Fanon’s Theory of the Inevitable Nationalism and Colonialism Struggles
For Fanon, nationalism is inevitable in contexts of struggles against colonialism, yet is inadequate if it is not tempered and ultimately superseded by humanism.
I would like to analyse these concepts in relation to the societies previously discussed within Lost Children Archives. Given that the book illustrates the intersections and overlaps between a troubled family’s cross-country journey and the treacherous journeys of ‘‘lost’’ children migrating from Mexico to the United States, I would like to focus on the story’s social, historical and political background to answer this questions.
I would like the essay to be split into 2 sections;
1) Discussing Fanon’s theory of the inevitable nationalism within Luiselli’s struggles against colonialism
2) How nationalism is inadequate when not tempered and ultimately superseded by humanism.
To support these arguments, I would like to draw from the resources used in the PowerPoint, particularly through the themes of ‘processing and performing others' trauma’ and ‘archive and the search for collective meaning’.
During part one, I would like to analyse Luiselli’s struggle against colonialism and how it is depicted within the book. For instance, the book’s post-colonialism term to trace imperialism’s lasting and continued influences on the lives of children in ex-colonial countries.
I really like Erica Burman's book, ‘Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method’ and how its correlation to Luiselli’s use of children to navigate the theme of migrating from Mexico to the USA and the consequent difficulties and racism faced. Within the essay, I would like to comment on the ‘Traumatogenic Child’ theory in relation to the ‘processing and performing others trauma’ theme.
Within this argument, I would like to link it back to Fanon’s inevitable nationalism theory with the struggles against colonialism (such as the Mexican Revolution and Cristero Revolt).
During part two, I would like to argue and analyse the inadequacy of nationalism without the superseding of humanism. I like the figurative theme of echoing within the book and the books Apacheria section about how the family searches for the ancestral lands.
I have attached 2 powerpoints about Fanon, his influences and postcolonial theory. I would like to use and reference these within both parts of the essay.
I have also attached ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ and an article exploring the metamorphic nature of Fanon’s thought. I would like to use these within my argument in part two, particularly the ‘metamorphic’ aspects of humanism given its progressive nature.
Within this section, I would also like to comment on Luiselli’s sentimental activism. Within the article by David James, I want to reference/use the comments about Luiselli’s ‘humanitarian sentiments’ and its paradoxical nature.
I love this paragraph:
“However, it is precisely the privilege that underlies the instalment of sympathetic beneficence as a premise for humanitarian instruction that Lost Children Archive wants us to recognize. And, paradoxically, it is the sentimental mode which facilitates that recognition as the novel contemplates the perils of exercising compassion from a position of relative security and ethical superiority”
Due to the word limit and breadth of the essay, I would like to paraphrase and quote James’ article to support my argument.
Finally, I have attached some notes summarising my research about Fanon today. When introducing his theory, I want to comment on his thinking with and against Marx, choosing counter-violence and colonised dreams of taking the colonist’s place
The word limit for my essay is 2000 words, however, I can go up to 2200 words as an absolute maximum. I selected 2200 words to allow extra words just in case. The essay is for a final undergraduate paper and I am aiming for a high grade. I have attached the essay writing and criteria for a checklist.
FANON’S NATIONALISM AND STRUGGLES AGAINST COLONIALISM
by(Name
Class (Course)
Professor (Tutor)
School (University)
City and State
Date
Fanon’s Theory of the Inevitable Nationalism within Luiselli’s Struggles against Colonialism
When the American government separated thousands of migrant children from their parents, there was a visceral outcry to provoke a stampede of storytelling. The cry made it imperative to pay attention to children's experiences. There was also a responsibility to humanize and counter political language like ''illegal alien''. Such stories primarily aim to humanize the audience (Román, 2021). The reporting makes the listeners see beyond legal, national, or partisan labels into the migrants' hearts and awaken the natives to empathy. To build empathy for children's lives, Luiselli begins with the narrator’s confusion about the separation and isolation of diaspora.
Fanon’s theory of the Inevitable Nationalism suggests that national consciousness determines the native’s ability to end colonialism. Fanon argued that violence is a primary factor in achieving nationalism and decolonization in his theory. For many years, colonial powers thrived in vulnerable countries. In Africa, these colonizers created a divide and rule system of governance. In this system, black people were alienated from white people and denied fundamental rights. Slavery, racial segregation, brutality, and other forms of oppression persisted during the colonial period. Fanon proposes violence as the only language that oppressors would hear to overcome these injustices since they were not open to negotiation. All these portray the struggles against colonialism.
