The Historical Development of Postcolonial Theory: Criticism on the Colonialist Practice

1. 1-Frantz Fanon and the "Inferiority Complex"

   Frantz Fanon is the first figure who initiated the ground thought for postcolonial theory. He was born in the French colony of Martinique and as a black intellectual, he was known for his analysis of the relationship between colonialism and racism. His medical and psychological practice enabled him to focus on harmful psychological effects of colonial dominance and racist policies conducted under colonial rule. However, Fanon was not only concerned with the psychology of the colonized people but also with their colonial masters. As a psychiatrist, Fanon defines colonialism as a source of violence and focuses on its psychological effects on human conscious and disempowerment on the natives.

   Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” (originally published in 1961), is a foundational text in post-colonial literature. In this book, Fanon considers violence, which, in his thought and many of the post-colonial writers, has ruled over the ordering of the colonial world, as a destruction form of native social forms without reserving the systems of reference of the economy, the customs of dress and external life. To Fanon, this violence affirmed the supremacy of white values and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life.

   In his Black Skin, White Masks (originally published in 1952), another significant work on post-colonial literature which Fanon defines as a psychoanalytical study, he notes that:

“There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men. There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect.”

Fanon holds the Black man has internalized the inferiority (colonization of the mind) set by the colonial masters and has sought to overcome this inferiority by imitating the whites in every aspect. In other words, the native feels that wearing the white mask (culture) is the only way of dealing with this psychological inadequacy.

   Fanon’s most controversial contribution to postcolonial theory was his argument concerning self-assertion as a counter strategy to the self-submission that the hegemonic discourse constructed. In order to assert oneself, he offered “cultural nationalism”, which is respecting native culture and literature as a remedy to the colonized existence.