Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Solidarity: On the Practice of Third World Intercontinentalism

245 Pages·2017·1.21 MB·English

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Solidarity: On the Practice of Third World
Intercontinentalism
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https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1q88v5dj
Author
Bose, Anuja
Publication Date
2017

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Solidarity: On the Practice of Third World Intercontinentalism

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in Political Science

by

Anuja Bose

2017
© Copyright by
Anuja Bose
2017
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Solidarity: On the Practice of Third World
Intercontinentalism

by

Anuja Bose
Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles, 2017
Professor Raymond A. Rocco, Chair

How was France consolidated as an imperial state, and how was its imperial form challenged
from the colonies? This is the question I address in this dissertation by turning to the works of
Frantz Fanon. I argue that Fanon’s first published work Black Skin, White Masks offers a critique
and diagnosis of how the French imperial state was consolidated through racialized relations of
social solidarity. In this work, Fanon shows that race mediated how social solidarity was
articulated and practiced such that colonial subject-citizens were simultaneously included into
and excluded from republican citizenship. Caught in the double bind of inclusion and exclusion,
the possibility of forging any substantial sense of social solidarity between black and white
citizens in France and its colonies was forgone. In Fanon’s subsequent writings - A Dying
Colonialism, Towards the African Revolution and The Wretched of the Earth – he demonstrates
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that the racialized social solidarity of imperial France and the international political community
more broadly, were challenged by practices of regional political solidarity between the Third
World masses in the post-war era. Specifically, I argue that his writings articulate two sets of
political practices that the masses of the Third World engage in to transform the imperialist
structure of France and international state system 1) the practice of vigilance in response to being
vulnerable to undemocratic rule internally and being subject to imperial domination externally
and 2) the practice of sacrifice as a way to share and distribute the burdens of waging armed
resistance against powerful imperial states. These practices form the basis of Fanon’s distinctive
account of Third World political solidarity as a form of intercontinental populism between
formerly colonized nations that could obliterate the bonds of racialized fraternity that defined
colonial relations, and continued to define core and periphery relations in the postcolonial era.

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The dissertation of Anuja Bose is approved.
Carole Pateman
Melvin L. Rogers
Robin D.G. Kelley
Raymond A. Rocco, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles
2017

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For Rethi Devi Bose
and in memory of Nassim Mobasher

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………...viii
Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………………..xi

INTRODUCTION: Frantz Fanon on the Question of Empire and Solidarity…………….1
I. Fanon and Third World Political Thought
II. Organization of the Dissertation

CHAPTER 1: Race and Fraternity under French Colonialism…………………………26
I. Fraternity and the Colonial Family Romance
II. Race and Social Structure
III. The Double Bind of Language and Race
IV. Republican Racism and the Problem of Inclusion
V. Conclusion

CHAPTER 2: Intercontinental Solidarity and Decolonization…………………………60
I. Decolonization Beyond the Nation-State: Federalism and the Turn to the Third World
II. The Dialectic between Pan-Ethnic/Racial Solidarity and National Consciousness
III. International Consciousness as Intercontinental Populism
IV. Conclusion: Critical and Revising Dialectics

CHAPTER 3: Vigilance and Intercontinental Solidarity……………………………….113
I. International Political Solidarity in Liberalism and Marxism
II. Seriality and Colonization
III. Contesting Seriality Through Vigilance
IV. Conclusion: Practices of Vigilance as Practices of Freedom

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CHAPTER 4: Sacrifice, Political Violence and Intercontinental Solidarity…………...172
I. Sacrifice and Democratic Citizenship
II. Sacrifice and Political Violence
III. Beyond Algeria: Sacrifice as the Foundation for Third World Solidarity
IV. From Algeria to Africa: Distributing the Burdens of Sacrifice
V. Conclusion

CONCLUSION: Frantz Fanon as a Theorist of Third World Political Thought……….211

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………...217

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Acknowledgments

The journey from articulating a faint idea for a dissertation, to defending the prospectus, to
completing the final version, has been a long and arduous process. I am grateful to the members
of my committee who have lent me invaluable support and guidance along the way. I wish to
thank my chair, Raymond Rocco, who has patiently seen me through every step of the doctoral
program, offering me practical and scholarly advice from day one, while always creating an
intellectual space for me in the field of Race, Ethnicity, Politics at UCLA to nurture my interests
in political theory and the study of race & racism. It would simply not have been possible for me
to envision and complete this project without his support and the intellectual community he
created for us political theorists at UCLA. I am also immensely fortunate to have begun this
project soon after Robin Kelley moved to UCLA. My conversations with him have enriched this
project tremendously, and his unwavering encouragement has carried me through to the end. He
is just the teacher and mentor I needed, and I am lucky that he appeared at the right time. I also
offer my deep gratitude to Carole Pateman and Melvin Rogers. Both have been exemplary role
models for me who engage and expand the political theory canon to deepen our understanding of
domination and democratic citizenship in their own original and insightful ways.
Outside of my committee, Victor Wolfenstein and Mark Q. Sawyer played an important
role in creating an intellectual home for me at UCLA to develop the ideas of this project. I am
very fortunate to have crossed paths with them in graduate school, and to have benefitted from
their legacy of advancing the study of race & racism in Political Science.
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