Reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of The Earth (1965) as a Social Drama Performance

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the process of performance, which takes the center of the stage in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1965). The author’s presentation of the conceptual features of Enlightenment in relation to his innovatory theories of recognition, agency, and revolution will be examined as a “Social Drama”, which is based on Victor Turner (1920-1983)’s anthropological perspective. This textual and discursive analysis attempts to explore how social reality and moments of conflict are performed in an artistic way where role-playing covers the breakdowns between official perspectives and countless counter stories revealing fragmentation. Such stories are reflexive about the cause and motive of dramatic action damaging to the social fabric. By using Victor Turner’s theoretical concept of “Social Drama Performance” with its four constituents, the task is to prove that Frantz Fanon’s discourse in his The Wretched of the Earth (1965) is not a tool for “instrumental violence”, but rather a social drama staging the suffering of victims of colonial oppression.