Fanon’s intervention in the realm of culture paved the way for a third world strategy to fight colonialism. Identity becomes a philosophical issue as and when certain people feel they are either neglected or ridiculed. In the present world the feeling of neglect and ridicule is increasingly high and hence the issue of identity appears as a cardinal point on which philosophical discussions all over the world develop. The thinkers are divided over the issue not only because of their earlier convictions but also because of the unpleasant consequences, which they anticipate from such debates. Anyhow now that we can no more neglect an issue, which has already occupied a central position in the current debates, it becomes inevitable to examine the details of the politics of identity especially from the philosophical view.

It was Marx who perhaps for the first time showed the material conditions responsible for human suffering. Aristotle did not live in a period of capitalism. It did not mean the Aristotle lived in a period of equality and fraternity. On the contrary he lived in a period of slavery and he had to address that issue. In spite of his encyclopedic wisdom Aristotle considered slavery as a necessity. He said, “For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”(Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard Mckeon, p559) So neither knowledge nor wisdom determines the nature of philosophical conclusion from the premises. Nobody will hesitate to recognize the good intention of Aristotle for he definitely decried slavery by way of law and force. It is the limitation of the historical period, which prevented Aristotle from seeing the material conditions responsible for the subjection of a community of men by the guardian class. However the philosophical debate opened up by the thinkers of the ancient Greece would have produced its necessary impacts in many spheres of life.

Although Hegel professed to offer an enlarged conception of reason that should overlap and include what had been separated by the analysis of Hume and Kant, and the center of his system was a new logic purporting to systematize a new intellectual method he could not trace the material forces leading to subjection of certain communities.1 More over Hegel wanted a strong German State. So he even exhorted the State to subordinate different parts for the successful functioning of the national government. Above all Hegel supported monarchy and the allied power structure. At the same time his effort to show that the history is the source of moral and political enlightenment was not a simple appeal to experience but was governed by the belief that the evolution of ideas and institutions reveals a necessity, which is at once causal and ethical. But Hegel failed to evolve a factual explanation of identity because of the transcendental nature of his theory of essence. In this regard Herbert Marcuse rightly observes the limitation of Hegel. Marcuse writes, “Hegel’s conception of essence already contains all the elements of a dynamic historical theory of essence, but in a dimension where they cannot be effective. Essence is for Hegel a movement, but a movement in which there is no longer any actual change, a movement which takes place within itself…….Hegel transposes the tension between what could be and what exists, between being-in-itself (essence) and appearance, into the very structure of Being; as such it is always prior to all states of fact. Hegel’s theory of essence remains transcendental.”(Herbert Marcuse, Negations, p.69.) As Edward Said endorses Harry Brackens criticism that ‘philosophers will conduct their discussions of Locke, Hume, and empiricism without ever taking into account that there is an explicit connection in these classic writers between their “philosophic” doctrines and racial theory, justifications of slavery, or arguments for colonial exploitation.’? Said in his celebrated book, Orientalism explains how the literary scholar and philosopher evade the political and ideological analysis of the issue in question.

In the history of thought Marx became the first to notice the material conditions, which produced subjection of certain people by some other because he had the occasion to live in a particular historical period when human knowledge itself sought a break from the tradition in order to give up the burden imposed by the new economic class. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx clearly explains the changes visible in the streets of London. The sight of an early global market as well as the sight of innocent victims of exploitation helped Marx to evolve an entirely new methodology. Marx says;

