"The struggle for freedom does not give back to the national culture its former value and shapes; this struggle which aims at a fundamentally different set of relations between men cannot leave intact either the the form of the content of the people's culture. After the conflict there is not only the disappearance of colonialism but also the disappearance of the colonized man."
I thought this quote was interesting and sad at the same time. I had never thought of colonization in this way that even when the colonizers leave, the colonized will never be able to return to their customs and traditions that existed before the colonizers came. They have to create a new culture in the new society they have been pushed into. This can be seen as good in the way that it promotes new things but it is sad to think about all the rich culture that might have been lost because of this period. Also, how different current society if some of these cultures had not pushed aside and maybe forgotten.
I agree with his statement. If you look at a place like India, it has many varied and ancient cultures and the language many use to speak to each other across those cultures is English, the language of the colonizers. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I think throughout history conquest has been sort of a means of cultural exchange that can have long term cultural benefits, even though you obviously wouldn't want to live in the conquered country when it's being conquered.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading Fanon I found it pretty important to keep in mind that he was raised in a French colony. While he talks about the colonizers disrupting the culture and traditions of the colonized, this primarily a French form of colonization. We touch on this in class, but the French thought that their culture was a gift to these societies. Other countries did this to a lesser extent but they were primarily focused on material gains and largely left the cultural sphere alone.
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