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1961 book by Frantz Fanon

The Wretched of the Earth is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications of establishing a social movement for the decolonisation of a person and of a people. The French language title derives from the opening lyrics of "The Internationale" anthem.

Through critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as coloniser and colonised, to teach and psychologically mould the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution. Fanon proposes that revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to effect the expulsion of the colonists. In traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariats are the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat—especially criminals, vagrants and the unemployed—people who lack the class consciousness to participate in the socialist revolution. Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to the colonial subjects who are not involved in industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the working class), the lumpenproletariat has sufficient intellectual independence from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class, ready to grasp that they can revolt against the colonial status quo and so decolonize their nation. One of the essays included in The Wretched of the Earth is "On National Culture", in which Fanon highlights the necessity for each generation to discover its mission and fight for it.

The first section is entitled "On Violence". It is a detailed explanation of violence in relation to both the colonial world and the process of decolonization. Fanon begins with the premise that decolonization is, by definition, a violent process without exception. The object of that process is the eventual replacement of one group of humans with another, and that process is only complete when the transition is total. This conception of decolonization is based on Fanon's construction of the colonial world. Through his observations, he concluded that all colonial structures are actually nested societies which are not complementary. He uses Aristotelian logic in that the colony followed the "principle of reciprocal exclusivity". Based on this conclusion, Fanon characterizes the assessment of the native population by the settler class as dehumanizing. The settlers literally do not see the natives as members of the same species. The natives are incapable of ethics and thereby are the embodiment of absolute evil (p. 32) as opposed to the Christian settlers who are forces of good. This is a crucial point for Fanon because it explains two phenomena that occur in the colonial world. The first is the idea that decolonization is the replacement of one population by another, and the second is that since the native knows that they are not animals, they immediately develop a feeling of rebellion against the settler. One of the temporary consequences of colonization that Fanon talks about is division of the native into three groups. The first is the native worker who is valued by the settler for their labor. The second group is what he calls the "colonized intellectual" (p. 47). These are, by western standards, the more educated members of the native group who are in many ways recruited by the settler to be spokespeople for their views. The settlers had "implanted in the minds of the colonized intellectual that the essential qualities remain eternal in spite of the blunders men may make: the essential qualities of the West, of course" (p. 36); these intellectuals were "ready to defend the Graeco Latin pedestal" (p. 36) against all foes, settler or native. The third group described by Fanon are the lumpenproletariat. This group is described in Marxism as the poorest class; those who are outside of the system because they have so little. This group is often dismissed by Marxists as unable to assist in the organizing of the workers, but Fanon sees them differently. For him, the lumpenproletariat will be the first to discover violence in the face of the settler (p. 47). Once the idea of revolution is accepted by the native, Fanon describes the process by which it is debated, adjusted, and finally implemented. According to Fanon, the revolution begins as an idea of total systematic change, and through the actual application to real world situations is watered down until it becomes a small shift of power within the existing system. "[The] pacifists and legalists  put bluntly enough the demand  'Give us more power (46), but the "native intellectual has clothed his aggressiveness in his barely veiled desire to assimilate himself to the colonial world" (47). The colonialist bourgeoisie offers non violence and then compromise as further ways out of the violence of decolonization; these too are mechanisms to blunt and degrade the movement. An example of this is the newly independent Republic of Gabon which gained independence from France in 1960 and afterward, the new president, Léon M'ba said "Gabon is independent, but between Gabon and France nothing has changed; everything goes on as before" (quoted in Wretched of the Earth, p. 52). For Fanon, this is the perfect example of a decolonization movement which has been enfeebled by the tentativeness of its leaders. To fight this, "The newly independent Third World countries are urged not to emulate the decadent societies of the West (or East), but to chart a new path in defining human and international relationship" (Fairchild, 2010, p. 194). In this essay Fanon describes many aspects of the violence and response to violence necessary for total decolonization. He also offers cautions about several different approaches to that violence.

In the essay "On National Culture" published in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon sets out to define how a national culture can emerge among the former and, at the time of its release in 1961, still colonized nations of Africa. Rather than depending on an orientalized, fetishized understanding of precolonial history, Fanon argues a national culture should be built on the material resistance of a people against colonial domination. Fanon narrates the essay with reference to what he calls the 'colonized intellectual'. To upset the supremacy of the colonial society, writes Fanon, the colonized intellectual feels the need to return to their so called 'barbaric' culture, to prove its existence and its value in relation to the West. The political focus derives from the first chapter of the book, "On Violence", wherein Fanon indicts colonialism and its post colonial legacies, for which violence is a means of catharsis and liberation from being a colonial subject. In the foreword to the 2004 edition of The Wretched of the Earth, Homi K. Bhabha criticized Sartre's introduction, stating that it limits the reader's approach to the book to focus on its promotion of violent resistance to oppression. After 1967, in the wake of Sartre's support for Israel in the Six Day War, the introduction by Sartre was removed from new editions by Fanon's widow, Josie. Interviewed in 1978 at Howard University, she said, "when Israel declared war on the Arab countries, there was a great pro Zionist movement in favor of Israel among western (French) intellectuals. Sartre took part in this movement. He signed petitions favoring Israel. I felt that his pro Zionist attitudes were incompatible with Fanon's work". Anthony Elliott writes that The Wretched of the Earth is a "seminal" work. Fanon's writing on culture has inspired much of the contemporary postcolonial discussions on the role of the national culture in liberation struggles and decolonization. In particular, Robert J. C. Young partially credits Fanon for inspiring an interest about the way the individual human experience and cultural identity are produced in postcolonial writing. Fanon's theorizing of national culture as first and foremost a struggle to overthrow colonial rule was a radical departure from other considerations of culture that took a more historical and ethnographic view.

Some theorists working in postcolonial studies have criticized Fanon's commitment to the nation as reflective of an essentialist and authoritarian tendency in his writing. In response to "On National Culture", Christopher L. Miller, professor of African American studies and French at Yale University, faults Fanon for viewing the nation as the unquestioned site of anti colonial resistance, since national borders were imposed on African peoples during the Scramble for Africa. According to Miller, the lack of attention to the imposition and artificiality of national borders in Africa overlooks the cultural and linguistic differences of each country that make theorizing a unified national culture, as Fanon does, problematic. This resonates with Fanon's argument in 'On National Culture', since any essentialism of national cultural identity was basically a strategic step towards overcoming the assimilation of colonialism, and building an international consciousness where binaries of colonized and colonizer were dissolved.

"On National Culture" is also a notable reflection on Fanon's complex history with the Négritude movement. Aimé Césaire, Fanon's teacher and an important source of intellectual inspiration throughout his career, was the co founder of the movement. While Fanon's thinking often intersected with figures associated with Négritude, including a commitment to rid humanism of its racist elements and a general dedication to Pan Africanism in various forms, Alioune Diop, speaking as one of the key figures of the movement at the conference, said Négritude intended to enliven black culture with qualities indigenous to African history, but made no mention of a material struggle or a nationalist dimension.