In The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon poses a question central to the relevance of the arts in pursuing a more liberated society, “Is the struggle for liberation a cultural phenomenon or not?” (1366). Is there a place for the graphic novel writer, the rapper, the visual artist, the filmmaker, the television actor, and the video game designer in the movement towards a decolonized, just society that places power in the hands of the people rather than the hegemonic forces that stifle us? 

In undergrad, I debated with a close friend about the necessity of liberal arts in addition to the medical field. Orlando V. was a dear friend and contrarian of the most pragmatic sensibilities. His claim argued that literally saving individuals’ lives was monumentally more important than the trivial pursuits of interacting with and producing various forms of art. I countered, insisting there is life-giving and society-transforming power in literature, among other artistic endeavors. The tools that create culture construct realities for individuals, marginalized groups, and even nations.

In the aforementioned seminal work, Fanon illustrates the colonized natives’ ability to organize, as Antonio Gramsci dubs, “organic intellectuals.” These individuals break from the institutions of the powers that be to create new modes of being and produce a counterculture that threatens oppressive control. These grassroots organizers come from the native people of a land and deconstruct the manufactured consent that permeates the colonizers’ culture. Fanon helps track a possible trajectory of how such a movement develops, one that I will compare with the work and life of Chinua Achebe.

When a colonizing power invades, they do so not only with physical might but with an eye towards “cultural obliteration” in order to control the very reality and ideas that exist in the minds of their colonized subjects. (Fanon 1361) In Things Fall Apart and in an “Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” Chinua Achebe notes how the culture of the colonizer invades Nigeria and the heart of the Congo basin, respectively, writing a new reality and creating the terms by which people themselves are defined. The colonizer forces the colonized, the Igbo in Nigeria, and the Congolese into a new culture, religion, and political landscape that envisions them in racist ways, placing significations of inferiority in every aspect of their lives. 

As one witnesses with the converts in Things Fall Apart, some of the colonized attempt to fit into the schema of the colonizer “throw[ing] [themselves] in frenzied fashion in the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying culture” (Fanon 1361). Nevertheless, the occupiers see them as less than others, “depersonalize a portion of the human race” and, in effect, silence them (Achebe 1542). The colonizer sets the terms of culture and how these subjects ought to be perceived by those in power. 

However, according to Fanon, there is a path forward, one that Achebe’s life illustrates. The native intellectuals and artists begin to counter the “dominating power.” They become not merely subjects of reproduction of dominant culture but “producers” of literature, art, and ideas that lead to the “crystallization of the national consciousness” that will “disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public” (Fanon 1362-1363). Achebe’s stunning works rose high in influence, challenging colonizing powers and cultural mindsets. Along with others, he formulates an indigenous counterculture and liberatory literature that influences the populace at such a scale as to animate the imaginations of the people, “by carving figures and faces which are full of life…the artist invites participation in an organized movement” (Fanon 1364). His own country, Nigeria, gained independence a few years after publishing his novel. This example does not suggest simplistic causation between this novel and that historical event. Rather, it proposes that the ideas envisioned in this novel and many other productions of culture by the colonized contributed to the actualization of a liberated Nigeria. 

The artist has a key role in deconstructing the culture of hegemony. They produce art from the people, demystifying the propaganda of the ruling classes and providing opportunities for a liberated existence and alternative realities. In effect, the arts also save lives.

Chinua Achebe’s “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” is typically celebrated as a strong indictment of European colonization. However, as Achebe demonstrates, this book enforces and perpetuates the bigotries that led to European colonization of Africa.

He begins by exploring how Conrad’s showcase of Africa’s visual aesthetic perpetuates racist notions of what Africa looks like. Achebe says that Conrad “… projects the image of Africa as “the other world, “the antithesis of Europe” (pg. 1537). Encountering this insightful observation reminded me of what was being discussed in my Fredrick Douglass class where the perception of Africans and by extension Africa was used to justify the existence of slavery. If there were to be any recognition of mutual emotions between enslaved Africans and slaveholders which would lead to a recognition of “kinship” then the system of slavery and by extension the racial hierarchy would no longer be able to stand on solid ground. Before this, he also mentions “… the need- in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar” (pg. 1537). I could not help but agree and add that Asia, the Middle East, and other countries/continents are also often treated as foils to European countries. This also gets done to the Indigenous people of the Americas as well. The rich cultures and histories of these places are made into pawns that colonization moves across the chessboard in such a way that ensures that only they have the moves to win.

One moment that caught my attention was when on pg. 1538 Achebe draws attention to a writing technique that Conrad uses “… engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words…” (pg. 1538) I feel that Conrad did this throughout the narrative to hide from the consequences of his racist ideas by creating a distraction through language. This distraction ensures that he is not “… put him in conflict with…his readers” (pg. 1538). It can be said unfortunately that the debates that surround his book show how successful he was at being able to create a distraction. In the sense that some will still maintain that the book is worth celebrating in spite of the racism present through the narrative.

Another observation that Achebe made that stood out to me was that “For Conrad, things being in their place is of the utmost importance…Tragedy begins when things leave their accustomed place…” (pg. 1539). This obsession with things “being in their place” explains why colonizers or even the average person struggles to give up structures/systems rooted in bigotry because being in the “right place” is how they conceive of identity.