Notes On On National Culture By Frantz Fanon

Notes on “On National Culture” by Frantz FanonThe article discusses how colonialism tries to dismantle national consciousness. Fanon describes how the colonial powers begin with economic and social reform projects that meet the aspirations of the colonized people, thus committing to the White Man’s burden. It is not long before it ultimately proves incapable of reform and ends up doing to the colonies “exactly what it has refused to do in its own country” (153). The second step is tarnish pre-colonial history. Civilization plays an important role in national consciousness, and we can see this in how we as Egyptians feel connected to our identity through taking pride in the Egyptian civilization. The colonizer tries to demolish this sense of national belonging or national consciousness by making the colonized people ashamed of their own history. There is a quotation from the article that really demonstrates this idea,” Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it” (154). A contemporary example of this is how Israelis culturally