Colonial Violence and the Divided World: Looking at Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth
Architecture of Colonial Domination: Violence and Manichaeism in Fanon's thought
📖 BLOG OVERVIEW — KEY THEMES AND ARGUMENTS
Colonial Violence
Force as the foundation of domination
Manichaeism
The divided colonial world
Psychological Effects
Inner damage and alienation
Decolonization
Beyond a change of rulers
Spatial Separation
Two towns, one colony
Introduction: Understanding Fanon's Colonial World
What does freedom mean if the flag changes but the daily structure of life stays the same? That question stayed with me while I went through Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon does not treat colonialism as the simple occupation of land. For him it is a whole arrangement of power. It decides who owns resources, who counts as fully human, and how people learn to see themselves.
For this blog I have chosen two of the eight questions given to us:
- Question 1: What is the role of violence in colonialism with reference to The Wretched of the Earth?
- Question 2: Describe what Manichaeism means in a colonial context.
I picked these two because they explain each other. Violence shows how the colonial order is enforced. Manichaeism shows how that order is made to look natural and deserved. In the first chapter, "On Violence," Fanon moves between them so quickly that separating them can feel artificial.
My central argument is that colonialism, in Fanon's analysis, is a system of organized domination. Force keeps it in place, and a divided picture of the world makes it look legitimate. These two things are not identical, and I will try to keep their differences clear. But I will argue that each one covers the weakness of the other.
I also bring in two scholarly articles that sharpened my reading. Benda Hofmeyr's 2025 article in African Studies (Taylor & Francis) helped me with the question of violence. Zaynul Abedin's article on Manichaeism in Philosophy and Progress helped me with the second question.
1. Historical and Intellectual Context
Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary
Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925 and trained as a psychiatrist in France. He later worked in a hospital in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence and joined the national liberation struggle there. The Wretched of the Earth appeared in 1961, the year he died, with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. This background matters. He writes as a doctor of minds and as a participant in a real war, so his theory comes from what he saw colonialism do to people.
📖 KEY TERMS DEFINED
Colonialism — The rule of one people over another through political, military and economic control
Decolonization — The process of ending colonial rule; Fanon insists it is far more than a change of government
Colonial Domination — The combined pressure of law, force, economy and ideology on the colonized
Racial Hierarchy — Ranks people by supposed racial worth; colonial rule used it to justify privilege
National Liberation — The struggle to end colonial rule and build a self-governing community
What I find most important is that Fanon refuses a neutral tone. He starts from the position of those on whom colonial rule was imposed. That is one reason the book still matters in postcolonial studies. It criticises the past, and it also asks what a decolonized society would have to look like.
Video: Introduction to Frantz Fanon and The Wretched of the Earth
2. Question 1: What Is the Role of Violence in Colonialism?
Violence as the foundation of colonial rule
When I looked at "On Violence," I noticed that Fanon does not begin with the violence of the colonized. He begins with the violence of the colonial order. His opening claim is that decolonization is always a violent phenomenon (Fanon, "On Violence"). Read quickly, that sounds like a call to arms. Read in context, it is closer to a historical observation. A world built by conquest and held by force is unlikely to dissolve because someone asks politely.
In Fanon's account, the soldier and the policeman are the visible representatives of settler authority. They stand between the two worlds and carry the settler's command into the native's daily life. The calm of the colonial city, then, is not peace. It is the result of continuous threat. Fanon's phrase for this is "atmospheric violence," something "rippling under the skin" (Fanon, "On Violence"). I like this phrase because it explains why violence does not need to be visible every minute to be effective. Everyone knows it is there.
Physical and institutional violence
Fanon's picture reaches beyond guns. Colonial violence works through police and military power, but also through unequal law, racial discrimination, economic exploitation, and the control of space and movement. His argument is not that every inequality is the same as physical force. It is that physical force is the base on which the other arrangements rest. Without the ability to enforce them, they would not hold.
"You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich." — Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, "On Violence"
In the colony, Fanon says, class and race are tied together so tightly that one cannot be used to explain the other. This is why he thinks Marxist analysis has to be stretched for the colonial situation. What I take from it is that exploitation in the colony arrives already labelled. The category of "native" decides in advance who is allowed to prosper.
