Ico's Corner

Nietzschean Influences in Fanon

This was an exam paper I had in FIL246 at UiB, it received a B. I find the paper has some issues, yet I'd like to post it here.

Introduction

Frantz Fanon engaged with an exceptionally wide range of authors and traditions. As stated in Alienation and Freedom (Khalfa & Young, 2018) "Fanon read incessantly and very widely." His writing brings together Marxism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology and anti-colonial political theory in an effort to understand and overcome the structures of colonial domination.

Among the many thinkers he draws on, one stands out as especially unexpected: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s project centers on the cultivation of a radical aristocracy and contains sharp critiques of egalitarian and socialist movements. Yet Fanon, who was himself a committed anticolonial socialist, explicitly cites Nietzsche at a decisive moment at the end of Black Skin, White Masks:

"And there is already resentment in reaction. Nietzsche had already said it in The Will to Power"
— (Fanon, 1952/2021, p. 197)

Although some secondary literature, such as the work of Donovan Miyasaki (2024), has explored this connection, the extent and significance of Nietzsche’s influence on Fanon remains underexamined. This paper does not attempt a full account of that influence. Instead, it asks a more focused question: what parallels exist between Fanon’s native and settler structure in The Wretched of the Earth and Nietzsche’s aristocrat and slave distinction in On the Genealogy of Morals?

A Brief Overview of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth

The Settler

Colonialism starts with an act of force. The foreigner comes into the land away from his own, away from his homeland of Europe which has formed him in its own historic situation, and he establishes a new relation, that of the relation to the native. The foreigner forces himself upon the native in all the ways that one can. He kills, rapes, conquers, and draws up governing structures. The foreigner tries to implant himself upon the native and rule over them. In this endeavour he will eventually fail, but at this moment the foreigner has only one goal: to be a settler of the native’s land and remake it in his own wants. This meeting of the two forces, the native and the settler, show a new part of history.

When faced with previous ideas of how history has proceeded, Fanon writes:

"Everything up to and including the very nature of pre-capitalist society, so well explained by Marx, must here be thought out again"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 32)

Fanon’s task is simply to investigate the genealogy of colonialism—genealogy here understood as the study of how ideas and societal frameworks have developed from a historical point of view. One of the first insights of this genealogy is that:

"The colonial world is a Manichaean world"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 31)

What does this mean? It means that the colonial world is a world where one considers the other an evil. The settler constructs the native as essentially evil, as does the native vice versa.

To begin with the settler’s Manichaean world, it starts with the settler’s goal. The goal, which as previously established was the goal to rule over what they wanted (in this case the native), faces an issue: the native themselves. The settler has by establishing his goal identified his key opponent, the very negation of his being. He is established as the enemy; the native, as Fanon writes, is described as follows:

"Native society is not simply described as a society lacking in values. (…) The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 32)

By negating the image of the native, the settler justifies his own actions by way of his opposition. As Fanon writes:

"In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 31)

Thus, the negation of the native serves as the foundation for the self-understanding of the settler. This is yet another reason why Fanon must embark on the genealogy to supplement the insights of Marx.

The Native

The native on the other hand finds themselves the victim of the settler’s action. All that the native knows about the settler is based upon the actions that are forced upon them. They know the settler through the violence. This violence is communicated through the main representatives of the settlers: the military and police. As the police enforce their laws on them and tighten the figurative noose around them, they look upon the settler’s towns in the distance, and see all that he has taken. They see that:

"The settler’s town is a well-fed town, an easy-going town; its belly is always full of good things"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 30)

Fanon goes on to write that:

"The look that the native turns on the settler’s town is a look of lust, a look of envy; (…) The colonized man is an envious man"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 30)

The native forms their vision of what the settler is; the Manichaean perspective shows itself here as well. As Fanon writes:

"To the saying ‘All natives are the same’ the colonized person replies ‘All settlers are the same’"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 72)

The enemy drawn up, the scene is set, the weapon is chosen. The native realises what they must do, and with vigour they use the language of the settler against him. Violence, that which has been all that the native has known of the settler, is destined to be all that the settler knows of the native. Fanon writes:

"The destruction of the colonial world is no more and no less than the abolition of one zone, its burial in the depths of the earth or its expulsion from the country"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 31)

"They want to take his place"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 47)

...and the settler knows this. Daily life under these conditions cannot continue. The native must transform themselves into a fighter, into a builder, into a master of their own destiny. If we return to the quote from Black Skin, White Masks regarding Nietzsche, we will illuminate this insight:

"Man’s behavior is not only reactional. And there is already resentment in reaction. Nietzsche had already said it in The Will to Power. To induce man to be actional, (…), that is the task of utmost urgency for he who, (…), prepares to act"
— (Fanon, 1952/2021, p. 197)

The project Fanon outlined years prior is now explored in Wretched of the Earth. How does one transform reactional actions into actional actions? It is the difference between actions based on a positive vs. a negative justification: for something rather than merely against something.

