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Franz fanon excerpts12/2/2023 Yes, the European spirit has strange roots. It is in the name of the spirit, in the name of the spirit of Europe, that Europe has made her encroachments, that she has justified her crimes and legitimized the slavery in which she holds four-fifths of humanity. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.Ĭomrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third Europe? The West saw itself as a spiritual adventure. Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth. Let us decide not to imitate Europe let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. The human condition, plans for mankind and collaboration between men in those tasks which increase the sum total of humanity are new problems, which demand true inventions. When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders. European achievements, European techniques and the European style ought no longer to tempt us and to throw us off our balance. We have therefore seen in the preceding pages to what mortifying set-backs such an imitation has led us. For many among us the European model is the most inspiring. Yet it is very true that we need a model, and that we want blueprints and examples. We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe.Įurope now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss we would do well to avoid it with all possible speed. That same Europe where they were never done talking of Man, and where they never stopped proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind.Ĭome, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended we must find something different. So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow that same Europe? She has only shown herself parsimonious and niggardly where men are concerned it is only men that she has killed and devoured. Europe has declined all humility and all modesty but she has also set her face against all solicitude and all tenderness. Look at how the shadow of her palaces stretches out ever farther! Every one of her movements has burst the bounds of space and thought. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.Īnd yet it may be said that Europe has been successful in as much as everything that she has attempted has succeeded.Įurope undertook the leadership of the world with ardour, cynicism and violence. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships of the time before life began. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. Source: Les damnés de la terre by François Maspéro éditeur in 1961 įirst published: in Great Britain by Macgibbon and Kee in 1965 Ĭome, then, comrades it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
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