Frantz Fanon – Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa

Frantz Fanon – Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa

(Extracts from Chapter 6: Conclusion, “The Wretched of the Earth”, 1961)

When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders. … Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth. Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.

The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose aim should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers … It is a question of the Third World starting a new history of Man, a history which will have regard to the sometimes prodigious theses which Europe has put forward, but which will also not forget Europe’s crimes, of which the most horrible was committed in the heart of man, and consisted of the pathological tearing apart of his functions and the crumbling away of his unity … racial hatreds, slavery, exploitation and above all the bloodless genocide which consisted in the setting aside of fifteen thousand millions of men.

So, Comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her. Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature. If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe … then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans. They will know how to do it better than the most gifted among us. But if we want humanity to advance a step farther, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries.

If we wish to live up to our peoples’ expectations, we must seek the response elsewhere than in Europe … for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and TRY TO SET AFOOT A NEW MAN.

Source: Reproduced from Frantz Fanon, “Wretched of the Earth”, Présence Africaine, 1959.

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