The Wretched of the Earth

Title The Wretched of the Earth
Original title Les damnés de la Terre
Author Frantz Fanon; pref. by Jean-Paul Sartre; transl. from the French by Constance Farrington
Publication Grove
Size 255p
Language ENG ENG
ISBN
Topics Political science
Racism
Colonization--History and criticism
Violence--History
Cold War
Decolonialization
Marxism (Politics)
Social change--Through natural and social disasters
Social stratification--Racial, ethnic or national groups
Notes a psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanising effects of colonization upon the individual, and the nation, from which derive the broader social, cultural, and political implications inherent to establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people. The French-language title derives from the opening lyrics of "The Internationale", the 19th-century anthem of the Left Wing. In his introduction to the 1961 edition of The Wretched of the Earth, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre supported Frantz Fanon’s advocacy of justified violence by the colonized people against the foreign colonizer, as necessary for their mental health and political liberation; The Wretched of the Earth presents thorough critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as colonizer and colonized in order to teach and psychologically mold the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution. Fanon proposes that revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to effect the expulsion of the colonists. Moreover, in traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariat are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat social-class — especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed — people who lacked the class consciousness to actively participate in the anti-colonial revolution. Yet, Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to identify the colonial subjects who are not involved in industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the working class), the lumpenproletariat have sufficient intellectual independence from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class to readily grasp that they can successfully revolt against the colonial status quo, and so decolonize their nation. [wikipedia]
303.485
FANO 23
11165
Available
Available
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