From Political Space To Political Agency - Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon On Race and Revolutionary Violence by Kathryn Teresa Gines PDF

From Political Space to Political Agency:
Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon on Race and Revolutionary Violence
A Dissertation
Presented for the
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree
The University of Memphis
Kathryn Teresa Gines

August 2003
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ii
To the Graduate Council:

1am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Kathryn T. Gines entitled From
Political Space to Political Agency: Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon on Race and
Revolutionary Violence. I have examined the final copy of this dissertation for form and
content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a major in Philosophy.
Robert Bemasconi, Ph.D.

Major Professor
We have read this dissertation and

recommend its acceptance:
S. W'JkujfLv
Sara Beardsworth, Ph.D.
Ronald Sundstrom, Ph.D.

Accepted for the Council:
KahsaD. Weddle-West, Ph.D.

Interim Assistant Vice Provost
for Graduate Studies
ABSTRACT
Gines, Kathryn T. Ph.D. The University of Memphis. August, 2003. From
Political Space to Political Agency: Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon on Race and
Revolutionary Violence. Major Professor: Robert Bernasconi, Ph.D.
This dissertation challenges Hannah Arendts conception of the political

realm including the public/private distinction and the rise of the social. I argue
that this distinction results in a paradox, confining the many to the private realm
so that the few may access the public realm. This is not only a problem in The
Human Condition (1958), but also before that in The Burden of Our Time (1951),
and afterwards in Reflections on Little Rock" (1959), On Revolution (1963), and
On Violence (1970). I make the case that the limitations of Arendts distinction is
clear in her glorification of the American Revolution for focusing on the political
question of the form of government and her claim that, unlike the French
Revolution, the American Revolution excluded the social questions of economics,
poverty, and misery.
This distinction is also present in Arendts analysis of imperialism, the rise
of which she attributes to bourgeois political thinking and to the political realm
taking on economic expansion as a national goal. The distinction also persists in
Arendts analysis of anti-black racism and her critique of the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements, which she accuses of dragging the social issue of
discrimination into the political realm. Finally, the distinction underlies Arendts
critique of violence. Arendt describes the violence necessary to maintain the
public/private distinction without criticism, yet she is highly critical of the
revolutionary violence of the colonized against colonizers.
iii
Against this background I present the alternative viewpoints of Jean-Paul

Sartre and Frantz Fanon.
Looking at Sartres Black Orpheus (1948) and
Fanons The Lived Experience of the Black (1951), I examine what I call anti
black colonialism, anti-black racism, and the formation of black racial identities
for the colonized. I also examine Sartres and Fanons later works, especially
The Wretched of the Earth (1961). with their analyses of colonialism in terms of
the antagonistic relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, the role of
super-exploitation, and the pervasive violence within the colonial system. Finally,
I argue that revolutionary violence is both a justifiable and a legitimate method for
the colonized to confront the violent system of colonialism.
iv
Table of Contents
Key to Abbreviations.....................................................
Introduction
vi
....................................................................................... 1
Chapter One: Hannah Arendts Political Exclusivity................................... 9

Chapter Two: Race, Racism, and Collective Memory.............................. 41
Chapter Three: The Violent System of Colonialism.................................. 91
Chapter Four: Revolutionary Violence.................................................... 133
Conclusion............................................................................................... 182
Bibliography..................................................................
188
Key to Abbreviations
Anti-Semite and Jew
Black Skin, White Mask
Colonialism as a System
Critique of Dialectical Reason
Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt
Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression
On Revolution
On Violence
Reason and Violence
Reflections on Little Rock
Situating the Self
The Burden of Our Time
The Conservation of Races
The Double Face of the Political and the Social
The Human Condition
The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt
The Social Question
The Wretched of the Earth
ASJ
BSWM
CS
CDR
FI HA
FFPO
OR
OV
RV
RLR
SS
BOT
CR
DFPS
HC
OT
PTHA
SQ
WE
Introduction
Hannah Arendt has had such a tremendous impact on contemporary

social and political philosophy that scholars often state, too hastily, that by the
political they are referring to Arendts notion. More and more philosophers are
relying, sometimes uncritically, on Arendts notion of the political that is derived
(at least in part) from the ancient Greek polis and the Romans.
In this
dissertation I will argue that Arendts notion of the political is too exclusive.
highlight the problematic limitations that arise out of a notion of the political that
relies so heavily on the public/private distinction.
I argue that Arendts
conception of the political is further limited by her analysis of economics,

especially the exclusion of economics from the political realm. These limitations
manifest themselves most clearly in Arendts analysis of the American and the
French Revolutions, and her muddled interpretation of racial issues, including her
examination of anti-Black racism and segregation within the United States, and
her study of European colonialism in Africa. Arendts political framework not only
impacts her perception of economic and racial oppression, which she designates
as social issues, but it also prompts her criticism of revolutionary violence posing
limitations on the methods by which these systems of oppression may be
overcome. The result is a lack of, or even denial of, political agency for those
confined to the private realm as well as those who experience racial or economic
oppression.
It is not my intention merely to reiterate previous criticisms of Hannah
Arendts notion of the political. Rather, I argue that Arendts exclusion of racial
1
and economic oppression from the political realm is (paradoxically) both a

serious blind spot for Arendt and a guiding thread that is interwoven throughout
her analysis of the black race and anti-black racism, colonialism, and
revolutionary violence. At this point I want to make clear my usage of the terms
race, racism, and colonialism. When I use the term race, I am referring to black
racial identities, particularly descendents of the African Diaspora.
When I
mention racism, I am specifically dealing with anti-black racism. And the type of
colonialism, or as Arendt describes it imperialism, that I have in mind is Europes
violent and exploitive colonization of Africa and the Caribbean. I am addressing
the violent system of exploitation used to invade Africa and the Caribbean, which
virtually enslaved its inhabitants without extending to the colonized the rights,
protection, or even any sense of humanity that was given to the colonizers by
virtue of their citizenship to the mother country and by virtue of their whiteness.
With all of this in mind, I dissect Arendts political writings for traces of her
notion of the political (including her analysis of economics and race) in works as
early as The Burden of Our Time (1951) later published under the title The
Origins of Totalitarianism (1966), before this notion was fully articulated by
Arendt in The Human Condition (1958). But more importantly, I also look beyond
The Human Condition to see how her concept of the political determined the
arguments of such works as On Revolution (1963) and On Violence (1970). I
explore viable alternatives to Arendts theory of the political that allow economic
and racial oppression such as segregation and colonialism to be encompassed
within the realms of the political and the public (not relegated to the private or the
2
social). Toward that end, I thoroughly examine the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre
and Frantz Fanon. I argue that in order to get beyond the limitations in Arendt,
we must take seriously the work of Sartre and Fanon who place racial and
economic oppression at the center of the political stage.
For example, in Black Skin. White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the
Earth (1961) Fanon emphasizes the importance of an economic or class analysis
in any examination of racism and the system of colonization.
Sartre also
analyzes colonial oppression in terms of race and class oppression in Black

Orpheus (1948), Colonialism as a System (1957), and Critique of Dialectical
Reason (1960). When analyzing anti-black racial and economic oppression in
political terms rather than social terms, it becomes evident that the violent system
of colonialism is not simply a historical mishap, but a strategically planned
system of anti-black racism, economic exploitation, and political oppression.
Thus, an investigation of colonialism cannot omit an analysis of the role of race,
economics, and violence within the system. Race, economics, and violence are
already interconnected in colonial oppression.
My argument is that Arendts exclusion of economic oppression and racial
oppression (which she describes as social concerns) from the political realm
will prove to be a stumbling block to her analysis of those who are oppressed on
those terms, namely the poor and people of color.
The result is that Arendt
presents analyses that are oftentimes more sympathetic to the oppressors (those
who are exploiting the poor or oppressing on the basis of race) than the
oppressed (those who are subjugated, demoralized, exploited, abused, and even
3
killed as a result of economic or racial oppression). Arendt denies the oppressed

access to the political realm and to political agency by confining them and the
systems of oppression that they endure to the social and private spheres. Sartre
and Fanon offer a viable alternative to Arendt insofar as they include systems of
racial and class oppression within the political realm.
Arendt takes the position that a true revolution has the political form of
government as its primary aim rather than the structure of society.
She
describes but does not denounce the use of violence in the private realm (to
master necessity) and the political realm (such as in the American Revolution),
and she even acknowledges violent methods of oppression within colonialism
without condemnation. I argue that it is only in cases of revolutionary violence,
i.e. when those who are oppressed rise up in revolt against their oppressors, that
Arendt offers the harshest criticism of violence.
This is the case not only in
Arendts critique of the violence involved in the French Revolution, but also her
criticism of the Black Power movement and her criticism of Sartre and Fanon.
Unlike Arendt, Sartre and Fanon take the position that revolutionary violence is a
necessary tool to overcome colonial oppression.
The dissertation will be presented in four chapters outlined as follows: In
Chapter One I focus on Arendts analysis of the French and American
Revolutions as presented in On Revolution and the exclusion of social and
economic issues from the political realm. In this chapter I also examine Arendts
theory of the political presented in The Human Condition along with the
distinctions she makes between the public, the private, and the social. I point to
4
the problematic paradox of public space that arises from Arendts analysis,
namely that her conception of public space and the public/private distinction
requires the many to be confined to the private realm so that the few may gain
access to the public realm, all of which places constraints on political action and
agency. I see this as a constraint on political action and agency because if one
does not have access to the public realm, then political action is not possible.
(Let me point out that this would still be a problem even if there were only a few
or a minority that were subjugated and confined in the private realm so that
others could gain access to the public or political sphere.)
By meticulously
investigating exactly what Arendt means by the political, Chapter One lays the
foundation for later chapters in which I analyze the role of the political in her
analysis of black racial identities, anti-black racial oppression, and revolutionary
violence. In Chapter Two I concentrate on the formation of black racial identities,
especially in the context of colonialism, and anti-black racism.
I make the
argument that we should conserve and preserve black racial identities both for
the sake of developing an ongoing authentic race consciousness and for a
collective memory of what the descendents of the African Diaspora have
achieved and endured.
I begin with Arendts account of political equality and
juxtapose this notion with the realities of oppression and discrimination based on
perceived racial inequalities. This chapter also highlights Arendts problematic
account of the situation of the Negro in the United States as it pertains to anti
black racial oppression.
I challenge Arendts description of anti-black racial
oppression as social discrimination and I refute her arguments concerning the

5
aims of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Here I take into account
Arendts distinction between race-thinking and racism, and the distance she
places between the Jewish question and the Negro Question. I also argue that
Arendts analysis of the situation of the Negro in the U.S. and her
characterizations of black Africans as savages without reason, culture, or history
are problematic. In the second portion of the chapter I consider Sartres analysis
of Jewish identity in Anti-Semite and Jew (1948) and juxtapose this analysis with
his account of Black identity in Black Orpheus. Furthermore, I draw attention to
Fanons critique of both Anti-Semite and Jew and Black Orpheus as those
works relate to Black identity. I examine the creation of Jewish and of Black
identities, Negritude, authenticity, and racelessness.
Finally, I argue against
Sartres assertion that Negritude prepares the way for a raceless society. In this
section I also make reference to Fanons Black Skin. White Masks and W.E. B.
Du Bois The Conservation of Races (1897). In the end, I go against Sartres,
Fanons, and Du Bois positions that it is unnecessary to retain racial identities in
the absence of racial oppression. I contend that we must conserve and preserve
race even in the absence of racial oppression for the sake of developing an
authentic race consciousness and for collective memory.
Building on the first two chapters, Chapter Three examines the political,
racial, and economic aspects of colonialism as well as the role of violence in
establishing and maintaining this system. I begin with Arendts investigation into
the role of bourgeois political thinking in the development of colonialism, which
she refers to as imperialism.
I also underscore the fact that Arendt

6
acknowledges the key role of European racism and violence in the rise of
colonialism. But more importantly, I examine the alternative viewpoints of Sartre
and Fanon who are led to very different conclusions about colonialism. Unlike
Arendt, Sartre and Fanon argue that we need to see colonialism as a system,
and they put greater emphasis on the colonizers violence within this system.
This emphasis is important because it is the ferociously violent nature of the
colonial system that precipitates the revolutionary violence necessary to
overthrow the system.
In my analysis of Sartre and Fanon I focus on their
critiques of Western humanism, the characterization of the colonizer and the

colonized in the divided colonial world, the beginning stages of colonialism and
its development into a system of super-exploitation. Finally, I present Sartres
and Fanons analyses of colonial violence including anti-black racism, culturekilling, and the use of military force.
I conclude with the political aspects of
Sartres analysis.
In the fourth and final chapter I argue (against Arendt) that revolutionary
violence is both a justifiable and a legitimate method of combating colonial
oppression. In the first part of the chapter I challenge Arendts distinction
between violence and power, and her strong criticism of Sartres and Fanons
analyses concerning violence. I make the case that Arendt's critique of violence
is biased insofar as she describes but does not criticize the violence in the
private sphere, the violence in the American Revolution, and the violence in the
colonial system. But when there is a violent revolt against oppression, such as
with the French Revolution or with the process of decolonization, Arendt
7
becomes excessively critical of violence. This chapter also takes as its focal
point Sartres and Fanons analyses of revolutionary violence as a counter
violence to that which already permeates the colonial system. Towards that end,
I explore the relationship between violence and scarcity as well as violence and
the group.
I also examine the role of violence in recreating and unifying the
colonized and their internalization of the colonizers violence.
Finally, I offer a
defense of revolutionary violence and I present the case for the impossibility of
non-violence resistance within the colonial system.
In the conclusion I reinforce my argument that Arendts concept of the
political - including her prioritization of the political over the social, the
public/private distinction she insists upon, and the exclusion of economics from
the political realm - is a guiding thread that is interwoven throughout her
investigation of all these issues. Towards that end I reiterate my argument that
Arendts notion of the political contaminates her perception of the issues
discussed in each chapter (including Black racial identity and anti-black racism,
colonialism, and revolutionary violence) and consequently limits her analysis. It
is necessary to go beyond the public/private division, or at the very least to
reconceptualize it to include racial, social, and economic issues, if we are to
attain a richer concept of the political that can even begin to speak to and act
against anti-black racism and anti-black colonialism. Again I turn to Sartre and
Fanon for a more favorable conception of the political, one that accounts for the
systems of oppression at work in anti-black racism and colonialism.
Chapter One: Hannah Arendts Political Exclusivity
In The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt presents a notion of the

political that relies heavily on the public/private distinction and a strong critique of
the rise of the social, which she asserts has distorted this distinction. The impact
of the rise of the social on the separation of public and private space is a central
aspect of Arendts project, not only in The Human Condition, but also before that
in The Burden of Our Time (1951) later published as The Origins of
Totalitarianism (1966), and afterwards in essays from Between Past and Future
(1961) and On Revolution (originally published in 1963, though my references
are to the 1965 edition).
Consequently, while the public/private distinction is
often rehearsed, it retains its importance and relevance in several of Arendts

texts and must not be dismissed or overlooked. In this chapter I will focus on the
relationship between this distinction presented in The Human Condition and later
essays including The Social Question (from On Revolution) and What is
Freedom? (from Between Past and Future). I argue that Arendts conception of
the public, the private, and the social, and the resulting exclusion of economic
oppression from the political realm, is a serious stumbling block in her work.
To support my argument, I examine Arendts exclusion of poverty and
social demands from the political realm, as well as her analysis of the public and
the private realms, and the rise of social. In the first section of this chapter, I
begin my critique of Arendt with On Revolution where she prioritized the
American Revolution above the French Revolution because the former focused
on political issues while the latter focused on social and economic issues. It is in
9
the context of this analysis of revolutions that we find Arendts argument that
economics, which she describes as the social question, should be excluded from
the political realm. The first section starts with Arendts criticism of the French
Revolution and her assertion that the social question hinders plurality in the
public realm. I am critical of Arendts praise of the American Revolution and her
handling of the role of slavery in America at the time of the Revolution.
After examining Arendts study of poverty in relation to revolutions and her
persistent argument that politics can not address social concerns, in the second
section of this chapter I focus on Arendts analysis of the public realm, the role of
the political, and the concepts of freedom and action.
In the third section I
explicate Arendts account of the private realm, which is contrasted with the
public and the political. I also examination what Arendt means by the rise of the
social, which she claims distorts the public and the private realms. In contrast to
Arendt, who emphasizes the problems that arise when there is not a
public/private distinction, I highlight the problems that arise as a consequence of
this distinction.
Toward that end, I address how this distinction imposes
limitations on political agency and action, as well as the problematic paradox of

public space. My aim in this chapter is both to challenge Arendts assertion that
the social question must be excluded from the political realm, and to outline how
Arendts distinctions between public, private, and social prove too difficult to
maintain. The problems that accompany these distinctions will be evident in her
analysis of anti-black racial oppression, anti-black colonialism, and revolutionary
violence.
10
I.
Revolution and the Social Question

In The Social Question Arendt claims that mass poverty or economics
more generally and the state of misery that results are not appropriate causes for
a revolution.
Not only are these inappropriate causes for a revolution, Arendt
adds that political methods cannot solve these problems, which for her are social
rather than political.
The downfall of any revolution is accelerated when the
social question is its aim.
For Arendt, this is perhaps not a judgment, but a
historical fact. Arendt makes this clear in her own words when she asserts:
[T]he whole record of past revolutions demonstrates beyond doubt
that every attempt to solve the social question with political means
leads to terror, and that it is terror which sends revolutions to their
doom...[T]o avoid this mistake is almost impossible when a
revolution breaks out under conditions of mass poverty.1
Arendt equates the social question with poverty by straightforwardly

stating that, The Social Question may simply be called the existence of
poverty.2 She describes poverty as, more than deprivation, it is a state of
constant want and acute misery whose ignominy consists in its dehumanizing
force.3 And while this is an acknowledgment of the austerity of poverty, for
Arendt poverty is the unfortunate (but seemingly acceptable) result of scarcity.
She does not agree with the Marxist argument that poverty is a political issue and
the result of the bourgeoisie exploitation of the proletariat. Arendt suggests this
when she states that Marx persuaded the poor that poverty itself is a political
1Hannah Arendt, The Social Question, in On Revolution, (New York: Penguin
Books, 1990), 112. Hereafter SQ.
2 SQ, 60.
3 SQ, 60.
11
phenomenon, the result of violence and violation rather than of scarcity.4 Arendt
is critical of Marx for taking this position because in her view poverty is not a
political phenomenon, but a social one. This is not only true for poverty, but for
economics in general.
Arendt does not accept Marxs politicization of these
issues that she labels as social or private rather than political.

When Arendt asserts that the uprising of the poor against the rich carries
with it an altogether different and much greater momentum of force than the
rebellion of the oppressed against their oppressors it seems that poor and
oppressed along with rich and oppressors are mutually exclusive terms. In other
words, Arendt suggests that the condition of poverty could not be a form of
oppression, and that wealth could not be a means by which the rich may oppress
the poor.5 Failing to recognize poverty as a way of experiencing oppression, or
more importantly as a political issue, demonstrates the limitations of Arendts
conception of the political.
When conceived in this way, the political realm
excludes the poor and denies them the political agency to confront poverty as a
political issue.
According to Arendt, the social question should be excluded from the
political realm both because it is not a political issue, and because it cant be
addressed by political means. Arendt asserts, No revolution has ever solved the
social question and liberated men from the predicament of want, but all
revolutions, with the exception of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, have
4 SQ, 62-63.
5 SQ, 112.
12
followed the example of the French Revolution and used and misused the mighty
forces of misery and destitution in their struggle against tyranny and
oppression.6
Here Arendt acknowledges that all revolutions are about a
struggle against tyranny and oppression.
But the systematic exploitation of
laborers and of the poor does not constitute oppression for Arendt.
She is
claiming that poverty and want are not appropriate revolutionary aims, and even
if they were, a revolution is incapable of solving the social question of poverty.
For Arendt, any attempt deal with economic or social issues by political
means not only goes against the Greek distinction of the public and private, but it
also inevitably results in destruction and doom. To demonstrate the need to
exclude social and economic issues from the political realm Arendt uses the
examples of the French Revolution, which she viewed as a disaster and the
American Revolution, which she viewed as a success. Arendt is discontented
that after the French Revolution, and even more strikingly through the influence
of Marx, the role of the revolution was no longer to free men from oppression of
their fellow men, not to found freedom, but to overcome scarcity and turn it into
abundance.7 According to Arendt, it was Marx who taught the idea that poverty
should help men break the shackles of oppression because the poor have
nothing to lose. The men of the French Revolution were inspired by hatred of
tyranny and by rebellion against oppression.8
6SQ, 112.
7 SQ, 64.
8 SQ, 73. Does this mean that oppression as such is not political? No, it means
here that oppression of the poor is not political.
13
Arendt condemns the French Revolution for focusing on necessity and

poverty rather than on the foundation of freedom. For Arendt, necessity has to
do with biological processes and meeting the basic needs of the body.
According to Arendt the most powerful necessity of which we are aware in self
introspection is the life process which permeates our bodies and keeps them in a
constant state of change...9 Arendt also describes necessity as the urgent
needs of the people.10 Prioritizing these needs above freedom is problematic for
Arendt because poverty and necessity are social, not political matters.
On
Arendts analysis the poor distort the political by raising social problems as
political issues. She explains, when the poor appeared on the scene of politics in
the French Revolution, necessity appeared with them. It was the appearance of
necessity in the political realm that unleashed terror and sent the French
Revolution to its doom.11 Consequently, freedom (which belongs to the political
sphere) had surrendered to necessity (which belongs to the private sphere).12
Arendts concern is not just with the rise of the social, but also with the
effect of uprisings among the poor. According to Arendt, Since the revolution
had opened the gates of the political realm to the poor, this realm had indeed
become social.13 She leaps from the claim that the question of poverty is a
9 SQ, 59.
10 SQ, 60.
11 SQ, 160.
12 For Arendt, necessity is the urgency of life process, the basic human needs
such as food and shelter, but also the company of others. See Hannah Arendts The
Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; reprint, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), 30, 70-71. (page citations are to the reprinted
edition). Hereafter HC.
13 SQ, 90.
14
social issue to asserting outright that allowing the poor in the public realm makes
it social. The poor bring household issues into the public realm, issues which,
even if they were permitted to enter the public realm, could not be solved by
political means, since they were matters of administration, to be put into the
hands of experts, rather than issues to be settled by the two-fold process of
decision and persuasion.14 Again, Arendt is asserting that social matters cannot
be addressed by political methods.
In addition to characterizing the poor as being concerned exclusively with
social problems, Arendt also characterizes the poor as violent. Not only did the
poor intrude into the political domain with their social issues, they did so violently.
Arendt claims, Their need was violent, and as it were pre-political; it seemed that
only violence could be strong and swift enough to help them.15 The idea here
that the needs of the poor were pre-political and violent is drawing on Arendts
analysis in The Human Condition, where she claims that all Greek philosophers
took for granted, that necessity is primarily a pre-political phenomenon, and that
force and violence are justified in this sphere because they are the only means to
master necessity.16
She adds, Because all human beings are subject to
necessity, they are entitled to violence toward others; violence is the pre-political
act of liberating oneself from the necessity of life for the freedom of the world.17
14 SQ, 91. (My emphasis.)

15 SQ, 91.
16HC, 31. (My emphasis.)
17 HC, 31.
15
This claim is very significant because it raises questions about whether Arendt
also takes for granted that force and violence are justified in the private sphere.
In The Human Condition Arendt asserts that all Greek philosophers took
for granted that all human beings are entitled to violence to liberate themselves
from the necessities of life. But Arendt does not criticize this position she simply
presents it. She also argues that in order for some to have access to the political
realm, many have to be confined to the private realm and this is also achieved
through force and violence.18 A problem ensues because Arendt is uncritical of
the role of violence in the private realm and the use of violence to enter the public
realm. But when it comes to the use of violence by the French revolutionaries,
Arendt takes a much more critical stand.
If Arendt is to follow her account of
violence that she gives in The Human Condition to its conclusion, then she
should have also argued in The Social Question that the poor of the French
Revolution were also entitled to violence to liberate themselves from necessity
and poverty. Rather than making this claim, Arendt takes the opposite position
and criticizes the French revolutionaries for doing that which she previously
claimed all humans were entitled to, i.e. use force and violence to liberate
themselves from necessity.
In addition to criticizing the use of violence by the poor, another critique
against the poor is that poverty makes political plurality, i.e. multiple political
voices, impossible. This is revealed by Arendts claim that unlike the social
French Revolution, the political American Revolution maintained the plural
18 SQ, 114.
16
aspect of the people. Arendt claims that for the American founders, the word
people retained the meaning of manyness, of the endless variety of a multitude
whose majesty resided in its very plurality...19 In contrast to the multitude of
voices in the American Revolution, plurality ceased to exist (if it ever existed) in
Europe as soon as one approached the lower strata of the population.
The
malheureux whom the French Revolution had brought out of the darkness of their
misery were a multitude only in the numerical sense.20 Here Arendt wrongly
assumes that those whom she labels as the lower strata, i.e. the poor, cannot
have a multiplicity of opinions. Although a plurality of voices and the presentation
of differing opinions is important, even crucial for any politics that takes difference
seriously, a major problem that arises here is Arendts exclusion of those voices
that perhaps should count the most, or at the very least should count equally
among other voices. The exclusion of economics and the poor from the political
realm is an exclusion of voices that need to be heard in the public arena.
Excluding the poor poses limitations on the plurality that Arendt claims she
wants to achieve.
Perhaps even more disturbing than Arendts condemnation of the French
Revolution is her praise of the American Revolution. This is especially alarming
given the flagrant contradiction in the American Revolution between freedom and
slavery. The contradiction is in the fact that the rebels against the British fought
for freedom for themselves while simultaneously denying freedom to the
19 SQ, 93.
20 SQ, 94.
17
enslaved black people who were not counted as fully human. The Negro was
human enough to be baptized, but not enough for any form of equality.
According to Arendt, the American Revolution was successful because the
founding fathers posed a political rather than a social problem, that is, the
Revolution focused on the form of government rather than the conditions of
society.
Arendt attributes this focus on the political to the fact that the
predicament of poverty was absent from the American scene but present
everywhere else in the world.21
This predicament of poverty is not just
deprivation and misery, but inhumanity. Poverty is a dehumanizing agent; to be

poor is to be confined to the invisible sphere of the private under the burden of
necessity. Arendt supports the claim that the predicament of the poor is to be
unseen and unacknowledged by mankind.22 While America had laborers who
were poor, they were not miserable or driven by want.
For this reason the
revolution was not overwhelmed by them as was the case in the French
Revolution.23
Up to this point the portrait that Arendt has painted of America is missing
one very important component, the institution of slavery. So Arendt must explain
how the founding fathers were able to focus on political issues rather than on
misery and poverty, and the fact that they were unconcerned with altering the
miserable state of the slaves.
To her credit, Arendt acknowledges that, the
absence of the social question from the American scene was, after all, quite
21 SQ, 68.
22 SQ, 69. (Arendt is referencing John Adams.)
23 SQ, 68.
18
deceptive, and that abject and degrading misery was present everywhere in the
form of slavery and Negro labor.24 She asserts that, even worse than the
invisibility of the poor was the invisibility of the slaves and explains, we can only
conclude that the institution of slavery carries an obscurity even blacker than the
obscurity of poverty; the slave, not the poor man, was wholly overlooked.25 In
other words, the founding fathers were able to ignore the conditions of the poor
and the conditions of the slaves because they were rendered virtually invisible
and went unnoticed.
While the passion of compassion had played a role in the French
Revolution and had driven the best men of all revolutions, Arendt claims the only
revolution in which compassion played no role in the motivation of the actors was
the American Revolution.26 Again she is contrasting the focus on social issues
in the French Revolution with the focus on political issues in the American
Revolution. Thomas Jefferson and others knew that the institution of slavery was
incompatible with the foundation of freedom. But Arendt argues that they were
not moved by pity or a feeling of solidarity with their fellow men (i.e. black
slaves).27 Arendt is simultaneously maintaining that slavery was a social issue
that did not move the founding fathers to pity and that they recognized the
political truth that slavery was incompatible with freedom. In The Double Face
of the Political and the Social Robert Bernasconi points out, Although Arendt
24 SQ,
25 SQ,
26 SQ,
27 SQ,
70.
71.
70.
71.
19
denied that the Founding Fathers were faced with a social question, she used the
fact that Jefferson saw the problem posed by slavery as a political one to support
her application of the distinction between the political and the social in the
American Revolution.28
Arendt is being inconsistent in her characterization of slavery, whether it is
a social or a political question. The issue of slavery, along with the contrast
between the French and American Revolutions, and the exclusion of social and
economic issues from the political realm all point to problems that arise from
Arendts exclusionary conception of the public and political spheres.
In the
following section of this chapter I examine the six themes presented in The
Human Condition and clarify Arendts categorization of the public realm, her
conception of the political, and the notion of freedom.
II.
The Public Realm and the Political Concept of Freedom

In The Human Condition Hannah Arendt emphasizes six major themes
including the function of labor, work, and action as well as the purpose of the
public, the private, and the social. She explores the interconnection and the
distinctness of these themes and the myriad of problems that she asserts have
arisen due to ignorance of their meaning and relevance.
Labor, Work, and
Action are the three fundamental human activities and the first themes Arendt
discusses. She describes the human condition of labor as life itself. Necessity,
28 Robert Bernasconi, The Double Face of the Political and the Social: Hannah
Arendt and Americas Racial Divisions," Research in Phenomenology, 26 (1996): 13.
Hereafter DFPS.
20
survival, and the biological processes of the human body including growth,
metabolism, and decay are categorized under the title of labor.29 Labor is a
necessary, but undesirable aspect of the human condition analogous with an
animal-like existence. To be limited to biological necessity is animal-like because
laborers, like animals, are required to do what is necessary for survival. Labor is
continuous, but not permanent, because the products of labor are constantly
consumed and constantly in need of reproduction. In The Political Thought of
Hannah Arendt. Margaret Canovan notes that liberation from labor and natures
necessity could only be achieved by the few when they subjugate others.
The
elite relieved themselves from necessity by shifting it to the less fortunate,

enslaving them to serve the biological needs of everyone.30
In contrast to labor, which deals with the natural, work attempts to improve
on the natural to create lasting products. The human condition of work is
wordliness, described as the unnatural and artificial.
For example, human
artifacts and man-made materials such as buildings, tools, and machines are
products of work.
Thus, permanence and durability are the characteristics of
work. Canovan points out that the distinction between a laborer and a worker is
similar to the distinction between a servant and a craftsman. A servants labor is
ongoing while a craftsmans work is complete with the finished product.31
29 HC, 8.
30Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought o f Hannah Arendt (London: Dent,
1974), 55. Hereafter PTHA.
31 PTHA, 56.
21
Finally and most importantly, action is central to Arendts project.

asserts that action is specific to the condition of political life.
She
Action occurs
between men without the help of a moderator, it includes establishing and

sustaining political bodies, and it creates history.32 Arendt relates action to
natility because the processes of birth and action share the newness of a fresh
beginning and undiscovered possibility.
Unlike labor, which deals with the
natural, and work, which attempts to improve upon the natural, action is
spontaneous, it is not dictated by nature. Each human being is capable of doing
the unexpected and acting in ways that no role-prescriptions can foresee.33
Arendt also states that deeds and relationships develop from action. One
limitation of action is that it is only achievable in the public world.
Canovan describes and summarizes the roles of labor, work, and action in
Arendts project as follows: Labor is predictable because it is bound by
necessity; work contains an element of freedom but once the process of making
an object is embarked upon the activity is bound by the end at which it aims;
action alone is free, for it consists above all in the capacity to initiate.34 Thus
labor is confined by necessity, work is limited to its end or purpose, but action is
spontaneous.
Labor, work and action are significant concepts in Arendts
political theory because they each play a role in specific spheres.
Labor is
limited to the private sphere and work may appear in the public realm, but it is not
political. Only action (along with freedom) belongs to the political realm.
32 HC, 9
33 PTHA, 59.
34 PTHA, 60.
22
In the second chapter of The Human Condition, Arendt discusses the

three remaining themes: the public, the private, and the social. She outlines the
historical role of the public and the private spheres in the Greek Polis, while
asserting that the diminishing distinction between the two spheres is a
consequence of the contemporary rise of the social.
Although Arendt
references the Greek polis in her presentation of the early or original division of
public and private space, her analysis of this division and its importance is not
contingent upon the use of this model. While it may be argued that Arendt does
not advocate a return to the ancient Greek city-state, and furthermore, such a
return is simply not possible, it is still clear that the principles of the public/private
division advanced by Arendt are derived from her historical exploration of the
Greek polis. My analysis is aimed at the principle of the division and what is
required to maintain it rather than the model used to explain the principles. Thus,
even if Arendt is not relying on or prioritizing the model of the Greek polis, the
division between public and private space will still prove to be problematic.
According to Arendt, the public sphere corresponds to the realm of the
polis, which is the realm of freedom. Arendt uses the terms public, polis, and
political interchangeably throughout The Human Condition.35 For example, on
one occasion Arendt states, the public realm itself, the polis, was permeated by
a fiercely agonal spirit where everybody had to constantly distinguish himself
from all others...36 Arendt also asserts that the public realm was and should be a
35 For examples of the interchangeability of these terms see HC, 30-33.

