The essays in
Toward the African Revolution are split into five sections, roughly grouped by topic and manner of original publication. They help to trace the evolution of Fanon's thought over time, from his years working as a psychiatrist through the period when he actively worked for the FLN and his exile from
Algeria in
Tunisia. Most of the writing involves his political theory of opposition to colonialism as a dehumanizing force that cannot be reformed, as well as the ways in which he thought Africans ought to resist colonialism.
The Problem of the Colonized The first section of the book (French: Le colonisé en question) deals with the views that outsiders hold of North Africans. Fanon ostensibly wrote only two other essays on this topic, but one of them, "West Indians and Africans," was actually written by
Pierre Chaulet. Fanon did not want to write the article, but it was incorrectly attributed to him after it was published anonymously in
El Moudjahid. In his essay "The North African Syndrome," Fanon challenged the prejudices of French doctors against Algerians and other North Africans, whose complaints of illness or pain were often dismissed as whining or laziness. Written while Fanon was still studying to become a psychiatrist, he constructs the imagined, stereotypical Arab in the minds of the French doctors, who would have considered themselves more civilized: "Who are they, those creatures starving for humanity who stand buttressed against the frontiers (though I know them from experience to be terribly distinct) of complete recognition?" This is one of Fanon's early works, and it represents some of his original thinking on the institutional and societal nature of colonialism that was most dangerous to Africans, as well as a blend of the political thought and psychological expertise that he would blend throughout his life.
Racism and Culture The second section, Racism and Culture (French: Racisme et culture), is a single speech given by Fanon in 1956 at the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists, and it was originally published in a special edition of
Présence Africaine. His central point is that racism "is only one element of a vaster whole: that of the systematized oppression of a people." Fanon did not see any practical benefit to helping individual Algerians when the colonial system he worked in was harming the mental health of the entire population. Working at the hospital likely sped up or influenced his decision to formally abandon the colonial enterprise and join the FLN outright, as his duties at the hospital forced him to see firsthand the mental and physical effects that the war, especially the torture used by the French forces, had on Algerian independence fighters. Especially troubling to Fanon in this portion of the book is the use of torture by French colonial authorities against Algerians. or the powerful citizens in each newly independent country will start wars with each other: "The triumphant middle classes are the most impetuous, the most enterprising, the most annexationist in the world." Fanon also discusses the overthrow and murder of
Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The critical mistake in the African response to the Belgian-engineered rebel movement in the Congo was to work with the
United Nations to maintain peace in the country, since the United Nations, in Fanon's words, "is the legal card used by the imperialist interests when the card of brute force has failed." African nations needed their own instrument for military and diplomatic unity, so that they could respond to African problems without relying upon the institutions created and dominated by colonial powers. == Reception ==