Frantz Fanon. Christopher J. Lee

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       2

       France

      In the world I am heading for, I am endlessly creating myself.

      I show solidarity with humanity provided I can go one step further.

       —Black Skin, White Masks ¹

      With the exception of Martinique, Frantz Fanon spent more years of his life in France than in any other country, including Algeria. The Second World War initiated this long, contentious relationship. The war significantly affected Martinique, as it did the rest of the French Empire. By the same stroke, it profoundly changed the course of Fanon’s life. On June 22, 1940, the French government signed an armistice agreement with Nazi Germany, only eight days after German tanks had entered Paris and less than two months after Germany had invaded France. Its swift defeat astonished the international community and especially France’s overseas colonies. This course of events generated an immediate response in support of resistance. Before the truce was signed, General Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) rejected its terms and called on a Free French movement to liberate France from foreign occupation—a declaration known as the Appeal of June 18 (L’Appel du 18 juin), later broadcast by the BBC on June 22, 1940. He specifically called on France’s imperial territories, declaring, “France is not alone. She has an immense Empire behind her.”²

      French colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean gradually aligned with de Gaulle, a bulk of support coming from Francophone Africa.³ Popular political sentiment in Martinique also fell behind de Gaulle. Fanon’s introduction to continental France consequently came through the roles of patriot and liberator. Movement forms an essential part of Fanon’s personal history, constituting the extensive geography his life encompassed. His service in the Free French forces initiated this theme.

       Military Service

      Despite de Gaulle’s appeal for imperial loyalty, the high commissioner for the French West Indies placed Martinique under the authority of the Vichy regime that collaborated with Nazi Germany. While the war in Europe may have been geographically distant, it did have a local impact, as it did in other parts of the empire. Shortages of food and other everyday needs became commonplace. Naval blockades contributed to this scarcity. Over time, this situation generated anxieties that cropped up in small acts of resistance—petty theft, sugarcane fields set ablaze—as well as desertion from the island. Fanon pursued this latter course of action, leaving Martinique in 1943, as did approximately 4,500 others during this period. He went north to the island of Dominica in order to join the Free French and received some basic military training. But he soon returned to Martinique, which fell under Free French control later that year. Fanon volunteered once more to fight overseas, and he left in 1944, against the wishes of his family, with the 5ème Bataillon de Marche des Antilles, a small infantry battalion.

      After crossing the Atlantic via Bermuda, Fanon’s unit was stationed in French-controlled Morocco for training, where it joined a diverse assemblage of military brigades that supported the Free French from across the empire.⁴ Peter Geismar, in an early biography, writes that Fanon observed “noticeable barriers between the French from the metropolitan territory and the settlers in North Africa; both groups, though, looked down on the Moslems [sic] in the army, who [in turn] didn’t care for the blacks. Fanon’s company of soldiers, from Martinique, held aloof from the African troops, especially the Senegalese.”⁵ Such racial and cultural differences influenced Fanon’s views regarding the diversity to be found across the French Empire and the pervasiveness of colonial racism—a fact that would later shape his political thinking. Fanon’s time in North Africa also marked his introduction to Algeria. Stationed at Bougie (Béjaïa today) on the Algerian coast, Fanon was disturbed by the racism and poverty he encountered. “It was far worse than anything he had seen in the Caribbean,” Geismar writes. “In Oran, Fanon had to watch French soldiers tossing crusts of bread to Moslem [sic] children fighting each other for the food. In Bougie, he went into a rage when he came upon Moslem children picking through military garbage.”⁶

      Fanon’s unit ultimately formed part of Operation Dragoon, a plan promoted by de Gaulle to invade southern France from Algeria. In tandem with Operation Overlord—the D-Day assault on Normandy by American, British, Canadian, and Free French troops on June 6, 1944—this invasion would provide a counterassault from the south. The two operations combined would crush German forces occupying France. The Allied invasion of southern France began on August 15, though Fanon’s battalion did not cross the Mediterranean until almost a month later on September 10. Fanon eventually joined a regiment of the tirailleurs sénégalais—as soldiers from Francophone West and Equatorial Africa were called—and later a European unit. As the season of autumn and their movement north progressed, Fanon endured challenging weather conditions in addition to combat. He suffered wounds from mortar fire in November 1944, eventually receiving the Croix de Guerre in February 1945 in recognition of his bravery. But any sense of honor this medal bestowed was paralleled by physical exhaustion, growing emotional discontent, and homesickness as the war reached its end in May 1945.

      Indeed, the experience of fighting for France proved to be highly ambiguous for Fanon, with racism in its multiple forms generating a sense of constant unease. Despite a principle of shared patriotism, sharp differences materialized during his time in North Africa as indicated, with whites occupying the officer ranks and the tirailleurs sénégalais commanding the most respect among the colonial troops. Though Fanon and his two close friends from Martinique, Pierre Marie-Claire Mosole and Marcel Manville, were known as spirited troublemakers, Fanon remained deeply affected by his brief time in Algeria, due to the abject poverty and colonial racism there.⁷ He himself faced discrimination from many Arab North Africans; they were not immune from racist French attitudes. In Europe, Fanon experienced further racism that many colonial troops were subjected to by local communities, despite their status as liberators. By the end of his service, he looked forward to returning to Martinique.

      On his arrival home in October 1945, however, Fanon encountered Martinique with a different sense of the world. Though his military experience left him uncertain about his position as a French colonial, his decorated war service had provided him with an enlarged worldview—imperial in scope, but also beyond it. Alice Cherki writes that he was “disappointed to have taken part СКАЧАТЬ