36 HC, 41.
23
realm of freedom and action.
Freedom meant that a man did not have to be
bothered with the necessities of life because they were mastered in the
household, he was not subjugated to the command of another, and he was in
command himself.37 Action corresponds to human plurality, individuality, and
political life. The plurality exists because we are all human and yet nobody is the
same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.38 In other words each
person is the same as a member of the human race (plurality), yet each has the
capacity to demonstrate his or her humanity in a unique and distinct way
(individuality).
The public realm allowed for individualization and differentiation among its
members.
It was an arena of competition in which a man relied on particular
deeds and achievements to be distinguished from others.
In public a man
attempted to exhibit himself as the best. It was the only place that men could
show who they were.39 Arendt further asserts that the excellence achieved in the
public sphere surpasses any achievement possible in private. This is the case
because excellence must be demonstrated before a formal audience, or in the
public presence of others. The activities of the public realm were seen and heard
by all, receiving the widest possible publicity. Appearance became reality when it
was seen in public. Validation, visibility, and reality were only accessible in public
space and the maintenance of this space preserved permanence (or survival) for
future generations.
37 HC, 31-32.
38 HC, 8.
39 HC, 41.
24
Although Arendt often uses the terms public, polis, and political
interchangeably in The Human Condition, she does make specific assertions
about the political in The Social Question and What is Freedom? At times
Arendts account of the political seems to place more emphasis on what is to be
excluded from the political realm rather than providing a positive account of what
belongs to the political realm.
But there are instances in which she makes
mention of what is properly political. For example, I have already mentioned

that in The Social Question Arendt asserts that the American Revolution was
not social but political because the problem they posed concerned not the order
of society but the form of government.40
She applauds the American
Revolutions commitment to the foundation of freedom and the establishment of

lasting institutions rather than submitting to necessity or focusing on social
issues.41
The relationship between the political realm and freedom is presented at
length in What is Freedom? where Arendt claims that the Greek city-state first
discovered the real meaning of the political realm.
According to Arendt, the
purpose of the political in the sense of the polis was to establish and preserve a
space for freedom...[it was] a realm where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible
in words which can be heard, deeds which can be seen, and events which are
talked about and remembered.42 She then defines the political as that which
40 SQ, 68.
41 SQ, 92.
42 Hannah Arendt, W hat is Freedom?, in Between Past and Future: Eight
Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1968; reprint New York:
Penguin Books, 1993), 154. (page citations are to the reprint edition). Hereafter WIF.
25
occurs in public/political space when she states, Whatever occurs in this space
is political by definition, even when it is not a direct product of action. What
remains outside this space of appearances...may be impressive and noteworthy,
but it is not political strictly speaking.43
Arendt asserts that in the tradition of philosophy the correct meaning of
freedom has been lost. Along with the Philosophical tradition, the Christian
tradition has also removed freedom from the external realm of the political to the
internal realm of free will or even conscience. But Arendt contends that freedom
belongs in the realm of politics, not the realm of thought or philosophy. Rather
than being the aim of political action, freedom is the reason why political
organization and action are achievable in the first place.
The possibility of
participating in politics is contingent on freedom from lifes necessities. Again,

looking at the model of the Greek polis, Arendt claims that freedom meant to be
free from the private realm and free to participate in the political realm.
According to Arendt, Without it [freedom] political life as such would be
meaningless. The raison detre of politics is freedom, and its field of experience
is action.44
For Arendt, freedom is not a philosophical notion. It is rather a political
notion to be expressed in the political realm through speech (word) and action
(deed).
For Arendt, freedom is always a political notion.
We are free to
43 WIF, 155. But if political is simply that which occurs in public space, does
that mean that bringing private and social issues (as Arendt defines them) into public
space then makes them political issues?
44 WIF, 146.
26
participate in the political realm.
We must think of freedom in terms of the
public/political realm and in terms of speech and action. If one is free from the
necessities of life and still chooses not to participate in the political realm, or
chooses not to act, he is not really free because freedom is available only
through action in the political realm. Arendt asserts that the existence of political
institutions depends on men who act.
In addition to having men who act, Arendt claims that the exercise of
freedom and the existence of political institutions also required the company of
other men who were in the same state [i.e. equal], and it needed a common
public space to meet them - a politically organized world...into which each of the
free men could insert himself by word and deed. Women and slaves, along with
the necessities of life, are confined to the private realm and consequently
excluded from politics. Thus women, slaves, and laborers were not free because
they did not share the same state of freedom from the necessities of life in the
private realm. A byproduct of their exclusion from the political realm was not only
a perpetual denial of their freedom but also a denial of any methods by which
they might obtain political freedom.
As long as freedom, action and speech, and political influence remains in
the hands of the few men who are liberated from the necessities of life by
exercising domination over others, those dominated and subjugated by others
will never be free in the political sense that Arendt intends. The fact that freedom
is expressed through speech and action, which are limited to the public/political
realm is also problematic because questions arise about who has political
27
agency and who is free. Freedom for Arendt is not a question of free will or inner
freedom, it is rather an outward manifestation - the freedom to act politically.
III.
The Private Realm and the Rise of the Social

Contrary to the public realm of freedom and political equality, the private
as described by Arendt is synonymous with deprivation or lack. A man that lived

an exclusively private life, who like a slave was not permitted to enter the public
realm or like the barbarian had chosen not to establish such a realm, was not
fully human.45 It is not surprising that an exclusively private life constituted a
slave-like or barbaric state because those confined to the private were often
slaves to labor and necessity. These conditions were forced upon them, often
through violence, in order to create a public space independent of necessity.
Laborers provided opportunities for free men to leave behind the necessities of
life to and engage in public activities 46 To be free from the burden of lifes
necessities and participate in the polis required the subjugation of others who
were then forced to bare the burdens of the private realm.
According to Arendt the necessities of life were provided and guaranteed
in the private realm.
Men were freed from dealing with them because those
burdens were forced upon the subjugated. These necessities included bodily
functions, labor, and household responsibilities.
In the Greek polis labor had
been banished and restricted to the private realm in an effort to keep it
45 HC, 38.
46 HC, 48.
28
monitored.47 Thus women and slaves were confined to private space, separated
from the community, and constantly supervised. They were reduced to property
and their function was bodily and laborious.48 Their lives were controlled by
necessity.
Confinement to a privatized life meant that one was simultaneously
monitored and yet not really seen or heard by anyone in the sense that ones
behavior was not displayed in the public realm. Consequently one confined to
the private realm was denied those things that are fundamental to a truly
human life such as individuation.49 The events that occurred in private were
unacknowledged and hidden in the shadows. I imagine those who were confined
to privacy longed for validation of their existence.
Perhaps they desired to
display their excellence, enjoy freedom, or simply to put aside the necessities of
life, like those who were privileged to participate in the public realm. Or, more
importantly, they may have desired to experience freedom and agency in the
political sense advanced by Arendt. At best, the necessity, futility, and shame
associated with the private realm ranks inferior when compared to the freedom,
permanence, and honor attributed to the public realm.
According to Arendt, the ancient Greek distinction between the public and
the private spheres has been distorted in the modern era and this is partially a
result of what she describes as the rise of the social. I have already examined
Arendts analysis of the social in terms of poverty in The Social Question, now I
47 HC, 47.
48 HC, 72.
49 HC, 58.
29
turn to Arendts critique of the social in What is Freedom? and The Human
Condition. In What is Freedom? Arendt states Now, where life is at stake all
action is by definition under the sway of necessity, and the proper realm to take
care of lifes necessities is the gigantic and still increasing sphere of social and
economic life whose administration has overshadowed the public realm ever
since the beginning of the modern age.50 Here, the concepts of the private and
the social seem to overlap. The language previously used by Arendt to describe
the private, i.e. the realm of lifes necessities, is now used to describe the social.
This is because, as previously stated, the social realm is a hybrid between the
private and the political.
A more detailed account of the social is given in The Human Condition, where
Arendt, states that the social realm is a product of the modern age that is neither
private nor public.
Arendt claims that society seems to have conquered the
public realm.51 When we substitute the social for the political we betray the
Greek understanding of politics. Before the modern age housekeeping, family
matters, and economics were confined to the private sphere, but the rise of
society has turned formerly private issues into public concerns. The life process
itself, necessity, and economics - which properly belong to the private for Arendt
- have been channeled into the public realm by the rise of the social. Arendt
asserts that the emergence of society has not only blurred the old borderline
between private and political, it has also changed almost beyond recognition the
50 WIF, 155.
51 HC, 41.
30
meaning of the two terms and their significance for the life of the individual and
the citizen.52
Seyla Benhabib describes Arendts notion of the rise of the social well in
Situating the Self. Models of Public Space. Benhabib explains:
By the rise of the social in this work, Arendt means the institutional
differentiations of modern societies into the narrowly political realm
on the one hand and the economic market and the family on the
other. As a result of these transformations, economic processes
which had hitherto been confined to the shadowy realm of the
household emancipate themselves and become public matters.53
Another problem that Arendt has with the social as she presents it in The Human
Condition is that it takes away from human plurality and replaces it with a
unanimous and simultaneously anonymous general will of all. Whereas one is
able to express his distinct opinion among other differing opinions in the public
realm, the rise of the social has distorted this plurality. Society always demands
that its members act as though they were members of one enormous family that
has only one opinion and one interest.54
As populations increase we are further lead into the social mentality of the
common good. I would add to increased populations, the heightened emphasis
on globalization and the economic and military interdependence among nations
as all creating a notion of the common good. Arendt criticizes society because it
expects from each member a certain kind of behavior, imposing rules,
52 HC, 38.
53 Seyla Benhabib, Models of Public Space, in Situating the Self: Gender
Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992),
90. Hereafter SS.
54 HC, 34.
31
normalizing members to make them behave.55 The prevalent concept of the

common good is indicative of the absence of a true political realm, and as a
result, the public realm is composed of the social rather than the political.56
Arendt has a problem with the pursuit of one common good because it
excludes the possibility and spontaneity of action, as well as any outstanding
achievement.57 The true purpose of the public realm (to be a platform to display
ones excellence, individuation, and action) becomes eclipsed by the social.
Society is like a melting pot of people void of differentiation. Society normalizes
everyones behavior and imposes rules and regulations. According to Arendt this
regulation of behavior makes political action virtually impossible.
The
spontaneous action and outstanding achievement previously possible in the

political realm is replaced with mere behavior.
In Conformatism, Housekeeping, and the Attack of the Blob: The Origins
of Hannah Arendts Concept of the Social, Hanna Pitkin explores Arendts
separation of action and behavior. Pitkin makes the observation that for Arendt,
Behavior contrasts action... it does not produce anything tangible... its product
is normalized, rule-governed conduct.58
Seyla Benhabib makes a similar
observation and states, the political realm is being absorbed by the social
55 HC, 40.
56 HC, 35.
57 HC, 40.
58 Hanna Pitkin, Conformatism, Housekeeping, and the Attack of the Blob: The
Origins of Hannah Arendts Concept of the Social, in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah
Arendt (Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1995), 56. Hereafter FI HA.
32
resulting in individuals merely behaving as economic producers, consumers,

and urban city dwellers rather than acting."59
Pitkin summarizes Arendts account of the social accurately when she
states, the rise of the social, then, seems to mean the development of a complex
economy...in which people are profoundly interdependent, yet no one is in
charge...it reaches beyond the supervision of any human head.60 She is noting
Arendts claim that the social realm is like an invisible force that is uncontrolled
by man and that paralyzes action. There is no longer a public space for political
action; politics has been reduced to no man rule, rule by an invisible hand, rule
by nobody.61 Arendt warns the rule by nobody is not necessarily no-rule; it may
indeed under certain circumstances even turn out to be one of the cruelest and
most tyrannical versions.62
It is tempting to be sympathetic toward Arendts critique of the social as
she portrays it in The Human Condition because the social is presented as a
force that binds everyone together, prevents personal individuation, and distorts
political action. However, it is important not to forget or dismiss Arendts account
of the social in The Social Question. Recall that Arendts critique of the social
and what constitutes social issues in The Social Question could be better
described as a critique of the poor.
It is a call for the exclusion of lifes
necessities and economics from the political realm. This exclusion of economics,
59 SS, 90.
60 FI HA, 54.
61 HC, 44,45.
62 HC, 40.
33
or more specifically the exclusion of the poor, was emphasized by Arendts

differentiation between the French and American Revolutions. And at the heart
of this distinction is the idea that the French Revolution focused on social issues
(poverty and necessity) while the American Revolution focused on political issues
(the form of government and foundation of freedom).
In the next and final section of the chapter I argue that a division between
the public and the private spheres will not necessarily prevent the effects of the
social, nor will it ensure political activity. This is most obviously the case for
those who carry lifes burdens in the private realm and are consequently denied
political agency.
Strict distinctions between the private and the public realms
inhibit the political action, which is so important to Arendt.
IV.
The Problems and Paradox of Public Space

The division between public and private space, both in Arendt and
historically speaking, raises some key concerns.
Behabib articulates one
concern when she explains that this distinction has served to confine women
and typically female sphere of activity like housework, reproduction, nurturance,
and care...to the private domain and to keep them off of the public agenda in
the liberal state.63 Another concern is that as long as this division is in place the
many are forced into the private realm so that the few may enter the political
realm. We face the risk of denying political agency to those in the private realm.
I will refer to this concern as the paradox of public space.
63 SS, 108.
34
Arendts exclusionary account of the public realm is problematic because

the public/private divide limits political action for those who are confined to the
private realm. Benhabib also addresses this problem when she asserts, contrary
to Arendts position, that fluidity between the public and private spheres has
brought liberation. Benhabib makes this point when she states, the rise of the
social was accompanied by the emancipation of these groups [including women,
slaves, etc.,] from the shadowy interior of the household and by their entry into
public life.
She then asks, Is Arendts critique of this process a critique of
political universalism as such?64 In other words, does Arendts critique of the

social also imply a critique of an all-inclusive approach to politics? If Arendts
critique of the social is inextricably tied to the necessity of a public/private
distinction, then the answer is yes. When the private realm is composed of the
majority any strict division between the public and private realms entails the
exclusion of the majority from political space, and consequently, from action as
well. But this division remains a problem even if it is the few or the minority who
is confined to the private realm.
Benhabib identifies two models of public space introduced by Arendt in
The Human Condition, the agonistic model of the Greek Polis and the
associational model of modern politics. In the Greek Polis the public space was
political space where appearance became reality, men demonstrated greatness,
and competed with one another for recognition. Women, slaves, laborers, and
many others were forced to fulfill lifes necessities and therefore were excluded
64 SS, 91.
35
from engaging in political activities. The modern associational view of political

space is not extraordinarily different.
According to this model, public space
emerges whenever and wherever, in Arendts words, men act together in

concert...public space is the space where freedom can appear.65 Public space
is wherever power and action are coordinated and demonstrated through speech
and persuasion among a group of equal human beings.66 Yet this model is still
exclusive because all humans are not seen as equal and various groups must
contend with discrimination both in the private and the public/political realms.
In an essay titled, The Double Face of the Political and the Social,
Robert Bernasconi confronts the paradox of Arendts agonistic model of public
space. He reinforces the criticism that in order for some to enter the public realm
many must be confined in the private realm. The many are sacrificed to create
public space for the few. This point is made when he states:
The evident problem with this conception of political freedom is, not
only that it has historically been confined to the few, but also that, of
its nature, it is bought at the expense of others... If to be human is
to disclose oneself in the public sphere, and if that possibility is
itself dependent on ones being liberated from the necessities
imposed by the life-cycle, then it would seem that one of the pre
conditions of being human is the inhumanity of exploiting the labor
of others.67
This is quite a disturbing paradox in Arendts project. In order to be fully human,
one must be able to act in public space; but in order for some to act in public
space, many must suffer the inhumane life of necessity in the private realm.
65 SS, 93. (Emphasis added)

66 SS, 93.
67 DFPS, 6.
Arendts clear-cut separation of the private and public realms only

crystallizes the problematic paradox of public space. This is a peculiar blind spot
in Arendt. She acknowledges that in order to participate in public/political space,
one must be liberated from the burdens of life in the private realm and also that
this liberation is most often achieved by forcing lifes burdens onto other people.
But where does this leave the people upon whom lifes burdens have been
forced?
How do they ever achieve the human condition of freedom through
speech and action in the public realm? Where is the political agency of the
oppressed (i.e. those carrying lifes burdens)?
Why doesnt Arendt problematize the fact that we are faced with a
paradox of public space, i.e. that the possibility of attaining freedom in the public
realm seems to be achievable only through the oppression of others in the
private realm? Arendt states in On Revolution:
All rulership has its original and its most legitimate source in mans
wish to emancipate himself from lifes necessity, and men achieved
such liberation by means of violence, by forcing others to bear the
burden of life for them. This was the core of slavery, and it is only
the rise of technology, and not the rise of modern political ideas as
such, which has refuted the old and terrible truth that only violence
and rule over others could make some men free.68
Even if Arendt is not endorsing this position and merely describing it, her
observation is disturbing because it suggests that freedom and emancipation
from necessity is achievable one of two ways: either by subjugating others
through force and violence or through the rise of technology.
examine these two possibilities more closely.
68 SQ, 114.
37
We need to
Arendt is correct to acknowledge the fact that freedom in public space (as
she conceives it) is attained by the few through violence and force against the
many who are confined to the private sphere.
The very fact that she
acknowledges the role of violence in maintaining the public/private division, or in

the political realm in general, is very significant. Here, Arendt reveals the role of
violence in maintaining a public/private divide and in sustaining the political
realm. The question is whether Arendt is merely revealing the role of violence or
going a step further by validating the role of violence here. If the latter is the
case, and Arendt is validating or in some way condoning the role of violence in
emancipating oneself from the necessities of life, then it reveals that Arendt does
not object to all forms of violence in all circumstances. But even if Arendt is not
validating, but rather revealing how violence is used to maintain the public/private
division, she is nonetheless uncritical of its role. These issues are important in
relation to Arendts overall position concerning violence.
I will later argue that
while Arendt is uncritical of violence here, in other writings she gives a sharp
criticism of violence and those who advocate it.
While violence may be necessary to be freed from necessity and to
maintain the public/private distinction, the rise of technology may exacerbate
rather than solve this problem. This is the case because access to the political
realm is not only an issue of being liberated from labor in the private realm; in the
modern era people have been denied access to the political realm for numerous
other reasons.
For example, technology could not solve the problem of
38
discrimination at voting polls that prevented black people from voting even after
they received legal suffrage.
Another example can be derived from the system of colonialism where the
freedom of the colonizers was defined in terms of the violent subjugation of the
natives.
In this case, far from refuting this terrible truth of rulership through
force and violence, technology actually reinforced it. Sartre explains the role of
technology in his essay Colonialism as a System. He explains how Europeans
set out to occupy a territory in Africa, take the land, and exploit the people for
labor and resources.
But improvements in technology, or an increase in
mechanization, only worsen the problem because even cheap labor becomes too
expensive and the very right of the colonized to work (even if under exploitative
conditions) is taken away.69 The rise of technology does not help the colonized
and empower them to enter the public sphere. It just leaves them even more
impoverished and trapped in the colonial system. I presented this example here
because of its relation to Arendts assertion that technology can address the
problem of the public/private division and the resulting rulership through force
and violence.
Although Arendt does not explain exactly how technology can
address the problem, Sartre is clear about how technology can make it worse.
In this chapter, I have argued that Arendts public/private distinction, the
exclusion of economics from the political realm, and the paradox of public space
are all problematic aspects of her political theory. The exclusion of various forms
69 Jean-Paul Sartre, Colonialism as a System, in Colonialism and
Neocolonialism, trans. Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewer and Terry McWilliams (New
York: Routledge, 2001), 39. Hereafter CS.
39
of oppression from the political realm is disconcerting to say the least.
It is
alarming that Arendt categorizes poverty and economic needs as social issues
rather than as political problems that require political solutions.
If these very
serious problems are reduced to matters of social concern, how can they ever be
addressed in public space? If the problems are not presented in public space,
then they may continue to go unnoticed, unacknowledged, and unsolved. How
can those suffering as a result of such problems ever achieve political action? It
seems they cannot act politically. They can never reach what Arendt describes
as the highest achievable human condition, i.e. action, because they will
constantly be bound in the social or in the private, but never reach the political. If
economics and necessity could be limited to the private or social sphere and
excluded from the political realm, as Arendt recommends, then economic
oppression would not be addressed as a political issue. The people who suffer
economic oppression would be confined to the private realm and denied the
opportunity for any political action. If this is the case, how are we to address
questions of freedom and oppression? Arendts exclusionary conception of the
political realm would deny a large number of people access to political space.
Arendt does not address this problematic paradox of public space. The problem
continues to manifest itself in various aspects of her political theory, not only in
relation to economics, but also in her analysis of racial discrimination, civil rights,
and slavery.
40
Chapter Two: Race, Racism, and Collective Memory
In the previous chapter I outlined the narrowness of Arendts conception of

the political realm, including her exclusion of economics and social matters from
that realm, the public/private distinction, her critique of the rise of the social, and
the problematic paradox of public space. In first part of this chapter I argue that
Arendts limited conception of the political and all the problems which that entails
also hinder her analysis of anti-black racial oppression. This is especially the
case in her assessment of anti-black racial oppression in the United States. In
my investigation I begin with Arendts analysis of equality and juxtapose her
assertions about political equality with the reality of racial inequality.
I also
examine Arendts analysis of racial discrimination, civil rights, and slavery.
challenge Arendts claim that racial discrimination is a social issue that should not
be addressed politically. I also argue against Arendts criticism of the Civil Rights
and Black Power movements for their efforts to overcome segregation in
education.
Finally, I examine Arendts distinction between race-thinking and
racism as it relates to the Jewish question and the Negro Question. I argue that
although Arendt discredits race-thinking and racism as it pertains to the
justification of oppression against Africans (and later against Jews), this does not
prevent
Arendt
from
incorporating
the
same
race-thinking
into
her
characterization of people of African descent. I also make the case that Arendt
makes efforts to distance the Jewish question from the Negro question precisely
because she wants to distance race-thinking about the Negro from the attitudes
towards the Jew.
41
In the latter portion of the chapter I focus on the debate between Sartre
and Fanon. In particular I examine Sartres analysis of race and Jewish identity
in Anti-Semite and Jew (1948), which provides a thought provoking backdrop to
his analysis of black identity in Black Orpheus (1948). Additionally I examine
Fanons Black Skin. White Masks (1952) focusing on the fifth chapter in which he
critiques both of these works by Sartre as they relate to black identity. In part I
am interested in the contrast between the situation of the Jew and the situation of
the Negro as it pertains to the formulation of their racial identities as well as their
acquisition of an authentic race consciousness. But I am also disputing the claim
that black racial identities need to be eliminated altogether. I make the argument
that constructing positive black racial identities is possible and these identities
should be conserved when confronting racial oppression and preserved even in
the absence of racial oppression. I want to conserve and preserve black racial
identities both for the sake of developing a positive and authentic race
consciousness and for the sake of forming a collective memory of the trial,
triumphs, and history of descendants of the African Diaspora.
I.
Political Equality versus Racial Inequality

In The Burden of Our Time (1951) later published as The Origins of
Totalitarianism (1966) Arendt claims that the political life requires an assumption
of equality among the participants.
This equality results from citizenship and
racial homogeneity. Arendt strongly suggests that a lack of racial diversity is

ideal for a good political life when she explains:
42
[T]he reason why highly developed political communities, such as

ancient city-states or modern nation-states, so often insist on ethnic
homogeneity, is that they hope to eliminate as far as possible those
natural and always present differences and differentiations which
by themselves arouse dumb hatred, mistrust, and discrimination
because they indicate all too clearly those spheres where men
cannot act and change at will, i.e., the limitations of the human
artifice.1
It is clear that Arendts reference to the human artifice is an allusion to the
physical features of the body that cannot be changed. But is she also asserting
that ethnic differences denote differences in actions that are also unchangeable?
Are different ethnic groups destined to actions that they cannot change? These
questions go unanswered, but Arendt does claim that ethnic differences are
natural and always present. And that these natural and always present
differences are
discrimination.2
responsible for arous[ing] dumb
hatred,
mistrust,
and
That is to say, racial or ethnic differences evoke hatred
mistrust, and discrimination because they cannot be changed.
Rather than
proposing tolerance or acceptance of difference, Arendt excuses intolerance and

suggests that the best response to the problem of difference is to avoid it with
homogeneity.
But is Arendt asserting that assumed equality among participants in the
political realm requires an elimination of difference, particularly of ethnic
difference, within the political community? Perhaps she is not going that far, for
she claims that in the United States, a heterogeneous and racially diverse nation,
1Hannah Arendt, The Burden of Our Time (1951), 297. Hannah Arendt, The
Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1966), 301.
Hereafter BOT and OT respectively.
2 BOT, 297. OT, 301.
43
there was (and still is) political equality.
For example, in The Social Question,
Arendt gives an example of the significance of the idea of equality among the
founding fathers of America who knew that the public realm in a republic was
constituted by an exchange of opinion between equals, and that this realm would
simply disappear the very moment an exchange became superfluous because all
equals happened to be of the same opinion.3 Equality among the members of
the public realm is important because it allows issues to be presented and
discussed through debate rather than through coercion.4
But before The Social Question, in the Origins, Arendt claims that there
was not only political equality in the U.S., but also equality of condition. She
makes this assertion on at least two occasions.
First, when she states that
Equality of condition, as the Jacobins understood it in the French Revolution,

became a reality only in America, whereas on the European continent it was at
once replaced by a mere formal equality before the law.5 Here Arendt is going
beyond political equality, or equality before the law. She mentions equality of
condition again in her explanation of the social antipathy for Jews in Europe.
Arendt asserts:
The situation would have been entirely different if, as in the United
States, equality of condition had been taken for granted...In such a
society, discrimination becomes only the means of distinction, a
kind of universal law according to which groups may find
themselves outside the sphere of civic, political, and economic
equality.6
3 SQ, 93.
4 I find it peculiar that coercion is unacceptable in political life, but completely
tolerable in the private realm.
5 BOT, 12. OT, 12.

