Baldwin's Unconditional Love vs Fanon's Necessary Violence
Baldwin vs Fanon: The Most Persuasive Road to Black Transformative Freedom
By: Tyler English-Beckwith
In The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon as well as The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, both writers, seemingly in opposition, are asking the same question; in what way(s) is Black liberation conceivable? Set on a transformative state, the writers differ greatly in approach. Baldwin’s sweeping epic from the birth of his nephew to his time spent with The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, offers love as a radical antidote to white supremacy. Fanon’s explanation of violence as an essential element for the possibility of decolonization requires a shift in understanding of the western ideals of violence, and politics, and is ultimately more persuasive.
Politic as defined by Merriam-Webster, is characterized by shrewdness in managing, contriving, or dealing; sagacious in promoting policy; shrewdly tactful. Violence is defined as injury by distortion, infringement, or profanation; intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force; vehement feeling or expression; an instance of such action or feeling; a clashing or jarring quality. These definitions offer the terms as true opposites, with violence positioned as lacking morality, as politic is abundant in shrewdness.
In the very first chapter, on the very first page of The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon states, “…decolonization is always a violent event.” To fully understand the modes of decolonization one must understand the state of colonialism. In colonized zones, violence is used to maintain order. Fanon explains on page 4, “We have seen how the government’s agent uses a language of pure violence. The agent does not alleviate oppression or mask domination. He displays and demonstrates them with the clear conscience of the law enforcer, and brings violence into the homes and minds of the colonized subject.” The colonial world is a world that is intrinsically violent, positioning violence as the sole component by which the politic is made possible under colonialism.
Fanon’s remarks on colonialism, in the Algerian context, mirror Baldwin’s illustration of the American ghetto in which his nephew, James, was born, and he was raised. Though their depictions of life as the colonized/disenfranchised can be compared, the similarities do not continue. On page 334 of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin accuses his country of a crime. “…They have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it, and do not want to know it.” Baldwin is describing a gratuitous destruction of the people in the American ghetto, Black people. He goes on to say, “The innocent country set you down in a ghetto, in which, in fact, it intended you to perish. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.” He paints the picture of a place very similar to one Fanon describes in The Wretched of the Earth. Baldwin’s nephew, his family, and himself face endemic violence in the same way that the colonized do. Baldwin veers away from the idea of a purposeful violence in his description of an “innocent country”. He says, “…It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” Baldwin’s analysis of a willful disavowing by those who carry out that violence is the antithesis of the “agents of the government” Fanon describes, and it isn’t believable considering that the violence is racially and geographically specific.
On page 6, Fanon writes, “Challenging the colonial world is not a rational confrontation of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.” Fanon theorizes that there is no common ground on which to appeal to the similarities between the colonizer and the colonized. Fanon goes on to state that in the eyes of the colonizer, the colonized are, “…absolute evil.” When those who possess power view those who don’t as the complete antithesis of themselves, there is no appealing. The colonial world is not simply unpleasant. It is not founded on mutual suspicion. It is founded on an organized violence toward the colonized. If this is believed to be true, then Baldwin’s assumption that once his country sees clearly through its ignorance, it will then understand his nephew cannot also be true. From page 335 to 336, Baldwin states, “You must accept them and accept them with love. They are in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it they cannot be released from it.” He ends his letter by telling his nephew, “We cannot be free until they are free.” This contrasts with Fanon’s idea of decolonization.
To combat the endemic violence of colonialism, violence on the part of the colonized subject is necessary for the possibility of decolonization. That “muscular tension” as Fanon describes it is always nearly bubbling over, and can result in the colonized…”defend[ing] his personality against his fellow countryman”, as stated on page 17. He goes on to state, “One of the ways the colonized subject releases his muscular tension is through the very real collective self-destruction of these internecine feuds.” The act of violence among the colonized is a manifestation of the systematic violence that is used to keep the colonized in line. The subject of colonialism does not passively accept the violence of the colonizer. As stated on page 16, “The colonized subject is a persecuted man who is forever dreaming of becoming the persecutor”, and continues, “The muscular tension of the colonized periodically erupts into bloody fighting between tribes, clans and individuals.” This violence between the colonized is not only a response to endemic violence; it is a quest for subjectivity, liberation from colonial expression. This expression includes love and acceptance outside of the colonial gaze, the kind of love Baldwin suggests employing to combat the colonizer. But how can this action happen without this brief expression of violence outside of the realm of the colonizer, or without de-colonization, first?
