The Wretched of the Earth
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Frantz Fanon |
|---|---|
| Original title | Les Damnés de la Terre |
| Translator |
Constance Farrington (1963) Richard Philcox (2004) |
| Illustrator | Zonama Bonaharda |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject | Racism and Colonialism, Violence, Post-colonialism, Third-world development, Revolution |
| Publisher | Grove Press (1963 translation) |
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Publication date
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1961 |
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Published in English
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1963 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 251 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 11787563 |
The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by Frantz Fanon, in which Fanon provides a psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanising effects of colonization upon the individual, and the nation, and discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications inherent to establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people. The French-language title derives from the opening lyrics of "The Internationale", the 19th-century anthem of the Left Wing.
Through critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as colonizer and colonized in order to teach and psychologically mold the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution. Fanon proposes that revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to effect the expulsion of the colonists. Moreover, in traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariat are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat social-class—especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed—people who lacked the class consciousness to actively participate in the anti-colonial revolution.
Yet, Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to identify the colonial subjects who are not involved in industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the working class), the lumpenproletariat have sufficient intellectual independence from the dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class to readily grasp that they can successfully revolt against the colonial status quo, and so decolonize their nation.
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