6 BOT, OT, 55.
44
It is unclear exactly what Arendt means by equality of condition, it is something

beyond political equality, but it is not the same as social equality, for social
discrimination is still permissible. We will see later that social discrimination is a
right on Arendts view.
In Reflections on Little Rock Arendt again points to the American
Republic as an example of political space based on the equality of all citizens.
But is she referring to political equality or equality of condition? Perhaps is does
not matter because neither truly exists nor ever existed for all in the United
States. In any case, Arendt asserts that the principles of equality may threaten
the American way of life.
She explains that the American notion of equality
possesses an enormous power to equalize what by nature and origin is

different, but she cautions, the principle of equality, even in its American form,
is not omnipotent; it cannot equalize natural and physical characteristics.7 Here
Arendt is again referring to racial differences as natural and physical. She claims
that even if inequalities in economic and educational conditions are ironed out
equality does not have the power to iron out natural and physical differences.
Rather than helping, Arendt asserts that equality becomes a stumbling
block for the Negro. Perhaps she means that while political equality is necessary
in the public realm, social equality is always problematic. Arendt suggests this
7 Hannah Arendt, The Portable Hannah Arendt. ed. Peter Baehr, Reflections on
Little Rock (New York: Penguin Putnum, Inc., 2000), 234. (My emphasis.) Hereafter
RLR. This is a statement about racial differences. Arendts use of the terms nature and
natural here raises questions about her conception of race, namely, whether she sees
racial difference as a natural difference. Is Arendt claiming that different races have
natural tendencies particular to each race that cant be changed?
45
when she explains that the danger point emerges because the more equal
people have become in every respect...the more will differences be resented, the
more conspicuous will those become who are visible and by nature unlike
others.8 Following this rationale, Arendt claims that the Negro should not seek
equality because, It is therefore quite possible that the achievement of social,
economic, and educational equality for the Negro may sharpen the color problem
in this country instead of assuaging it.9 Arendt acknowledges that this does not
have to be the case, but it would be only natural if it did occur, and surprising if it
did not.
When these assertions are examined more closely, the contradictions are
glaring. Arendt is claiming that equality in the social realm causes resentment of
differences, but the opposite is the case. It is precisely the inequality, i.e. the
lowered status of the Negro because he is a Negro, which is to blame for
resentment. Racism perpetuates inequalities and inequalities perpetuate racism.
It is this vicious cycle that causes resentment. Maintaining inequalities threatens
resentment from black people who are oppressed on every front, socially,
politically, economically, academically, and psychologically.
But Arendt is
unconcerned about black resentment. She is more concerned about the white
people that will resent the Negro for not staying in his place. Again she misses
the nature of the problem, for white resentment of black people can and does
motivate their unequal treatment and oppression of blacks.
8 RLR, 234. (My emphasis)

9 RLR, 234. (My emphasis)
46
Based on Arendts account in Reflections on Little Rock, we are led to

believe that social and private inequalities are acceptable as long as there is
political equality. But a private realm ravaged with inequalities is not compatible
with an equal political realm. Political equality is contingent upon some level of
private equality. Inequality in social and private spheres endangers the chance
of attaining equality in the political sphere. For proof of this we need only look at
the history of the United States where social inequality has gone hand in hand
with political inequality. Unequal treatment in the social and private spheres has
been reinforced by unequal enforcement of the law and unequal protection under
the law. This has been the experience of Native Americans, slaves and freed
blacks, immigrants, and generally speaking - the poor.
Those perceived as
social inferiors have been subjected to the stiffest penalties when transgressing
the law, but have not received equal protection under the law.
But Arendt was aware of the dangers that social inequalities may pose to
political equality before writing Reflections on Little Rock.
In The Origins of
Totalitarianism she states:

The fundamental contradiction between a political body based on
equality before the law and a society based on the inequality of the
class system prevented the development of functioning republics as
well as the birth of a new political hierarchy.10
However, she adds, An insurmountable inequality of social condition...could
nevertheless exist side by side with political equality.11 Although Arendt does
not say as much, one seemingly insurmountable inequality of social condition is
10 BOT, 12. OT, 12.
11 BOT, 12. OT, 12.
47
the racial discrimination in America.
And this social discrimination on the
basis of race has many political implications.
II.
Racial Discrimination, Civil Rights and Slavery

Arendt understates the persistent inequality between the status of whites
and the status of blacks in the U.S. particularly as it pertains to racial

discrimination. While Arendt acknowledges that there is racial discrimination in
the U.S., her analysis of it is severely handicapped by her limited conception of
the political. Thus her analysis exposes not only the problems of the distinctions
she draws between what is properly public, private, and social, but also her lack
of understanding concerning the Negro question. In On Violence. Arendt claims:
[W]hile boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations were successful in
eliminating discriminatory laws and ordinances in the South, they
proved utter failures and became counterproductive when they
encountered the social conditions in the large urban centers - the
stark needs of the black ghettos on the one side, the overriding
interests of white lower income groups in respect to housing and
education on the other.12
This comment is significant for two reasons. First, it is used to support the claim
(also made in The Social Question) that political means cannot be successful at
attaining social ends. But it also points to problems in Arendts categories. She
sees the civil rights movement as a political movement, but the aims of the
movement are social aims. For Arendt, the needs of the black ghettos including
housing and education are social needs, not fit for public or political debate.
12 Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises of the Republic (San Diego: Harcourt

Brace and Company, 1972), 173. Hereafter, OV.
48
Following the same line of reasoning, in Reflections on Little Rock Arendt

criticizes the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People) because they sought to overcome discrimination in employment,
housing, and education by addressing these matters in court.13 Arendt views
these concerns as matters of social opportunity, rather than as public problems.14
Recall that Arendt claims that what occurs in the private sphere does not
and should not concern the political sphere. Consequently, it is a violation of
privacy when legislation gets involved in private affairs. For Arendt the realm of
privacy is ruled by exclusiveness. The private realm is where we choose what
we want to do and with whom we want to do it.
This is why marriage, for
example, should not be legislated. But this is also why, according to Arendt, we
should allow private resorts to be segregated. The decision of what company I
choose to keep while on holiday is a private (and social) decision that should not
be regulated by legislation. Since segregation is not a political issue, but rather a
private and social issue, the social question is raised again in relation to
discrimination. Arendt asserts, society is a hybrid realm between the political
and the private it is the realm through which we pass before we enter the
political realm of equality, and it is a realm that demands discrimination.15
Discrimination is to society what equality is to the body politic. Whether this
discrimination is based on race, nationality, class or any other social factor, it
13 RLR, 231-232.
14DFPS, 16.
15 RLR, 237. See also HC, 33.
49
remains as indispensable a social right as equality is a political right.16

Therefore, the question is not how to abolish discrimination, but how to keep it in
the social sphere.
According to Arendt, in the civil rights program, the political issue was the
franchise, the human rights issue was interracial marriage laws, and segregation
was a merely a social issue. She claims that franchise and eligibility for office
are the only political rights, and they constitute in modern democracy the very
quintessence of citizenship.17 But she adds, while the civil rights program dealt
with franchise and segregation, it did not go far enough, for it left untouched the
most outrageous law of Southern states - the law which makes mixed marriage a
criminal offense.18 According to Arendts prioritization of rights, the right to
marry is an elementary human right while segregation (or rather integration) is a
minor issue.
Arendt contends that the Negroes had the wrong priorities in
dealing with discrimination.
Rather than confronting segregation, they should
have been trying to marry white people.
It is in this context that she claims,
oppressed minorities were never the best judges on the order of priorities...and
there are many instances when they preferred to fight for social opportunity
rather than for basic human or political rights.19
This line of thinking leads Arendt to criticize the Supreme Court ruling that
enforced desegregation in public schools.20
Arendt wrongly sees racial
16 RLR, 238.
17 RLR, 237.
18 RLR, 236.
19 RLR, 231.
20 Brown versus The Board of Education of Topeka (1954).
50
segregation in public schools as a social issue, an instance of social

discrimination, rather than a political problem. White parents have a private right
over their children and a social right to free association (i.e. to send their children
to segregated schools). She maintained that enforced integration was as bad as
legally enforced segregation. For Arendt segregation, like all social issues, could
not and should not be addressed by political means.
Arendt is more concerned about the positive right to discriminate than the
negative right not to be discriminated against.
We are brought back to the
problem of the distinction between the public, private, and social spheres.
Benhabib makes this observation of Arendt in Situating the Self. She states:
[P]erhaps the episode which best illustrates this blind spot in
Hannah Arendts thought is that of school desegregation...Arendt
likened the demands of black parents, upheld by the US Supreme
Court, to have their children admitted into previously all-white
schools, to the desire of the social parvenue to gain recognition in a
society that did not care to admit her.21
Arendt does not grasp the foundation of segregation and racism and their
devastating impact in the lives of African Americans. She conflates the legal (i.e.
political) issue of de jure segregation and the social issue of de facto
segregation.
Benhabib notes that Arendt fails to make the distinction between
public justice - equality of educational access - with an issue of social

preference - who my friends are or whom I invite to dinner.22
21 SS, 94. For more information about the social parvenue discussed in
Arendts work, see Hanna Pitkin, Conformatism, Housekeeping, and the Attack of the
Blob, in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt (Pennsylvania: Penn State Press,
1995).
22 SS, 94.
51
Benhabib and Bernasconi agree that the consequences of Arendts

insistence on keeping the two realms separate are very clear in the essay
Reflections on Little Rock.23 Education was presented as both a public and a
social issue. Education was a public issue because public authorities controlled
it, but Arendt believed that the choice of what group of children ones child goes
to school with (i.e. desegregation) was a social issue. She does not see that it
was not the black families, but the white families that had this social choice.
Arendt also assumes that the desire to have an education of equal quality was
the same as the desire to desegregate schools.
This is true of Arendts
assessment of integration in public education and of integration in higher

education.
Her disapproval of political efforts to gain equal public educational
opportunities is far surpassed by her discontentment with the Black Power

movement and its efforts to gain access to higher education for Black people.
Arendt describes their efforts and methods as violent rather than political.
In her discussion of black student rebellions on college campuses, Arendt
asserts that the majority of Negro students admitted to colleges and universities
were admitted without academic qualification and furthermore that as an interest
group of the black community, the Negros interest was to lower academic
standards.24
For Arendt, lowering academic standards included attempts to
create courses in African and African American studies, whish she describes as
23DFPS, 15.
24 OV, 120.
52
soul courses, as well as instruction in African languages such as Swahili.25

Arendt then goes on to describe Swahili as a nineteenth century kind of no
language spoken by the Arab ivory and slave caravans, a hybrid mixture of a
Bantu dialect with an enormous vocabulary of Arab borrowings.26 Arendts
claims here ignore the fact that qualified black students were denied admission to
colleges and universities on the basis of their race. She also fails to capture the
problem of black people being systematically erased from history books and
classroom discourse. There was a serious need to create courses in African and
African-American studies because history has been incredibly whitewashed.
Mainstream curriculum often reduces black history to slavery and the
reconstruction era without regard for the history of Africa before slave trade and
without reference to the contributions of the Negro in the making of America.
Ignoring these matters, Arendt states that the U.S. yielded to nonsensical
and obviously damaging demands - such as admitting students without the
necessary qualifications and instructing them in non-existent subjects... and she
attributes this yielding to white guilt and to violence.27 And although Arendt
claims that feelings of guilt in the white community allowed black demands to be
met, Arendt warns against confessions of group guilt because Black Power has
proved all too happy to take advantage of this confession to instigate an
irrational black rage.28 But at no time does Arendt confront the source of white
25 OV,
26 OV,
27 OV,
28 OV,
177.
192.
177.
162.
53
guilt, which is the history of systematically racist oppression of blacks. Nor does
she explain why white guilt - in the absence of protests, civil rights movement,
and Black Power - never produced any libratory changes in the conditions of the
American Negro.
In addition to taking advantage of white guilt, Arendt suggests that violence
was the method by which black students hoped to lower academic standards and
create non-existent subjects and disciplines. Contrasting the U.S with other
Western countries, Arendt claims that while elsewhere there is no popular
support of violence in a movement, in the U.S. the black community endorses it.
She states, there is a large minority of the Negro community behind the verbal
or actual violence of the black students.29 Arendt is astonished that the colleges
and universities themselves respond to such violence:
...[l]t seems that the academic establishment, in its curious tendency to
yield more to Negro demands, even if they are clearly silly and
outrageous, than to the disinterested and usually highly moral claims of
the white rebels, also thinks in these terms and feels more comfortable
when confronted with interests plus violence than when it is a matter of
nonviolent participatory democracy.30
So for Arendt, the demands of the violent Negro students are silly and
outrageous,
but the demands of the white rebels, through
nonviolent
participatory democracy, are highly moral.

But Arendt must be aware that black students were not the only
proponents of violence. They learned the effectiveness of violence from their
oppressors. In fact violence was one of the law enforcement officers most often
29 OV, 121.
30 OV, 121.
54
used responses to the nonviolent protests of the civil rights movement.31 Arendt
acknowledges that violent police brutality was a form of intervention in nonviolent
demonstrations in the student movement, but asserts that serious violence did
not enter the scene until the Black Power movement hit college campuses.32
This is problematic because it suggests that police brutality is not serious
violence and because it wrongly suggests that the Black Power movement was
necessarily and exclusively a violent movement.
Furthermore, it ignores the
serious violence to which many students were subjected not only at the hand of
law enforcement officers, but also at the hand of civilians.
Arendt is far less condemning of the oppressors violence, which is offensive,
than she is of the violence of the oppressed, which is defensive. And Arendt is
more concerned about backlash in the white community than she is about the
oppressive conditions that prompted the resistance movement in the first place.
She asserts that if there were a backlash from the white community in response
to the Black Power movement, it would be the perfectly rational reaction of
certain interest groups which furiously protest being singled out to pay the full
price for ill-designed integration policies whose consequences their authors can
easily escape.33 She adds that black racism could provoke a white backlash
31 The images of fire hoses and growling dogs attacking nonviolent protesters in
the South, including many children and students, are embedded in the minds of many
who lived through the Civil Rights era as well as those who have witnessed
documentaries of it.
32 OV, 121.
33 OV, 174.
55
that could result in the transformation of white prejudices into full-fledged racist
ideology.34
Far from seeing the race riots as a form of backlash from the black
community against white racism, Arendt describes the riots and protests as a
form of black racism that invites white backlash. When she claims that white
prejudice could turn into racism, she is denying that white racism was already a
problem.
And while white backlash - with its tendency towards racism - is
perfectly rational, Arendt claims that the real danger comes from black students.
She asserts, The greatest danger comes from the other direction [i.e. from
blacks students]; since violence always needs justification, an escalation of the
violence in the streets may bring about a truly racist ideology to justify it.35 In
other words, Arendt is claiming that black students will have to develop a racist
ideology to justify their protests and actions. But this analysis is quite inverted.
Historically it has been white people who have relied on racist ideologies to
oppress black people, not the other way around. This is evidenced by the racial
segregation that has already been discussed, as well as slavery and colonialism.
And the backlash from the white community is not against black racial ideologies;
it is just another instance of their resentment of the Negro for not staying in his
place.
I have provided a brief analysis of Arendts account of violence and the
Black Power movement here because it underscores both how Arendt constantly
34 OV, 174.
35 OV, 174
56
misses the mark when it comes to the Negro question and it establishes a
pattern in Arendt of a biased critique of violence. She condemns the violence,
riots, and protests in the black community while describing a potential violent
backlash in the white community as perfectly rational. This is not only the case in
her analysis of Black Power, and earlier in her account of the American
Revolution, but it will also prove to be the case in her criticism of Sartre and
Fanon for advocating revolutionary violence against the colonial system. I will
provide a more thorough analysis of Arendts discussion and critique of violence
in Chapters Three and Four, but now I will comment on Arendts analysis of
slavery in the U.S., which is one more aspect of the Negro question that she gets
wrong.
Like her analysis of segregation and integration, and her critique of the
Black Power movement, many of Arendts assertions about American slavery are
unconvincing. This is the case in several of her works including both editions of
the Origins, and the late essay The Social Question. In The Burden of Our
Time (the first edition of Origins) she correctly understands that:
Slaverys fundamental offense against human rights was not that it took
liberty away (which can happen in many other situations), but that it
excluded a certain category of people even from the possibility of fighting
for freedom - a fight possible under tyranny, and even under the
desperate conditions of modern terror (but not under any conditions of
concentration camp life). Slaverys crime against humanity did not begin
when one people defeated and enslaved its enemies (though of course
this was bad enough), but when slavery became an institution in which
some men were born free and others slave, when it was forgotten that it
was man who had deprived his fellow-men of freedom, and when the
sanction for the crime was attributed to nature.36
36 BOT, 294.
57
Here Arendt identifies several harms caused by the institution of slavery. It took
away liberty, it prevented those who were enslaved from the possibility of fighting
for freedom, and it allowed some men to be born slaves and others to be born
free - a determination attributed to nature. Finally, slavery was a crime instituted
by man against his fellow man, not against sub-humans or animals.37
It is problematic that Arendt does not explicitly state that slavery was a
racially based system whereby black people were born slaves and white people
were born free. This omission is significant because in an earlier section of the
Origins. Arendt asserts that slaveholders were not race-conscious. She claims
that although slavery was established on a strict racial basis, [it] did not make
the slave-holding peoples race-conscious before the nineteenth century.
Throughout
the
eighteenth
century,
American
slave-holders themselves
considered it a temporary institution and wanted to abolish it gradually.38 Aside

from the dubious claim that American slaveholders ever wanted to gradually
abolish the financially lucrative institution of slavery, it also seems contradictory
for Arendt to claim that slavery was both an institution established on a racial
basis and that slave-holders were not conscious of race.
They had to be
conscious of some concept of race to determine which race would consist of the
slaveholders and the free, and which race would consist of slaves. How can an
37 Arendt added several additional paragraphs to the second edition to clarify her
assertion and defend it against critics.
38 BOT, 177. OT, 177.
58
institution both be founded on the basis of race and in the absence of raceconsciousness?
In addition to the relationship between race and slavery, Arendt does not
give adequate attention to the significance of the relationship between slavery
and freedom in the U.S. Arendt emphasizes the distinction between the man
enslaved in the private realm and the man free to enter the public realm in The
Human Condition, and she has much to say on the political meaning of freedom,
in What is Freedom? and in The Social Question. In each of these works
Arendt stresses the idea that freedom meant being free from the necessities of
the private life to be able to enter the public realm of the political. But in all of
these discussions of slavery, she neglects to highlight the strong relationship
between freedom and slavery in the United States. Arendt makes mention of this
relationship in The Social Question when she states that Thomas Jefferson and
the founding fathers knew that the institution of slavery was incompatible with the
foundation of freedom, but she describes their acceptance of these conditions as
an indifference towards the slaves. I contend that the foundation of freedom by
the founding fathers was possible precisely because it could be juxtaposed with
the institution of slavery.
The antithesis of slavery and freedom was a mirror of the antithesis
between black and white people. The white image was defined in contrast to
black slavery, and the black image was defined in contrast to white freedom.
Toni Morrison explains in Playing in the Dark. The concept of freedom did not
emerge in a vacuum. Nothing highlighted freedom - if it did not in fact create it 59
like slavery...For in that construction of blackness and enslavement could be

found not only the not-free but also, with the dramatic polarity created by skin
color, the projection of the not-me.39 Morrison is underscoring the idea that
freedom had all the more significance in the U.S. because it stood in such drastic
contrast to slavery. This is a central aspect of the relationship between slavery
and freedom in the U.S. that Arendt misses.
Up to this point in the chapter I have examined Arendts analysis of race
and diversity as it pertains to the political realm, equality, or rather inequality in
the U.S, segregation, education, civil rights, black power, and even slavery.
now turn my attention to Arendts distinction between race-thinking and racism,

her characterization of Africans as savages, and the distance she places
between the Jewish question and the Negro question in The Origins of
Totalitarianism. In the Origins, Arendt distinguishes between race-thinking, such
as psuedo-scientific and anthropological studies about racial hierarchies and
origins, and the ideology of racism, which was eventually used as a justification
for the national political agendas of imperialism.
Whereas race-thinking was
largely a matter of free-opinion, Arendt claims that racism is more ideological

because it permeated public opinion and led people to abandon concrete facts
for racist principles. For Arendt, ideologies are systems based upon a single
opinion that proved strong enough to attract and persuade a majority of people
and broad enough to lead them through the various situations of an average
39 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
(New York: Vintage, 1992), 38.
60
modern life.40 Ideologies differ from mere opinions in that an ideology claims to
have the key insight or knowledge to history, all the worlds problems, or
universal laws. According to Arendt, the ideology of race interprets history as a
natural fight of races.41
She exclaims that race thinking has become so
influential that intellectuals as well as the masses choose to reject facts that dont
fall in line with these ideologies.
Arendt rejects racial categories and asserts that no matter what learned
scientists might say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity
but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man
but his unnatural death.42 Arendt advocates a world without racial categories as
the best thing for the Jews and claims that the abolition of race society means
only the promise of their liberation.43 For Arendt, not just racism, but racial
categories themselves oppress the Jews.
III.
Racial Encounters: the Negro Question versus the Jewish Question

Arendt sees the development of race and racism against blacks as a tool
used to justify European exploitation of Africa, but also as a valid response by

Europeans to Africans who she describes as savages.
Race became the
emergency explanation of human beings whom no European or civilized man

could understand and whose humanity so frightened and humiliated the
40 BOT,
41 BOT,
42 BOT,
43 BOT,
159.
159.
157.
205.
OT,
OT,
OT,
OT,
159.
159.
157.
205.
61
immigrants that they no longer cared to belong to the same human species.44
Arendt sees the xenophobia of Europeans at the sight of Africans as the impetus
for raced societies. She states, This fright of something like oneself that still
under no circumstances ought to be like oneself remained at the basis of slavery
and became the basis for a race society.45
It is striking that Arendt points out the fallacy of race thinking and the lack
of foundation for racial stereotypes and she nevertheless incorporates this
thinking into her characterization of Africans. She constantly refers Africans as
savages, backward, and lacking of history and culture. Arendts incorporation of
these stereotypes into her own analysis is evidenced by her description of Africa
as the world of native savages with people who were as incomprehensible as
the inmates of a madhouse.46 Even if Arendt is describing the perspective of
Europeans towards Africans and not her own, she still presents this view
uncritically. Arendt explains that although Christianity had founded a notion of
unity and equality of all human beings coming from the same lineage all the way
back to Adam and Eve, this notion was challenged as soon as Europeans
encountered Africans who lacked reason, passion, and culture. White men were
faced with tribes which, as far as we know, never had found by themselves any
adequate expression of human reason or human passion in either cultural deeds
or popular customs, and which had developed human institutions only to a low
44 BOT, 185. OT, 185.

45 BOT, 192. OT, 192.
46 BOT, 190. OT, 190.
62
level.47 She even goes as far as to describes Africans as a species of men

whom human pride and the sense of human dignity could not allow them [the
Boers] to accept as fellow-men.48
Arendt makes it clear that the separation between the savages and the
rest of humanity was not an issue of skin color, but one of behavior.
She
explains, What made them [Africans] different from other human beings was not
at all the color of their skin but the fact that they behaved like a part of nature,
that they treated it as their undisputed master, that they had not created a human
world, a human reality...49 This points to Arendts personal description of
Africans, not just an adaptation of a European perspective. She is claiming that
Africans are not different because of their skin, but because they did not exploit
all of the natural resources around them for their exclusive advantage.
She
adds, The great horror which had seized European men at their first
confrontation with native life was stimulated by precisely this touch of inhumanity
among other human beings who apparently were as much a part of nature as
wild animals.50
I will demonstrate shortly that given Arendts negative
assessment and portrayal of Africans, it is no wonder that she blames the rise of
racism against black people for opening the door towards racism against the
Jews. It is also not surprising that Arendt then attempts to put great distance
between the Jewish question and the Negro question, not because they are
47 BOT,
48 BOT,
49 BOT,
50 BOT,
176.
192.
192.
194.
OT,
OT,
OT,
OT,
176.
192.
192.
194.
63
oppressed under different circumstances and in different ways, but because she
does not want the Jew to be reduced to the status of the Negro.
Arendt maintains that anti-Semitism (a social phenomenon) must be
distinguished from Jew hatred (a political phenomenon) but she notes that the
former paved the way for the latter, stating social anti-Semitism...introduced and
prepared the discovery of Jew-hating as a political weapon.51 But in Arendts
estimation, this discovery of Jew-hatred was prompted by racism as a tool
against blacks and as a justification for slavery and colonialism.
Jews were
caught in the cross fire and just happened to fit into racial ideologies that had
been developed by other race problems, i.e. anti-black racism.
Arendt criticizes conceptions of race based on blood ties and familial
characteristics because this is a notion that became problematic for Jews when
anti-Semitism turned to Jew hatred. The consequence of a notion of race based
on blood and family ties was that when, for reasons which had nothing to do with
the Jewish question, race problems came to the foreground of the political scene,
the Jews at once fitted all ideologies and doctrines which defined a people by
blood ties and family characteristics.52 Arendt notes that the family played a
major role in the preservation of the Jewish people and that this became a
stereotype that anti-Semites would use against them. She states, Family ties
were among the most potent and stubborn elements with which the Jewish
51 BOT, 169. OT, 169.

52 BOT, 28. OT, 28.
64
people resisted assimilation and dissolution.53 And then she explains, the antiSemitic picture of the Jewish people as a family closely knit by blood ties had
something in common with the Jews own picture of themselves.54
But Arendt repeatedly attempts to distance the Jewish confrontations with
race from the race problems faced by blacks, in fact at times she suggests that
Jews suffered a worse form of oppression than black people. For instance, she
claims as bad as slavery was for the Negro, the state of the slave is not as bad
as the conditions of the Jews who are stateless persons without a community.
She says, even slaves still belonged to some sort of community; their labor was
needed, used, and exploited, and this kept them within the pale of humanity. To
be a slave was after all to have a distinctive character, a place in society - more
than the abstract nakedness of being human and nothing but human.55 Arendt
is asserting that to belong to the community of slaves within civil society is
preferable to the abstract nakedness of being nothing but human. The issue
of mere humanity should be understood in the context of the European concept,
or more specifically the French notion of the Rights of Man. For Arendt, basic
human rights mean nothing in the absence of political rights. But the problem to
which she is blind is the fact that the black slave was denied both human rights
and political rights.
Does Arendt really expect that one should prefer the sub-human or even
non-human status of the black slave to being nothing but human? It seems she
53 BOT, 28. OT, 28
54 BOT, 28. OT, 28
55 BOT, 295. OT, 297.
65
may be leaning in this direction when she later uses the example of a Negro in a
White community to explain her point.
Arendt claims, If a Negro in a white
community is considered a Negro and nothing else, he loses along with his right
to equality that freedom of action which is specifically human; all his deeds are
now explained as necessary consequences of some Negro qualities...56 She
adds, Much the same thing happens to those who have lost all distinctive
political qualities and have become human beings and nothing else.57 At first
glance it seems that Arendt sees the reduction of the Negros deeds to some
Negro characteristic as similar to the reduction of certain persons to human
beings and nothing else.
But when examined more closely, this is not a comparison, but another
subtle contrast of the Negro situation with the Jewish situation. In her remark on
slavery just mentioned, Arendt already described the Jews as those whom have
been stripped down to the abstract nakedness of being human and nothing but
human.
Here, in her discussion of the Negro in the white community, she
makes explicit reference to the Negro, but only an implicit reference to the Jew.
The contrast she is drawing between the two is that the Negro is denied his
humanity and reduced to his Negro qualities, but the Jew is denied, not Jewish
qualities, but political qualities, and reduced to a human being and nothing else.
Again Arendt is overlooking the fact that while the Jew may be denied political
qualities, the Negro is denied both human and political qualities or rights.
56 BOT, 297. OT, 301.

57 BOT, 297. OT, 301.
66
Earlier in the Origins, Arendt makes another distinction between the Negro
and the Jew contrasting how Jews experience discrimination in homogenous
European nations versus the discrimination black people experience in the U.S.
In a footnote Arendt states:
Although Jews stood out more in than other groups in the
homogeneous populations of European countries, it does not follow
that they are more threatened by discrimination than other groups
in America. In fact, up to now, not the Jews, but the Negroes - by
nature and history the most unequal among the peoples in America
- have borne the burden of social and economic discrimination.58
Arendt is not only making the claim that the Negro has experienced more
discrimination, she is also asserting that black people are both naturally and
historically the most unequal people in the U.S. But then she suggests that Jews
could become the targets of hatred, not because of their inequality, but as a
result of their tendency towards a principle of separation.59 And she adds that
since Negroes and Chinese dont exhibit this principle of separation, even if they
may stand out more by their physical appearance and differ more from the
majority than the Jews, they are still less endangered politically.60 This claim
underscores previously discussed problems with Arendts categorization of the
public and private spheres. The fact that Negroes and Chinese often do stand
out by their physical appearance makes them targets of discrimination.
And while Arendt is concerned about Jewish political rights she also notes
that some Jews held racist attitudes towards Blacks. Arendt claims that Jews
58 BOT, 55.
59 BOT, 55.
60 BOT, 55.
OT,55. (See Arendts footnote 1) (My emphasis.)

