The Wretched of the Earth (B-342-K)

316 pp. Frantz Fanon, the distinguished Algerian psychiatrist, presents in The Wretched of the Earth a challenging inquiry into the dehumanizing nature of colonial oppression, and draws up an exciting inventory of the possibilities of eventual freedom for the world's subject peoples. For his audience in the Third World, and for us who listen in, Fanon conducts, for perhaps the first time since Engels and Sorel, a brilliant examination of the role of violence as the most efficient midwife of historical change. He demonstrates how violence in the colonized countries of today's cold war world reflects the violent relations that obtain between capitalism and socialism, and shows how violence affords a colonialized people its first sense of community. He shows the limits of spontaneous individual action, and points out the necessity and dangers of organized action. He traces, in short, the historical dialect that leads from slavery to statehood - from a period of chauvinism, racism, tribalism, and religious rivalries, through the armed struggle for liberation, to full nationhood.