Frantz Fanon

“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”

Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder. But it cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentleman’s agreement. Decolonization, we know, is an historical process: In other words, it can only be understood, it can only find its significance and become self coherent insofar as we can discern the history-making movement which gives it form and substance. Decolonization is the encounter between two congenitally antagonistic forces that in fact owe their singularity to the kind of reification secreted and nurtured by the colonial situation. Their first confrontation was colored by violence and their cohabitation —or rather the exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer—continued at the point of the bayonet and under cannon fire.

Decolonization never goes unnoticed, for it focuses on and fundamentally alters being, and transforms the spectator crushed to a nonessential state into a privileged actor, captured in a virtually grandiose fashion by the spotlight of History. It infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power: The “thing” colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation.

Decolonization, therefore, implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation. Its definition can, if we want to describe it accurately, be summed up in the well-known words: “The last shall be first.” Decolonization is verification of this. At a descriptive level, therefore, any decolonization is a success.

On November l, 1 954, the Revolution broke out.
Very quickly I came to realize that I belonged in the camp of those who fight for an Algerian nation. The countless tortures that I had occasion to wi tness in the exercise of my duties were to strengthen my hatred of colonialism : Algerians torn apart by two military trucks driven in opposite dire(!tions, classic tortures
ALGERIA'S EUROPEAN MINO RITY
1 77
by water, electricity, hanging by the thumbs or by the testicles.
One day my wife who had been kept awake all night, as she had for several weeks, by the cries of the tortured (we lived above one of the torture cham bers of Saint-Arnaud), unable to stand it any longer, went and violently protested to the soldiers and the C.R.S. responsible for these practices. She was led back to the house with two machine guns digging into her ribs.

to hear one of our elders and if need be protect h im from the fascists.
On this point we were not called on to intervene. Camus's audience had been carefully screened and the approaches to the hall were guarded by the helmeted C. R.S.27 We expected that Camus would take a clear postion on the Algerian problem.
\Vhat we were treated to was a sweet-sister speech. He explained to us at length that the innocent civilian population must be protected, but he was categorically against fund raising in favor of the innocent families of political prisoners. We in the hall 211 Hernu-a radical-socialist of the Mendes-France persuasion. Albert Camus-the Algerian-born French writer, Nobel prize-winner in J9!j7, Z'l C.R.S.-Compagnie Rtipublicaine de Sticuntti, a national constabulary army corps, independent of the regular army. (Translator's note)
ALGERIA'S EUR OPEAN MINORITY
1 75
were dumbfounded. Outside, the mob of fascists was rhythmically yelling: '"A lgerie fran�aise!" and screaming: "Camus to the gallows!"
But these demonstrations seemed to us to be the dying spasms of the colonialist beast.