File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9805, message 25


Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 17:22:42 -0500
From: Clarisse Zimra <czimra-AT-siu.edu>
Subject: Re: Fanon's native


A modest suggestion, following Deborah's posted quotes
(Wyrick-AT-social.chass.ncsu.edu). She writes:

Re Fanon quote--

French: " Le colonise est un persecute qui reve en permanence de
devinir persecuteur" (p. 84, ed. Gallimard--excuse my inability to
reproduce accent marks on e-mail)

English: " The native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is
to become the persecutor" (p. 53, Grove Weidenfield ed, Farrington
trans.)

To jump on an oid bandwagon, I'd agree that the quote does not do Fanon's
justice, and that it is always prudent to find a bi-lingual edition when
finessing precise words to assess a writer's intent. Very literally, Frantz
is saying "the colonized is a persecuted (person) who dreams/wishes
continually/permanently to become persecutor."

To translate the French "colonise" as "native" instead of "colonized"
destroys the ideological impact: one can be "native" without being
"colonized." The semantic slippage should be interesting to post-colonial
fiends.

Likewise, to translate "persecute" as "oppressed" breaks the parallel on
which much of Fanon's Hegelian structures depend, including the
mirror-image effect between colonizer and colonized, which he learns from
Sartre's "Portrait of the Anti-semit;" namely that the white makes the
"nigger" (excuse the unpalatable term) much as the anti-Semite "makes" the
Jew. For an expansion of Fanon's argument, you may also wish to turn to
Albert Memmi (Tunisian Jew trained in French schools) whose "Portrait du
colonise" was translated as "The Colonizer and the Colonized," and much
used by the young lions who defined and practiced Black Power.

No harm done, though, and no hard feelings. Best, cz

>**********************************


Clarisse Zimra
English and Comparative Studies
Member, The Faculty Seminar for Irish and Migration Studies
Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale 62901-4503
phone messages: 618 453 53 21 (main English office)
private line:  618 453 68 13
fax 618 453 32 53




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