OT,55. (See Arendts footnote 1)
OT,55. (See Arendts footnote 1)
67
adjusted to racism as well as everybody else and their behavior toward black
people was beyond reproach.61 Evidently political rights are not a prerequisite
for racist attitudes and behavior. Arendt also mentions the fact that no coalition
ever formed between blacks and Jews even though they were both the objects of
racial hatred. She states, they [Jews] cannot and will not make common cause
with the only other group which slowly and gradually is being won away from
race society: the black workers who are becoming more and more aware of their
humanity under the impact of regular labor and urban life.62
It is not clear exactly why Jews cannot and will not make a common cause
with black people, but it is clear that Arendt attributes black peoples growing
awareness of their humanity to labor and urban life. This latter assertion about
the Negro is not wholly correct. One need only look to the analyses of Sartre and
Fanon to learn that labor is often dehumanizing, particularly for the Negro who is
often subjected to the most menial forms of labor. But before taking up these
analyses of the Negro in relation to labor (or more specifically colonial labor) in
the coming chapters, I will now transition to Sartres and Fanons accounts of
race in the context of colonialism and the debate in Sartres Black Orpheus and
Fanons The Lived Experience of the Black.
61 BOT, 203. OT, 204.

62BOT, 205. OT, 205.
68
IV.
An Introduction to the Debate between Sartre and Fanon

Jean-Paul Sartres Orphee Noir, later translated under the title Black
Orpheus, was first published in 1948 as the preface to Leopold Senghors

Antholoaie de la nouvelle poesie neqre at malqache de lanaue francaise. an
important anthology of Negritude poetry.63 Frantz Fanon replied to Sartre with
Lexperience vecue du Noir, meaning The Lived Experience of the Black
which was published in Esprit in May of 1951.64 This essay later became the fifth
chapter of Fanons Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), translated Black Skin.
White Masks.65
In Black Skin. White Masks. Fanon is not only confronting
Sartres analysis of Negritude in Black Orpheus, he is also meeting head-on

Sartres analysis of race as it pertains to the Negro in Black Orpheus and as it
pertains to the Jew in Anti-Semite and Jew (1948). Towards that end, Fanon
claims that Sartres arguments about the Jewish experience are incompatible
with the lived-experience of the Negro.
In addition to these aspects of the Fanon/Sartre debate, I challenge the
claim by Sartre that we should reject the concept of race once an authentic race
consciousness is attained. To understand what Sartre is asserting and how
63 Jean-Paul Sartre, Orphee Noir, in Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et
malgache de langue frangaise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948). trans.
John MacCombie (Mass.: The Massachusetts Review, 1965), reprinted with minor
revisions as Black Orpheus," in Race. ed. Robert Bernasconi (Mass: Blackwell
Publishers, 2001). (page citations are to the original French article and the reprinted
version). Hereafter ON and BO respectively.
64 Frantz Fanon, Lexperience vecue du Noir, E sprif\9, no.179 (May 1951):
659-679. trans. Valentine Moulard, T h e Lived Experience of the Black in Race. ed.
Robert Bernasconi (Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 2001).
65 Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Seuil: Editions du Seuil, 1952).
trans. Charles Lam Markmann Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967).
(page citations are to the translated edition). Herafter BSWM.
69
Fanon is responding, we must first turn to Sartres analysis of race in Anti-Semite

and Jew, where we find Sartres controversial claim that the Anti-Semite creates
the Jew.
Fanon then examines the creation of the Negro and negotiates the
possibility of overcoming the myth of the Negro.
Both Sartre and Fanon
emphasize the importance of attaining race consciousness, however, they do not

emphasize the retaining of race consciousness. I will argue that once a positive
black race consciousness is acquired, it is worth conserving.
I will also argue in
favor of the collective memory of a race as an incentive for retaining race.

Although I am fully supportive of fighting racism, the assumption that we can
make racial categories disappear is a naive one only surpassed by the
assumption that eradicating race is the same as eradicating racism.
V.
The Creation of the Jew and the Negro

When I refer to the creation of the Jew and the Negro, I am referring to
the negative stereotypes and characteristics attributed to them.
I am not
asserting that the Jew would not exist without the anti-Semite or that the Negro
would not exist without the racist or the white man.
In Anti-Semite and Jew.
Sartre explains how the anti-Semite and his gaze create the Jew and influences
his behavior. Sartre states:
As soon as he [the Jew] steps outside, as soon as he encounters
others, in the street or in public places, as soon as he feels upon
him the look.. .that is a mixture of fear, disdain, reproach, and
70
brotherly love - he must decide: does he or does he not consent to

be the person whose role they want him to play?66
Under the gaze, everything the Jew does is measured against the stereotype of
the Jew.
This was magnified in Germany when Jews were forced to wear the
Yellow Star. The star, obligated him to feel himself perpetually Jewish in the
eyes of others.67 The star enhanced the gaze as a tool to objectify the Jew.
And when this analysis is borrowed to consider the situation of blacks, it
becomes evident that their skin serves as a yellow star.
Sartres in depth
account of the gaze in relation to the Negro comes in Black Orpheus, but it
differs from Anti-Semite and Jew in two main ways.
First, he is speaking of
whites and blacks rather than French whites and Jewish whites.68 Secondly, and
more importantly, he is speaking of the gaze from blacks to whites, not just vice
versa. He states, Here are black men standing, looking at us, and I hope that
you - like me - will feel the shock of being seen. For three thousand years, the
white man has enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen; he was only a
look69-...Today these black men are looking at us, and our gaze comes back to
our own eyes; in their turn...70 Through Negritude, the role of the gaze is
changing.
66 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew. trans. George Becker (New York:
Schocken, 1976),88-89. Hereafter ASJ.
67 ASJ, 76.
681say Jewish whites because in Black Orpheus Sartre describes the Jew as
a white man among white men. (ON, xiv. trans. BO, 118.)
69 ON, il etait regard pur, ix. trans. BO he was only a look, 115.
70 ON, ix. trans. BO, 115.
71
And although Sartre asserts that through Negritude white men are now
under the gaze of black men, Fanon expresses how the Negro experienced the
gaze in the absence of Negritude.
Fanon and Sartre are well aware that the
gaze has been a tool used by whites to inferiorize blacks. Fanon describes the
gaze of the Other as a force of fixation, the movements, the attitudes, the
glances of the other fixed me...71 Fanon claims that the black man experiences
his very being through the irresistible white gaze, the black man has no
ontological resistance to the eyes of the white man.72
Fanon explains, As long as the black man is among his own, he will have
no occasion, except in minor internal conflicts, to experience his being through
others.73 It is not until he encounters whites that he experiences the gaze of The
Other. When subjected to the gaze of whites the black man is made to
experience his being through The Other as inferior to The Other. Consequently
Fanon states, I progress by crawling. And already I am being dissected under
white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed."74
So we see how, according to Sartre and Fanon, the Jew and the Negro
are created in part by the white gaze.
Now lets look more closely at the
formation of racial concepts, particularly the creation of the Jew (as explained
by Sartre) and of the Negro (as explained by Fanon). In Anti-Semite and Jew
Sartre constantly refers to the Jewish race. Sartre does not define what race is,
71 BSWM,
72 BSWM,
73 BSWM,
74 BSWM,
109.
110.
109.
116.
72
but he does state what it is not.
He explains, If by race is understood that
indefinable complex into which are tossed pell-mell both somatic characteristics
and intellectual and moral traits, I believe in it no more than I do in ouija
boards.75 He does, however, assert that races imply racial inequalities, stating,
Is not race itself a pure vital value; ...the very idea of race implies that of
inequality?76
Although Sartre sees a correlation between race and racial
inequality, he neglects the importance of a more positive correlation between

race and collective memory.
Sartre asks if Jews dont have a historical community: what gives any
unity to this community? He answers, To reply to this question, we must come
back to the idea of situation. It is neither their past, nor their religion, nor their
soil that unites the sons of Israel. If they have a common bond, if all of them
deserve the name of Jew, it is because they have in common the situation of a
Jew, that is, they live in a community which takes them for Jews.77 Here it is
implied that the situation is given externally.
Adding to the externally given
aspects of the Jewish situation is the role of the inauthentic Jew. According to
Sartre, the anti-Semite takes advantage of the inauthentic Jew to forge a general
mythology of the Jew.78 Inauthentic Jews run away from their situation, choosing
to deny it. In fact this flight and denial characterize the inauthentic Jew. I must
emphasize the fact that Sartre has been criticized for these claims.
75 ASJ,
76 ASJ,
77 ASJ,
78 ASJ,
61.
119.
67.
92.
73
But the
notion of collective memory, which is mentioned by Sartre in Anti-Semite and

Jew as well as in Black Orpheus, could serve as an alternative for the Jew. If
Jews could be united by the collective memory of their experiences as Jews
including their past, their living history, and their future aims, then their situation
could be defined from within their community rather than externally.
But my focus is obviously not just on the Jews. While the inauthentic Jew,
on Sartres account, is running from his situation, Fanon explains how he is trying
to understand the black situation. Toward that end he states, I subjected myself
to
an
objective
examination,
I discovered
my
blackness,
my
ethnic
characteristics; I was battered by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency,

fetishism, racial defects, slave ships...79 Fanon is expressing his frustration with
the racist stereotypes of the Negro, particularly the colonized Negro, as a
backward savage.
Fanon, in an attempt to attain black race consciousness, is met at every
turn with negative stereotypes: the Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the
Negro is ugly.80 But these stereotypes are not a discovery of blackness. I read
Fanons account of the stereotypical Negro as a creation or construction of
blackness by whites.
The white man creates the Negro, as the anti-Semite
creates the Jew.81 Recall that Sartre asserted, Far from the experience
79 BSWM, 112.
80 BSWM, 113.
81 See Sartres ASJ.
74
producing the idea of the Jew, it is the latter which explained his experience. If
the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would create him.82
For Sartre, the question was not, What is a Jew? but What have you
made of the Jews?"83 Fanon is answering the question, what have you made of
the
Negro? The answer he offers is that theelements used to sketch this
schema of the Negro had been provided by the other, the white man, who had
woven him out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories.84 Fanon explains, in the
white world, A man was expected to behave like a man.
behave like a black man, or at least like a nigger.85
construction
of
blackness,
Negroes
are
I was expected to
Based on the white
savages,
brutes,
[and]
illiterates...[Fanon asserts,] there was a myth of the Negro that had to be

destroyed at all costs.86
VI.
Negritude, Authenticity, and Racelessness

Given this grim account of the formation of racial concepts, the question of
whether an authentic race consciousness is possible must be considered in order

to understand if and how the Jew and the Negro are able to transcend the
negative constructions of their races and attain a more positive construction.
Sartre presents authenticity as an option for the Jew, and both Sartre and Fanon
consider Negritude a tool of authenticity for the Negro, yet both overlook
82 ASJ, 13.
83 ASJ, 69.
84 BSWM, 111.
85 BSWM, 113.
86 BSWM, 117.
75
collective memory as a part of an ongoing positive construction of race.
But
before focusing on the notion of collective memory, lets examine the idea of
authentic race consciousness. Sartres notion of authenticity includes three main
ideas:
1)
having
consciousness
of
ones
situation,
2)
assuming
the
responsibilities and risks of the situation, and 3) claiming the situation along with
its positive and negative aspects.87 For the Jew, authenticity consists in
choosing oneself as Jew - that is, in realizing ones Jewish condition.88 The
authentic Jew also, chooses his brothers and his peers; they are the other
Jews...he accepts the obligation to live in a situation that is defined precisely by
the fact that it is unlivable; he derives his pride from his humiliation.89 Sartre
presents authenticity as a tool to render the anti-Semite impotent.
But how is such an authenticity achieved in the Negros case?
This
question brings us to Black Orpheus where Sartre analyzes Negritude and

highlights the differences between racial oppression and class oppression.
Sartre points out that, while both the white worker and the Negro are oppressed
by capitalism, the two experience this oppression in very different ways.
He
states, the black is a victim of it insofar as he is black and by virtue of being a

colonized native or a deported African. And since he is oppressed within the
confines of his race and because of it, he must first of all become conscious of
87 ASJ, 90.
88 ASJ, 136.
89 ASJ, 137.
76
his race...The negro cannot deny that he is negro, nor can he claim that he is
part of some abstract colorless humanity: he is black.90
Like the Jew, the Negro finds authenticity by realizing his situation, but he
uses Negritude as a mode of authenticity within this situation. Sartre explains
that the black man tries to offer other blacks a stellar image of their Negritude in
his attempt to convince them to embrace black consciousness. The Negro finds
this positive image of Negritude within his own soul.
guide) and a mirror (a reflection) of this Negritude.91
He is both a beacon (a
But again, for Sartre,
Negritude does not serve to establish a collective memory. Rather, it serves to

prepare blacks to become socialists.
He states, before black peasants can
discover that socialism is the answer to their immediate local claims...they must
think of themselves as blacks.92 And again, highlighting the difference between
race and class oppression Sartre reminds us that, the selfish scorn that whites
display for blacks...has no equivalent in the attitude of the bourgeois towards the
working class.93
What purpose does the contrast between blacks and whites serve? Such
contrasts often lead to a polarization of that which is contrasted and a hierarchy
of the characteristics on each side of the pole. For example, traits attributed to
Blacks are viewed as inferior to the attributes of their White counterparts. Recall
that Sartre discussed race in terms of inequality in Anti-Semite & Jew. Is Sartre
90 ON,
91 ON,
92 ON,
93 ON,
xiv.
xiv.
xiv.
xiv.
trans. BO, 118.

trans. BO, 119.
trans. BO, 119.
trans BO, 119.
77
reinforcing this polarization, and consequently the hierarchy? No, I dont believe
that is the case. I think Sartre is doing something very different. In the spirit of
Negritude he is taking traits that were considered negative for Blacks and
rethinking them as positive attributes. He is not only calling into question the
polarization; he is challenging the hierarchy. So it seems that Sartre has got it.
Finally, someone understands!
But lets not be hasty.
This understanding
reaches a turning point towards a raceless society.

Before taking up this turning point, I will examine Fanons account of
Negritude as a response to the creation of the Negro.
Fanon observes- after
slavery, and even in the face of colonization, rather than expressing remorse and
seeking forgiveness from blacks, whites continued to reject blacks. He exclaims:
What! When it was I who had every reason to hate, to despise, I was rejected?
When I should have been begged, implored, I was denied the slightest
recognition?
I resolved, since it was impossible for me to get away from an
inborn complex, to assert myself as a BLACK MAN.94 Although the Negro is

disdained in the white world, Fanon states, From the opposite end of the white
world a magical Negro culture was hailing me.95
Rather than trying to disprove the stereotypes created by whites, Fanon
embraces the stereotypes. Yes, we are - we Negroes - backward, simple, free
in our behavior. That is because for us the body is not something opposed to
94 BSWM, 115.
95 BSWM, 123.
78
what you call the mind.96 Fanon adds, T h e white man was wrong, I was not a
primitive, not even a half-man, I belonged to a race that had already been
working in gold and silver two thousand years ago.97 Recalling the greatness of
his history, Fanon states, I put the white man back into his place; growing
bolder, I jostled him and told him point-blank, Get used to me, I am not getting
used to anyone.98
But Fanon must sort out the analysis of Negritude in Black Orpheus
where Sartre reduces Negritude to a minor movement of a dialectical
progression and he adds, Negritude is for destroying itself, it is a passage and
not an outcome, a means and not an ultimate end.99
Sartre understands
Negritude as a means toward the end of achieving a raceless and classless

society. Through Negritude, blacks are able to realize black consciousness, at
which point they can join the greater" struggle against class oppression.
should note that the move to prioritize class oppression is not unique to Sartre.
Some, but certainly not all, of the Negritude poets, including Cesaire, also held
this position.100 (So in a sense, Fanon is responding to them as well.)
In response to Sartres account of Negritude, Fanon states, Help had
been sought from a friend of the colored peoples, and that friend had found no
96 BSWM, 126.
97 BSWM, 130.
98 BSWM, 131.
" O N , xli. trans. BO, 137.
100 The prioritization of class oppression is not entirely unproblematic because it
can minimize the significance of other forms of oppression including race and gender
oppression.
79
better response than to point out the relativity of what they were doing.101 Fanon
is denied an opportunity to gain black race consciousness through Negritude. He
explains, Jean-Paul Sartre, in his work, has destroyed black zeal...I needed to
lose myself completely in negritude...I needed not to know.102 He adds, What is
certain is that, at that very moment when I was trying to grasp my own being,
Sartre, who remained The Other, gave me my name and thus shattered my last
illusion.103
Consequently, Fanon falls back into the vicious cycle of searching for
meaning and once again he is subjected to and haunted by stereotypes of the
Negro, his odor, good nature, gullibility, et cetera.
meaning through whiteness and that failed.
Fanon attempted to find
He attempted to analyze his
heredity, and that failed, he attempted to analyze his ailment and that also failed.
Fanon states that he wanted to be a typical Negro and that was no longer
possible, he wanted to be white and that was a joke. What option is left for the
Negro? Both Sartre (and arguably Fanon) pursue a society without race. In a
raceless society it seems that a negative construction of race would not be
possible, but Sartre (and arguably Fanon) are more interested in moving beyond
the race question to focus on class oppression. Focusing first on Sartre, I will
investigate his argument that the Negro should reject race. I will also juxtapose
this position in Black Orpheus with his arguments in Anti-Semite and Jew.
Finally, I will explore where Fanon stands on this matter.
101 BSWM, 133.
102 BSWM, 135.
103 BSWM, 137.
80
In Black Orpheus Sartre supports the Negritude movement insofar as it

helps black consciousness.
But then the Negro must join the ranks of the
workers of the world in an effort to overcome class oppression. Again, Sartre is

not alone in holding this view. Like some Negritude poets, Sartre sees the Negro
as a potential soldier in the army for socialism.
This will require first the
discovery of blackness and then the elimination of racial differences. Sartre

states, ...it is in the bottom of his heart that the negro finds race, and he must
tear out his heart.104 Once black consciousness is realized, the Negro is then
unified with all the oppressed peoples together in the same struggle.105 This
same struggle is the class struggle and this unity within the class struggle is not
possible without erasing racial differences.
When the Negro asserts his solidarity with the oppressed of every color,
what was a subjective, existential, and ethnic notion of negritude becomes an
objective, positive, and precise notion of the proletariat.106 Sartre claims that the
notion of (and also by implication the struggle associated with) race does not mix
with the notion of class.
The two cannot mix because race is concrete and
particular while class is universal and abstract.107 But this is not the case of the
Negro worker for whom race and class are always already mixed. Why must the
black man strip himself of his blackness for the sake of joining the class
struggle?
This move by Sartre is too quick.
104 ON,
105 ON,
106 ON,
107 ON,
He seamlessly shifts from the
xliii. trans. BO, 138.

xiv. trans. BO, 118.
xl. trans. BO, 137.
xli. trans. BO, 137.
81
discovery of blackness to the rejection of race for the sake of the united pursuit of
a classless society.
Sartres claims seem all the more peculiar when we go back to his
analysis of the democrat and universal humanism in Anti-Semite and Jew.
Sartre criticizes the democrat who fails to see individuals. He sees humans but
ignores the Jewish man, the Negro man, the Chinese man, et cetera.
The
democrat offers a defense of the Jew, which saves the Jew as a man and
annihilates him as Jew.108 Sartre states, In his abstract liberalism, he [the
democrat] affirms that Jews, Chinese, Negroes ought to have the same rights as
other members of society, but he demands these rights for them as men, not as
concrete individual products of history.109 In what way does Sartres position in
Black Orpheus differ?
Sartre affirms the need for blacks to join the class
struggle, but denies them the opportunity to join that struggle as blacks.
Sartre also criticizes measures that aim at the liquidation of the Jewish
race.110 These are measures taken by the democrat to suppress the Jew for the
sake of the man. But Sartre explains, the man does not exist; there are Jews,
Protestants, Catholics; there are Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans; there are
whites, blacks, yellows. Sartre adds, In short, these drastic measures of
coercion would mean the annihilation of a spiritual community, founded on
custom and affection, to the advantage of the national community.111
108 ASJ,
109 ASJ,
110 ASJ,
111 ASJ,
56.
117.
144.
145.
82
Furthermore,
the Jews want to draw a legitimate pride from this community,
they must indeed end up by exalting racial qualities...112 These assertions in

Anti-Semite and Jew are not compatible with the raceless society discussed in
Black Orpheus.
Would Sartre say that once Jews have authenticity and
community they, like the Negro, must also renounce their Judaism in order to join
the class struggle? If he did would he be wrong to do so? I say yes.
I am taking the position that it is difficult enough to envision and attain an
authentic race consciousness (whatever that may entail) without having to
relinquish it for the class struggle. What I have in mind when I mention authentic
race consciousness is a positive consciousness of ones race developed from
within racial groups by its participating members rather than a racial identity
imposed upon groups from the outside. Developing a positive and authentic race
consciousness is an ongoing project.
And once this project is underway,
authentic race consciousness is something worth holding onto, in part because it

has been such a long time coming and it has been so difficult to attain.
My
arguments for holding onto racial identities, particularly black racial identities, will
be discussed in more detail in the next section of the chapter. But first I want to
consider Fanons position of retaining race.
Where does Fanon stand on this issue? Recall that in Black Skin, White
Masks, he wants to destroy the myth of the Negro. Does this mean that Fanon
must reject the notion of race altogether to achieve this aim? Not necessarily.
But we do see Fanon emphatically reject the significance of the past in the
112 ASJ, 85.
83
concluding chapter of Black Skin. White Masks. Fanon asserts that the Negro
makes himself abnormal and is a slave of the past. Rather than focusing on the
past and on race, Fanon shifts his attention back to class oppression against
workers. He states that it would be interesting to discover the past contributions
of Negroes, But I can absolutely not see how this fact would change anything in
the lives of the eight-year-old children who labor in the cane fields of Martinique
orGuadelope,113
Fanon reduces the significance of race, and perhaps denounces race
altogether. He explains that there are times when the Negro is locked (or sealed)
into his body (and by extension his race). But Fanon then references MerleauPonty and asserts that the body is no longer the structure of consciousness, it
has become an object of consciousness.114 Does this mean that the body no
longer seals the Negro in blackness? That remains to be seen. But we do see in
the concluding chapter that Fanon is no longer asserting himself as a Negro or
even as a BLACK MAN. Rather, he asserts, I am a man, and what I have to
recapture is the whole past of the world.115 Fanon even goes so far as to claim
that he has no right to be a Negro.116 And he renounces (at least the black and
white) race altogether when he states, The Negro is not.
No more than the
white man.117
113 BSWM,
114 BSWM,
115 BSWM,
116 BSWM,
117 BSWM,
230.
225.
226.
229.
231.
84
So it is now evident that both Sartre and Fanon move toward the
eradication of race, in my examination of Sartre and Fanon, I have discussed
the negative stereotypes used in the creation of the Jew and the Negro and
examined authenticity as a possible response. But then there is a giant leap by
Sartre (and arguably Fanon) to eliminate racial categories altogether.
Sartre
demonstrates this to the extent that he advocates a raceless society.
Fanon
demonstrates this to the extent that he agrees with Sartre and to the extent that
he denies the existence of the Negro and the white man.
VII.
Collective Memory: Conserving and Preserving Race

Sartre does not provide an adequate justification to eliminate racial
identities for the sake of the class struggle or for the sake of escaping the past. I
am arguing in favor of retaining race for two main reasons: conservation and
preservation.
I use the tern conservation to signify protection of black racial
identities from defeat, damage, and/or depletion. We must conserveTace in the

face of racism and racial oppression. But I use the term preservation to convey
the idea of sustaining black racial identities and the previously mentioned
concept of authentic race consciousness in theirs proper condition and protecting
this consciousness from future abuse.
I contend that even after attaining a
positive and authentic race consciousness, and even after the revolution, we
should preserve race against possible future assaults.
The idea of conserving race goes back to at least 1897 when William
Edward Burghardt Du Bois published what is now an American literary and
85
philosophical classic, The Conservation of Races.118 In this powerful essay he

presents a socio-historical notion of race and asserts that as Negroes living in the
raced and racist United States of America, it is imperative that we conserve our
race rather than allowing ourselves to become further divided, assimilated, or
amalgamated.
Even if one argues that his definition of race has been
successfully challenged (e.g. Anthony Appiah argues that Du Bois does not give
a socio-historical definition of race, his notion is still very much biological), I
contend that Du Bois arguments for the conservation of race remains in tact. In
the face of the systematic racial oppression against blacks, such as segregation
and Jim Crowism, Du Bois argues that we have a duty to conserve our race, at
least until a human brotherhood of all races has become a practical
possibility.119
Du Bois is writing to the Negro about the black experience in America
where we have been enslaved, oppressed, and subjugated through various
methods in the antebellum, post-slavery and reconstruction eras. Although Du
Bois is writing in a very different socio-historical context than Sartre and Fanon,
his argument still applies against the abolition of racial categories, particularly in
the face of racial oppression. In The Conservation of Races Du Bois explains
that the American Negro has a vested interest in the origins and destinies of
races, because most discussions of race have included assumptions about his
118 See W.E.B. Du Bois, The Conservation of Races, in The Souls of Black
Folk, ed. David Blight and Robert Gooding-Williams (New York: Bedford, 1997), vii.
Hereafter CR.
119 CR, 237.
86
natural abilities, and his political, intellectual, and moral status- assumptions he
felt were wrong.120 In an effort to avoid these negative constructions of the black
race, the Negro has attempted to deprecate and minimize racial distinctions and
spoken of an all-inclusive brotherhood as if it were an immediately achievable
possibility of an already dawning tomorrow.121
But Du Bois explains that in
our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human beings are divided into
races...122
According to Du Bois, Negro people in the US must realize that their destiny
is not absorption by the white American.123 In other words, our goal should not
beassimilation and amalgamation with whites.
Du Bois noted that it may be
objected that this attitude is impossible in America and our only hope is to lose
our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation.
In response to this
objection, Du Bois states that the Negro must ask himself: what, after all, am I?
Am I an American or am I a Negro?124 Du Bois concludes that we are both
American and Negroes:
We are Americans, by birth, citizenship, political ideals, language,
and religion. But our Americanism does not go further than that.
Beyond that point, we are Negroes...Our duty is to conserve our
physical powers, intellectual endowments, and our spiritual ideals.
As a race we must strive by race organization, race solidarity, race
unity to the realization of that broader humanity which freely
recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in
their opportunities of development.125
120 CR,
121 CR,
122 CR,
123 CR,
124 CR,
125 CR,
228.
229.
229.
233.
233-234.
234.
87
According to Du Bois, if we are to overcome inequality, we need race

organizations both for positive advance and for negative defense.126 Du Bois
admonishes us not to:
...deceive ourselves at our situation in this country: We are
weighted with a heritage of moral iniquity. We are hard pressed
economically by immigrants and by native prejudice. We are hated
here, despised there, and pitied everywhere. Our one haven of
refuge is ourselves. Our only means of advance is our own belief
in our great destiny, our own implicit trust in our ability and worth.127
But at the end of The Conservation of the Races Du Bois suggests that
the Negro may not always have a duty to conserve the race.
He states that
American Negroes have a duty to Maintain their race identity until this mission of
the Negro people is accomplished, and the ideal of human brotherhood has
become a practical possibility.128 Once we accomplish our mission to give our
message to humanity and to overcome inequality, and once we live in a society
of human brotherhood, then we are relieved of our obligation to conserve the
race. As with Sartre and Fanon, I am disagreeing with Du Bois on this point. I
am asserting that we must go a step beyond the conservation of race in the mist
if racial adversity and aim at developing a positive race consciousness even in
the absence of racial oppression.
In this sense we ought to preserving the
positive or authentic race consciousness for the sake of collective memory, that
is, for the sake of a shared remembrance of our past, our living history that we
create each day, and our future goals and aims.
126 CR, 235.