“The development of the materialist conception in respect of even a single historical example was a scientific task requiring years of quite research, for it is evident that mere phrases can achieve nothing here and that only in abundance of critically examined historical material which has been completely mastered can make it possible to solve such a problem.” So Marx concluded, “the political and legal phrases, like political action and its results, originated in material causes.”3As Eric Hobsbawm shows, ‘It could not even have been formulated in an adequate manner before the transformation of society which created the conditions for it. But once the conditions were there, the victory was certain, for ‘mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve’3. Marx as a part of his historical interpretation of social development showed the way in which the human essence appears in disguise. Herbert Marcuse notes this with necessary clarity, “Basic to the present form of social organization, the antagonism of the capitalist production process, is the fact that the central phenomena connected with this process do not immediately appear to men as what they are “in reality,” but in masked, “perverted form” 5From Marx’s analysis of human essence Marcuse could arrive at the right observation regarding identity. “The characteristics of essence no longer need to be stabilized in timeless eternal forms. The truth according to which the particular interests are preserved in the universal, the resulting objective “validity” of the universal, and the transparent rationality of the life process, will all have to prove themselves in the practice of the associated individuals and no longer in an absolute consciousness divorced from practice.”? Fanon’s observation that human essence in the age of colonialism faces new challenges underlines this position. In the Preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth, Sartre writes, “Europeans, you must open this book and enter into it. After a few steps in the darkness you will see strangers gathered around a fire; come close, and listen, for they are talking of the destiny they will mete out to your trading centers and to the hired soldiers who defend them. They will see you, perhaps, but they will go on talking among themselves, without even lowering their voices. This indifference strikes home: their fathers, shadowy creatures, your creatures, were but dead souls; you it was who allowed them glimpses of light, to you only did they dare speak, and you did not bother to reply to such zombies. Their sons ignore you; a fire warms them and sheds light around them, and you have not lit it. Now, at a respectful distance, it is you who will feel furtive, night bound and perished with cold. Turn and turn about; in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies.” Sartre invites the attention of the White to enter into the new space opened up by Fanon and get ashamed of what they have done to the colonized. He reminds that shame as Marx pointed out is a revolutionary sentiment.

Ngugi Wa Thiong asked the students of his country to go through two Books. One is Lenin’s Imperialism; the Highest Stage of Capitalism and the other is Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Indeed in the present world this instruction becomes more apt as we have imperialism of two types. On the one hand the economic and military might of imperialism has extended throughout the world without any boundary. On the other hand cultural imperialism of the West helped to maintain the atrocities and aggression even without any sense of shame either in the West or East. Imperialism in the early twentieth century had to face immense threat owing to liberation movements across the world. In the beginning of twenty first century we find only rare instances of resistance against imperialism especially in the form of mass movement. It is here we find the subjection of the people all over the world by means of hegemonic ideology. We are compelled to think in terms of high/low binary in culture. Derrida’s intervention in philosophy opened up a new cultural space in support of what Fanon has already put down in his books. Indeed Derrida’s attempt to deconstruct and demystify the binary in culture is a radical step, which has the potential to thwart the ideology in support of a colonial mood. As a result of this there evolved ardent critics of culture and philosophy like Edward Said. This influence is evident from the writings of Said, which in turn produced a large array of postcolonial writings. As Said explains Derrida’s writings at least since Of Grammatology “attempted what he has called a form of ecriture double, one half of which “allows the detonation of writing in the very interior of the word, thus disrupting the entire given order and taking over the field.”?

Fanon’s attempt to show the trauma produced in the minds of the natives and its necessary outcome was an indication towards the future especially in relation to the colonies of the West. Fanon like other nationalist leaders finds not only the necessity to fight against the colonizer but to redeem the status of native culture existed in the pre-colonial period. Fanon writes in his The Wretched of the Earth :“The claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the native. Perhaps we have not sufficiently demonstrated that colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”? Here Fanon speaks about a perverted logic, which is more or less similar to the “perverted ideas” in Marx’s German Ideology. Marx says, “ The individuals composing the dominant class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an historical epoch, it is self evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulates the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.”? Actually Marx talked about the whole world where the “dominant class” rules over the people. Marx could see the perverted logic, which subordinates the people all over the world. Marx also explained the need to create the real human sense. Marx writes in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscrips of 1844, “ Thus the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.”?? So from theoretical and practical aspect thinkers, revolutionaries and cultural activists are supposed to make man’s sense human, which, means liberate his/her senses from inhuman vision of him or herself. Although Marx noted the functioning of capitalist economy his period was neither a period of globalization nor a period of cultural hegemony of the postmodern kind. The limit of Marx was the limit of his period and the potential of Marx was his ability to break the chains of dominant ideology.

