Quote of the week

"In these poor, underdeveloped countries where, according to the rule, enormous wealth rubs shoulders with abject poverty, the army and the police force form the pillars of the regime; both of which, in accordance with another rule, are advised by foreign experts. The strength of this police force and the power of this army are proportional to the marasmus that afflicts the rest of the nation"

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

La citation de la semaine

Manifestants chargés par la police, Le Caire, 28 janvier 2011

"Dans ces pays pauvres, sous-développés, où, selon la règle, la plus grande richesse côtoie la plus grande misère, l'armée et la police constituent les piliers du régime. Une armée et une police qui, encore une règle dont il faudra se souvenir, sont conseillés par des experts étrangers. La force de cette police, la puissance de cette armée sont proportionnelles au marasme dans lequel baigne le reste de la nation."
Les Damnés de la Terre, chapitre "Mésaventures de la conscience nationale" (1961)

Between Fanon and Fukayama: Understanding Egypt's Revolutionary Abyss

Abbas Barzegar

Assistant Professor at Georgia State University

Posted: January 29, 2011 12:46 PM, in The Huffington Post

Baby pharaoh...
Cairo, January 28th

In a poignant scene from the Battle of Algiers--that timeless cinematic testimony of insurrection, torture, and triumph--Ben M'Hidi, the resistance movement's political boss, tells Ali la Pointe, the street ruffian turned zealous revolutionary, "It is difficult to start a revolution, more difficult to sustain it, and still more difficult to win it. But it's later, when we've won, that the real difficulties will begin." The words couldn't ring more this weekend as Hosni Mubarak rolled his tanks on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and elsewhere.

What started as a largely middle class internet movement to voice dissatisfaction with stagnation in Egypt has unleashed the fury of the Nile nation's downtrodden hordes. In the first days of this movement the young stood with the old, the poor with the wealthy. But the rage of the masses has now moved beyond burned police stations and looted shops and turned on the chic neighborhoods of Zamalek and Mohandissen.

At this stage in the conflict the disparate elements that have made up the collective Egyptian effort to oust President Mubarak will have to ask themselves some hard questions if their movement is to reach its goal.

Political scientists often explain social revolutions through the concept of "rising expectations"--e.g. when they are not met or there is some stall in economic progress, one can anticipate social unrest and political change. Until now that is largely what we have seen from Egypt's opposition movements. Educated and unemployed, the cosmopolitan Cairene youth demanded only the promise of greater freedom and economic opportunity. For all intents and purposes, this was a Fukayama-style march to the "end of history" where an authentic liberal democracy would make its long overdue entrance in Egypt. Outside of the Muslim Brotherhood, the only substantive ideological demand of Egyptian opposition was greater capitalist efficiency and democratic procedure.

The scenes of from Friday's chaos, however, show a different dimension of the story. Ecstatic and jubilant, the shabby youth before the cameras displaying their makeshift weapons and shouting curses to the president-pharaoh were nothing short of joyful. Only Frantz Fanon, that nearly forgotten philosopher of violence and revolution, can explain this aspect of the Egyptian unrest. Those Egyptians with nothing to lose are not only willing to set buildings aflame and loot their leftovers, they are likely to have little sympathy for their middle class counterparts whom they see as part of the same corrupt system that is to blame for their miserable state. This violence for them is cathartic redemption and they pay little regard to the political calculus of the moment.

As property damage and other uses of material violence become a hallmark of the fallout we can expect to see a marked withdrawal of the educated, middle class elements while the enraged youth that Fanon so acutely described in The Wretched of the Earth will wreak havoc on the streets. In fact this may have been Mubarak's very design--with chaos on the street his iron hand will be welcomed by many.