Psychological effects
The most distinctive part of his argument, to me, is the psychological one. Constant humiliation and the denial of dignity do not stay outside the person. They enter the sense of self. Fanon, writing as a psychiatrist, describes fear, inferiority, anger and alienation as all present at once.
He also notes that the anger has to go somewhere. Because the colonized person cannot safely turn it on the settler, it often falls on other colonized people, in quarrels and everyday aggression. I find this one of the most honest observations in the book, since it shows colonial violence reproducing itself inside the community it has wounded.
Fanon also does not treat the colonized as one block. Peasants, townspeople, intellectuals and the urban poor appear with different positions and responses. A careful reader should not flatten "the native" into a single figure.
Violence and decolonization: what the Taylor & Francis article adds
This is where Fanon becomes controversial, and where Hofmeyr's article helped me most. Hofmeyr works from Fanon's 1960 address "Why We Use Violence" and from the first chapter of the book. His argument is that Fanon is often read through a binary borrowed from Hannah Arendt. In that binary, violence is acceptable when it is a tool for some goal, and Fanon is dismissed because his violence is supposed to be valued for its own sake. Hofmeyr says this reading decontextualises Fanon. Violence in Fanon cannot be understood apart from the end it serves, which is decolonization. The necessity Fanon insists on is therefore not an unqualified endorsement of violence, and it is not a call for violence out of nowhere (Hofmeyr).
📚 HOFMEYR (2025) — TWO KEY IDEAS
💡 Idea One — Fanon urges the colonized to make productive use of the violence already imposed on them. Violence does not begin with the colonized — they inherit it and decide what to do with it.
💡 Idea Two — Fanon's violence is not only instrumental and reactive but also creative and constructive, connected to the colonized person recovering agency (Hofmeyr).
So what exactly is being transformed? In my reading, several things at once: political authority, social hierarchy, economic ownership, and the psychological structure that made the native feel permanently lesser. Fanon's claim about a "new humanity" refers to all of this.
I also want to avoid reducing Fanon to a slogan that violence is always good. He writes from Algeria, where a settler colony had met demands for equality with repression. His argument is conditional and historical. Hofmeyr adds a useful test at the end of his paper, where he sets Fanon's theory against the wartime journal of the Algerian writer Mouloud Feraoun. I could only see the abstract, so I cannot say what he concludes. But the method seems right to me. A theory of revolutionary violence has to be tested against how people actually lived through a war.
Critical reflection
Does Fanon treat violence as a method of colonial domination, as a response to it, or both? From my reading, both, and the order matters. Colonial violence comes first as the foundation of the system. The violence of the colonized comes second, as a response that Fanon analyses and, in Hofmeyr's reading, ties to a constructive purpose.
Why is colonialism so hard to reform from within? Because it depends on denying equality. A colonial order that granted full equality would no longer be colonial.
The question I find hardest is about long-term consequences. A society that is liberated through violence still has to live with what that violence did. Fanon sees some of these dangers himself, especially in the later chapters. I did not feel I had to accept every part of his prescription to take his analysis seriously.
Fanon examines the relationship between colonial domination and the struggle for liberation.
3. Question 2: What Does Manichaeism Mean in a Colonial Context?
What Manichaeism means
The word comes from an ancient religion founded in Persia in the third century, which pictured the universe as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil. Fanon borrows it to describe the colonial world, and he says plainly that "the colonial world is a Manichaean world" (Fanon, "On Violence"). He means a society organised into two opposed camps, colonizer and colonized, with no middle ground and no shared humanity assumed between them.
In this picture the settler stands for order, reason and value. The native stands for the opposite. Fanon describes the colonized being turned into what he calls the "quintessence of evil" (Fanon, "On Violence"). I read this as an ideological division and not a description of anything real. Nobody is born a "native" in the way the colonial system needs. The category is manufactured and then made to look like nature.