127 CR, 235.
128 CR, 237.
88
Attaining an authentic race consciousness is not a final destination

intended to preface a raceless society. On the contrary, it is an ongoing journey.
It is a consciousness that constantly develops by taking into account the past, the
present, and even future possibilities. When we realize the complex and arduous
task of developing an authentic race consciousness, rather than hastily moving to
reject race altogether; the importance of conserving and preserving race should
become more evident.
We cannot jump from aiming at an authentic race
consciousness to the goal of attaining a raceless society.

acknowledge
the
difficulty
involved
in
developing
an
We must first
authentic
race
consciousness before we can even imagine a society without racial oppression

or without race. And even if such a society is possible, I refuse to struggle to
discover and take up my racial identity in a positive way only to later deny it for
the sake of the class struggle or any other reason. For these reasons, I stand in
disagreement with proposals by Sartre, Fanon, and Du Bois to eliminate racial
categories altogether.
It is important to have a race consciousness that negates the negative
stereotypes and oppression that Jews and Blacks have endured historically and
continue to experience today.
This is necessary for the purpose of resisting
oppression and, even in the absence of racial oppression, for the purpose of a
maintaining the collective memory of a given race. In spite of the fact that the
Jew has been continually in exile as a stateless or rootless people, or that the
Negro has been scattered abroad by slave trade and colonization, they can
remain connected by their collective memory. In spite of the oppression we have
89
in common, we can also celebrate our resistance to oppression and the positive
history that has endured through the oppression. Even Sartre noted in Black
Orpheus: From one end of the earth to the other, blacks- separated by
languages, politics and the history of their colonizers- have a collective memory
in common.129 What would come of the collective memory of black people in a
society that erases race? This collective memory, a source of heritage and even
resistance and empowerment, becomes endangered.
129 ON, xxxvii. trans. BO, 134.
90
Chapter Three: The Violent System of Colonialism
Having examined Sartres, Fanons, and Arendts concepts of race and

racial oppression, and making a case for conserving and preserving race for
collective memory in chapter two, in this chapter I examine the political, racial,
economic, and violent aspects of colonialism as presented in Arendt, Sartre and
Fanon. My central objective is to expose the violence required to establish and
maintain colonialism and to lay the foundation for the argument that revolutionary
violence is a justified method defending oneself against this violent system.
While Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon all identify the role of race, economics, and
violence within this system, their analyses do not lead them to the same
conclusions. As in the previous chapter, I start with an analysis of Arendt and
then turn to Sartre and Fanon. I begin by arguing that Arendts limited account of
the political, including the exclusion of economics from the political realm, is also
operating in her analysis of colonialism. I then focus on Arendts account of how
racism has been used in attempts to justify colonialism, as well as her description
of racism as a form of violence. Finally, I focus on Arendts acknowledgement of
the central role of violence in the colonial system.
I argue that Arendt has a
biased critique of violence because she reveals the role of violence in

colonization without criticism, yet she is very critical of Sartre and Fanon for
advocating revolutionary violence.
In the latter portion of the chapter, I examine the viewpoints of Sartre and
Fanon who argue that we need to see colonialism as a violently oppressive
system. I begin with Sartres labeling of Europeans as oppressors who are all
91
responsible for the crimes of colonization. I then turn to the contradictions within
Western humanism, particularly as it pertains to the Europeans oppression of
African natives, and the characterization of the settler and the native within the
colonial world.
I also explore Sartres account of the establishment of the
colonial system, economic super-exploitation, and violence in the form of racism,

culture-killing, and military force.
The dehumanizing violence required to
establish and maintain colonialism is central to the argument that the colonized
natives are justified in using revolutionary violence to defend themselves against
colonialism and to regain their humanity. This will be a point of transition into
chapter four on revolutionary violence.
I.
Politics, Economics, and Imperialism

It is in Part Two of The Origins of Totalitarianism, especially chapters five
through seven, that Arendt gives her attention to imperialism as it relates to

bourgeois economics, the political realm, racism, and violence. In her analysis,
Arendt differentiates between colonialism and imperialism. According to Arendt,
the period of imperialism dates from 1884 to 1914, between the scramble for
Africa and the pan-movements. The political ideals of imperialism, which has
expansion as a permanent and supreme aim of politics, grew out of
colonialism.1
According to Arendt, the difference between colonialism and
imperialism is one that has been neglected along with distinctions such as the
1 OT, 125 and OT, xvii.
92
difference between Commonwealth and Empire, plantations and possessions,

and colonies and dependencies.2
Arendt
differentiates
between
colonialism,
or colonial
trade,
and
imperialism. When she speaks of colonial trade, she has in mind the European
colonization of America and Australia, and when she speaks of imperialism, she
has in mind the expansion of European countries into Africa and Asia and the
racism, exploitation, and violence that was entailed therein.
For Arendt,
colonialism involved more of an extension of the laws and ideals of the mother
country into the colonial territory, while imperialism often denied the extension of
these laws, denied efforts at assimilating the foreign country, and focused on
economic expansion for the mother country at the expense of the conquered
country through racist ideologies and through violence. Although Arendt, for the
most part, is analyzing what she calls imperialism, when I refer to Sartres and
Fanons analyses I will retain the use of the term colonialism since that is the
term most often used by them. When I use the term colonialism, I have in mind
what Arendt describes as imperialism.
Arendts analysis of imperialism is not so much inspired by her interest in
the oppressive system as it is by her concern with the rise of imperialism as a
precursor to the rise of totalitarianism. For Arendt, the period of imperialism was
a preparatory stage for the coming catastrophes of totalitarianism.3 Arendt
blames totalitarianism for collapsing the public and private realms, explaining that
2 OT, 131.
3 BOT, 123. OT, 123.
93
the totalitarian movement claimed to have abolished the separation between

private and public life and to have restored a mysterious irrational wholeness in
man.4 Arendt associates both imperialism and totalitarianism with bourgeois
political attitudes.
She states, ...imperialist ideologies and totalitarian
movements, betray a surprisingly strong affinity with the political attitudes of

bourgeois society...5 Arendt describes bourgeois political philosophy as
totalitarian in so far as it always assumed an identity of politics, economics and
society, in which political institutions served only as the facade for private
interests.6 She is critical of bourgeois political philosophy because it brought
private concerns and economics into the public sphere.
Here we see the early stages of Arendts argument for the public and
private distinction and the exclusion of economics from the public realm. She
later builds on this argument in The Human Condition and The Social Question
from On Revolution, both of which were discussed at length in chapter one. In
Origins. Arendt asserts that the bourgeois blurred the distinction between politics
and economics, not because of their interest in politics, but because they needed
politics to overcome the national limitations of economic growth and expansion.
Towards that end, they situated economic expansion as a central political goal of
foreign policy.7 The emphasis on expansion as the primary political goal is, for
Arendt, the main idea of imperialism.
4 BOT-328. OT, 336

5 BOT, 156. OT, 156.
6 BOT, 329. OT, 336
7 BOT, 126. OT, 126.
94
Recall that in chapter one I argued against Arendts critique of economics

and poverty as the driving force for revolutions, along with her general position
that economics should be excluded from the public realm.
However, the
separation of economics and politics in the Origins seems more appealing

because Arendt asserts that the denial of this separation is one of the
characteristics of imperialism. But it would be hasty to accept the exclusion of
economics from the political realm strictly on the basis that blurring the lines
between economics and politics is characteristic of imperialism.
Such an
exclusion is virtually impossible anyway, and even if it were possible, this division
is certainly not a guarantee against the rise of imperialism, colonialism, or even
totalitarianism. Arendt herself argues that the adoption of economic growth as a
political aim of government was not the only factor in the rise of imperialism, it
was one factor accompanied by numerous others. In what follows I will address
some of the other factors that led to the rise of imperialism.
Arendt explains that various national governments were hesitant towards
the growing tendency to transform business into a political issue and to identify
the economic interests of a relatively small group with national interests as
such.8 So governments were left to choose between exporting their power in an
effort to import more wealth or to sacrifice a large part of their national wealth.
They chose the former over the latter.
Although there was an expansion of
economic interests and an exportation of national power into other countries,

there was not an expansion of citizenship and exportation of the legal rights and
8 BOT, 136. OT, 136.
95
liberties that citizenship may have entailed. The laws and rights of citizens in the
mother country did not accompany the colonizers and their national instruments
of violence into the countries of Africa.
It was not the intent of European countries to extend these rights and
liberties to the natives of Africa. And while some, like Sartre, rightly see this as a
denial of positive rights for the natives; Arendt describes this as a refusal on the
part of Europeans to impose their laws on foreign territory.
According to
Arendt, such an imposition could only be done with a clear conscience if the
conquering nation had a conviction that their law was superior to that of the
barbarians.9 This claim misses the point. The issue was not imposing laws,
because that was already done through the colonial system; it was a matter of
denying the rights that should accompany the transference of laws.
The seriousness of this misunderstanding becomes clearer when Arendt
points to Frances colonization of Algeria and what she describes as their refusal
to impose their laws on Arab people. She states, They [the French] continued
rather to respect Islamic law and granted their Arab citizens personal status,
producing the nonsensical hybrid of a nominally French territory...10 But the
French were not choosing not to impose their laws on the Arabs, rather they
were choosing not to extend their rights to the Arabs.
In a sense they had
already imposed much more than their laws on the Arabs insofar as they had
imposed their might in the form of oppressive colonialism.
And far from
9 BOT, 126. OT, 126.
10 BOT, 127. OT, 127.

96
respecting Islamic law, the French instituted new colonial rule in Algeria that
destroyed Islamic laws, language, and culture.
Arendt notes that there was a conflict of interest between government
representatives in the mother country and colonizers who are described by
Arendt as colonial administrators. The colonial administrators did not think they
should have to justify their actions towards the colonized to their government at
home. French colonists either put pressure on French appointed governors or
simply refused to carry out reforms in the treatment of the colonized, which were
allegedly inspired by the weak democratic principles of (their) government.11
But Arendt asserts that these sentiments from the colonizing administrators were
perfectly right because they understood that if the conquered people were able
to follow the laws of the conquering nation, it would end (as it did) with the
peoples rise to nationhood and the defeat of the conqueror.12 According to
Arendt, French methods of empire building failed because they attempted to
extend some of the rights of French citizens to the colonized, which only led them
to desire their own nationhood and overtake their conquerors.
But for Arendt, it is not a positive undertaking for the colonized rise to
nationhood and demand independence from the oppressors. It only points to the
shortcomings of Frances methods.
If the methods and the motives used for
imperialism had been along the same lines as Rome and Alexander the Great,
Arendt asserts that the events that followed, i.e. the events of mass exploitation
11 BOT, 134. OT, 134. In footnote 32 Arendt states that these are the
words of Leon Cayla, former governor of Madagascar.
12 BOT, 134. OT, 134.
97
and oppression, would have been more humanly tolerable.13 In other words,
Arendt is again articulating prioritization of the political over economics. If the
purpose of imperialism had been empire building, in the sense that the
conquering government was aiming at spreading its form of government and
politics abroad, the oppression required to do so would have been acceptable.
But since imperialism was largely an economic venture, and partly an attempt at
acquiring more military force, the oppressive means used to achieve these
economic and defensive ends were not as tolerable to Arendt.
11.
Racism and the Oppressors Violence

In the Origins Arendt explores how race-thinking and racism against
Africans during imperialism was eventually used against Jews (as well as Asians
and Indians), turning the formerly social phenomenon of anti-Semitism into the
political phenomenon of Jew-hatred.
According to Arendt, it was not race-
thinking but the new era of imperialism that gave rise to racism. She suggests
that race thinking might have disappeared if it were not for the scramble for
Africa and the rise of imperialism. Since imperialism needed justification, Arendt
claims that racism would have been invented even in the absence of racethinking to provide an explanation and excuse for its deeds.14 Arendt adds,
13 BOT, 132. OT, 132.

14 BOT, 184. OT, 184.
98
Since, however, race-thinking did exist, it proved to be a powerful help to

racism.15
In addition to discussing the role of racism in the establishment of the
colonial system, Arendt also acknowledges racism as a form of violence.
(Unfortunately, she does not follow this argument to the same conclusions as
Sartre and Fanon.) To provide an example of violent racism, Arendt cites the
Boers who were Dutch descendants stationed at the Cape and outnumbered by
the black natives. The Boers decided to address this problem through violent
racism and enslavement of the natives. Arendt explains, Race was the Boers
answer to the overwhelming monstrosity of Africa - a whole continent populated
and overpopulated by savages...16 But massacres of Africans quickly resulted
from the use race, or rather racism, to answer to the question concerning the
savages of Africa.17 Racism introduced massacre as an acceptable policy for
handling foreign affairs.
But Arendt,
perhaps
unintentionally,
excuses
Europeans use of violent racism against Africans when she asserts that Africans
were, natural human beings who lacked the specifically human character, the
specifically human reality, so that when European men massacred them they
somehow were not aware that they had committed murder.18 She further plays
down the heinous nature of these violent massacres of Africans by Europeans
when she states that Africans had already been killing themselves. She claims,
15 BOT,
16 BOT,
17 BOT,
18 BOT,
184.
185.
185.
192.
OT,
OT,
OT,
OT,
184.
185.
185.
192.
99
relying on accounts given by C. W. De Kiewiet and Selwyn James, that the

senseless massacre of native tribes on the Dark continent was quite in keeping
with the traditions of these tribes themselves.19
In addition to downplaying the massacres of Africans on the basis that
they were already killing themselves, Arendt also suggests that violent racism is
an acceptable instrument to use against Africans, but not against Asians and
other groups, particularly Jews. She states that racism was first used against
Africans and then spread to Asians and other groups. But for Arendt, the crime
of racism was not what was done to Africans, because that was natural and
comprehensible. Arendt found it incomprehensible that the same racism was
extended towards non-Africans because in thelatters case, they should have
known better. So racism isunderstandable whenexercisedagainst theAfrican
savages who had frightened Europeans literally out of their wits, but for Arendt,
there could be no excuse and no humanly comprehensible reason for treating
Indians and Chinese as though they were not human beings.20
Arendt also addresses the relationship between racism and violence in On
Violence, stating that racism is fraught with violence by definition because it
objects to natural organic facts - a white or black skin - which no persuasion or
power could change...21 She also asserts that violence in interracial struggle is
always murderous and furthermore, violence is a logical and rational
19 BOT, 192.
20 BOT, 206.
21 OV, 172.
OT, 192.
OT, 206.
100
consequence of racism.22 This is a significant claim by Arendt because she

maintains that, contrary to popular belief, violence is often very rational and
calculated.
Though people may choose to believe that the murderous and
destructive nature of violence is thoughtless and irrational, the opposite is more

often the case.
But it is precisely the claim by Arendt that violent racism is
rational and calculated
that makes racism even more
intolerable and
unacceptable. Contrary to Arendts account, violent racism was not a just result
of the Europeans fear of Africans, it was the direct result of their aims at
controlling, subjugating, and exploiting Africans. And violent racism is no more
acceptable when launched against Africans than it is when launched against
Asians or Jews, for they are all human beings.
Arendt seems exposes the use of violence in the form of racism against
Africans and this supports my argument that Arendt was aware of the violence
used to establish and maintain the colonial system, and yet she was not as
critical of the oppressors violence as she proves to be of revolutionary violence.
Not only does Arendt acknowledge racism as a form of violence, she also
recognizes that imperialism was only achievable through violence in the form of
military presence in colonial territories. Arendt correctly noted:
Only through the expansion of the national instruments of violence
could the foreign-investment be rationalized, and the wild
speculations with superfluous capital, which
had provoked
gambling of all savings, be reintegrated into the economic system
of the nation.23
22 OV, 173.
23 BOT, 136. OT, 136.
101
This assertion is significant because it demonstrates Arendts awareness of the

violent methods used to establish and maintain the colonial system. Arendt is
even aware of the consequences of the use of violence for imperialist aims. She
states that a major consequence of the exportation of the tools of violence, i.e.
the police and the army, was that they no longer had any political or national
limitations on how they were used and executed in foreign lands.
Arendt
explains that the framework of the nation and national institutions that controlled
the police and the army within the nation were now separated from them,
allowing them to give violence much more latitude in backwards regions without
industries and political organization than would have been given in a Western
country.24 Arendt also explains:
[T]he state employed administrators of violence soon formed a new
class within the nations and, although their field of activity was far
from the mother country, wielded an important influence on the
body politic at home. Since they were actually nothing but
functionaries of violence they could only think in terms of power
politics.25
They were the first to claim that power was the essence of every political
structure.
But Arendt asserts that this predominance of violence and the
discovery of power as a basic political reality was nothing new because violence
has always been the ultima ratio in political action and power has always been
the visible expression of rule and government.26
24 BOT, 136. OT, 136.

25 BOT, 137. OT, 137.
26 BOT, 137. OT, 137.
102
Once again we are confronted with Arendts bias concerning violence. So

far Arendt revealed the role of violence in the private sphere to master necessity
(HC, 31). She also claimed that it is a terrible truth that only violence and rule
over others can make some men free (SQ, 114).
In the Origins she has
acknowledged the major role of violence in the colonial system. Now she has
claimed that violence is the ultima ratio of political action (OT, 137). And while
Arendt describes all of these modes of violence without criticism, she has
denounced the violence involved in the French Revolution and the Black Power
movement. Even more noteworthy is Arendts critique of revolutionary violence
in the context of decolonization, and her criticism of Sartre and Fanon for
endorsing it, which will be examined in detail in the final chapter.
III.
A De-Humanizing Humanism
While Arendts account of imperialism focuses more on the problematic
incorporation of economic expansion into the European political agenda, and

excuses for what motivated the actors, Sartres and Fanons accounts of
imperialism and colonialism prove to be much more critical.
They require
accountability from Europeans for their deliberatively oppressive actions rather

than providing excuses for racist behavior as a natural reaction to encounters
with Africans. For example, Sartres preface to The Wretched of the Earth is, in
part, an admonition to Europeans to see themselves as oppressors who are
responsible for the conditions of the colonized and to see the concrete facts of
103
colonialism. He warns that reading Fanons book will require courage on the part
of Europeans because the book exposes the contradictions of Western
humanism. Rather than hiding behind the mask of Western civilization, Sartre
attempts to evoke shame in Europeans as a revolutionary sentiment stating,
Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you
ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment.27
Sartre also promotes an idea of group responsibility for the colonial
situation, leaving no one absolved of blame and responsibility. He claims, You
know well enough that we are exploiters because gold and metals and other
resources have been brought back to Europe from colonized countries.28
Evidence of European guilt can be found in its palaces, cathedrals, and great
industrial cities. Sartre asserts that they are all guilty of colonization because
they have all profited from it.
He reminds France of the wars, murders and
tortures of Africans and he condemns the silence and complicity of Europeans

when it comes to confronting oppression and colonialism.
Like Black Orpheus (the preface to Senghors collection of Negritude
poetry) Sartres preface here begins with an analysis of the creation of the
colonized by the colonizers. He points to the fact that the European elite set out
to manufacture a native elite, and to their surprise the native elite began to think
on their own and reject the European notion of humanism, which was full of
contradictions. According to Sartre, the colonized are saying You are making
27Frantz Fanon, The Wretched o f the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 14.
This quote is from Sartres preface. (Hereafter WE)
28 WE, 25.
104
us into monstrocities; your humanism claims that we are one with the rest of
humanity but your racist methods set us apart.29 He exposes the contradictions
in humanism, some of which were previously discussed in Black Orpheus and
Anti-Semite and Jew. He also asserts that European humanism is nothing but an
ideology of lies and European values are stained with blood.30 According to
Sartre, With us there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since
the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and
monsters.31
Whereas Sartre points out the contradictions of Western humanism to
Europeans, Fanon explains that the contradictions of Western values are quite
obvious to the colonized. He asserts:
The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed
and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these
values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that,
in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are
mentioned in front of him.
The colonized laugh in mockery because they have seen and experienced the
contradictory nature of these so-called values in their daily interactions with the
settler and by living in a divided colonial world.
29 WE,
30 WE,
31 WE,
32 WE,
8.
25.
25.
43.
105
IV.
Characterizing the Settler and the Native in the Divided Colonial World
According to Fanon the colonial world is a world that is very much
segregated and divided into two zones.
And although the two zones are
opposed to one another, they still follow the principle of reciprocal exclusivity.33
The settlers town is strongly built, brightly lit, and clean with a good
infrastructure. The people there are well clothed and fed. In contrast, the town
inhabited by the colonized people is described as the Negro village, the medina,
the reservation.34 Fanon adds, it is a place of ill fame peopled by men of evil
repute.35 There is very little space, because men to live together in close
quarters. Rather than having strong and sturdy houses, the colonized live in huts
that are practically on top of one another. The inhabitants are barely clothed and
suffering from hunger.
According to Fanon, The native town is a crouching
village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire. It is a town of dirty
niggers and dirty Arabs.36 Two distinct species, the colonizer and the colonized
inhabit the two zones of the colonial world.
And Fanon asserts that the
destruction of the colonial world will mean the replacing of a certain species of
men by another species, and this requires the complete abolition of one
zone.37
In other words, the colonized species will destroy the colonizers
species, and there will be an elimination of the colonizers zone.
33 WE,
34 WE,
35 WE,
36 WE,
37 WE,
39.
39.
39.
39.
35 and 41.
106
Fanon analyzes the role of the settler in the colonial situation. He explains
that the settlers role is simply to exploit and oppress the colonized.38 The settler
justifies his presence by the ceaseless need to transport raw materials. While he
makes history, it is history for his mother country (his homeland), not for the
country he plunders.39 The settler is constantly contrasted with the native,
representing everything the colonized are not and can never be.
Unlike the
settler, the colonized are characterized in the colonial world as the quintessence
of evil, they are insensible to ethics, and they are both the absence and the
negation of values. Fanon asserts that the colonized are portrayed as the enemy
of values; through them values become poisoned and diseased. Furthermore,
Fanon describes how the colonized are perceived as ugly and immoral, they are
the collection of wicked powers, and the instruments of blind forces.
Under the colonial system the colonized are taught to stay in their place
and within their limits. They are always on alert and always presumed guilty. But
Fanon assures readers that they do not accept this guilt and they admit no
accusation.40 The colonized are able to see that these stereotypes are not
accurate.
While treated as inferiors, the colonized are not convinced of this
inferiority.41 The colonized recognize that they can only escape the immobility of
colonization by putting an end to the history of colonization and pillage.42 They
38 WE,
39 WE,
40 WE,
41 WE,
42 WE,
36.
51.
53.
53.
51.
107
also recognize that they must be the agents that bring the history of the nation
and the history of decolonization into existence.43
And yet, the colonized experience some tension in their thinking about the
settlers. While the colonized man recognizes that the settler must be defeated,
he is also envious of the settlers world and he dreams of putting himself in the
settlers place.44 Fanon explains that the colonized man is an oppressed person
whose dream it is to become the persecutor.45 But we should not think this
strange.
It is not unusual for the oppressed to begin to take on some of the
characteristics of the oppressor. Fanon explains that this dualism between the
colonizers and the colonized, dehumanizes the colonized.
The colonizer (often referred to as the settler by Fanon) and the colonized
are expected to play specific roles and each of them is in a particular situation.
In Colonialism as a System Sartre explains that the colonists, their children, and
even their grandchildren have been greatly influenced by colonialism, so much
so that they think, speak, and act according to colonial principles. Sartre then
makes the very important assertion that the colonist is fabricated like the native;
he is made by his function and his interests.46 This is particularly interesting for
two reasons; first because Sartre is asserting that both the colonizer and the
colonized are fabricated, and second because this notion of fabrication puts us in
remembrance of the idea presented in Anti-Semite and Jew that the Jew is
43 WE, 51.
44 WE, 52.
45 WE, 53.
46 CS, 44. (My emphasis.)
108
created by the anti-Semite. Only here, in the colonial situation, the colonized
seem to be created by the colonizer, while the colonizers function and his
interests create (or fabricate) him.
The colonizers function and interests also cause him to be divided. He is
divided between his homeland (France) and his colonial country (Algeria).
Furthermore his economic interests and the exploitation and oppression required
to pursue those interests come into conflict with the political institutions of
France, i.e. bourgeois democracy founded on liberal capitalism...the right to
vote, to free association and freedom of the press.47 So, Sartre characterizes
the colonialist as double and contradictory.
He simultaneously exploits the
colonized by using oppressive methods and he accepts the rights of French

institutions for himself, even if they can only be enjoyed in France and among the
French.48 And yet, Sartre adds, he detests the token universality of French
institutions. Precisely because they apply to everyone, the Algerians could claim
these rights.49 His willingness to deny the colonized the very rights he enjoys in
his homeland leads him toward secessionist tendencies.
He is not willing to
allow his homeland to distribute these rights to the colonized in his country.
47 CS, 44.
48 CS, 44.
49 CS, 45.
109
V.
Colonialism in its Beginning Stages

In Colonialism as a System, Sartre sets out to debunk the myths spread
by neocolonialists that the colonial problem in Algeria is economic, social, and

psychological.
He asserts, The fact is that colonization is neither a series of
chance occurrences nor the statistical result of thousands of individual

undertakings. It is a system which was put in place around the middle of the
nineteenth century, began to bear fruit in about 1880, started to decline after the
First World War, and is today turning against the colonized nation.50 He adds
that the clearest example of this system is in Algeria, which is the primary
example of colonialism used by Sartre and Fanon.
According to Sartre, colonialism began with the exportation of the poorest
peasants of France and Spain into Africa.
Behind these peasants came the
unemployed workers who were sent to Algeria. Out of 20, 000 laborers, most of
them died and the remainder of them were repatriated.51 But the colonial empire
was not to be based on exportation of Europes least wanted.
It found its
beginning in violent colonial war and conquest along with initial uncertainty.
Sartre explains that at first France did not know what to do with the newly
acquired conquest of Algeria. It was not until 1880 that any regular practice was
defined and put in place concerning the conquest of Algeria. In the mean time,
there were conflicting messages and interactions between the European
invaders and the Muslim inhabitants, the Muslim still had to be respected, and
50 CS, 31.
51 CS, 32.
110
subdued, and their slightest murmurs of revolt had to be suppressed.52 Overall

the Muslim was treated as other than man.53
Sartre explains that in general, the Muslims were at first more likely to be
exterminated than employed and their economic, social, and cultural systems
quickly came to ruin.
The colonizers used repression, division tactics, and
dispossession, all of which destroyed feudal structures and transformed this

backward but structured society into an atomized crowd, and, before long, into
an agricultural sub-proletariat.54 According to Sartre, What this implies is that
the colonial system, as an infernal machine which was to develop its own
contradictions right up to a final explosion, corresponded to the objective needs
of the French capitalists in general, but contradicted many particular interests.55
As a result of these contradictions, there was a need to promote the idea and the
system of colonialism.
Sartre explains that this was not an overnight
achievement, rather it took patient efforts to impose the colonial system and
these efforts included the use of propaganda, an emphasis on the victories in the
colonial wars to wipe out the memory of defeats, and an emphasis on the initial
advantages to be gained.
Sartre also noted that for the French, armed victory was not enough; it had
to be renewed daily and then institutionalized so that it could become
52 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume One. trans. Alan
Sheridan-Smith, ed. Jonathan Ree (New York: Verso, 1991), 715. Hereafter CDR.
53 CDR, 715.
54 CDR, 716. I do not approve of Sartres description of Algerians/Muslims as
backwards .
55 CDR, 716.
111
economically profitable.
The colonist had a need that was to be met in the
exploitation of the colonized.
And according to Sartre, it is precisely the
colonialists need for the super-exploited and the colonized that transformed the
wasteful, uncontrolled violence of the colonial conquests into economic,
controlled violence.56 Sartre is demonstrating that the colonial wars were marked
by violence, but at first this violence had no particular aim or purpose other than
conquest.
As the direction of the conquest became clearer - aiming at
institutionalizing colonialism, the direction of violence also became clearer aiming at controlling and exploiting the natives.
VI.
Colonialism as Economic Super-Exploitation

Although the objectives of colonization may have been uncertain at first,
its goals and aims were eventually articulated in economic terms. This was due
in part, Sartre explains, to the influence of Jules Ferry. The methodology used to
institute colonialism was to overcome resistance, smash the existing framework,
subdue, terrorize, and then put the new economic system in place.57 Sartre
provides these details at length in both Colonialism as a System and the
Critique. Based on the economic plan provided by Jules Ferry, capital was to
remain in France and to be invested in new industries that would sell their
56 CDR, 727.
57 CS, 33.
112
manufactured products to the colonized country.58
So one aspect of the
economic system of colonialism was to create a consumer base in the colonized

country in which France would have a monopoly on the market. But in order to
create consumers in the colonized country, spending power also had to be
created. In other words, to be able to buy, the colonizer also had to be able to
sell. In order to establish spending power in the colonies, land was stolen and a
labor force was created to manufacture goods that could be sold to the mother
country at lower than global rates. Consequently, the land was stolen from the
Algerians and placed in the possession of the colonizers.
European land
ownership increased at the expense of Algerian land ownership.