As a psychiatrist the primary concern of Fanon was the patient before him. So he could see the mental world of the people of the colonized country to which he also belonged. In that way Fanon’s attempt was to derive the cause of psychological trauma from which the black natives were suffering. As Fanon discusses in his Black Skin White Masks? The “Eueopeanizers” sought to reject the past of the natives and they got the status of “civilized” by “aping” and becoming mere parasites. Either they accept the Westernization process or they themselves feel the agony of lesser culture. Fanon writes, “Culturally Europeanised but racially black African, they suffered a crisis of identity when rejected by the British on whom they molded themselves.”(Black Skin, White Masks?p.2.) Actually they inflict themselves with the trauma of high/low binary in culture. The trauma gets converted into action as and when socio-political conditions become suitable for a collective resistance in the colonized countries. In the light of Marxian way of understanding the communist thinkers like E.M.S. Naboodiripad could explain the Malabar revolts in the late 19th and 20th century as peasant revolts against feudalists and Imperialists. E.M.S. writes, “The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal character of the Moplah peasantry naturally made it extremely unlikely that they would remain for long confined to the limits of non-violence laid down by the bourgeois leadership of the national movement. It was not for a non-violent non-cooperation movement but for real militant action of the masses that Moplah peasantry was being organized by their local middle leadership.”?? Dr.K.N.Panikkar tried to explain the revolts with the help of Gramcian approach. In those revolts the peasants belonging to the Mappilas of Malabar (Muslims) had to face twin oppression owing to feudal Brahminic domination on the one hand and British rule on the other hand. The people of Malabar especially Muslims turned violent at a particular juncture in history and expressed their resistance with religious hue and cry. As Panikkar writes, “rituals played an affirmative role by heightening religiosity and keeping the rebels in a continuous frenzy –hal elakkam in the local parlance.”??In Malabar the so-called hal elakkam denotes a psychological imbalance when the individual deviates from the routine life and expresses certain violent deviations. Fanon’s interpretation of trauma of the colonized helps us to interpret the ‘abnormal behaviour’ of the Mappilas of Malabar involved in revolts especially in 1921. It was not something abnormal or superstitious but the necessary practice to resist domination. For this those people required a logic of their own compared to the perverted logic of the oppressors. On such occasions people themselves invent their tradition and culture in order to warrant their own action. Panikkar says, “In the collective consciousness of the Mappila peasantry they represented a tradition of revolt which had an important bearing on their ability to defy and challenge the powers of the janmi and the authority of the state. The Mappila perception of this tradition was rather romantic, but powerful all the same.”?? So here we find that even before Fanon put forward the idea about inventing pre-modernity certain people invented it in practice as it was a historical necessity on their part to fight against imperialism for their very existence. The people of the colony realizes that ‘we only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.’ So the invention of the past in such contexts should not be treated as revivalism since it only acts as a tool to fight domination. Otherwise as Sartre rightly points out , ‘if this suppressed fury fails to find an outlet, it turns in a vacuum and devastates the oppressed creatures themselves. In order to free themselves they even massacre themselves’.

What Sartre and Fanon explain about the Algerian condition is true to the present world also. Nowadays the whole world witnesses the domination of Imperialist forces. It happens in three forms, one, domination of multinational corporations, second the military might of the West especially America and thirdly the cultural domination of the West. All these together create a new condition where the people of the subjected nations suffer from a kind of suffocation. In the words of Aijas Ahmed the ‘technologically spectacular Anglo-American war of occupation’ in Iraq and Afghanistan crated an entirely new situation after the Second World War. The victims of those countries should have compelled to resort to a philosophy of their own either to find solace or to maintain the feeling that they are resisting the enemy. It was in such a context Foucault admitted and supported the movements of Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran. Foucault says, “Since the man who revolts is, thus, ‘outside of history’ as well as in it, and since life and death are at stake, we can understand why revolts have easily been able to find their expression and their mode of performance in religious themes: the promise of the beyond, the return of time, the waiting for the saviour or the empire of the last days, the indisputable reign of good. When the particular religion has permitted, these themes have furnished throughout the centuries not an ideological cloak but the very way to live revolts.”?? In his essay, ‘Is it useless to revolt?’ Foucault shows the behaviour of the people at the time of revolt as the language against the dominant force, which keep up the silence of the oppressed.

Before concluding this essay we have to look into the space opened up by Fanon’s intervention in the present Indian context. Fanon assumes that an intellectual of the colony should undergo three phases in order to become a revolutionary activist.14 In this process he/she reconstructs himself/herself by entering to one’s own experience of the past. In India a citizen cannot escape the memory of his/her caste identity since it remains an inevitable experience in the country. When a Dalit environmentalist Pokkudan from Kerala writes his memoirs he remembers the days when he had to give a false identity before the landlord when he had to work in Kutak. Although he belonged to the untouchable Pulaya community he introduced himself as a Nair, which is an upper cast in Kerala. So even in Kutak, which is in Karnataka, the Kerala Dalit could get a better treatment when he worked in disguise. So a Dalit is compelled to wear the mask of the upper caste if he/she wants to get a better treatment in society. We know that fundamentally every worker is same and share the same essence. But here in the case of Pokkudan as any other untouchable had to suffer not only as an agriculture worker but also as a Pulaya. This shows the inevitable contradiction and ambivalence an Indian citizen faces even in the period of Imperialist globalization.

