The politics of violence in colonization and decolonization: A Fanonian study of selected postcolonial drama (Frantz Fanon, South Africa, Nigeria)

This study investigates the politics of violence in colonization and decolonization in selected postcolonial plays with the application of Frantz Fanon's philosophy of revolutionary decolonization. Fanon argues that since colonialism is violent in nature, it can be defeated only when it is confronted by greater violence. Fanon insists that through violence in revolutionary decolonization, the colonized, first, can bind the colonized people together as a whole against colonialism; second, they can make a clear break from colonialism; third, violence is a cleansing force since it can erase the inferiority complex of the colonized.; For this purpose, I divide selected plays into three groups; first, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly (1988), Arthur Kopit's Indians (1968); second, Amiri Baraka's The Slave (1964), Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs (1970); third, Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman (1975), and Athol Fugard's My Children! My Africa! (1989). I use the first group to investigate the violence of the Western colonialism/imperialism in the process of colonization on the Others. The second group is put together to study the violence employed by the colonized in decolonization to sever the ties with the colonial past. The third group is set up to explore the fully-developed revolutionary violence in decolonization with which the colonized will open a new postcolonial era.; The plays show that the Western colonialism/imperialism unilaterally imposes its religion/custom/culture/education on its Others. In this process, the Western colonialism/imperialism justifies/legitimates its violent domination over its Others with the self-assumed pretense of its superiority in terms of race (white supremacy), gender (male chauvinism), religion (Christianity) and the economic system (capitalism).; Given the facts that the violence of the Western colonialism/imperialism pervades colonial society and thus suppresses freedom of the colonized, and there is no possibility that the colonialism/imperialism might withdraw itself from its colony, the revolutionary violence by the oppressed must be tolerated since it is the only method by which the oppressed can achieve the liberation from the oppressor. Therefore, Fanon's thesis on violence is not a glorification of violence but violence to achieve non-violence since it is violence that will squelch greater violence.