This transference of land was accomplished by various methods. Sartre
explains that any resistance by Algerians became an excuse to confiscate land.59
The divide and conquer method was also used. Collective tribal property was
converted into individual properties, which was then bought from the individuals
for peanuts.
The shift in land ownership over the course of 100 years is
astounding. Sartre explains, in just a century the Algerians were dispossessed of

two-thirds of their land by the French.60 This transference of land ownership
accomplished two main objectives, it created purchasing power for the
colonizers, and it enabled the colonizers to sell the fruits of the stolen land to the
French markets at lower prices.
58 CS, 33.
59 CS, 35.
60 CS, 36.
113
The exchange of land and establishment of the colonial system had

devastating consequences. Sartre explains that the tearing down of the old tribal
society was systematically encouraged to suppress resistance from the colonized
and to replace their collective strength with individualism, and to create a new
labor force in the colonies.61 According to Sartre, the same Algerians who once
owned and worked their own land were made into slaves for the new European
owners. And if that were not problematic enough, Algerians were also denied the
opportunity to consume or even purchase the goods of the land. Sartre explains
that Algerians are not and cannot be the colonists consumers because the
produce of the land is intended for French consumption.
Additionally, the
colonists must export the produce to the French market to be able to import other
products from the French market. Another consequence of this system is that
the needs of the colonized are sacrificed for the French. Land that was once
used to grow cereals for the Algerian market was converted into land for grapes
and wine production.
In addition to stealing the land, the colonizers stole the
methods of producing the food to feed the Algerian people. And as the rate of
food production has decreased, birth rates have increased, creating a cycle in
which Algerians are born into poverty to live as slaves and then die of hunger.62
According to Sartre, this is a demonstration of the colonial systems vigor.
For ninety percent of Algerians, colonial exploitation is both methodical and
rigorous insofar as they are expelled from their land, restricted to unproductive
61 CS, 36.
62 CS, 37.
114
soil, obligated to work for derisory wages, and discouraged from revolt by fear of
unemployment.63 Sartre explains that the ploy of the colonizers is to occupy the
country, take the land, exploit the former owners as a source of cheap labor,
through mechanization make even cheap labor too expensive, and then deny the
native even the right to work.64
Sartre asserts, the colonial system is
pitiless...the whole French project in Algeria has been carried out for the profit of
the colonists.65
Sartre builds on this analysis in Critique of Dialectical Reason where he
explains that ...The colonial goal was to produce and to sell food to the
metropolitan power at less than world rates and that the means of achieving this
goal was the creation of a sub-proletariat of the desolate and the chronically
unemployed...66 Having already described the details of the methodology used
in Colonialism as a System Sartre is able to focus on other economic aspects of
colonialism in the Critique, such as colonialism as a process of super
exploitation.
Sartre explains how the colonial operation was executed with
partnerships between merchants who depended on military authorities to destroy

all structures which might permit regroupment or resistance.67 These colonial
merchants were accomplices of the French who kept up the appearance of a
locally-based sovereignty while exploiting an impoverished, impotent mass,
63 CS, 39.
64 CS, 39.
65 CS, 40.
66 CDR, 717.
67 CDR, 717.
115
which had been reduced to a molecular statute.68 Sartre also explains that in a
colonized country, the pauperization of the masses destroyed the structures of
the old society, and removed the means for reconstructing another, based on
different structures and on different relations of sociality.69 Sartre describes the
colonial system as:
...an infernal machine of the practico-inert field [that] became the
undertaking of the French through its institutional groups... through
a new form of imperialism based on new politics (involving new
relations between individuals and public powers), through the
systematic, concerted destruction of a community and, of course,
the installation of a new mechanism of exploitation (new
colonialists) by appropriate organizations (banking, credit systems,
government favors, etc.).70
For Sartre, colonialism is partly a byproduct of the greed of capitalism. It is like
taking the methods used to pauperize feudal society in Europe and pushing them
to the extreme when used against non-Europeans. Sartre asks, If the bourgeois
was a man, while the worker, his compatriot, was merely sub-human, how could
an Algerian, a distant enemy, be anything but a dog?71
And this abusive
treatment of others is not to be attributed to the colonizers superiority, but rather

to inferiority and to the revolving brutality which so clearly characterized
capitalism in its origins.72 Sartre describes the bourgeois as both products and
agents of capitalism.73
68
69
70
71
72
73
CDR,
CDR,
CDR,
CDR,
CDR,
CDR,
717.
722.
717-718
718.
719.
719.
According to Sartre there are two aspects of colonial praxis, i.e.

oppression and exploitation, which complement one another. Once this process
of oppression and exploitation is installed, the colonizer does not have to force
the colonized to work for starvation wages, there is now a deceptive system of
free contract by which competitive antagonisms between the natives forces them
to accept or even propose the lowest wages.74 This process of exploitation is
possible because the communities and cultures of the colonized have been
destroyed and they have been atomized.
Colonialism aims at reducing the
atomized and colonized masses to a cheap labor force that can be purchased at
lower and lower wages, surpassing exploitation and becoming a process of
super-exploitation.75 According to Sartre, the process involves both the super
exploiters (the colonizers) and the colonized sub-proletariat in an anti-dialectical
movement, which constitutes the future as a destiny for everyone and for every
collective.76 Colonial exploiters are made up of all social categories because
they all get paid and enjoy comfort based on the poverty of the Muslim.77
VII.
Re-conceiving Violence: Racism, Culture-Killing, and Military Force

This violence took on various forms including racism, the destruction of
cultures and communities (or culture-killing), as well as the use of military force. I
74 CDR,
75 CDR,
76 CDR,
77 CDR,
721.
722 and 727.
728.
730.
117
will emphasize each of these in detail, beginning with racism as a form of

violence. In Colonialism as a System Sartre explains that one of the functions
of racism is to justify colonialism on the bases that the Algerian is not human,
Racism compensates the latent universalism of universal bourgeois liberalism:
since all human beings have the same rights, the Algerian will be made
subhuman.78 In the preface to The Wretched of the Earth, Sartre explains how
racism is used to project the negative characteristics of the colonizer onto the
colonized. He asserts that the savagery in the oppressed peasants is really the
savagery of the settler. The settler forgets that he was once a man and becomes
a horsewhip or a gun aiming at the domestication of the inferior races.79 In
trying to make savages and animals out of the colonized, the settlers themselves
became savages in their animal-like behavior towards the colonized.
Sartre
warns, Our worthiest souls contain racial prejudice.80

In a footnote in the Critique Sartre asserts, racism is the colonial interest
lived as a link of all the colonialists of the colony through the serial flight of
alterity.81 Sartre explains that stereotypical phrases used by the colonizers dont
have real, concrete thought, they arose with the establishment of the colonial
system and they are reinforced between the colonizers about the colonized. He
provides more support for his claim later when he states that racist thinking is
simply an activity which realizes, in alterity, a practical truth inscribed in worked
78 CS, 45.
79 WE, 16.
80 WE, 21.
81 CDR, 300. (See Sartres footnote 88)
118
matter and in the system which results from it.82 He explains that the racism that
occurs to an Algerian colonist was imposed and produced by the conquest of
Algeria, and is constantly recreated and reactualized by everyday practice
through serial alterity.83 It is not only the reduction of the Algerian to the status
of less than human that is racist, the violence, the cruelty towards Algerian tribes,
and the systematic operations which, according to Sartre, aimed at taking over
their land is also racist. Sartre describes all of these things as no more than an
expression of a still abstract racism.84
Sartre asserts that racism has to become a practice, it is not
contemplation awakening the significations engraved on things.85 He is even
bold enough to rightly assert that racism is in itself self-justifying violence:
violence presenting itself as induced violence, counter-violence and legitimate
defense.86
Sartre is explaining how racist attitudes toward the colonized
become justifications for violence against the colonized. The colonizers instantly
justify the violence and force used against the natives when they portray them as
subhuman creatures that only understand the language of violence and force.
But in addition to attitudes and words, racism also involves actions. According to
Sartre, racist phrases are themselves actions. The colonist phrase We know the
Arab like the Southerners The Yankee doesnt know the nigger, is an action. It
82 CDR,
83 CDR,
84 CDR,
85 CDR,
86 CDR,
714.
714.
714.
720.
720.
119
is a denial of the possibility of finding a solution to the colonial problem.87 He

explains that the aim of the colonists racist propaganda and negative portrayal of
the colonized is a practical operation that involves a rejection of any political
solution to the colonial problem.
In the Critique Sartre also describes racism as a psychological defense
used by the colonist to justify colonization to the metropolitan power and to
himself. But in addition to serving this purpose, racism was also Other-Thought
produced objectively by the colonial system and by super-exploitation: man is
defined by the wage and by the nature of the labor, and therefore it is true that
wages, as they tend towards zero, and labor, as an alternation between
unemployment and forced labor, reduce a colonized person to the sub-human
which he is for the colonist.88 Sartre is arguing here that it is the low wage and
the exploitative labor (made possible through racism) that reduces the colonized
to the sub-human for the colonizer and justifies the super-exploitation of
colonialism and the creation of a labor force.
Alongside the violence of racism is what I call culture-killing, that is the
violence required to tear down the language, culture, and community in a
conquered nation in order to establish domination and colonial rule.
In
Colonialism as a System Sartre describes the destructive behavior of the

French in the conquest of Algeria and the transformation of the inhabitants into
the colonized.
He explains how the French Republic imposed an individualistic
87 CDR, 721.
88 CDR, 714.
120
and liberal legal code to ruin the frameworks and development of the Algerian
community.
He adds that it creates natives by a double movement that
separates them from their archaic community by giving them or maintaining in

them an archaic mentality.89 The French succeeded at creating masses in a way
that prevented them from becoming a conscious proletariat.90 In addition to
these violent acts, the French took away the religion, language, and history of the
colonized in an effort to keep them fragmented. They successfully set out to
create an uneducated and illiterate workforce by establishing French as the
national language and making the Arabic language a foreign language.91
According to Sartre, in addition to removing the linguistic unity of the people, the
French also erased the religion and the history of the people. This is the type of
violence in the system of colonialism that often goes unnoticed and
unacknowledged, the violent destruction of a peoples history, language, culture,
religion, and identity, and the replacement of all those things with a violent racist
ideology aimed at exploitation.
In addition to the racist violence, and the violence used to destroy culture
and language, the entire colonial system was established and maintained
through violence. According to Sartre, the colonial wars of the 19th Century:
...realized an original situation of violence for the colonists as their
fundamental relation to the natives; and this situation of violence
produces and reproduces itself as the outcome of a collection of
violent practices, that is to say, of intentional operations with
89 CS, 41.
90 CS, 41.
91 CS, 41.
121
precise aims, carried out by the army - as a group-institution - and

by economic groups supported by public authority (by the delegates
of the metropolitan sovereign).92
In other words, the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized was
established in violence and this violence was supported by France in the form of
military operations as well as economic groups such as the colonial merchants
and the various banking systems. For Sartre, no one is absolved in his or her
responsibility for colonialism.
In all aspects of the practices of colonialism, Sartre asserts that violence
and destruction were integral parts of the desired objective.93 This violent action
involved murder of Muslims and dissolution of their institutions while they were
not
allowed
to
partake
in
European
institutions,
depriving
indigenous
communities of land ownership and transferring it to newcomers through the

brutal and deliberately over-rapid application of the civil code, and establishing
the true bond between the colony and the metropolis.
We have already
discussed the sales of colonial products at minimal prices, and purchases of

manufactured goods from the metropolitan power at high prices, all of which was
made possible on the bases of systematic super-exploitation of the colonized.94
According to Sartre, violence became a social force present in the system
of colonialism in such a way that it produced the child of the colonist as well as
the child of the colonized, except the former was on the giving side and the latter
92 CDR, 714.
93 CDR, 718.
94 CDR, 718.
122
was on the receiving side of the violence.95
For Sartre, both the children of the
colonizer and the children of the colonized are of the objective violence that
defines the system itself as a practico-inert hell. He adds, But if this violenceobject produces them, if they suffer it partly because of their own inertia, this is
because it used to be violence-praxis when the system was in the process of
being installed.96 These children of violence were produced by the praxis of
their fathers. Here Sartre is examining the impact of the violence of colonialism
on the generations born into this system. He distinguishes between those who
established the system and those who were born into the system.
For the
second-generation colonizer, i.e. the son of the colonizer, (as well as the son of
the colonized) violence...exists as an inherited relation of the dominant class to
the dominated class...and violence, as the praxis of this bourgeois generation,
lay in colonization.97
Sartre describes the violence of one class against another within a
community as bourgeois violence. But, he explains, colonization brings on a new
set of conditions, and under these conditions exploitation must start on the basis
of oppression, [and] this violence renews itself; it will extend to mass
extermination and torture.
It must, therefore, create itself in order to maintain
itself, and change in order to remain the same.
Conversely, it will return as
practical violence to be used immediately in the metropolitan power against the
95 CDR, 718.
96 CDR, 718.
97 CDR, 719.
123
exploited masses as soon as there is a lull in the colonial war.98 Here Sartre is
predicting the return of the colonial methods back onto working Europeans (i.e.
the masses in Europe). According to Sartre, violence is actualized as praxis in
colonization and it represents the fundamental structure of reciprocity between
the colonialists and the colonized.99 He emphasizes the notion of reciprocity in
this violence, asserting that if the situation did not involve reciprocity of violence it
would be no more than an ineffectual transcendence of the objective ex/'s.100
Building on an analysis of violent responses to scarcity (which will be
discussed in more detail in the next chapter) Sartre asserts that the colonizer
creates an enemy out of the colonized.
He explains that for the colonist the
native is not only the Other-than-man, but also his own stormy enemy (the
enemy of man). And contrary to popular belief, this discovery is not based on
resistance, riots, or threats of revolts on the part of the colonized.101 Sartre
refutes assumptions and arguments that the colonizers violence is a response to
the violence launched by the colonized. On the contrary, the colonizers violence
is the only violence and it emerges as an infinite necessity even in the absence
of violence on the part of the colonized. Sartre explains that the colonist reveals
the violence of the colonized, even in his passivity, as the consequence of his
own violence and its sole justification.
98 CDR, 719.
99 CDR, 720.
100 CDR, 720.
101 CDR, 720.
124
Founding and maintaining colonialism required violent operations that had

to take place in a violent climate, by violent men.102 And the propaganda
surrounding colonialism also had to reflect this universal violence. It presented
the colonizers violence as manly courage and presented the other-violence of
the colonized as a constant threat to colonialists everywhere. Sartre asserts that
the being of a series in the world of violence is determined on the basis of its
relation of antagonistic reciprocity with the masses whom it oppresses.103 In
other words, the colonizers have a violent and antagonistic reciprocity with the
colonized.
The colonizers anger is expressed towards the colonized and
simultaneously attributed to the colonized, or the oppressed other.104
The
colonizers project their anger, animosity and violence onto the colonized and
assert that the violence that they exert onto the colonized is a counter-violence
when it is not.
It is actually the violence that has always been a part of the
system and it is a violent response to the possibility, not yet manifested, of a

violent revolt by the colonized. Sartre explains that the employer is worried and
his anxiety turns into violence and the will to repress the colonized.
Sartre
describes this transition of anxiety into the will to repress as an act of alterity.105
All of this anxiety and repression is manifested in pressure groups, violence
groups, and institutional groups, all of which provide an index of violence
between the colonialists and the colonized.
102 CDR,
103 CDR,
104 CDR,
105 CDR,
726.
730.
730.
731.
125
In addition to the force and violence of the colonizers against the

colonized, they are backed up by the military force and violence of the mother
country. Sartre explains that the military presence in the colonized nation is itself
another form of violence. The army is a force that is displayed both so it need
not be used and so that it is available for immediate use, but it always presents
itself as an apparatus of counter-violence.106 But of course, this is not counter
violence, but still a part of the originary violence of the colonizers. The soldiers
have the power to unleash counter-violence and see themselves as sovereign
members of the sovereign.107 Sartre describes the relationship between the
soldiers and the colonized as being similar to the relationship between the
sovereign to the rebels. This is the case because the army recognizes itself as a
unit of repression and an agent of the perpetual dissolution of communities in
favor of serial alterity.108 According to Sartre, the African army was the violence
of the colonists and the colonists were the legitimacy of this violence for the
army.109
Fanon also discusses the role of the military and the police in colonialism
and contrasts it with the role of these authorities in a capitalist (non-colonial)
society.
According to Fanon, a capitalist society fosters an environment of
submission and inhibition around (and through) the exploited person. Such an
atmosphere reduces the use of police and military authorities. But this is not the
106 CDR,
107 CDR,
108 CDR,
109 CDR,
724.
725.
725.
730.
126
case in colonial countries where the relationship between the colonized and the
colonizer is often mediated by police or military force and violence.
Fanon
explains, the policeman and the soldier by their frequent and direct action
maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of riffle butts and
napalm.110 In other words, these relationships are constantly mediated through
violence, that is, the violence of the colonizers military force against the
colonized. According to Fanon the government officials speak the language of
pure force. And while they are perhaps supposed to function as intermediaries
between the colonized and the colonizers, they neither lighten the oppression nor
seek to hide their domination.
Rather, Fanon argues, these supposed
intermediaries operate with their own violence and practice this violence with the
clear conscience of an upholder of peace.111 Far from being a bringer or keeper
of peace, Fanon asserts that the intermediary is the bringer of violence into the
home and into the mind of the native.112
In the Critique. Sartre claims that the fundamental relationship between
the colonizers and the colonized was one of armed struggle. He describes them
as a couple produced by an antagonistic situation and by one another.113 In their
deliberative violence towards the colonized, the colonists are careful to maintain
a certain threshold of violence that is not lower than the violence exerted by the
super-exploiters in their relations to the exploited colonized. Fanon describes the
110 WE, 38.

111 WE, 38.
112 WE, 38.
113 CDR, 721.
127
relationship between the colonized and the colonizers as a mass relationship.

Since the colonized outnumber the colonizers, the latter have to use brute force
against the great numbers. Fanon explains that the colonizer is aware that he is
outnumbered, so he is preoccupied by security and wants to demonstrate to the
colonized that he is the master. Strength of the colonialism lies in its use of force
and violence to oppress and exploit the colonized. And Fanon notes that no one
tries to hide or deny this aspect of colonialism.
If there is any hint of resistance, the colonized are killed. Fanon explains,
the settler then asks each member of the oppressing minority to shoot down 30,
100, or 200 natives. No one shows any indignation, but the problem is to decide
whether it is done all at once or in stages.114
According to Fanon, this
aggressive violence exhibited by the colonizers is accepted without question or

indignation.
The indignation only comes after the colonized decide to fight
violence with violence. And then the settlers respond with greater violence. But
of course the murder and massacre of the colonized eventually begins to
undermine the purpose of the colonial system. In a footnote Fanon references
this argument in the Critique, where Sartre points to the fact that killing the
colonized undermines what the colonizer wants to preserve, i.e. colonialism. If
the colonizers were massacred altogether it would only destroy colonialism
altogether with one blow.115
114 WE, 84.

115 WE, 84.
128
According to Fanon, The single combat between the settler and the
native takes the form of an armed and open struggle.116 The very existence of
an armed struggle demonstrates that the people have decided to trust violent
methods only.117 But Fanon emphasizes the fact that the violence was already
a part of the colonial system in its foundation and its maintenance.
The
colonized learned the violence from the colonizers. Fanon states, The settlers
said that the native only understands the language of force and the native
decides to give utterance by force. The settler, through his violence, has shown
the native that violence is the only way that he can be free.118 Since the
colonized are oppressed through violence, they come to understand that violence
will be required to overcome colonialism and attain freedom.
Fanon explains,
The argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an
ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the colonist
understands nothing but force.119 In other words, while the colonizers previously
argued that the colonized only understand force, the colonized are now using
that argument against the colonizers.
Sartre made a similar assertion in
Colonialism as a System when he states, the colonists themselves have taught

their adversaries...that no solution was possible other than force.120 He adds,
colonialism has prepared its own ruin...it is in the process of destroying itself.121
116 WE, 83.

117 WE, 83.
118 WE, 84.
119 WE, 84.
120 CS, 47.
121 CS, 47.
129
When the natives revolt, the settler is faced with a contradiction.
The
settler wants to kill the native, but he also wants to continue to exploit him, and
he cannot do both.122 Sartre explains in the preface to The Wretched of the
Earth. Because he cant carry massacre on to genocide, and slavery to animal
like degradation, he loses control, the machine goes into reverse, and a
relentless logic leads him on to decolonization.123 This contradiction is not new.
It was there from the beginning when the settler attempted to animalize the
native. According to Sartre, The master seeks to reduce the natives to animals
but stops half way because of his own interest to exploit them.124 Although the
colonizer wants to create colonized beasts of burden through violence, through
the struggle for liberation the colonized are able to become men. Sartre states,
By this mad fury...they have become men: men because of the settler, who
wants to make beasts of burden of them - because of him and against him.125
VIII.
A Political Analysis
In the Critique. Sartre asserts that he has shown through colonization that
the relationship between oppressors and oppressed was, from beginning to end,
a struggle.126 But one should not assume that Sartres emphasis on the struggle
against racism, economics, and violence is devoid of a political analysis. Sartre
122 WE, 16.

123 WE, 16.
124 WE, 17.
125 WE, 17.
126 CDR, 733.
130
is not ignorant of the political aspects of colonialism.
Straight away (in
Colonialism as a System) he acknowledges that colonialism is not just an

economic and social system, but it is also a political system, and therefore
Algerians have the right to attack it first of all politically.127 And while Sartre
takes into account the political aspects of colonialism, he differs from Arendt
insofar as he is not blind to the abstract aspects of politics. Understanding the
systematic method by which colonialism oppresses Algerians, he asks the
rhetorical question, why vote if you are dying of hunger? Unlike Arendt, Sartre is
aware that economics must be taken into account in political issues and
questions.
rights.
Political rights are inconsequential in the absence of basic human
Sartre explains that those who talk about free elections and Algerian
independence are missing the point. They are just agitators and troublemakers
who cloud the issue at the center of colonialism.
In the Critique Sartre explains that any change in the colonial system will
only accelerate its end, whether it be integration, assimilation, or independence,
the result will be an end to super-exploitation, an end of low-wages, and an end
of low prices all of which were the purpose of colonialism.128 But Sartre is also
careful to highlight the fact that the problems of colonialism cannot and will not be
solved by simple reforms because in most cases the reforms only serve the
interests of the colonizers and not the colonized.
We must remember that
poverty and despair in Algeria are direct and necessary effects of the colonial
127 CS, 32.
128 CDR, 721.
131
system.
According to Sartre, reforms and economic transformation are
ineffective because they only address symptoms of colonialism and not the root
of the problem. With reforms, three scenarios are possible: the reform will only
work to the colonists advantage, the reform is ineffective, or the reform is left
dormant with the complicity of the administration without enforcement.
Sartre
explains that the colonists reject any real reforms involving assimilation and
integration. The colonists deny recognition of any Muslims' or Algerians' political
rights; consequently, any reforms were turned to the colonizers advantage.129
The only real solution to the colonial problem is complete decolonization.
The only reforms that will work are the reforms instituted by the Algerians after
they have won their independence and freedom from France. Sartre asserts that
their liberation can only be achieved through the shattering of colonization.130
And the shattering of colonization is only possible through the revolutionary
violence of the colonized against their oppressors, at which time they can regain
their humanity, their human rights, their political rights, and their dignity. Sartre
stresses that the only thing that the French can and ought to do is to fight along
side the Algerians in an effort to deliver both Algeria and France from colonial
tyranny.131
129 CDR, 726.

130 CS, 32.
132
Chapter Four: Revolutionary Violence
In the previous chapters, my focus has been on exposing Hannah

Arendts limited conception of the political giving particular attention to the
public/private distinction and the exclusion of economics and racial oppression
from the issues to be addressed within the political realm. I have also critiqued
Arendts analysis of racial oppression in the U.S., her characterization of Africans
as savages, and her account of colonialism in Africa,
Additionally, I have
asserted that Arendt has a biased criticism of violence. While she has been
uncritical of violence in the form of forced subjugation in the private realm, she
has been exceedingly critical of violent resistance to oppression. In this chapter
my objective is to demonstrate, not only that Arendts critique of violence is
always changing, but also that her critique in On Violence of Sartre and Fanon is
ill founded. After briefly outlining Arendts analysis of violence, I will challenge
the distinction that she makes between violence and power and point to
inconsistencies in her assertions concerning violence.
Furthermore, I not only
show the inaccuracy of her interpretation of Sartre and Fanon, but also the
limitations of her position.
The second part of this chapter has as its focal point both Sartres and
Fanons explication of revolutionary violence as a viable and necessary method
of combating the systematically violent oppression intrinsic in colonialism. I also
argue that revolutionary violence is a justifiable and legitimate tool against
colonialism, which is a system of oppression that is already constituted by
violence.
133
I.
Violence Versus Power

In On Violence. Arendt draws distinctions between the terms power,
strength, force, authority, and violence, all of which she describes as methods by
which man rules over man. I shall focus on the distinction she draws between
violence and power. According to Arendt power is the human ability to act in
concert...it belongs to a group and remains in existence only as long as the
group keeps together.1 Power is inherent in political communities and requires
legitimacy, but not justification. Arendt asserts that legitimacy is derived from the
initial organization of acting in concert, but justification is derived from a future
end. Not only does Arendt assert that violence does not equal power, she adds
that politically speaking, the two terms are opposites. Power does not entail any
form of violence. This is so much the case that to speak of non-violent power is,
for Arendt, redundant.
She explains that power and violence cannot rule
simultaneously, Violence appears when power is in jeopardy and ends in

powers disappearance.2
While power needs legitimacy and not justification, violence always stands
in need of justification and will never be legitimate.
Power belongs only to a
group and points to that groups ability to act in concert, but violence is merely a
means and is by nature instrumental. Arendt asserts that the ends of violence
are always in danger of being overwhelmed by the means that it justifies, and
1 OV, 143.
2 OV, 155.
134
which are needed to reach it.3 Furthermore, Arendt warns that within violence
there is an arbitrariness or an all-pervading unpredictability that will not allow for
any certainty.4
I will challenge three of the above claims by Arendt.
First, I want to
challenge the idea that the unpredictability of violence is particularly problematic.

The uncertainty and unpredictability of violence can hardly be perceived as a
strong criticism of violence because Arendt makes the same claims about all
human activity. Recall that Arendt, in The Human Condition, prioritizes action
above labor and work because of its spontaneity and what she calls natility. So
unpredictability is not only a characteristic of violence, but also of action insofar
as Arendt claims that the end of human activity can never be predicted.
Second, and more important, I want to challenge Arendts claim that
violence cannot be legitimate. According to Arendt, legitimacy is derived from
the initial organization of a group or the getting together to act in concert. It is
the getting together and not the resulting act that gives legitimacy. I contend
that revolutionary violence is not only justified, as a means to the end of
decolonization, but it is also legitimate, because it requires the getting together
of the colonized natives to act in concert. Finally, I want to challenge Arendts
claim that power, which is intrinsic in political communities, does not entail any
form of violence. On the contrary, there would not be a political community in the
3 OV, 106.
4 QV, 106.
135
absence of violence, or at least the threat of violence, in the form of law

enforcement, the military, etc.
It is surprising that Arendt is so critical of violence in On Violence, given
the claims she has made in other texts concerning the necessary role of violence
in the private realm to master necessity, the role of violence in freedom and
rulership, and the role of violence in colonialism. Recall Arendts claim that all
Greek Philosophers took for granted that:
...force and violence are justified in the private sphere because
they are the only means to master necessity.. .because all human
beings are subject to necessity, they are entitled to violence
towards others, violence is the pre-political act of liberating oneself
from the necessity of life for the freedom of the world.5
Here, although violence is not legitimate, it is justified, not only in efforts to
master necessity, but also in efforts to liberate oneself from necessity. If Arendt
is offering a justification of violence here, it seems that she should also agree that
the efforts of the colonized to liberate themselves from the oppressive necessity
imposed by the colonizers is also legitimate.
Although Arendt attempts to distance violence from power and political
action in On Violence, in the earlier work the Origins, Arendt states that the
discovery of power and the predominance of violence was nothing new because
violence has always been the ultima ratio in political action and power has
always been the visible expression of rule and government.6 On the question of
violence and in relation to freedom and rulership, Arendt stated:
5 HC, 31.
6 BOT, 137. OT, 137.
136
All rulership has its original and most legitimate source in mans
wish to liberate himself from lifes necessity, and men achieved
such liberation by means of violence .. .This was the core of slavery
and it is only the rise of technology, and not the rise of modern
politics as such, which has refuted this old and terrible truth that
only violence and rule over others could make some men free.7
Whereas in On Violence Arendt claims that violence can never be legitimate, in
The Social Question, she states that the most legitimate source of rulership, i.e.
the wish to emancipate oneself from lifes necessity, is achieved through
violence.
Arendt also spoke of the role of violence in colonialism stating it
depended on the expansion of the national instruments of violence and she

only takes exception to these methods because the aims of colonialism were
economic and not political. But again, is Arendt merely describing the role of
violence or is she justifying it?
Although Arendt warns against the unpredictability of violence, in On
Violence, she does allow for the use of violence in self-defense explaining that no
one questions this use of violence because the danger is not only clear but also
present, and the end justifying the means is immediate. She also correctly notes
on at least three occasions that non-violence does not work in all circumstances.
The first is when she states, If Gandhis enormously powerful and successful
strategy of nonviolent resistance had met with a different enemy - Stalins
Russia, Hitlers Germany, or even pre-war Japan, instead of England - the
outcome would not have been decolonization but massacre and submission.8
Here it seems to be the case that the use of non-violence may depend on the
7 SQ, 114. (My emphasis.)
8 OV, 152.
137
enemy that is being confronted or resisted. I will push this even more to stress
that when a group is confronting a violent oppressor (or oppressive system) then
non-violence may have to be replaced with violent methods of resistance.
On another occasion Arendt concedes, ...in private as well as public life
there are situations in which the very swiftness of a violent act may be the only
appropriate remedy.9 Here Arendt concedes that violence can be a remedy in
certain (undisclosed) situations, not only in the private realm of necessity, but
also in the public realm of political action.
Finally, Arendt acknowledges that,
under certain circumstances violence - acting without argument or speech and

without counting the consequences - is the only way to set the scales of justice
right again.10 So not only does Arendt concede that non-violence does not
always work, she also concedes that violence is in some cases a remedy and in
other cases the only way to address certain situations. I contend that the violent
system of colonialism is one such case, where revolutionary violence may be a
more swift and appropriate remedy, and is the only way to set the scale of
justice right again.
In what follows I will first argue that Arendts interpretation of Fanon and
Sartres analyses of violence is wrong.
I also argue that Arendts critique of
violence in Sartre and Fanon is biased. She rejects their analysis because they
argue for revolutionary violence to overcome the violent system of colonialism. If
Sartre and Fanon had instead argued in favor of the oppressive violence of
9 OV, 160. (My emphasis.)
10 OV, 161. (My emphasis.) Arendt gives the example of Billy Budd sticking the
witness who bore false witness against him, OV, 161.
138
Europeans or even of Americans, perhaps they would not have been met with
the criticism of Arendts pen; but since they argue for revolutionary violence
against oppressors, they are accused of glorifying violence for violences sake.
II.
Critical Fanonianism
In her critique of Fanon, Arendt asserts that he is one of few authors
(along with Sorel and Pareto)11 who glorify violence for violences sake and she
attributes this glorification of violence to a deeper hatred of bourgeois society
and a radical break with its moral standards.12 Arendt also describes Fanon as
praising the practice of violence, but this is far from the case.
Rather than
glorifying or praising violence, Fanon is describing the events of the struggle for
liberation in Algeria from a historical, philosophical, and psychological standpoint.
Fanon is analyzing the events that are opening up before him. Or, as Sartre
states, Fanon is merely an interpreter of the situation, thats all, so we need not
think that he has an uncommon taste for violence.13 Arendt does not see the
struggle for liberation in Algeria as an instance of one attempting to liberate
oneself from necessity, an instance of self-defense, or a method to properly
balance the scales of justice.
According to Arendt, Fanon is misled because he believes that a new
community together with a new man will arise out of the strong fraternal
11 Geoges Sorel was the author of Reflections on Violence and Vilfredo Pareto
was an economic and social theorist.
12 OV, 162.
13 WE, 14.
139
sentiments collective violence engenders.14 This line of thinking is misleading,

according to Arendt, because this brotherhood that arises out of collective
violence is merely transitory. Arendt is wrong because she assumes that the
brotherhood to which Fanon refers is based exclusively on violence. Arendt is
blind to the bond that under-girds collective violence, namely the bond of being in
the situation of an oppressed native in a colonial system. In fact it is this latter
bond of being in the situation of colonialism that makes collective violence
possible.
Fanon himself notes that everyone does not participate in this
collective violence. For example the native elites or the native intellectuals act
more as mediators than participants in violence. It is the peasantry and the rural
masses who, out of their particular situation, are able to engage in collective
violence. But in addition to the bond of being in the situation of the colonized
native, another bond to be considered is the bond of collective memory that
outlasts the revolution, and remains even in the absence of oppression.
In addition to challenging Fanons conceptions of community and
brotherhood, Arendt also attempts to distance Fanon (and later Sartre) from the
theory of Marx(ism). She asks, Who could possibly call an ideology Marxist that
has put its faith in classless idlers, believes that in the lumpenproletariat the
rebellion will find its urban spearhead, and trusts that gangsters will light the way
14 OV, 166.
140
for the people?15 However, this selective quotation of Fanon takes his words
out of context. In context Fanon states:
The lumpenproletariat, once it is constituted, brings all its forces to
endanger the security of the town, and is the sign of the irrevocable
decay, the gangrene ever present at the heart of colonial domination. So
the pimps, the hooligans, the unemployed, the petty criminals, urged on
from behind, throw themselves into the struggle for liberation like stout
working men. These classless idlers will by militant and decisive action
discover the path that leads to nationhood.
In fact the rebellion, which began in the country districts, will filter into the
towns through that fraction which has not yet succeeded in finding a
bone to gnaw in the colonial system. The men whom the growing
population of the country districts and colonial expropriation have
brought to desert their family holdings circle tirelessly around the
different towns, hoping that one day or another they will be allowed
inside. It is within this mass of humanity, this people of shanty towns, at
the core of the lumpenproletariat, that the rebellion will find its urban
spearhead.17
For example, the gangster who holds up the police set on to track him
down for days on end, or who dies in single combat after having killed
four or five policemen, or who commits suicide in order not to give away
his accomplices - these types light the way for the people, from the blue
prints of action and become heroes.18
Arendt, possibly as a consequence of her desire to exclude those who are
oppressed on the basis of economics and race from the revolution, fails to see
the fact that the lumpenproletariat, the class idlers, and the gangsters as
revolutionaries. They represent those in the colonial system who have nothing to
15 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 130,
129, and 60 respectively; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises of the
Republic (San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1972), 122. These are selective
quotations of Fanons work.
16 WE, 130.
17 WE, 129.
18 WE, 69.
141
lose and therefore are willing to risk the only thing that they have to give, their
lives, in the struggle for liberation. They are, so to speak, the founding fathers
in the Algerian Revolution, but they receive none of the accolades and praise that
Arendt showers on the founding fathers in American Revolution.
Perhaps Arendt is so critical of the Algerian Revolution because she thinks
that it, like the French Revolution, was driven by economics, need, and violence.
But Arendt never makes an explicit correlation between the two. Or perhaps she
is critical because she also see colonialism as a racial problem, not fit for political
debate. Whatever the case, it is clear that Arendt reduces Fanons analysis of
colonization, and by implication the struggle for decolonization, to a mere
glorification of violence rather than a legitimate and justified struggle for freedom.
III.
Critical Sartreanism
This is also the case in Arendts critique of Sartre.
Arendt compares
Sartres account of violence in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth to