In the writings of Narayan who belongs to the tribal community the experience of an adivasi get expressed. It is the first in the history of Kerala or even the whole India an adivasi writes novels and stories depicting the life of the tribal people in Kerala. His story becomes the story of the adivasi. When Tirumavalaavan from Tamil Nadu or Kancha Ilaiah from Andra Pradesh or SaranKumar Limbale from Maharashtra and OmPrakash Valmiki from North India began to speak about the reminiscences of their early childhood their words become a charge sheet against Caste domination in India rather than Imperialism. So in India the praxis in the realm of culture without realizing the twin domination will become futile and passive. The hue and cry for a monolithic culture in the present context will only help Imperialism and Upper-caste domination. An individual or community has to put forth the identity only when it becomes necessary to counter the hegemonic ideology and its subjection. On such occasions they are bound not only to invent their past but also their present which is actually hidden under the perverted logic. They invent their gender identity to fight male domination, their caste to fight Brahminic Monism, their nation to fight Imperialist hegemony. In a cast less society caste identity need not become a political or philosophical issue. The same is the case with national identity. People fight against imperialism not as workers or peasants but as nations. They fight the bourgeoisie as the workers. The people of Iran are now bound to think as a nation opposed to imperialism because the imperialist forces threaten their very existence as a free nation. So there is no mystery regarding identity. It is not an intangible philosophical issue. On the other hand the notion of monolithic identity leads to mystery. One invents his/her past only when he/she faces subjection. On such occasion people put forth their identity to show how the construction of the ‘other’ becomes a means to dominate over a section of people. In the present society a man need not raise the issue of his gender since he does not face any threat in the name of gender. On the other hand a woman should raise the problem, as it is inevitable to overcome the existing male dominant structure. Similarly a black or an Indian or a Dalit raise the issue of his identity according to the nature of cultural prejudice he/she faces. The process of globalization has paved the way for more resistance from people against cultural domination. On the one hand we witness the formation of a global village and on the other hand more and more disintegration. Nothing can prevent certain people from raising their identity in such a circumstance as it has become necessary for their survival. So the philosophical debates opened up by Derrida focuses on the historical role of the ‘difference’ rather than ‘unity’ in the period of neo-colonialism. Those who ignore the role of post-structural philosophy actually fails not only to strengthen the demystification process initiated by Marx but also to slightly stretch the same as Fanon suggested to provide a suitable philosophical ground for resistance movements all over the world against neo-colonialism.

George H.Sabine, A History of Political Theory, Oxford and IBH Publishing Co, New Delhi, 1973,p570.
2.Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York, 1979,13.
3. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1989,p239.
4.Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution,1789-1848 Vintage Books, New York,1996, p.245.
5.Herbeert Marcuse, Negations, Essays in Critical Theory, Penguin books, 1968. p.70.
6Herbert Marcuse, 1968, p87.
7. Edward Said, The world The Text and The Critic, Vintage Edition, London,1991, p185, Said quotes Derrida from Positions.
8. Bill Ashcroft, et al., Ed. The Post- Colonial Reader, Routledge, London and New York,1997 p154.
8.Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol.5, Progrss Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p.59.
9.E.M.S.Namboodiripad, Kerala Society and Politics, An Historical Survey, National Book Centre, New Delhi, 1967, 1984,p.113.
10.Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art, Progress Publishers, Moscow,1976. p.128.
11.K.N.Panikkar, Against Lord and State, Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar 1836-1921, p.90.
12 K.N.Panikkar, p 90.
13. Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture. Selected and edited by R. Carrette, Manchester University Press, 1999,P.132.
14. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin, 1967,p178-179.

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(The scholarly exposition that follows is written by Dr. P.K.Pokker, an eminent Malayalam writer and critic; he works as Professor of Philosophy in the University of Calicut. He is connected with the Progressive writers’ Movement of Kerala, known as Purogamana Kala Sahithya Sangham. )

Dr.P.K.Pokker
University of Calicut
Pokker.pk@gmail.com