📚 ABEDIN (2022) — MANICHAEISM AND COLONIALISM: THREE SHARED FEATURES
🔲 Dichotomic Worldview — Both colonialism and Manichaeism share a dichotomic way of looking at the world (Abedin)
🌐 Global Reach — A determined effort to extend their influence across much of the world (Abedin)
✝️ Messianic Zeal — A messianic zeal to preach their own enlightenment values; colonial rule did not only take — it claimed to bring civilization (Abedin)
🪞 Identity Formation — Fanon uses the metaphor to explain identity formation for both the colonizer and the colonized; the division shapes the settler as much as the native (Abedin)
How colonial categories work
From what I went through, Manichaeism is not just an attitude in people's heads. It is built into institutions. The language of administration, the content of schooling, stereotypes in public speech and the rules of the colony all repeat the idea that the colonized are inferior or dangerous. Once that idea circulates, harsh treatment starts to look reasonable. People ask why a native would need rights if he is, by definition, unready for them.
This is also how racial classification attaches to political and economic power. If one group is defined as lesser, its exclusion from land, office, wages and decisions seems to follow logically. The classification does the work of an argument, so the system never has to defend its injustice case by case.
Spatial and social separation
Fanon describes the colonial city as two towns. The settler's town is solidly built, well lit and well fed. The native town is crowded, hungry and short of almost everything. I am paraphrasing here and not quoting, since I want to avoid putting words in his mouth. What matters to me is his point that these two zones do not complete each other. They are opposed, and the line between them is kept by police stations and barracks.
Space is political. The geography of a colony does not just record inequality. It teaches it. A child growing up on one side of that line learns something about their place in the world from the layout of the streets alone.
Colonial space reflects and reinforces unequal political and social power.
Psychological and cultural consequences
Manichaean division also shapes how people see themselves. The colonized are pushed into fixed categories, and this can damage self-respect. It also creates a struggle for recognition. If the system says you are less than human, claiming dignity becomes a political act in itself.
This helps me understand why, in Fanon's account, the demand for freedom is never only about wages or votes. The Manichaean order does not just deny rights. It denies the standing from which rights could be claimed.
Critical reflection
Who benefits when people are sorted into superior and inferior? Fanon's text points to the settler and the colonial economy. Racial classification supports political and economic domination by turning privilege into a natural entitlement.
Can these divisions survive independence? Fanon suggests they can, and I agree. Categories do not vanish when the flag changes. They continue in education, in language, in unequal wealth and in habits of thought. I would still be careful. Many present-day divisions have their own causes, and it would be wrong to call every one of them colonial Manichaeism. The safer claim is that colonial categories left deep marks that shape how later divisions are organised.
4. How Violence and Manichaean Division Reinforce Each Other
When I put the two questions side by side, a sequence emerged. I use it as a framework and not as a formula.
🔄 THE SEQUENCE: HOW VIOLENCE AND MANICHAEISM WORK TOGETHER
Unequal Relations
Colonial power sets up unequal political and social arrangements
Racial Division
Categories divide people into superior and inferior groups
Justified Domination
Divisions make governance without consent appear reasonable
Enforcement
Institutional and physical violence keep the order in place
Decolonization
How can a structure like this actually be changed?
The two ideas are not the same. Violence is a means of enforcement, and Manichaeism is a system of meaning. Force alone is costly and unstable, so a colonial order needs a picture of the world in which it looks reasonable. A picture alone is fragile, so it needs force behind it when people refuse it.
Here the scholarship pushed my thinking further. Fanon writes that "the Manichaeism of the colonist produces the Manichaeism of the colonized" (Fanon, "On Violence"). On the surface this seems to be a trap. If the colonized answer with the same binary, violence might only mirror the system it opposes. But Hofmeyr's reading offers a way through. If Fanon's violence is creative and constructive and not simply reactive (Hofmeyr), then it is meant to do more than flip the hierarchy. It is meant to break the structure that produced the binary. Whether that actually happens in practice is a different question, and I think it is the real test of Fanon's argument. His own text acknowledges that the old division can carry over into the struggle itself.
Colonialism is not maintained by force alone. It depends on ideas, representations, institutions and divisions that normalize unequal power. Resistance therefore has to work on both fronts. Removing the soldier without removing the story that justified him leaves the structure half standing.
Video: Violence and Manichaeism in Fanon's thought
5. Fanon and the Contemporary World
I will choose a few examples and handle them carefully, since Fanon's framework should not be stretched over every conflict.