Georges Sorels Reflections on Violence, asserting that, like Sorel, Sartre
thought about class struggle in military terms. Arendt points out that while Sartre
goes much farther than Sorel (and even Fanon) in his glorification of violence,
he still mentions Sorels fascist utterances in this preface.19 She also claims that
Sartre is unaware of his basic disagreement with Marx on the question of
violence, especially when he states that irrepressible violence...is man
19 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wretched of the Earth (Preface) (New York: Grove
Press, 1963),14; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises of the Republic (San
Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1972), 114.
142
recreating himself,20 [and] that it is through mad fury21 that the wretched of the
earth can become men.22 Contrary to Arendts claim, Sartre was well aware of
his disagreements with Marx, however; this disagreement had more to do with
the issue of scarcity than the issue of violence 23
Placing more emphasis on the differences between Marx and Sartre on
violence, Arendt points to the tradition of Hegelian and Marxist thinking. While
Sartre claims that man is able to recreate himself through violence, Hegel claims
that man can recreate himself through thought and Marx claims that this is
possible through labor.
But Arendt asserts, a gulf separates the essentially
peaceful activities of thinking (Hegel) and laboring (Marx) from all deeds of
violence (Sartre).24 In making this assertion, Arendt takes for granted that labor
is peaceful. However, it can be violent - particularly for the proletariat workers,
especially colonized workers. Furthermore, Arendts presentation of Marx here
as non-violent conflicts with her analysis in The Social Question where she said
Marx unmasked necessity as man-made violence [and]...reduced violence to
necessity.25 She does not see how Sartres analysis is an extension of this idea.
Sartre presents the notion of necessity in terms of scarcity and the violence it
induces.
Press, 1963), 21; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises of the Republic (San
Press, 1963),17; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises of the Republic (San
22 OV, 114.
23 This is discussed at length in Sartres Critique o f Dialectical Reason.
24 OV, 115.
25 SQ, 64.
143
Another difference between Sartre and Marx, according to Arendt, is

Sartres claim that To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one
stone...there remain a dead man and a free man.26 Arendt says this is a
sentence Marx could never have written, but she does not explain why Marx
could not write this.
If indeed he could not have written this, perhaps it is
because Marx did not confront the violent system of colonialism, as did Sartre.
To further support her theory that Sartre has abandoned Marx, Arendt cites
Leonard Schapiro and Raymond Aron, who consider Sartres emphasis on
violence to be a kind of backsliding or an unconscious drifting away from
Marxism.27
While Arendt critiques Sartres account of violence in The Wretched of the
Earth in the body of On Violence, she reserves her criticisms of Sartres
Critique of Dialectical Reason for the second appendix at the end of the book.
And while she claims to be addressing Sartres account of violence in the
Critique, she gives no indication that she has actually read it. All of the quotes
that she attributes to Sartre are extracted from Laing and Coopers Reason and
Violence: A Decade of Sartres Philosophy 1950-1960. which was published in
1964. This text, is a highly condensed version of three major works by Sartre
including Saint Genet, Comedien et Martyr (1952), Questions de Methode
(1960), and Critique de la Raison Dialectique (I960).28 In fact, Reason and
27 OV, 186.
28 RV, 9.
144
Violence is so condensed that it summarizes all three works in about 175 pages!
In their introduction, even Laing and Cooper point out, Condensation to about
one-tenth of the scale of the original clearly creates its own difficulties. They
attempt to follow Sartres lines of argument without reference to Sartres
examples, which they describe as very lengthy.
Nevertheless, Arendt quotes Laing and Cooper at length in her criticisms
of Sartre, substituting their volume for Sartres Critique. To complicate things
further, she provides few references to page numbers in her attacks against
Sartre, which may lead the reader to believe that she is actually quoting Sartre.
When possible, I have provided the page numbers in footnotes and they
reference the passages in both Reason and Violence and the Critique. I will also
point to the differences in Coopers and Laings summary of the Critique and
Sartres actual arguments.
Unfortunately, Arendts interpretation of Sartre is
based on Reason and Violence and not on Sartres actual work. This alone is a
major problem for Arendts critique of Sartre.
She is actually critiquing an
interpretation without going to the source. While reading a condensed version of

Sartre may be acceptable for someone wishing to grasp a few basic concepts
before committing to the time and effort required to examine his actual works,
clearly this volume should not serve as the basis on which one launches a
critique against Sartre for his stance on violence.
Arendt describes Sartre as giving a Hegelian espousal of violence in the
Critique. But this claim undermines her previous claim that a gulf separates
145
Sartres account of violence from Hegels thought.29 She asserts that Sartres
Hegelian point of departure is that need and scarcity determined the
Manicheistic basis of action and morals" in present history, whose truth is based
on scarcity [and] must manifest itself in an antagonistic reciprocity between
classes.30 Arendt is quoting from Reason and Violence, but what Sartre actually
states in the Critique is, I believe that, at the level of need and through it,
scarcity is experienced in practice through Manichean action, and that the ethical
takes the form of destructive imperative: evil must be destroyed.31
The
difference is that Sartre is examining the ethical implications of violence in

scarcity rather than celebrating violence for its own sake as Arendt previously
asserted. He is exploring how scarcity gives rise to violence. But this point will
be explained in more detail later.
Arendt adds that under such circumstances, violence is no longer a marginal
phenomenon.
Violence and counter-violence are perhaps contingencies, but
they are contingent necessities, and the imperative consequence of any attempt
to destroy this inhumanity is that in destroying in the adversary the inhumanity of
the contraman, I can only destroy in him the humanity of man, and realize in me
this inhumanity.32 What Sartre actually states here is, Violence always presents
itself as counter-violence, that is to say, as a retaliation against the violence of
Press,
Diego:
Press,
Diego:
29 OV, 115.
30 R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper, Reason and Violence (New York: Humanities
1964), 114; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises o f the Republic (San
Harcourt Brace and Company, 1972), 186.
31 CDR, 133.
1964), 114; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises o f the Republic (San
Harcourt Brace and Company, 1972), 186.
146
the Other. But this violence of the Other is not an objective reality except in the
sense that it exists in all men as the universal motivation of counter-violence; it is
nothing but the unbearable fact of broken reciprocity and of the systematic
exploitation of mans humanity for the destruction of the human.
Counter
violence is exactly the same thing, but as a process of restoration, as a response

to a provocation: if I destroy the non-humanity of the anti-human in my adversary,
I cannot help destroying the humanity of man in him, and realizing his non
humanity in myself.33 In other words, we always want to say that the other
started it, and therefore I must strike back.
And although my retaliation is a
response to provocation, and I see this response as a destruction of the anti-man

(the Other), I am actually destroying the Others humanity and realizing my own
inhumanity. Put another way, in my attempt to treat the other as non-human I
become non-human.
But Sartre does not stop here, he adds, In other words, it is undeniable that
what I attack is man as man, that is, as the free praxis of an organic being. It is
man, and nothing else, that I hate in the enemy, that is in myself as the Other;
and it is myself that I destroy in him, so as to prevent him destroying me in my
own body.34
Arendt is missing an important point being made by Sartre
concerning exploitation and violence against men.
Sartre is emphasizing the
point that exploitation and violence are attacks on the humanity of man as well as
a kind of self-destruction.
Exploitation and violence cannot be reduced to
33 CDR, 133.
34 CDR, 133.
147
treating man as non-human or even as an animal.
Sartre is building on his
earlier assertion (not mentioned by Arendt) that in order to treat a man like a
dog, one must first recognize him as a man.35
This is what Sartre describes as the contradiction of racism, colonialism, and
all forms of tyranny. He explains that, The sealed discomfort of the master is
that he always has to consider the human reality of his slaves (whether through
his reliance on their skill and their synthetic understanding of situations, or
through his precautions against the permanent possibility of revolt or escape),
while at the same time refusing them the economic and political status which, in
this period, defines human beings.36 This point is also illustrated by the debate
about baptizing slaves. If slaves have a soul and are in fact persons, then they
should be baptized, but of course that also means that they should not be
enslaved.
Having ignored all these points, Arendt then says that Sartre claims, Whether
I kill, torture, enslave...my aim is to suppress his freedom - it is an alien force de
trop.37 But Sartre actually states, I may try to kill, to torture, to enslave, or
simply to mystify, but in any case my aim will be to eliminate alien freedom as a
hostile force, a force which can expel me from the practical field and make me
into a surplus man condemned to death.38 This statement must be understood
in the context of Sartres analysis of scarcity. But Arendt ignores this analysis
35 CDR, 111.
36 CDR, 111.
Press, 1964), 114; quoted in Hannah Arendt, On Violence in Crises o f the Republic (San
38 CDR, 133.
148
and leaps to Sartres analysis of collectives, which is presented over 100 pages
after the idea she cites in the example of the bus queue.
Arendt is either
neglecting the analysis of scarcity altogether or she is conflating his analysis of

scarcity with his analysis of collective, series, and group.
Arendt claims that
Sartres model for a condition in which each one is one too many...Each is
redundant for the other39 is a bus queue, the members of which obviously take
no notice of each other except as a number in a quantitative series.40 Here
Laing and Cooper may be paraphrasing the passage where Sartre states that
there are not enough places for everyone41 so each passenger on the bus
becomes too many. The idea of redundancy may be a paraphrase of Sartres
claim that Everyone is the same as the Other in so far as he is Other than
himself.42 Or the claim that Identity becomes synthetic: everyone is identical
with the Other in so far as the others make him an Other acting on the Others;
the formal universal structure of alterity produces the formula of the series.43
After this misquotation and misinterpretation of Sartres analysis, Arendt
casually adds that the flaw in Sartres argument should be obvious. There is all
the difference in the world between not taking notice and denying, between
denying any link with somebody and negating his otherness; and for a sane

41 CDR, 260.
42 CDR, 260.
43 CDR, 264.
149
person there is still a considerable distance to travel from this theoretical

negation to killing, torturing, and enslaving.44 Arendt is trying to navigate
between different examples used by Sartre to explain different analyses, but she
has the wrong roadmap. The description of the unity of the people waiting at the
bus stop is one example that leads to other examples of serial unities. There are
points at which Laing and Cooper remain very close to Sartres text, and Arendt
still chooses to oversimplify Sartres analysis; this may point to a willful distortion
of Sartre. She selected bits and pieces from Reason and Violence that fit her
critique, but she is not fair or true to the analysis presented in Reason and
Violence or the Critique.
Arendts analysis of both Sartre and Fanon focuses exclusively on their
accounts of the revolutionary violence in the struggle against colonialism. But
she completely ignores the their detailed accounts of the violence already
present within the system that was used to oppress the colonized natives. She is
silent about the oppressors violence that is intrinsic within the system and
consequently is biased in her critique of violence because it is one-sided. But I
am also making the case that even if Arendt were to take a critical stance against
the violence that she has been uncritical of up to this point, her distinctions and
categories including the public/private distinction, the account of the rise of the
social, and even her distinction between violence and power, all perpetuate an
uncritical relationship to the violence that is central to colonialism and
emphasized by Sartre and Fanon. It is not only Arendts critique of Sartre and
44 OV, 186.
150
Fanon in relation to violence, but also her own relationship to race, race-thinking
and violence in the colonial contexts that continues the cycle of violence.
In
other words, Arendts very analysis of what should constitute the political realm,
the notion that anti-black racial oppression is not a political issue, and her own
reinscription of stereotypical race-thinking in her presentation of Africans and
colonialism, all fall into the category of violent racism that Sartre and Fanon are
describing in their analyses of the violent system of colonialism. By uncritically
thinking through the violence of racism in the context of colonialism, Arendt
perpetuates that violence in a way that seems to justify it.
IV.
The Alternative Viewpoints of Sartre and Fanon

Now that I have demonstrated the inaccuracy of Arendts interpretation of
Sartre and Fanon, I will explicate Sartre and Fanons analyses of violence in the
context of colonialism.
We have already outlined the role of violence in
establishing the colonial system in the third chapter on the violent system of
colonialism. It is on the foundation of the argument that colonialism is a system
of violent oppression that Sartre is able to assert that the revolutionary violence
of the colonized is really counter-violence.
On both Sartres and Fanons
accounts, this counter-violence serves as a response not just to the violence of

the colonizers, but also to the systematically violent oppression of colonialism.
While some (like Arendt) conceptualize the violence of the oppressors and the
oppressed as one and the same, on Sartres analysis, in one sense they are the
same, because the revolutionary violence of the oppressed is a return of the
151
oppressors violence back to the oppressor.
But there are still important
differences to be noted. I want to underscore the argument that it is the ferocious

nature of the systematic violence of oppression in colonialism that broadens the
justification of counter-violence.
We see Sartres analysis of violence as a
counter-response to violence in the essay Colonialism as a System (1956)

where he asserts that colonialism is the shame of France. Rather than passively
supporting colonialism, Sartre asserts that the French must help it die. He adds
that the only thing that they can and ought to do is to fight alongside the Algerian
people to deliver Algeria and France from colonial tyranny.45 In the same essay,
Sartre also claims that the first violence is the colonizers. He explains, the
colonists themselves
have taught their adversaries
[i.e.
the colonized
Algerians]...that no solution was possible other than force.46 Four years later, in
Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), Sartre describes the system of colonialism
as an infernal machine for which violence and destruction were an integral part
of the desired objective.47
He adds that it is the objective violence (of
colonialism) that defines the system itself as a practico-inert hell.48 Then, in 1961
Sartre builds on the analysis of an original violence in his preface of Frantz
Fanons The Wretched of the Earth 49 Again he asserts that the first violence is
always the colonizers violence because it is the colonizer who sets the tone for
46 CS, 47.
47 CDR, 718.
48CDR, 718.
491am aware of the debate about whether Sartres preface distorts Fanons
purpose in The Wretched of the Earth. While this is not the focus here, I will state briefly
that although I think Sartres aim in the preface and Fanons aim in the book are not one
in the same, Sartres comments do not undermine Fanons overall project.
152
violence in this systematic oppression against the colonized known as

colonialism. Sartre is not so much concerned with who started it, though he does
disprove the assumption that the colonized introduced the violence.
The
argument for the use of violence does not simply rest on proving who struck first;
rather it aims at demonstrating that overcoming a violent system of oppression
most often requires a violent revolt. Thus, when the colonized respond with
violence, it is always counter-violence, a means of resistance, and a means to
regain humanity. When appropriate, I will be incorporating Fanons analysis of
violence, colonialism, and resistance, as it relates to Sartre throughout the
remainder of the chapter.
V.
Violence And Scarcity

Before addressing Sartres analysis of revolutionary violence, I want to
take up his analysis of violence and scarcity as well as his analysis of violence
and the group. Sartre describes all of human development as a bitter struggle
against scarcity.50 Scarcity is a part of the relationship between men and nature
as well as their relationship between one another. Because of scarcity, men view
other members of society as members of a group that exists collectively and
each member of this collective group represents a threat to his life. They are a
threat because they are potential consumers of something he needs. Each of
them represents the possibility of his annihilation through the annihilation of an
object he needs. As a result of scarcity, everyone elses existence poses for me
50 CDR, 123.
153
the threat of my non-existence.
But Sartre explains, this clanger is not just
something I see in others: I myself am also that danger insofar as I am Other...I

am a danger to others and to myself as a part of the totality.51
According to Sartre, human relations are reciprocal.
In pure reciprocity
that which is other than me is also the same. But in scarcity, while the other is
the same, the same becomes radically other or anti-human, and this radical other
threatens me with death.52 It is in this context that Sartre makes the previously
mentioned claims about scarcity, violence, and non-humanity. Sartre states that
violence always presents itself as counter-violence, or as retaliation against the
violence of the Other or as a response to provocation. So violence in the context
of scarcity presents itself as counter-violence because my attack of the other is
based on my view of the other as radical other, and the radical others existence
is a threat to my existence.
Sartre is careful to point out that this analysis of scarcity and violence is not a
license for taking these actions. He states, the idea that the economy of scarcity
is violence does not mean that there must be massacres, imprisonment, or any
other visible use of force, or even any present project of using it.
It merely
means that the relations of production are established and pursued in a climate
of fear and mutual distrust by individuals who are always ready to believe that the
Other is an anti-human member of an alien species; in other words, that the
51 CDR, 130.
52 CDR, 131.
154
Other, whoever he may be, can always be seen by Others as the one who
started it.53
But questions arise from this analysis: Is Sartre laying the foundation here for
his later analysis of the violence of the oppressors, or of the violence of the
oppressed?
Or does this analysis of violence and scarcity describe the
foundations for all violence, applying to both the colonizers and the colonized
violence? Is scarcity the model for the line of reasoning for both oppressors and
oppressed when they turn to violence? In other words, are the actions of the
colonizers motivated (at least in part) by this analysis of scarcity? And are the
actions of the colonized (when they revolt against the colonizers through
violence) motivated by this analysis of scarcity? Does the idea that any attack on
humanity (even if attacked as non-humanity) is still an attack on man - apply to
both the colonizers and to the oppressed?
In other words, is the colonizers
attack against the colonized a destruction of the non-humanity of the anti

human? Is the natives attack against the colonizers a destruction of the non
humanity of the anti-human? And yet it is undeniable that what I attack is man
as man.
The answer to all of these questions is yes. Sartre is applying this analysis to
both the oppressors and the oppressed. The analysis of scarcity shows that the
violence of the oppressed is not the original violence, but neither is the
oppressors. Violence is systematic in scarcity. But then, the question arises,
whose attack is justified? The answer is that, although violence is systematic in
53 CDR, 149.
155
scarcity, this does not exonerate the oppressors from their exploitation.
The
oppressor is not only guilty of practicing the violence that is systematic in

scarcity, they go a step further and take hold of this violence as a tool in the
process of super-exploitation and colonialism.
(This point was previously
discussed in chapter three.) On that basis, the oppressed/colonized violence is

justified as counter-violence or a response to the super-exploitation and violence
inherent in the colonial system.
VI.
Violence And The Group

I am presenting Sartres analysis of the statutory group, particularly his
discussion of violence and the group, as an analysis of the internalized violence

of the colonized.
Although Sartre does not state that he is referring to the
colonized explicitly, this analysis has many implications for what he and Fanon
say later about the ways in which the violence of the colonial system is
internalized by the colonized and manifested in their violent interactions with one
another.54 Sartre describes the formation and survival of the group in terms of a
pledge based on fear and violence. This fear and violence provide coherence to
the group in such a way that I remain a part of the group for fear of the potential
violence that I must face if i abandon my pledge. According to Sartre, the origin
of the pledge is fear of the third party and of myself. The pledge substitutes a
real fear produced by the group for the retreating external fear (from the enemy).
54 Sartre does make one reference in this section to the black rebels of San
Domingo, but no references to the Algerian natives.
156
In the absence of material pressure, the group must present itself as a

pressure on its members.55 This re-creation [of the group] is not idealist but
presents itself concretely as a set of real means (accepted for everyone by all) of
establishing in the group a reign of absolute violence over its members.56 The
group is transformed by the risk of death faced by everyone in the group. In
other words, the transformation of the group lies in the risk of death which
everyone runs within the group.57 Violence provides a particular, real, practical
bond between freedoms within common action. Violence is re-created, carried
out and accepted by all. This includes both the violence against enemies and
violence against fellow members of the group, if they attempt to abandon the
group or become traitors.
Sartre describes a pledge as the common production, through mediated
reciprocity, of a statute of violence.58 He adds that once the pledge has been
made the group has to guarantee everyones freedom against necessity, even at
the cost of his life and in the name of freely sworn faith.59 In other words, ones
pledge to the group permits the group to hold each member accountable for that
pledge. Each member of the group is defended against external forces. And
even in the face of the enemy, when a member of the group may desire to
abandon the group, his pledge allows the other members of the group to hold
him to the pledge.
55 CDR,
56 CDR,
57 CDR,
58 CDR,
59 CDR,
Sartre explains that everyones freedom demands the
430.
430.
431.
431.
431.
157
violence of all against it and against that of any third party as its defense against
itself. He adds, to swear is to say, as a common individual: you must kill me if I
secede.60
The demand of the pledge, which is also a demand on my life, aims at
instilling terror in every member. But this terror functions as a defense against
each members fear of the outside enemy.
Each member gives every other
member the right to kill him if he fails to fulfill his pledge. Sartre states, I have
freely consented to the liquidation of my person as free constituent praxis, and
this free consent returns to me as the free primacy of the Others freedom over
my own, that is to say, as the right of the group over my praxis.61 But, even here
Sartre is differentiating different types of terror. The terror of the pledge in the
[revolutionary] group is a unifying terror rather than one that separates the
members.
Sartre describes terror in this instance as unifying because it is
everyones (i.e. each member of the group) power of freedom over necessity.62
This terror and collective violence is such a unifying agent that the traitor
remains a part of the group, even if it is through his extermination.63 Such drastic
actions taken against the traitor do not deny his membership within the group,
rather, Sartre asserts that exterminating the traitor affirms his membership of the
group and his pledge to the group.
Punishing the traitor renews the bond
between the remaining members, even if only by renewing the fear of breaking
60 CDR,
61 CDR,
62 CDR,
63 CDR,
431.
433.
434.
438.
158
the pledge. Sartre adds that anger and violence at the traitors disloyalty are
lived both as Terror against the traitor and as a practical bond of love between
the members of the group.
Violence, claims Sartre, is the very power of this
lateral reciprocity of love.64 The creation of Terror as a counter-violence is a

common strength used against the enemy and used to reshape the group.65 So
this terror has a double purpose, both to strengthen the group against the enemy
and to regroup.
VII.
Recreating and Unifying the Group

In the Critique. Sartre also begins to give an account of the recreation of
the members of the group through violence. (He will later build on this analysis in
his preface to The Wretched of the Earth.') He explains that through mortal
solitude man is created as a new entity. Through the violent negation of future
possibilities there is a statute of created novelty or newness,66 This violence,
both within the group in the form of the pledge and outside of the group in
defending against the enemy, makes it impossible to turn back. It is not longer
an option to return to the life before the revolt.
Furthermore, it is impossible
revert to the statute of sub-humanity. Violence is the perpetuation of the violent

movement which created him as common individual rather than a sub-human.67
In this group Sartre explains, my brother and my own existence depend on one
64 CDR,
65 CDR,
66 CDR,
67 CDR,
439.
439.
435.
435.
159
another.68 But this fraternity is not based on physical resemblance expressing

some deep identity of natures.
He adds that this fraternity is the right of all
through everyone and over everyone. It is not enough to recall that it is also
violence, or that it originated in violence: it is violence itself affirming itself as a
bond of immanence through positive reciprocities.69
Sartre also addresses the question of the seemingly contradictory violent
behavior of the revolutionary.
He explains that since violence is always
everywhere, both against the external enemy and against the alterity within, the
revolutionary commits violence on the enemy, which Sartre again reminds us is
really counter-violence, and he uses perpetual violence in order to reorganize
himself, even going so far as to kill some of his fellow members.70 But, Sartre
asserts, there is not a contradiction here: this common freedom gets its violence
from the violent occasion which occasioned it, and from the reign of necessity
(which it transcended but preserved in itself).71
In other words, this is a
reiteration of the claim that the violence was introduced by the colonizers and
then taken up by the colonized, both within the revolutionary group, as an
organizing (and reorganizing) agent, and outside of the revolutionary group
against the external enemy. According to Sartre, the essential structures of a
revolutionary group include- Hope and Terror, Sovereign Freedom in everyone
and Violence against the Other (both inside and outside the group).72 While
68 CDR,
69 CDR,
70 CDR,
71 CDR,
72 CDR,
437.
438.
406.
406.
406.
160
these characteristics are often presented as contradictions, Sartre states that the
only contradiction between these terms is a dialectical one, he adds, these
supposedly incompatible characteristics are indissolubly and synthetically united
in every action and declaration of the revolutionary demonstrators.73
I agree with Sartres analysis of the impact of colonial violence on the
colonized group manifested in the form of internalized violence and violence
between members of the group. However, I do have some concerns about the
idea that this violence is the only unifying agent of the colonized. I do not want to
rely too heavily or exclusively on violence as a unifying agent for groups
(specifically for colonized groups). I actually agree with Arendt that violence can
only provide a temporary sense of unity. While I am willing to consider violence
as ONE MOMENT in the process of unification of the colonized against their
oppressors, it is certainly not the only moment. The source of unity has to be
deeper than violence.
In the face of colonial oppression as well as after the
revolution, collective memory can serve as a source of unity for the colonized.
VII.
Internalized Colonial Violence

