violence to create and maintain
    • Therefore the reaction/revolution by the oppressed will have to be violent
    • System upheld by nationalist narrative of bringing civilization, bad treatment excused as an exception
  • In the eyes of the colonialists, slaves don’t have capacity to organize or have agency

Questions

  • What does Spivak mean with Capital-S-Subject (and even S/subject), what is the distinction between that and lower-case-subject?
    • Subject is the agent in a sentence, vs object (I (subject) pick up the apple (object))
    • Capital-S is intensification of this idea, the West is the Subject of the global political/cultural sphere

Readings

  1. Concerning Violence - Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth ch. 1)
  2. Algeria Face to Face with the French Torturers - Frantz Fanon
  3. The Black Jacobins - C. L. R. James (ch.4 internet archive)
  4. Can The Subaltern Speak? - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak