Concerning Violence ': Fanon lives on

By Belen Ferbandez

OPINION:

A new documentary on colonial legacies in Africa raises
questions about the colonialisms of today.
In one of the more haunting scenes from Swedish
documentary director Goran Hugo Olsson ' s Concerning
Violence: Nine Scenes From the Anti- Imperialistic Self-
Defense, a young Mozambican woman with a stump of a
right arm breastfeeds a baby with a stump of a right leg .
Like the rest of the footage in the film , the scene was
unearthed from Swedish television archives dating from the
era of African anti -colonial struggles . The woman and child
were recorded in the immediate aftermath of an aerial
bombing raid in 1972 , one of Portugal ' s many responses to
the Mozambican desire for liberation .
In typical fashion , the Portuguese and their imperial
colleagues instead portrayed the Mozambique Liberation
Front ( FRELIMO) as violent terrorists , despite the
merely reactive nature of anti-colonial violence to centuries
of oppression .
After all, violence is the prerogative of empire .
Concerning Violence is inspired by The Wretched of the
Earth, the 1961 book of Martinique-born psychiatrist and
revolutionary Frantz Fanon, excerpts of which serve as the
film' s narrative and are read by singer and activist Lauryn
Hill.
Among Fanon ' s sober assessments is that colonialism "is
violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when
confronted with greater violence ". Decolonisation , he writes ,
"is always a violent phenomenon " . " Decolonisation , which
sets out to change the order of the world , is , obviously , a
program of complete disorder".
The film corroborates these assertions with footage from
former European colonial possessions in Africa. Scenes
variously depict the subjugation and impoverishment of native
populations, juxtaposed with Europeans sun -tanning and
playing golf in picturesque African settings in between
wantonly extracting resources and imprisoning and torturing
people .
This, in turn, provides the proper context for scenes of
militant African resistance .
Particularly illustrative of the prevailing " order of the
world " is an interview with a white settler in then -
Rhodesia who addresses his black servant boy as "you stupid
thing , you" and laments the impending African reclamation of
the territory : "The gooks have got it ".
When asked by the interviewer to clarify his derogatory
slang, he elaborates with more slang: "The terrs… The whole
world is supporting the terrorists " .
The refuse of empire
Concerning Violence premieres in New York on December
5 and provides us with a good opportunity to ask ourselves:
Has the world order changed much since Fanon?
To be sure , we ' ve superficially done away with the whole
colonialism business , it being generally understood that
colonies are bad and archaic things. There are , however ,
notable exceptions to the rule , as in the case of state of
Israel, which is granted a de facto exemption from ceasing
colonial operations and is furthermore regularly lauded as
a beacon of democracy .
But the same oppressive structures that underpinned
colonialism continue to flourish in the age of neoliberal
globalisation, which functions according to the idea that there
is a class of human beings - often but not always determined
by skin colour - entitled to a level of wealth and comfort that
is only attainable by depriving the global masses of a dignified
existence.
And as always , a violent apparatus is required to secure the
arrangement.
In recent years, the African continent has witnessed an
ever- amplified United States military presence . Writing in
Jacobin magazine , David Mizner describes the scenario as
a "soft occupation correspond[ ing ] with a battle between
China and the [ US] over the spoils of Africa , which has
massive natural resources and six of the world ' s fastest
growing economies ".
Poor Africans might be forgiven for failing to detect
enormous differences between this and previous intrusions
from abroad.
In other parts of the world that the US prefers to think of
as its own personal military base - such as Central America
- the imperial power has backed the security forces of
various repressive and illegitimate leaders committed to
violently squelching popular protest .
Reasons for protest have included government insistence on
catering to foreign corporations rather than to indigenous and
peasant communities opposed to the usurpation and
contamination of their lands by mining operations and the
like.
Of course , imperially sanctioned violence is not only military
in nature . The inherent cruelty and savagery that
characterise the global neoliberal system are acutely visible in
places like India , where the supposed "miracle " of free trade
has led to a situation in which nearly 300, 000 farmers
have committed suicide after being driven into insuperable
debt .
But the victims are largely invisible , the dehumanised refuse
of empire and the price to be paid for securing corporate
profit.
'Reduced to violence '
In her spoken preface to Concerning Violence , renowned
Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
explains that in "reading between the lines " of The Wretched
of the Earth , one sees that Fanon does not in fact endorse
violence but rather "insists that the tragedy is that the very
poor is reduced to violence , because there is no other
response possible to an absolute absence of response and an
absolute exercise of legitimised violence from the colonisers ".
Spivak goes on to make a telling comparison regarding the
earth' s "wretched " : " Their lives count as nothing against the
death of the colonisers: unacknowledged Hiroshimas over
against sentimentalised 9/ 11 ' s ".
For another modern -day example of legitimised violence
and self -victimisation by the very purveyors of said violence ,
it seems appropriate to once again bring up the state of
Israel, which shares the ex -Rhodesian resident ' s knack for
hallucinating himself into a position of unparalleled suffering at
the hands of "terrorists ".
Following last month ' s Jerusalem synagogue attack in
which two Palestinians murdered five Israelis , there was a
typical upsurge in terror -hysteria from the Israeli
establishment and sympathetic governments and media .
Studiously ignored were the various Israeli crimes that
directly preceded the event, not to mention this summer ' s
slaughter of more than 2 , 100 Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip.
Indeed , the only surprising thing about violent acts on the
part of Palestinians is that more of them have not occurred ,
as might be expected given asphyxiating conditions of
apartheid and legitimised terror.
Meanwhile, Israel' s primary benefactor - the nation
described by Fanon as the " former European colony [ that]
decided to catch up with Europe " - should find much to
reflect on in Concerning Violence, particularly given
Fanon' s conclusion regarding the European experiment: "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 ".
Contemporary manifestations of the American sickness
include the recent decision by a Missouri grand jury not to
indict a police officer for killing an unarmed black teenager in
the city of Ferguson - far from an isolated instance of
fatal bigotry.
Anything but a cure
Drawing on several of Fanon' s texts , journalist Roqayah
Chamseddine penned an essay on the aftermath of the
Ferguson decision for Al -Akhbar English , in which she
condemned the liberal American tradition of placing the onus
of non -violence on those oppressed by the state rather than
the state itself - an entity that engages in " unfettered police
brutality and judicial discrimination" against black
communities.
This tradition entails an obsession with containing potentially
"violent" black reactions to state violence ( e. . vandalism and
looting), and ultimately prescribes a superior concern for
private property and material goods than for black life.
Writes Chamseddine :
"Today in the United States many will be grieving for
buildings burned and windows broken, while the bourgeoisie
will cry out ' calm!' and hurriedly search for Martin Luther
King Jr . quotes to guilt Black protesters into supporting
their deadly liberal pacifism ".
Suffice it to say Concerning Violence should concern us all .
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger:
Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso . She is a
contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine .