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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2705 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 29, 2023

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So, what are you reading?

Still on The Wretched of the Earth. Thoughts below.

Reading 12 Rules for Life by Peterson. It's actually quite good.

Finally got around to coming back to Card's Ender series and picked up Speaker for the Dead. About midway through, I think the punchline of the mystery part of the story is kind of obvious, but the characters and setting are charming enough that I'm enjoying it anyway.

Book 5 of McCullough’s Rome series. Still lots of fun, though I am a bit bummed about Caesar’s first five years in Gaul getting skipped over. (Ditto for Sulla’s campaign against Mithridates between books 2 and 3). I guess it’s time to pick up Caesar’s own account thereof.

Shit, I thought it was a trilogy. I should really read the third book and onwards, the second is probably one of my favorites ever, and the first was great too.

Loved that series, though I think the Marius and Sulla arc is the best part. Sulla is just such a fun psychopath and Caesar is bit of a goody two shoes in comparison.

I agree, though my absolute favorite scene so far involved Nicomedes questioning why ‘mentula’ and ‘cunnus’ are misgendered in Latin. (I had the exact same question about half a book before this, and just howled when it came up in the story).

So far, mixed feelings on The Wretched of the Earth. After reading Sartre's haphazard preface, which bounced from discreditably vicious to euphorically well-written (and admittedly thought-provoking, disconcerting in its assurance of the reader's guilt), Fanon's somewhat more restrained tone is welcome.

Fanon had actual experience in the matters he wrote about, so I'm sure there's some insight here, but I must admit some mild surprise that this often reads like just another pseudo-socialist psychoanalysis. There's so many assumptions involved that one wonders if it ever coheres outside of a narrow interpretation in the context of academic tropes.

In its most basic level, it seems to be arguing that 1. The colonized need a space free from the colonizing culture which purports to be supported by universal values, 2. Various dehumanizing (emasculating?) neuroses take root so long as violent impulses are displaced away from rather than focused towards the colonizer where (he claims) said violence originated, and 3. Since the sole and overriding goal is decolonization, whatever furthers that, even violence, is legitimate. There's a lot more going on that I haven't wrapped my mind around yet, such as his thoughts on how to prevent a revolution from reaching a "reactionary" end, or his analysis of native superstitions.

Unless I'm misinterpreting it, there isn't a one-to-one match with what he writes about and what's going on in Israel. If anything, one wonders what Fanon would say about a permanent state of independently reinforced anger with a theological bent. Furthermore, the question of a realistic endgame can't be ignored if one wishes to invoke Fanon's arguments.

I had the impression before reading that this book was about something like "reclaiming psychological dignity through violence," and while that aspect is present, it definitely isn't a sufficient summary. Fanon's belief in the power of a resistance which faces a seemingly superior force was based on a theory of the colonizer's motives and material needs which constrains his possible reactions, not on psychological factors alone, and it is unclear to me what a similar analysis would say about Israel.

For now, I'm withholding judgement, and wondering what Fanon might say were he alive.

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