![]() His experiences treating the sufferings of Algerians and witnessing this explosion of violent anticolonialism led Fanon to join the nationalist movement and advocate for the Algerian revolution as a militant activist and writer. On November 1, 1954, leaders of the embryonic Algerian national movement, known as the Front de Lib ération Nationale (FLN), began the armed struggle for independence with violent attacks against French military and civilian targets, thereby rejecting the path of negotiation and compromise that had been followed to this point. ![]() He thus gained first-hand knowledge of the damage that colonialism inflicted on the minds and bodies of African people. Beyond the hospital walls, Fanon saw how the constant presence of French police stations and military barracks conveyed to the Algerians the clear message that they were little more than animals, to be beaten, dehumanized, and contained for the sake of colonial interests. Some of these French torturers were also his patients, and by working with them Fanon learned how the “disease ” of colonialism also infected the mind of the colonizer. ![]() Most of his psychiatric patients were native Algerians, many suffering from the mental and physical turmoil of colonial degradation, including the experience of torture at the hands of French interrogators. He was born in Martinique and trained in France, later working in a hospital in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, under the auspices of the French colonial administration. ![]() For Fanon, violence was both the poison of colonialism and its antidote.įanon arrived at this view on violence largely through his work as a psychiatrist. According to the Martinican author and political theorist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), violence fundamentally defined the meaning and practice of colonialism, and as such violence was central to the effort to resist and overthrow colonial rule. ![]()
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