Frantz Fanon in Iraq

Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary work, The Wretched of the Earth, was written as a study of north African post-colonialism. Yet the theories Fanon laid out in Wretched continue to reveal themselves as accurate. By applying some of Fanon’s theories concerning nationalism and the role of literature in a post-colonial state to the current situation in Iraq, it’s easy to see that Fanon is still getting it right – 40 some odd years after his death

It’s not hard to see how modern Iraq is the product of a history of Western colonialism, stemming from the British capture of Baghdad from the Ottoman Empire in 1917. A false nation was created, one that encompassed peoples with potentially volatile differences in culture and religion. Saddam Hussein came to rule over a country comprised of people with no clear national consciousness. Because of this national ambiguity and because of Hussein’s own ethnic background as Sunni Arab (which various sources have cited as comprising less than one fourth of Iraq’s population), he was in essence still carrying out the colonialist institution of a foreign ruler. When Saddam Hussein was dethroned and the colonial economy he occupied crumbled, the fragile unity that existed in Iraq was unmasked. Fanon’s analysis of African post-colonialism is eerily relevant: “unity takes off the mask, and crumbles into regionalism inside the hollow shell of nationality itself.” (1583) Tensions that had existed before Hussein among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, and Sufis (among others) resurfaced almost immediately. Fanon’s words are again prophetic: “Inside a single nation, religion splits up people into different spiritual communities, all of them kept up and stiffened by colonialism and its instruments.” (1584) This spiritual regionalism seen by Fanon in northern Africa is now prevalent in modern day Iraq, evidenced by the massive outbreak of insurgent violence.

For three years, the U.S. has been attempting to institute an Iraqi parliament. This government has passed legislation and held free elections, yet the country is still entrenched in regionalism and violence. This may be because Iraq is attempting to adopt a model based on Western ideology – a model which loses meaning in the middle-east as it is an empty replica of the original. Nationalism must grow from the Iraqi people themselves for any semblance of a stable state to exist.

I am by no means an expert on the literature of Iraq, but through the lens of Fanon’s work it seems that literature may play an integral role in the success of the region. Fanon argues that under post-colonialism there will be a progression in literature which mirrors the progression of nationalism: “In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual.” (1589) It remains to be seen if a “literature of combat” (1589) will be created in Iraq’s new nationalism, but it seems that if Fanon is right – and he usually is – a close analysis of the literature coming out of Iraq in the years to come will be necessary to accurately and organically provide methods of peace and stability within the region.

 

Work Cited

Fanon, Frantz. From The Wretched of the Earth. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1575-1593.