Possible Connections to Nietzsche

Which leads into the next question. With these ideas in motion, which ideas of Nietzsche would it be fruitful to investigate in their similarity to Fanon?

  1. Resentment: To start, in the Nietzsche quote, Fanon makes an explicit mention to the idea of resentment, or ressentiment as it is sometimes called. As the translations I have available use the term resentment in both Fanon and Nietzsche, I will continue with that terminology. Ideas related to resentment or stemming to/from it should also be explored, as there may be insights to be found there.
  2. Master- and Slave-Morality: Thus, we will also take a look at both master- and slave-morality. Considering that Fanon makes several explicit mentions of good and evil in his analysis, we should expect to find good use out of these.
  3. Radical Aristocracy: Lastly, in one of the secondary texts I read I found an interesting idea as it relates to Nietzsche’s solution to some of the issues he raises in his writings, that being the idea of the radical Aristocracy. Donovan Miyasaki (2024), in his paper Nietzsche and Fanon on the Political Breeding of Race and Class as Caste, proposes this as a key to understand how Fanon uses Nietzsche, that being the idea of castes; however, I have found some issues with it that illuminate the bigger problems of trying to look for a Nietzschean influence in Fanon that also my own analyses will unfortunately suffer from. We will explore this later on in the paper.

Then without further ado, to begin with we must start with the beginning; we must start with the introduction of the genealogical method.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche starts with a critique of previous English psychologic and utilitarian philosophy, who up until that point had (according to Nietzsche) proposed the idea of “good” as essentially the same as “utility.” Nietzsche writes:

"According to this theory, ‘good’ is the attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful, and so is able to claim to be considered ‘valuable in the highest degree,’ ‘valuable in itself.’ This method of explanation is also (…) wrong"
— (Nietzsche, 1887/2024, Essay I, §3, p. 24)

Nietzsche instead thinks that in order to ascertain what is good, one must look to history as the basis. In other words, one must look to the lineage of good—the genealogy of good. To start this genealogical reconstruction, Nietzsche starts with the aristocrat.

For Nietzsche, the aristocrat is first and foremost not a concrete social class as in a Marxist perspective, but a character-type with a specific attitude towards life. Essay I, §10 states:

"… the aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself"
— (Nietzsche, 1887/2024, p. 34)

This is an actional attitude towards life. From this point of view, the aristocrat defines good as that which affirms, which in this case is himself. As Nietzsche writes:

"Much rather had it been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good"
— (Nietzsche, 1887/2024, Essay I, §2, p. 23)

This Nietzsche calls master-morality. A morality which is based upon, as Fanon puts it (although not directly on master-morality, but around the context of the Nietzsche quote): “Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity.”

Nietzsche contrasts this with the lower classes, claiming that instead of viewing the world through an actional view, they view it with a lens of resentment. For whatever reason—their weakness, their powerlessness, their inability to act—they cannot engage in master-morality. They are unable to imprint their will upon the world through direct means, and thus are stuck in a deep resentment towards those who can be actional. This resentment is an inward-turned deep envy of the inability to act. This resentment is not a choice, but a consequence of their structured situation. They see the aristocrat, and see this being which is actively imprinting its will upon the world. They see the negation of themselves, everything they are not. Thus, they do not start with defining good as the foundation for morality; instead it is negation which is the bedrock of slave morality. They define the aristocrat as their opponent. They wish to fight their opposition with all their might, but unable to do so, they take it to a different arena. As such Nietzsche writes:

"… the revolt of the slaves begins in the sphere of morals"
— (Nietzsche, 1887/2024, Essay I, §7, p. 30)

Terms indicating an aristocratic attitude like “powerful,” “dominating,” and “actional” become recast as essentially evil, while weakness and wretchedness are elevated into virtues. Revenge, an actional attitude of strength, becomes evil. Forgiveness, the inability to commit revenge, becomes a virtue. Value after value, this inversion becomes complete. The morals of master-morality are negated in their entirety. This moral battle is fought according to Nietzsche by the clergy, who wage a spiritual struggle by redefining the values of the strong as morally corrupt. Nietzsche claims that by his time the defeat of the aristocracy was complete: slave morality had won.

This leaves Nietzsche with a problem. Nietzsche is not pleased with this state of affairs. He is hostile to Christianity precisely because he sees it as the historical vehicle for the victory of slave morality, and thus for the suppression of actional, life-affirming types. The question becomes: how could a genuinely aristocratic type be cultivated again in a world already shaped by slave morality?

Donovan Miyasaki (2024) argues that Nietzsche’s answer lies in his analysis of the Hindu Laws of Manu. Miyasaki grounds this interpretation in both On the Genealogy of Morals and The Antichrist (Nietzsche, 1895). Miyasaki shows that Nietzsche recognises that slave morality has won. Nietzsche must admit that:

"Species do not grow in perfection: the weak keep gaining dominance over the strong"
— (as cited in Miyasaki, 2024, p. 110, from The Antichrist)

As Miyasaki writes on the same page:

"Politics must create an artificial hierarchical order designed not to mirror nature but promote human flourishing … to beautify rather than preserve humanity."