Colonial legacies in education. In India, the push for English-language education in the nineteenth century, associated with Macaulay's 1835 Minute on education, was meant to create a class of intermediaries between rulers and the ruled. Even now, the prestige attached to English and the gap between English-medium and regional-language schooling can echo that older hierarchy. I would not say this is simply colonialism continuing, because India's present has its own causes. But I can see a Fanonian pattern in the way "cultured" and "uncultured" speech get sorted. As an English Literature student, I cannot ignore that my own training sits inside this history.
Colonial borders. Many borders in Africa and Asia were drawn by imperial powers with little concern for the people living inside them. The Radcliffe Line of 1947, drawn in a matter of weeks, is the example closest to home. Fanon would have understood why such lines can later become sources of tension. The difference, which I want to keep in view, is that postcolonial states and their peoples make their own choices too. A border is a legacy, not a full explanation.
Migration and representation. When media and politics describe displaced people as threats or as problems to be managed, I recognise the Manichaean habit of defining a group by what it lacks. The similarity is partial. Modern migration policy has its own legal and political logic. But the old pattern of turning people into a category before seeing the individuals in it still seems familiar.
🌍 FANON'S FRAMEWORK AND CONTEMPORARY LEGACIES
Education
Macaulay's 1835 Minute and the prestige of English echo a colonial hierarchy of language and culture
Colonial Borders
The Radcliffe Line (1947) — borders drawn without regard for people continue to generate tension
Migration
Displaced people described as threats — the Manichaean habit of categorisation before recognition
In each case I try to do what Fanon does, which is to look at the structure and ask who benefits from it.
6. My Critical Reflection
What changed most for me is how I think about the survival of colonialism. I used to treat it as something that ended on a date, usually the date of independence. Fanon complicates that. His argument suggests that colonialism can continue through inherited categories, unequal social relationships and habits of thought long after the administrators leave.
I also found the text uncomfortable in a useful way. I admire the clarity with which he shows violence and division working together. I am less sure how far his argument about liberating violence extends beyond the situation of Algeria. Hofmeyr's article reminded me that Fanon's position is more careful than its reputation, since it is tied to a purpose and not offered as a general rule. Even so, the question of what violence does to a society afterwards remains open for me.
My evaluation, separate from what Fanon himself claims, is this. His account of how colonial power operates is persuasive and useful. His account of how it can be overcome raises serious questions that the text does not fully settle. A reader can accept the first without accepting every part of the second.
Conclusion: The Continuing Question of Decolonization
I began with a question about what freedom means when the structures of life stay unequal. Fanon's answer, as I understand it, is that colonialism works as a double system. It uses force to maintain unequal power and a divided picture of humanity to make that power seem justified. To understand one without the other is to see only half of it.
For that reason, decolonization cannot be only a change of rulers. It has to address political authority, economic relations, social hierarchy and the psychological habits that colonial life created. Fanon does not make this sound easy, and I do not think it is. What the book leaves me with is a way of asking questions. Who holds power? How is that power explained? And what would it take to change both the fact and the explanation?
🌿 THE BLOG'S CENTRAL ARGUMENTS WOVEN TOGETHER
Violence is foundational
Force, not consent, holds the colonial order in place
Manichaeism legitimises
Division makes domination look natural and deserved
Psychology matters
Colonial violence enters the self; anger turns inward
Both must be challenged
Resistance needs to work on force and on meaning
Legacies persist
Colonial categories outlast colonial rule
Decolonization involves transforming the structures and relationships inherited from colonial rule.
📚 Works Cited
Abedin, Zaynul. "Manichaeism in Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth: Its Implications for Postcolonial Nations." Philosophy and Progress, vol. 71-72, no. 1-2, 2022, pp. 153-77, https://doi.org/10.3329/pp.v71i1-2.66524.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2004.
Hofmeyr, Benda. "A Critical Consideration of the Effects of Violence in Fanon." African Studies, vol. 84, no. 3, 2025, pp. 242-55, https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2025.2537311.
This blog explores Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth through colonial violence, Manichaeism and postcolonial theory | MKBU Department of English
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