Nigel C Gibson - Fanon and the Rationality of Revolt

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FANON

&

THE RATIONALITY OF REVOLT

BREATH, LIFE, TIME

Nigel C. Gibson

Daraja Press

Ottawa

Published by Daraja Press

Thinking Freedom

https://darajapress.com

CC BY-NC 4.0: Nigel C. Gibson, 2020
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Cover design: Kate McDonnell
Cover photo: Tony Webster.tony@tonywebster.com. We revolt simply because for many reasons we can no longer breathe..-Franz Fanon..Banner outside the Minneapolis Police Department fourth precinct following the officer-involved shooting of Jamar Clark on November 15, 2015.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Fanon and the rationality of revolt: Breath, life, time / Nigel C Gibson.

Names: Gibson, Nigel C., author.

Description: Series statement: Thinking freedom series

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200313738 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200313894 |
ISBN 9781988832777 (softcover) | ISBN 9781988832784 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Fanon, Frantz, 1925-1961. | LCSH: RevolutionsPhilosophy.

Classification: LCC JC491 .G53 2020 | DDC 303.6/4dc23

Contents

Introduction

Fanons idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the world takes on urgent significance in this moment of global movements for Black Lives after the police murder of George Floyd. [1]

We inhabit extraordinary times: times in which we are acutely aware of the intensity of what revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon called the glare of historys floodlights. Around the world, the invisible becomes visible as the pandemic throws new light on old inequalities. From the United States to Brazil and South Africa, it is those who had already been rendered acutely vulnerable who are on the front lines.

And then there is the rebellion. The velocity and scale at which the revolt against police murder that began in Minnesota after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and moved throughout the US, and then other parts of the world, was astonishing. It was impossible to predict, but then, in retrospect, it is utterly predictable. As George Floyds death became a nodal point, calling for action as well as rethinking and self-clarification, many were reminded of an observation attributed to Leninthat there are weeks where decades happen. What will happen next? How can we play a role in determining the future, making sure that these rebellions are not taken over and watered down, and realizing the systematic and truly human-centered transformations that people crave? Fanon offers us some important insights into these challenges as his dialectic of liberation becomes newly alive in moments like ours.

Thinking about this moment with Fanon, we need to be aware of continuities and discontinuitiesor, as he puts it, opacitiesbetween the ages. Fanon is always speaking to us, but often in ways we cannot hear. We have to work to listen to him and to understand the new contexts and meanings in relative opacity. It is this constant dialogue that helps illuminate the present and enables ongoing fidelity to Fanons call in the conclusion of The Wretched of the Earth, the necessity to work out new concepts, for ourselves and for humanity.

---

1. Some of the material in this pamphlet first appeared in the South African publication New Frame (https://www.newframe.com/combat-breathing-the-spirit-of-rebellion-in-the-usa/and https://www.newframe.com/fanon-and-the-rationality-of-revolt/).
   

The Rationality of Revolt

One of the concepts that is central to Fanons thought is the idea of the rationality of revolt. And the practice of engaging Fanon not only with revolt but also with revolts reason or rationality defines a uniquely Fanonian dialectic. In the chapter entitled Medicine and Colonialism in A Dying Colonialism, he connects hearing patients speak of their symptoms to hearing everyday resistances in daily life: It is necessary to analyse, patiently and lucidly, each one of the reactions of the colonized, and every time we do not understand, we must tell ourselves that we are at the heart of the drama, that of the impossibility of finding a meeting ground in any colonial situation. In a racist society like the US, a similar situation occurs. In other words, understanding requires both careful and self-critical listening while maintaining an awareness of meaning and context. The important first step is to understand how reactions are not forced into a ready-made scenario.

For Fanon the hospital and the doctors office are spaces of pathologization where the patients are therefore deemed irrational and thereby in need of being controlled (and medicated). In a racist society where white is considered the norm it is normal for the Black person to be abnormalized. The colonial regime and its institutions pathologizes the colonized as hysterical and thus for Fanon this has to be understood socially. Society, he says, is the source of the problem. Becoming more aware of institutional racism does not mean its dissolution and it is often forgotten how racism is internalized by those objectified by it and how resistance to institutional racism, to medicalization and to the fear of hospitals, for example, is considered irrational. All revolt is pathologized but for Fanon this resistance expresses an elemental rationality of revolt.

Politically, then, Fanon insists on self-critical reflection to enable listening as a first step towards understanding. It is on this basis of working with those who are considered external to history and rationality that new concepts are allowed room for their own development. Moreover, just as the hospital became the space of hearing reason in madness, the colony itself became the clinic for Fanons praxis. The question is how to hear reason in revolt in these repressive spaces.

As stated above, understanding this reason requires both critical listening and the development of new ways of thinking through which to hear, with each dependent on the other. Listening, however, cannot begin without critique, and Fanon is utterly critical of what he calls the common opportunists who simply repeat what they hear. To hear, in other words, means to engage critically. There is an important echo here of Gramscis notion of the philosophy of praxis. For Gramsci the philosophy of praxis had to become a consciousness full of contradictions, that is to say, critically engaged with the revolt. It isnt enough to praise mass action but rather it is necessary to engage its contradictions and, Fanon argues, elevate this element to a principle of knowledge and action.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon connects this praxis to the idea of the rationality of revolta concept which becomes the new beginning that opens up both action and thought. For example, the current mass movement across professional sports and especially in the NBA and WNBA has transcended Colin Kaepernicks individual act of taking a knee and has given it a new and collective voice.

Fanon immediately adds a critique of the old leadership and old politics, and here he is speaking of the politicos who want to close down thinking into a series of reformist or even faux-revolutionary demands which are constructed by old concepts. In the US reformism often takes the form of the vote. Everything in this election year is being funneled into beating Trump. And while this is a minimum demand, it silences more radical demands and ignores the larger issue that we must face, namely, almost half the electorate has openly supported a white supremacist.

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