Methods Devour Themselves by Benjanun Sriduangkaew & J Moufawad-Paul

Author:Benjanun Sriduangkaew & J Moufawad-Paul [Sriduangkaew, Benjanun & Moufawad-Paul, J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785358265
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2018-08-30T22:00:00+00:00

When the oppressed seek their liberation in appeals to the past they encounter numerous gatekeepers of the present squatting upon the remains of a history reduced to rubble by the colonizer, the occupier, the dominator, the exploiter.

Hence, Fanon argues that all radical appeals to the past on the part of the oppressed only remain radical if the historical subjectivity gained from this perspective reverses its gaze and focuses instead on a future that, like the imagined sky in Sriduangkaew’s story, transgresses the stasis imposed by a present that despises substantial change. In the closing passages of Wretched Fanon proclaims that the revolutionary option is to break the colonial impasse and its false division of humanity by founding a new humanity: “we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.”21 Such a rupture gleaned from a gaze aimed at future transgression is not merely a denial of the past orientated perspective; it is derived from its apparent negation.

According to Fanon, the native intellectual who begins by re-membering the past must necessarily, if they are honestly seeking to pursue a revolutionary historical perspective, realize that this past is compromised. Whereas a comprador consciousness emerges in the intellectual who fails to move beyond culturalism, a revolutionary consciousness is developed amongst those who treat this past as an invitation to a reopened future. “The culture that the intellectual leans towards is often no more than a stock of particularisms. He wishes to attach himself to the people, but instead he only catches hold of their outer garments. And these outer garments are merely the reflection of a hidden life, teeming and perpetually in motion.”22 As Amin pointed out “society changes” and a living culture is not the customs discovered in cultural nationalism but a history open to the future in the process of development.

Thus, according to Fanon, while the grounding in the past is necessary to reacquaint oneself with a historical position outside of the narrative of oppression and its pseudo-progress, this grounding must be part of the re-initiation of a futureaimed historical sequence if it is to escape the tomb of the past. Although the rediscovery of custom and tradition produces the necessary inoculation and grounding to resist various doctrines of oppressive civilization, one cannot remain in a state of quarantine without risking the breach of contamination; combat through new sequences of vaccination is required. Fanon is unequivocal: “The desire to attach oneself to tradition or bring abandoned traditions to life again does not only mean going against the current of history but also opposing one’s own people.”23

For Fanon, the past and future orientated perspectives are unified in the struggle against the present’s oppressive state of affairs. As Amin stated in Class and Nation, “the present gives meaning to the past.”24 But the present also provides meaning to the future based on how it has translated its past: this is the science of historical materialism.

The weapon of history

Although Fanon’s analysis of

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