Fanon’s theory is evident within Luiselli’s struggles against colonialism. Luiselli’s novel, Lost Children Archive, describes the displacement, migration, family, and parenthood cartography in the age of US immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities (Šimunović, 2021). The novel intertwines parental anguish with concurrent news about the migrant crisis and the US Southern border, Apacheria histories, and lost children stories. The lost children in the novel faced detainment, death, and deportation in the absence of their parents. These experiences subjected them to psychological torture (Stuelke, 2021). In many ways, Russell's struggles against colonialism are depicted in Lost Children Archive. The book highlights the absence of refugee voices and attends to the history of violence that has resulted in their disappearance.
Tarc (2020) suggests that modernity and colonialism are pillars of Western civilizations. Through the Lost Children Archive, Luiselli reminds the readers of the political and educational extraction, movement, removal, and extinction of children of colonies. Modernity eliminates colonized colonization in the minds of colonized children through the violent educational project with transgenerational effects (Tarc, 2020). Tarc (2020) pinpoints that children go through familial separation as a catastrophic event, initiating a total loss of continuity of being. This continuity of being does not exist in the absence of love attachment. Instead, the personality develops based on the reactions to environmental intrusion.
Luiselli demonstrates colonization, narrating how children are taken from land and their families and placed in residential schools (Enriquez, 2021). She also accounts how black children were enslaved and shipped across the Atlantic boats while Jewish children were subjected to mass torture and orphaned. The history of children's removal and dispersal from enslaved, colonized, and almost eradicated has a transgenerational effect (James, 2021). Tarc (2020) claims that enslavement histories deemed to be the past are modernism mechanisms.
Historical records show that black and native women in the US and Latina American women lost their children to adoption (Tarc, 2020). They experienced permanent traumatic effects of the loss of their children. Stuelke (2021) points out that the loss of children repeats in modern forms of forced family separation similar to those absurd ones conducted by adult overseers of enslavement and residential schools. Like these accounts, the contemporary separation of children from their families speaks little of the experiences of children adopted into white and middle-class families and society (Tarc, 2020). Essentially, the transnational adoptee concept gives researchers subconscious access when engaging children’s traumatic situations after separation from their parents.
The histories of indigenous and black children coincide with their entries into public residential and segregated educational settings in America (Burman, 2018). Present western education institutions include genocidal colonial plans meant to enslave and eliminate foreign children from the land (Tarc, 2020). Although the settler-colonial histories of genocide and racism geared toward black, indigenous, and people of color and their children are different, the US settler colonialism structure rests on political, economic, and social underpinnings that link racism (Stuelke, 2021). During colonization, racism was strictly observed by white people, who segregated African Americans and denied them fundamental human rights. Together with their children, Black people were enslaved, and these aspects form part of Luiselli's novel.
According to Tarc (2020), the migratory modernism structure influenced by the imperial occupation also rests on ancestral and educational keystones that connect the childhoods of indigenous, black, and people of color in the Americas. Without citing these histories of indigenous children and their slave descendants, Luiselli’s novel ignores childhoods taken, destroyed, and disappeared by imperialism (Šimunović, 2021). Her recovery of the nameless histories of the lost children in the book gives readers an impression that children's displacement is not a new phenomenon. One lesson drawn is that the situation of children seeking refuge in the presence or absence of their parents has failed to stir the adult community to action. Despite the adult communities’ investments in children, children's suffering remains a leader's non-event. Stunned by their melancholy, parents are concerned with their children’s emotional state (Burman, 2018). However, Luiselli finds that all children, including those with parents and privilege, are deeply affected and are subjected to separation from their familial background.
Franz Fanon perceived that colonial rule created political and social divisions as well as conflicting identities. In his view, nationalism could become the basis for overcoming these divisions. For a long time, natives devoted their energies to ending colonial oppressions, including forced labor, inequality, limitation of fundamental rights, corporal punishment, racism, discrimination, and other forms of injustices they inflicted on their colonies (Sajed & Seidel, 2019). According to Fanon, the ultimate goal of the anticolonial struggle was the overall transformation of state and social entity, which could be achieved by overthrowing the colonial rule.
Fanon presciently warns the bourgeois elite against capturing the post-colonial state, claiming that a bourgeoisie with only nationalism to feed the people fails in their mission and inevitably gets tangled up in trials and tribulations (Sajed & Seidel, 2019). In this context, Fanon argued that nationalism becomes effective if it quickly turns into social and political consciousness and humanism. In his view, nationalism becomes a sterile formalism if it tolerates elite leadership in the people's name (Sajed & Seidel, 2019). Fanon’s concept of violence is descriptively useful in achieving nationalism. He maintains that decolonization will always be a bottom-up instead of a top-down process.
Beyond the descriptive claim, Fanon claims that violence is an important, morally justifiable tool to achieve national liberation (Chrisman, 2011). This is evident during the struggles for independence, accompanied by revolts. In other words, revolutionary wars and other forms of violence against the colonial regimes paved the way for democracy and independence (Cooper, 2014). Fanon’s theory of inevitable nationalism reflects on Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, which also attempts to imagine anti-imperialist solidarity aesthetics during the inc...