Baldwin’s writings on Christianity are similar to the state of the colonizer. He writes, “The spreading of the Gospel, regardless of the motives or the integrity of the heroism of some of the missionaries, was absolutely indispensable justification for planting the flag.” (PG. 351) He recognizes Christianity as a source and tool of colonialism, and critiques it as such, but does not critique the Black church from the vantage point of the colonized. The Black church is a source of expression inside the confines of colonialism, but outside of the white gaze. He describes it as loveless, and founded on the ideals of “blindness, loneliness, and terror” (pg. 345), those may be the tenets of Christianity, but they are also the tenets of colonialism. The Black church combats colonialism, in a similar way to how the colonized combat endemic violence through expressions Baldwin describes as, “exciting.” He writes, “I have never seen anything to equal the fire and excitement that sometimes, without warning, fill a church, causing…[it] to ‘rock’. Nothing that has happened to me since equals the power and the glory that I sometimes felt when in the middle of a sermon…” This correlates with Fanon’s account of the “magical and supernatural powers” (Pg. 19), used to deal with their aggressiveness, with the violence bubbling over. He continues, “The colonist’s powers are infinitely shrunk, stamped by foreignness.” The Black church is a form of expression in place of liberation.
At the very end of his essay, Baldwin suggests, “…relatively conscious Blacks…must, like lovers, insist on or create the consciousness of others…” (Pg. 379) Baldwin attempts to highlight America, whom he accused of the crime of endemic violence at the beginning of his essay, and the Black citizen’s unconditional involvement with each other. He suggests that the terms of that love, involves holding America responsible for its negligence for the Black citizen so that it will understand it’s wrongs, and do better by those who love it unconditionally. If this does not happen, Baldwin suggests that the biblical prophecy will be fulfilled. As written on page 379, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time!” This suggests that if the Black citizen cannot appeal to America through this unconditional love, then the transformation of the country will come not gently, but violently.
To conceive of love in the way that Baldwin suggests is necessary for liberation, one must go from being the object of the colonized, to being a subject, and even then Black liberation, specifically, will still be unconceivable to the colonizer. In Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, on page 89, he talks about being born and wanting to know things. “I came into the world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul delirious to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among objects.” Fanon, like Baldwin’s nephew James, was put into the predicament of objectivity only because of the color of his skin. He came into the world “wanting” to know things, meaning he was himself a subject, but the structure of colonialism has a incapacity for subjectivity. The colonized must be an object for manipulation to solidify his sub-humanity. Baldwin suggests that unconditional love between America and the Black citizen will allow for transformation, but such a relationship cannot exist between a subject and the subjugated.
Even if America or the colonizer takes up a project of decolonization or anti-white supremacy, it does not offer the subjugated full subjectivity. This is made clear in Fanon’s analysis of Sartre. Fanon writes of his connection to negritude as an essentially Black/African expression of self, an intuitive way of being outside of the inferior being of Europeans. It would be the closest expression, for Fanon, to that of an unconditional involvement with another. Jean-Paul Sartre, whom Fanon considered a friend to Black people and also anti-racist, did not understand negritude in that way. Sartre writes, “The negro…creates and anti-racist racism…negritude is dedicated to its own destruction, it is transition and not result, a means and not the ultimate goal.” (Pg. 112) Sartre grants the validity of negritude but only as a phase in human development, and by doing so misses the distinctiveness of Blackness. Fanon realizes that negritude, and Black subjectivity, is rendered effectively subservient by white discourses.” Fanon writes, “When I read this…I felt they had completely robbed me of my last chance. We had appealed to a friends of the colored peoples, and this friend had nothing better to do than demonstrate the relativity of their action.” (Pg. 110) Sartre’s commitment to ending racism robbed Fanon of his impulsiveness. His anti-racist project had described a personal historical project as simply a “phase”. Sartre’s anti-racist project was indeed anti-Black. Even a ploy for Black subjectivity resulted in objectivity by even a so-called well-meaning agent of colonialism.
Baldwin’s call for unconditional love of Black people to create the consciousness of America, is improbable without the possibility of subjectivity. To end endemic violence, the colonized subject’s use of violence is pragmatically necessary to afford the possibility of true and lasting transformation.