Post-Coloniale Theory_Gender Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Post-Coloniale Theory_Gender - Essay Example This is not to say that he did not suffer the suppression of body, mind and spirit under alien masters or being an alien in his own country, as did millions of others before him. To imitate a popular statement: You can take colonialism out of a colony but you can not take a colony (of people) out of colonialism! Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique, French Antilles in the Caribbean. Creole is the language of this colony and black, the colour of his skin. Under the French administration, Martinicians were born and brought up as Frenchmen or Frenchwomen. This superimposition of a European culture on an African community in the Caribbean islands formed the background to the evolution of Fanon’s thinking and writings1. Formally trained as a psychiatrist and a philosopher, he was an original thinker, Marxist revolutionary and writer on suppressive aspects of colonialism and propounded his views in his seminal works, most important of which are â€Å"Black Skin, White Masks† (1952) and â€Å"The Wretched of the Earth† (1961). Through these writings and other works, Fanon has helped us understand colonialism as more than the exercise of political and economic power, but as a psychological process. We shall analyse this argument in the light of his cultural moorings, his works and his revolutionary interpretations. The word colonialism has its origins in the mid-14th century Roman word ‘colonye’, a settlement, an outpost or occupied lands outside the Roman city states.2 ‘Colonialism’ is a 19th century concept of social, political and economic policy towards ‘occupied lands’ under the British imperialism. During the 15th and 16th centuries, European nations experienced renaissance of art, literature, music and drama even as Christianity and the church confronted the State to capture and control the minds of the people. The sea-faring