On the other side of the coin, if the revolution that the liberal, democratically-oriented currents in Egyptian society began ever does succeed they will face their stiffest challenge the very next morning. They will need to manage three levels of resistance to genuine democratic progress: first, the military, which will likely retain a strong instinct for autocratic rule and reach for that option on a regular basis. Then, the Muslim Brotherhood, shrewdly quiet through this ordeal, will jump on the opportunity to expand its networks and take advantage of a gaping power vacuum. And finally, the awlad al-shuwari' (street kids) and young thugs who are determined to confront the state at any cost and remain in perpetual revolt.

The day after is indeed the most dangerous and difficult aspect of any revolution. When the symbol of oppression is no longer available as target for broad based consensus and coalition building, the disparate elements of any national movement inevitably turn on one another. My sense is that on Friday when the streets went ablaze and civil breakdown became the norm the next day, Egyptian society got its first taste of what its country's post-Mubarak abyss looks like. And like any abyss, the Egyptian one today offers little more than a chilling uncertainty.

50th Anniversary Commemoration of the publication of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

Thursday, February 10th 2011
University Center, University of Memphis

499 University Street

Featuring Lewis Gordon, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy, Temple University. Dr. Gordon will reflect on the publication, influence, and underlying social issues of Fanon’s world-famous tract on decolonization, "The Wretched of the Earth." This 1961 publication served as a blueprint for national liberation struggles around the world and greatly influenced the Black Power movement.

6:00 p.m. Reception, 6:30 p.m. lecture. 


Sponsored by the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities, U of M. Co-Sponsored by the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change. 
Email Contact: moch@memphis.edu.
www.memphis.edu/moch/events.htm

Colère sur le Nil...

Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon's Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization, by Reiland Rabaka

"Rabaka (Africana studies, Univ. of Colorado) asserts that Frantz Fanon's ideas continue to be relevant and inspirational. The introduction appeals for a wider 'transdisciplinary' methodology to Africana critical theory, a veritable shift toward 'epistemic openness,' which he subsequently implements. The author presents five dimensions or 'forms' of Fanonism: 'Anti-racist,' 'Decolonialist,' 'Marxist,' 'Feminist,' and 'Revolutionary Humanist.' Each form is a facet of Fanon's oeuvre. Rabaka critically and exhaustively examines each form, and gives comparative attention to W.E.B. Du Bois, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aimé Césaire, Karl Marx, Amilcar Cabral, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, among others....This is a valuable volume for manifold reasons--notably, its erudite narrative, bold approach, and comprehensive bibliography of English-language works on Fanon and critical theory....Rabaka's work will especially serve specialists and advanced students."—


When Frantz Fanon's critiques of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism are brought into the ever-widening orbit of Africana critical theory something unprecedented in the annals of Africana intellectual history happens: five distinct forms of Fanonism emerge. Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon's Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization is discursively distinguished from other engagements of Fanon's thought and texts insofar as it is the first study to consciously examine his contributions to Africana Studies and critical theory or, rather, the Africana tradition of critical theory. Forms of Fanonism identifies and intensely analyzes Fanon's contributions to the deconstruction and reconstruction of Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory.

In highlighting his unique "solutions" to the "problems" of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism, five distinct forms of Fanonism materialize. These five forms of Fanonism allow contemporary critical theorists to innovatively explore the ways in which his thought and texts can be dialectically put to use in relieving the wretched experience of this generation's wretched of the earth. Critics can also apply these forms to deconstruct and reconstruct Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory using their anti-imperialist interests. Throughout  Forms of Fanonism, Reiland Rabaka critically dialogues with Fanon, incessantly asking his corpus critical questions and seeking from it crucial answers. This book, in short, solemnly keeps with Fanon's own predilection for connecting critical theory to revolutionary praxis by utilizing his thought and texts as paradigms and points of departure to deepen and develop the Africana tradition of critical theory.


About the Author
Reiland Rabaka is associate professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is also an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies and a Research Fellow at the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA). He is the author of W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century (2007), Du Bois's Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory (2008), and Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition, from W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral (2009), all published by Lexington Books.

Mésaventures de la kleptocratie nationale...

Clin d'oeil à nos visiteurs Tunisiens !