[Les Damnés de la Terre]
Fanon, a psychiatrist from Martinique who joined the Algerian revolution, sees colonialism as a system that fractures the identity of the colonized. Colonialism was established through force, while true liberation requires more than political independence; it requires a deep shift to remove the sense of inferiority.
He warns that unless a revolution is rooted in the consciousness of the rural peasantry, it will only result in a new “national middle class” replacing the old oppressors. The book moves from international politics to clinical case studies in chapters like “Concerning Violence” and “Colonial War and Mental Disorders.” With a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre, it became a central text of decolonization, focusing on the difficulty of building a new society from the wreckage of empire.
[Fanon, F. (2001). The wretched of the earth. Tr. by Farrington. Penguin Classics]
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