These new hierarchies have the intention of creating purpose for their members, including those of the lower classes. In this way, the lower classes receive a stable identity within the order, one that prevents the build-up of resentment. Under such conditions, Nietzsche believes, a new human type might be cultivated.

Comparisons

Now that we have looked at some of the ideas of both Nietzsche and Fanon, let us try to do a comparative analysis of ideas that we have in front of us here.

To begin, one of the only places where Fanon explicitly mentions Nietzsche comes at the end of Black Skin, White Masks. The quote has already been present in reduced form, but let us now consider the whole quote:

"We said in our introduction that man was an affirmation. We shall never stop repeating it. Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity. But man is also a negation. No to man’s contempt. No to the indignity of man. To the exploitation of man. To the massacre of what is most human in man: freedom. Man’s behavior is not only reactional. And there is already resentment in reaction. Nietzsche had already said it in The Will to Power. To induce man to be actional, by maintaining in his circularity the respect of the fundamental values that make the world human, that is the task of utmost urgency for he who, after careful reflection, prepares to act."
— (Fanon, 1952/2021, p. 197)

It is worth considering exactly what Fanon is engaging with here. Fanon explicitly brings up the concept of resentment: “And there is already resentment in reaction.” With this in mind, it is possible to go back to Wretched of the Earth and ask: how does the native look at the settler? As previously established, he looks upon the settler with envy, which with our current knowledge that Fanon is directly aware of the idea of resentment, shares a striking similarity with it. With this illumination, it now becomes clearer that several of the other structures that Fanon is creating also share a striking similarity towards Nietzschean thought.

Both the settler and the native look upon each other with a Manichaean gaze, one that is remarkably similar to the one that slave morality entails. When the settler talks of the values of the native, the native is talked about as a negation, as a simple opposition. The native is talked about as the hostility towards values. The same applies to the native. The native sees the settler as nothing more than unbridled violence—a violence that they must oppose. Not only that, the native wants to take the place of the settler.

As should be obvious by now, while there are similarities, the master/slave moralities do not map cleanly onto the native-settler dichotomy. They both engage in resentment (as well as the consequences that follow it), they both to a certain extent define their actions based upon an external opposition, but key differences remain.

Nietzsche appears to hold the view that resentful reaction cannot lead to positive action, or a “yes to life.” Even in the explicit deliberations on Nietzsche, Fanon diverges from this view. Fanon doesn’t outright state that reaction can be turned towards action in BSWM, instead hinting that this should be the main project of any form of decolonisation: “To induce man to be actional (…) that is the task of utmost urgency” (Fanon, 1952/2021, p. 197).

This project, or task, seems to be deliberated on in Wretched of the Earth:

"Yesterday they were completely irresponsible; today they mean to understand everything and make all decisions. Illuminated by violence, the consciousness of the people rebels against any pacification"
— (Fanon, 1961/2001, p. 74)

What is so radical about this compared to Nietzsche is that it is the weak, downtrodden, and wretched who take control through violence and liberate themselves. This structure of liberation, which is not even an option in Nietzsche’s texts, shows itself as the true solution to freedom.

It is here worth going back to Miyasaki and considering his insights here, as well as coming back to the problem that I originally promised that I would explain. The radical aristocracy that Nietzsche wished for is, in Miyasaki’s view, realised in colonialism. Miyasaki goes on to claim that Fanon is critiquing Nietzsche’s caste system and claiming that it will lead to its own destruction. As Miyasaki writes:

"… slaves don’t create slave morality, aristocracies do"
— (Miyasaki, 2024, p. 112)

Miyasaki’s analysis goes into much further detail, but the major problem with it is that it relies on the Laws of Manu, which Nietzsche only discusses in The Antichrist, a work which does not appear in the record of Fanon’s personal library (Khalfa & Young, 2018). I must admit I haven’t had the ability to comb through all of the texts in the library to see if any of the secondary literature he owned mentioned the Manu, but none of the major works do.

This does not mean that Fanon never read the book. In fact, much to my own annoyance, the only reference Fanon makes to a work of Nietzsche is to The Will to Power, a book which does not appear in the library. So it is not only possible that The Antichrist is a book that Fanon read—there is precedence for it.

To muddy the grounds even more, I was going to make an analysis of the quote “For it is the settler who has brought the native into existence and who perpetuates his existence.” It in its original context seemed to share some of the Nietzschean elements previously discussed, but after some consideration this here would most likely map more cleanly onto Sartre and the creation of the Other. And yet, does the statement “the antisemite creates the Jew” have Nietzschean origins? It is beyond the scope of this article to answer that, but it hints at a greater problem. Fanon engages with a lot of writers, but many of the traditions that he engages with—namely French existentialism and psychoanalysis—engage themselves with Nietzsche. Thus it is difficult to ascertain what the direct influence (which does exist) of Nietzsche in Fanon is, and what is merely appearance or a shared intellectual tradition. Thus, this would be an excellent research question for someone else in the future, but hopefully this paper has illuminated the issue somewhat better.

Sources