Like Sartre, Fanon examines the impact of colonial violence on the
colonized natives. But I dont think Fanon is going as far as Sartre in resting so
heavily on violence to define the group. Sartre seems to be asserting here that
the creation, identity, and maintenance/preservation of the group depends on
violence.
Fanon recognizes the role of violence in uniting the group against the
73 CDR, 407.
161
oppressor, but asserts that the aim is to stop fraternal/fratricidal violence and
transform it to violence against the colonial system. However, Fanon does give a
similar account of the role of violence in the formation of the colonized as a
revolutionary group.
Fanon first calls our attention to the role of violence in maintaining the
colonial system, i.e. the violence of the colonizers against the colonized, and
then he examines the role of violence in organizing the colonized in revolt against
the system.
Sartre states that Fanon shows clearly that this irrepressible
violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor
even the effect of resentment: it is man recreating himself.74 But before violence
becomes a unifying agent for the colonized, it is first a mode of division and
animosity between them.
Fanon explains that the violence of the colonizers
against the natives becomes internalized in the colonized so much so that it has
a kind of psychosomatic impact manifested in muscular tension and cramping.
The violence remains dormant in the colonized for some time because they are
restrained from defending themselves against the violence of the colonizer.
Consequently, the aggression and violence that the colonized man has
learned from the colonizer is first manifested against his own people.
Fanon
explains, This is the period when the niggers beat each other up, and the police
and magistrates do not know which way to turn when faced with the astonishing
waves of crime in North Africa.75 Fanon is calling our attention to the black on
74 WE, 21.
75 WE, 52.
162
black crime that results from the colonial system. Because the colonized are not
allowed to exhibit any violence (i.e. self-defense) toward the colonizers, their
anger festers without an outlet. They find that the only outlet for this violence is
bloodthirsty explosions, tribal warfare, and quarrels with individuals.76
It may seem peculiar that the colonized endures the violence inflicted by
the colonizer and then projects that violence back onto other members of their
group in a very self-destructive way, but that is the reality and the consequence
of the violent colonial system. Fanon explains, The settler or the police strike
and insult the native all day without getting a response, but the native will reach
for his knife if another native even looks at him the wrong way.77 Since the
colonized are not yet able to see a way out of the colonial system, they display
patterns of avoidance.
Fanon states, It is as if plunging into a fraternal
bloodbath allowed them to ignore the obstacle, and to put off until later the
choice, nevertheless inevitable, which opens up the question of armed resistance
to colonialism.78 But this period of self-destruction is not a total loss for the
colonized.
Their muscular tension is set free through this self-destructive
fratricidal violence.
And although the bloodbath against other colonized men
allows them to prolong the inevitable choice of armed resistance to colonialism, it

is also a catalyst for recognizing that armed resistance is the only choice. So
self-destruction is only the first stage of violence, which is followed by a violence
that organizes the colonized against the colonizers.
76 WE, 54.
77 WE, 54.
78 WE, 54.
163
Violence becomes a unifying agent for the colonized when they all take
hold of that violence as a tool against their oppressors. Membership within the
group requires group responsibility for actions taken against the colonizers.
Fanon explains, The [colonized] group requires that each member perform an
irrevocable action.79 Each persons membership in the group is secured when
they have all performed acts that make it impossible for them to return to
colonialism, that is impossible to return to a passive acceptance rather than an
active resistance to colonialism.
According to Fanon, when everyone in the
group takes responsibility for the violence, it allows strayed and outlawed
members of the group to return, find their place, and become integrated into the
group.
Fanon cites an example of a resistance group in Kenya where each
member of the group was required to strike a blow to the victim so that each one
was personally responsible for the death of that victim. But this requirement for
full participation is not just aiming at a negative responsibility for the violent acts
of resistance; it is also aims at a positive responsibility for the independence that
will be won through the groups efforts.
Fanon describes the role of violence in resistance efforts in this way,
Violence binds them together as a whole, since each individual forms a violent
link in the great chain, a part of the great organism of violence which has surged
upward in reaction to the settlers violence in the beginning.
recognize each other and the future nation is already indivisible.
The groups
The armed
struggle mobilizes the people; that is to say, it throws them in one way and in one
79 WE, 85.
164
direction.80 Thus, violence is not only a unifying agent, it is also a mobilizing

agent. It mobilizes the masses against the colonial system in such a way that
once they get started there is no turning back.
This emphasis on the unification and mobilization of the people is not
something that should be taken lightly. Recall from the discussion of colonialism
as a system of oppression that it aims at dividing the colonized.
Colonialism
encouraged tribal warfare and disagreements among the natives. As long as the
natives were fighting one another, they could not mobilize to fight the real enemy,
the colonizers.
So the violence of the colonized unifies them against the
separatism of colonialism.
Fanon states that violence is all-inclusive and
national, liquidating problems of regionalism and tribalism.81 But Fanon also is

careful to note (unlike Sartre) that this is preliminary to the unification of the
people.82 So violence is not the only unifying agent, it is a part of the first stage
of unification of the people.
VIII.
Towards a Revolutionary Violence

However, both Sartre and Fanon agree that the system of colonialism was
founded and maintained by violence and that the colonized take hold of this
violence for themselves in the form of revolt. For example, Sartre states that the
French military in Algeria produces petrified violence described as inertia or
inertia violence that is taken up by the colonized masses both as their destiny
80 WE, 93.
81 WE, 94.
82 WE, 94. (My emphasis)
165
and as an oppressive practice of the enemy.83 Like Fanon, (though not with the
expertise that Fanon brings as a psychiatrist), Sartre considers the psychological
impact of violence and colonialism on the colonized in the form of an inferiority
complex. Sartre asserts that even if the individual interiorizes the oppression as
a feeling of inferiority and sub-humanity, and even if he tries to assimilate to his
conquerors, he does not cease to experience this condition, this ontological
statute, as the inexorable and unforgivable violence done to him by a hard
hearted enemy.84
Sartre adds that the colonizers violence is specifically
designed to deprive the colonized of any possibility of reacting, even in the form
of admiring and seeking to become like his oppressors.
In other words, the
violence perpetuated against the colonized does not allow for any action, not
even in the form of emulation, except of course for the natives emulation of the
colonizers violence launched back at the colonizer. Fanon explains that violence
is a remedy to the feeling of inferiority, It frees the native from his inferiority
complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores
his self-respect.85
The colonized are faced with a choice, to be complacent in their colonial
oppression or to rise up and revolt against their oppressors. They choose the
latter, and this choice is only possible through violence.
Negation from the
oppressor is combated with negation of the oppressor; violence from the

oppressor is met with violence against the oppressor. Sartre states, The only
83 CDR, 723.
84 CDR, 724.
85 WE, 94.
166
possible way out was to confront total negation with total negation, violence with
equal violence; to negate dispersal and atomization by an initially negative unity
whose content would be defined in struggle...86
Again, Sartre emphasizes the fact that the colonized use the colonizers
weapons of violence against the system of colonialism.
He describes the
Algerian rebellion as a desperate violence, but this was only, an adoption of the
despair in which the colonialists maintained the natives; its violence was simply a
negation of the impossible [i.e. negation of death], and the impossibility of life
was the immediate result of oppression.87 He adds, in a powerful assertion,
The violence of the rebel was the violence of the colonialist; there was never any
other.88
So in a sense, we are dealing with two seemingly contradictory
assertions by Sartre. On the one hand, Sartre is trying to differentiate between

the colonizers violence and the violence of the colonized, asserting that it is the
latters violence that is justified in the form of revolutionary violence. On the other
hand, Sartre is asserting that there is not a colonizers violence versus the
violence of the colonized there is one violence. The colonizers violence is the
one violence that is exerted against the colonized and it only returns to the
colonizers in the form of resistance/revolt. But as Sartre states about the other
seemingly contradictory characteristics of the revolutionary group, this is only a
dialectical contradiction.
86 CDR, 733.
87 CDR, 733.
88 CDR, 733. (My emphasis.)
167
The revolutionary violence of the colonized is a regurgitation of the

colonizers violence back onto the colonizer. There is a single violence and a
single oppression. Sartre asserts that the struggle between the oppressed and
oppressors
ultimately became the
reciprocal
interiorization of a single
oppression.89 Even the oppressive colonizer recognizes that it is his oppressive

violence that is manifested in the revolutionary violence of the colonized natives,
and he becomes appalled at it.90 I have intentionally highlighted the argument
that the violence of the colonial system requires a violent revolt on numerous
occasions. Sartres support of the argument takes on various forms and cannot
be emphasized enough. In fact, Sartre continues this line of argumentation in the
preface to The Wretched of the Earth where he describes the revolutionary
violence as a boomerang effect (an idea also presented by Fanon and Aime
Cesaire).
Colonialism initiates violence against the colonized in the form of
military presence, physical abuse, and murder.
But Sartre notes that this
violence is also manifested in higher birth rates and increased famine among the
colonized and with children having a life in the system of colonialism to fear more
than death. Consequently, Sartre explains, In Algeria and Angola, Europeans
are massacred on sight. It is the moment of the boomerang; it is the third phase
of violence, it comes back on us, it strikes us, and we do not realize any more
than we did the other times that its we who launched it.91
89 CDR, 733.
90 CDR, 733.
91 WE, 20.
168
In the preface, Sartre is addressing Europeans, specifically the French

bourgeois and liberals, all of whom he asserts are responsible for the crime of
colonialism.
He explains the contradictions of colonialism and the originary
violence of the Europeans against the colonized of Africa stating, Of course;

first, the violence is the settlers; but soon they will make it their own; that is to
say, the same violence is thrown back upon us as when our reflection comes
forward to meet us when we go toward a mirror.92 Sartre asserts that the
colonized have been trapped between the colonizers violence and the impact of
that violence in the form of violent confrontations with one another. According to
Sartre, this is not their violence but the violence of the French, for at first it is not
their violence, it is ours, which turns back on itself and rends them.93
So the colonized take on the violence inherent in the system of
colonialism. We have already noted that this violence is first taken up in the form
of internalization. The colonized first fight against one another, and then they
must make the transition from violence within the group to organized
revolutionary violence against the system of colonialism.
Fanon explains this
process poignantly. The colonized must figure out how to turn the atmosphere of
violence into something productive for decolonization. They must consider how
to utilize and organize these forced and convert them into action.94 When other
methods have failed, the colonized have learned that violence modifies the
92 WE, 17.
93 WE, 18.
94 WE, 70.
169
attitude of the colonist causing a panic.95 Violence becomes productive when

the colonized are able to identify their enemy and recognize their own
oppression, throwing all of their hate and anger against it. As their leaders are
arrested and tortured, the masses demand they be released and threaten more
force. Their violence is now aimed at the task of destroying the colonial system.96
The colonized have been organized around one objective, that is
decolonization, and this aim is necessarily achieved through violence. According
to Fanon, National liberation, national resistance, the restoration of nationhood
to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the
formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.97 Fanon
describes decolonization as the meeting of two opposed forces, the colonizer
and the colonized. He explains, Their first encounter was marked by violence
and their existence together - that is to say the exploitation of the native by the
settler - was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons.98
Fanons description of decolonization is not adorned with fancy words; it is crude
and raw, making it difficult to digest. Nevertheless, it is true and accurate. He
simply states what he sees unfolding before his eyes. Take this passage for
example:
The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets
and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall
be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive
struggle between the two protagonists. The affirmed intention to
95 WE,
96 WE,
97 WE,
98 WE,
70.
72.
35.
36.
170
place the last at the head of things...can only triumph if we use all
means to turn the scale, including, of course, that if violence."
Again, this violence is learned from the colonizers. Fanon explains, The
native who decides to put the program [of decolonization] into practice, and to
become its moving force, is ready for violence at all times. From birth it is clear
to him [the native] that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be
called into question by absolute violence.100 The violence that was once used to
oppress is taken up as a tool for liberation. Violence has ruled the colonial world
and destroyed the social forms, systems of economy, and other customs, but
Fanon states, that same violence will be claimed and taken over by the native
at the moment when, deciding to embody history in his own person, he surges
into the forbidden quarters.101
Once the process of decolonization has begun, there is no turning back. It
is too late for peace talks, negotiations, and diplomats. The destruction of the
colonial world is not to open lines of communication or for co-habitation. The
destruction of the colonial world is no more and no less [than] the abolition of one
zone, its burial in the depths of the earth or its expulsion from the country.102
The colonized come to realize that colonialism only loosens its hold when the
knife is at its throaf and they dont find these terms too violent.103 According to
Fanon, these terms of decolonization only expressed what every Algerian felt in
99 WE, 37.
100 WE, 37.
101 WE, 40.
102 WE, 41.
103 WE, 61. This is a phrase that appeared on a famous leaflet distributed by the
FLN in 1956.
171
his heart: colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with
reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state and it will only yield when
confronted with greater violence.104
Of course, all of the colonized are not necessarily prepared to accept the
terms of decolonization. Fanon explains that through colonialism, the colonized
have been divided into separate groups and classes. The main division is that
between the uneducated and impoverished masses and the educated elites.
Among all the colonized, it is the impoverished, peasant masses that are the
most revolutionary and most willing to accept the terms of decolonization. Sartre
explains, in colonized societies where development is deliberately hindered, the
peasantry, when it rises, quickly stands out as the revolutionary class.105
Fighting against hunger and starvation, the peasantry demands a complete
demolishing of all existing colonial structures. Everyone must fall in line with the
rural masses, that veritable reservoir of a national revolutionary army under the
command of the peasant class.106
Here we see Sartres incorporation of
socialism into the analysis of colonialism and decolonization.

Sartre, the revolution must be socialist.
According to
The peasants represent the most
oppressed class and should therefore be the leaders. Sartre is reiterating this
point that is emphasized by Fanon.
Fanon explains that the peasants are
systematically disregarded for the most part by the propaganda put out by the
nationalist parties:
106W E J 1 .
172
And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are
the revolutionaries, for they have nothing to lose and everything to
gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first
among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him
there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonialism
and decolonization are simply a question of relative strength.107
Violence is so intertwined with maintaining the system of colonialism that
only violence can overthrow the system and achieve decolonization.
But
revolutionary violence does not just combat against the system of colonialism
itself, it also combats against the negative impact that this system has had on the
psyche of the natives. According to Sartre, the wounds inflicted by colonialism
will not be healed by peaceful efforts or gentleness.
He asserts that only
violence can destroy the marks inflicted by colonial violence.

violence serves multiple purposes for the natives.
Revolutionary
It is both a method of
overthrowing the system of colonialism and a method of true self-discovery and

re-creation.
According to Sartre, violence is both a unifying agent and a
humanizing agent for the colonized.
Through violence the colonized are
emancipated and regain the innocence lost in colonialism. They regain humanity
and destroy the gloom of colonialism that has loomed in and around them.108
Sartre explains that the child of violence, at every moment he draws from it his
humanity.
We were men at his expense, he makes himself man at ours: a
different man; of a higher quality.109 Sartre even goes as far as to encourage

the killing of Europeans. He explains, For in the first days of the revolt you must
107 WE, 61.

108 WE, 21.
109 WE, 24.
173
kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an
oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead
man, and a free man...110
IX.
A Defense of Revolutionary Violence

But this is only one side of the story. We have explained how colonialism
is a violent system and how the colonized take hold of this violence to fight
against this system, but up to this point we have not considered the colonizers
response to the revolt. Sartre already made it clear that it is naive and just plain
wrong to assume that the violence was initiated by the colonized, or even that
they maintain it. On the contrary, violence was already present in the system of
colonialism, and after the first violent revolt by the colonized against their
colonizers, the cycle has begun. Sartre explains that the colonists are not going
to easily give up this violent, but financially lucrative, system of oppression that
he previously described as a type of super-exploitation. In response to the first
signs of revolt the colonial army becomes ferocious...and they massacre women
and children.111 Unity among the colonized is crucial to their survival in the
revolt against colonialism. The absence of unity results in the slaughter of the
naives by the colonizers.
In deciding to revolt against their oppressors the
110 WE, 22.

111 WE, 23.
174
colonized are well aware that they will be killed, but accepts the risk because
they prefer victory to survival, even if others will enjoy the fruits of the victory.112
Fanon also makes it clear that this violence is not one sided. Just as
colonization was founded and maintained in violence, the system defended itself
against collapse through violence. In their resistance, the violence of the masses
goes up against the violence of the French military forces and the situation
deteriorates and comes to a head. Fanon states that both the colonizers and the
colonized know the power of such violence.113 But Fanon questions the real
nature of this violence: ...it is the intuition of the colonized masses that their
liberation must, and can only, be achieved by force. But, one may ask, how do
the colonized come to believe that violence alone will free them? Again we must
return to the argument that it is violence that oppressed them, so violence is
required to free them.
Both Sartre and Fanon assert that the language of
violence was taught to the colonized by the colonizers, and they learned this
language well.
One problem is that attitudes towards violence are one-sided. It seems
that the violence required for the French to establish, maintain, and defend
colonialism is acceptable, but the violence required for decolonization falls under
condemnation.
This is certainly the case with Arendt, for example.
The
oppressors violence is presented without objections while the violent resistance

efforts of the oppressed are denounced. In response to resistance the colonizers
112 WE, 23.
113 Arendt, of course would disagree with the claim that there is power in violence
for these two terms are opposites for Arendt. This was discussed earlier in the chapter.
175
increase the police and military presence. In an effort to discourage resistance

among the colonized, the colonizers respond with greater violence. They arrest
political leaders, organize military parades. But these measures do not force the
natives to retreat; it only reinforces their aggression.114 According to Fanon, the
violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the colonized balance
each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal
homogeneity. But the violence will be the more terrible in proportion to the size
of the implantation from the mother country (France).
The development of
violence among the colonized people will be proportionate to the violence

exercised by the threatened colonial regime.115 However, the results of all of this
violence are not equivalent. The financial and military strength of the colonizing
country make it possible for them to inflict far more destruction on the colonized
people.
The colonizers have at their disposal machine-guns, airplanes, and
bombardments from the fleet, and the impact of these weapons go far beyond in
horror and in magnitude any answer the natives can make.116
But the media paints a different picture for the world to see. According to
Fanon, terror, counter-terror, violence, counter-violence: that is what observers
bitterly record when they describe the circle of hate, which is so tenacious and so
evident in Algeria.117 But in a footnote he explains in more detail the tenacity of
the violence launched against the colonized rebels. While the UNO asks for a
114 WE,
115 WE,
116 WE,
117 WE,
70-71.
88.
89.
89.
176
peaceful and democratic solution, Lacoste sets out to organize European militias
in Algeria to lighten the load of the French military in Algeria. The army was
given civil powers and civilians were given military powers. Every European was
armed and instructed to open fire on any person who seems suspect to him.
Every Frenchmen was authorized and even invited to use his weapons. When
the UNO asked to stop the bloodshed and Lacoste replied that the best way to
do this was to make sure there remains no blood to shed.118 In the face of all of
this, Fanon asserts that everyone now knows there is no turning back.
The
colonized are aware that since they have decided to reply by violence, they must
be willing and ready to take all of consequences of violence.119
consequences include massacres of thousands of the colonized.
The
They are
tortured, their wives are killed, or raped, or both, and the French do nothing about
it. According to Fanon, there have been almost seven years of crimes in Algeria
and not a single Frenchman has been indicted before a French court of justice
for the murder of an Algerian.120
So the colonized must now confront some of the setbacks of violence.
Not only do they have to deal with the higher magnitude of violence that the
colonizers are able to exert, they have to continue to deal with the consequences
of living in an atmosphere that is permeated by violence. Fanon states:
Already we see that violence used in specific ways at the moment
of the struggle for freedom does not magically disappear after the
ceremony of trooping the national colors. It has all the less reason
118 WE, 90.
119 WE, 92.
120 WE, 92.
177
for disappearing since the reconstruction of the nation continues

within the framework of cutthroat competition between capitalism
and socialism.121
The violence does not all of the sudden disappear because there is still economic
competition and apartheid.
But this does not render the situation hopeless.
Even the magnitude of the oppressors resources against those of the oppressed
does not thwart the revolution. Fanon asserts:
[T]he violence of the native is only hopeless if we compare it in the
abstract to the military machine of the oppressor. On the other
hand, if we situate that violence in the dynamics of the international
situation, we see at once that it constitutes a terrible menace for the
oppressor.122
X.
The Impossibility of Non-Violence

Both Fanon and Sartre categorize cries for non-violence as bourgeois
slogans that can be translated to mean: accept your oppressed station in life and
DO NOTHING. Fanon explains that when the colonialist bourgeois attempt to
speak about non-violence it signifies a point of agreement or mutual interest
between the intellectual and economic elite and the bourgeoisie.123 This is part
of the reason why it is not the native elites and intellectuals, but the peasants that
make up the revolutionary class. Fanon explains that non-violence is an attempt
to settle the colonial problem around a green baize table, before any regrettable
action has been performed or irreparable gesture made, before any blood has
121 WE, 75.

122 WE, 79.
123 WE, 61.
been shed.124
But Fanon warns that non-violence will not work because
decolonization is necessarily a violent phenomenon. He explains:

The uprising of the new nation and the breaking down of colonial
structures are the result of one of two causes: either of a violent
struggle of the people in their own right, or of action on the part of
surrounding colonized peoples which acts as a brake on the
colonial regime question.125
It is against this backdrop that I want to explain why non-violence is not an
option under the violent conditions of the colonial system. Non-violence is not an
option because the system is always already sustained by violence. To expect
the colonized natives to lie down and accept the vicious system of colonialism
with peaceful demonstrations is to miscomprehend the entire system and how it
functions in the lives of the people. It is a gross understatement of the problem.
A position of non-violence only offers more support for the violence exercised by
the oppressors. Sartre indicts the promoters of non-violence in this way:
A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that
they are neither executioners nor victims. Very well then, if youre
not victims when the government which youve voted for, when the
army in which your younger brothers are serving without hesitation
or remorse have taken race murder, you are, without a shadow of a
doubt, executioners...if violence began this very evening and if
exploitation and oppression had never existed in the earth, perhaps
the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole
regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a
thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place
you in the ranks of the oppressors.126
A non-violent stance on colonialism is an alignment with the oppressive
colonizers. To condemn the revolutionary violence of the colonized against the
124 WE, 61.
125 WE, 70.
126 WE, 25.
oppressive colonial system, as Arendt does, is to condone the violence of the

colonizers, along with their governments and institutions, all of which play a role
in the vicious and violent system.
Part of the problem is our limited conception of violence. Too often we
target instances of resistance and label them as violent while completely ignoring
the violence required to establish and maintain any form of social and political
order. Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan makes this argument in Frantz Fanon and the
Psychology of Oppression. Bulhan explains that oppression itself is a form of
violence stating, A situation of oppression is essentially a caldron of
violence...Thus to study oppression is, in the final analysis, to delve into the
problems of violence in both its subtle and crude manifestations.127 It is a
narrow conception of violence that lends to one-sided interpretations and
criticisms of violence in one broad stroke. According to Bulhan, violence is at the
center of some of our most admired institutions including law, order, and justice.
And even when people are partially aware of the role of violence in our social and
political institutions, their view is often skewed and perceives violence only as a
last resort to deal with criminals or those who break the law and bring disorder.
Bulhan underscores the error of this conception of violence and asserts
For any given social order, violence often occurs vertically - from top to bottom
- in the struggle for power, security, justice. This form of violence is often
sanctioned as legitimate, whereas violence from the bottom up is considered
127Hussein A. Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (New

York: Plenum Press, 1985), 131. Hereafter FFPO.
180
illegitimate.128 In part, this is the problem with Arendts analysis of violence.

She condones the violence in the private sphere that allows some to enter the
political sphere, and she excuses the use of violence in the form of racism and
colonialism, but she takes an unwavering stand against the revolutionary
violence of the oppressed that is advocated by both Sartre and Fanon.
I am advancing the argument that demands for peace and non-violence
are impossible to meet.
unattainable in our world.
These demands are not only impractical, but also

Furthermore, while these demands are presented
under the guise of a universal condemnation of violence, they are in reality a

rejection of only some forms of violence, in Arendts case, revolutionary violence.
All cries for peace and non-violence must immediately be qualified. Exactly what
does one have in mind when thinking of the term violence? We have seen (for
example in the third chapter) that violence, in the colonial system alone, takes on
numerous forms, including racism, culture-killing, and military force to name a
few.
But Arendt offered no criticism of these forms of violence, only the
revolutionary violence of the oppressors.
For this reason, and others already
mentioned and rehearsed, I am challenging Arendts analysis of violence and her

critique of Sartre and Fanon entailed therein.
128 FFPO, 134.
181
Conclusion
In this dissertation I set out to examine and critique Hannah Arendts

conception of the political realm and argue that this limited conception of the
political has a dire impact on her analysis of race, racism, colonialism, and
violence. Furthermore, I examine the alternate viewpoints of Sartre and Fanon in
reference to race, colonialism, and revolutionary violence - supporting their
claims that revolutionary violence is the only way to achieve decolonization,
against Arendts claim that they are glorifying violence for violences sake. In the
first chapter I argue that Arendts desire to exclude economics and other social
questions from the political realm is evidenced by her praise of the American
Revolution, which she claimed raised political questions and her critique of the
French Revolution, which she claims was preoccupied with social concerns. I
trace Arendts exclusion of economics from the political realm in The Social
Question back to her earlier project in The Human Condition where she
promotes a strict distinction between the public/political realm and the private
realm. According to Arendt the political realm is the realm of freedom and action,
while the private realm is the realm of labor, work, and necessity. Arendt also
critiques the rise of the social, which she blames for the diminished distinction
between the public and private realms. I argue that although her critique of the
rise of the social in The Human Condition may seem appealing at first glance,
when we look at her critique of the social in The Social Question, we see that
this is really just a critique of the poor and a call for the exclusion of economics
from public and political space.
To underscore the limitations of Arendts

182
exclusionary conception of the political realm, I point to the problematic paradox

of the political realm. This is the problem of making political space the region of
freedom that is limited to the few at the expense of the many.
According to Arendt, forcing the many to remain in the private space of
necessity so that some may enter the political space of freedom is not only
permissible, but also necessary in order to maintain the public/private division.
Arendt even admits and condones the fact that violence is a method by which the
few in the political realm rule over the many in the private realm. This marks the
beginning of a pattern in Arendt to give a biased critique of violence. Although
she does not take exception to the use of violence in the private realm to master
necessity, she later condemns the violence of the oppressed in their attempts to
liberate themselves from necessity.
In the second chapter I argue that Arendfs limited concept of the political
is also operating in her problematic analysis of racial oppression. I assert that
her notion of political equality does not line up with the realities of racial
inequalities. I argue that Arendts distinctions between the public, the private,
and the social also prove to be a hindrance to her analysis of racial
discrimination, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and her study of
American slavery.
Arendt insists that racial oppression, which she labels as
racial discrimination, is a social issue, and furthermore, that racial discrimination

is as much a right in the social realm as equality is a right in the political realm.
This chapter also highlights Arendts one-sided criticism against the violence of
the oppressed. I expose how Arendt attacks the Black Power movement as a
183
violent movement in which black people only desired to lower academic

standards (which itself is an erroneous assumption), yet she is uncritical of the
violence that she acknowledges is inherent in racism.
In the second chapter I also examine Sartres and Fanons accounts of the
development of racial identities, including the creation of the Negro and the Jew
through negative stereotypes, and the argument that these negative stereotypes
could be overcome by an authentic race consciousness. Unfortunately, Sartre
then argues that, in the case of the Negro, once an authentic race consciousness
is acquired through Negritude, we must then aim at attaining a raceless society
and join the socialist struggle with the other workers of the world. I reject the
idea that overcoming racism requires a rejection of race altogether and argue for
the conservation of race in the face of racial oppression, leaning on the analysis
of W.E.B. Du Bois.
But I also go beyond conservation and argue in favor of
preserving race, even in the absence of racial oppression, for the sake of
collective memory.
In the third chapter, I shift my attention to the violent system of
colonialism, again focusing first on Arendts analysis, and then on Sartre and
Fanon. I assert that once again Arendts distinctions persist in her analysis of
imperialism. She argues that the rise of imperialism came with the extension of
national political agendas to include economic expansion abroad. In addition to
the intermingling of economics and politics, Arendt examines the role of racethinking, racism and violence in the rise of imperialism.
According to Arendt,
race-thinking is not the same as racism, but it did help provide the arguments
184
that would be taken up by racism and used to justify imperialism.
Arendt
acknowledges the fact that both racism and violence played key roles in the
establishment and development of European imperialism in Africa.
But rather
than condemning this racism and violence against Africans, she asserts that
these were understandable reactions to encounters with the savage Africans.
Arendt also asserts that the crime of racism and colonialism was not the impact
that it had on Africans and people of African descent, rather the real crime was
that these same methods were also adopted and used against non-Africans,
particularly, Jews, Asians, and Indians. She adds that while it was acceptable to
commit certain crimes against Africans - who were savages without history,
culture, or reason - in the case of Jews, Asians, and Indians the Europeans
should have known better. I am very critical of Arendt for holding this view and
again I attribute it to her limited conception of the political, as well as her passive
acceptance of oppressive violence. I turn again to the analyses of Sartre and
Fanon concerning the violent system of colonialism to begin to establish why
revolutionary violence is justified against colonial oppression.
I point to their
accounts of the contradictions of Western humanism, the divided colonial world,

the beginning stages of colonialism, and its development into a massive system
of super-exploitation. I also explore the role of the colonizers violence on the
form of racism, culture-killing, and military force.
Finally, I argue that Sartres
examination of colonialism is not devoid of a political analysis.

In the final chapter, beginning again with Arendt, I present her distinction
between violence and power and challenge her assertion that power is never
185
violent and that violence is never justified.
I also expose Arendts erroneous
interpretation of Sartre and Fanon and argue that her critique of revolutionary
violence is just an extension of her critique of the oppressed and the poor. While
Arendt acknowledges and accepts the role of violence in various systems of
oppression, she is never as critical of the oppressors violence as she is of the
notion of revolutionary violence against the oppressors.
Again I turn to the
alternative viewpoints of Sartre and Fanon and their arguments that revolutionary
violence is the only method by which the violent system of colonialism can be
destroyed.
I explore how the colonized native internalizes the colonizers
violence and it is first manifested in attacks on other colonized natives. But then
this violence is taken up to organize, unify, and recreate the colonized group. I
argue that revolutionary violence is justified because it is the only means by
which decolonization will occur, and it is legitimate because it is a collective
violence acted out in concert by the revolutionary natives. I conclude the chapter
by asserting that non-violence is not an option to be used against a system that
has been founded, maintained, and even defended thorough violence.
While I covered quite a few major topics and issues in this dissertation,
there are quite a few points that need to be developed. For example, although I
focused on Arendts account of racial oppression in the U.S., I did not discuss
Sartres and Fanons accounts of racial oppression in the U.S. in contrast to
Arendt. Also some of the points that I raise about racial identity need to be
developed, for example, the role of the gaze in relation to the experience of ones
race.
I would also like to do more work on the controversy surrounding the

186
notion of racial authenticity or authentic race consciousness" as well as my

argument for conserving and preserving race for the sake of collective memory.
Although I do explore Arendts account of freedom in political terms, I
would like to add Sartres more ontological account of freedom and its relation to
facticity and race, class, and gender oppression. This brings me to one of my
greatest regrets, which is the fact that I was unable to incorporate a feminist
analysis into this research project. While I could have made mention of some
feminist issues in relation to this topic, I did not want to marginalize a feminist
analysis by making a few random and undeveloped points about racism,
colonialism, and violence as experienced by women. In the future I would like to
explore these topics in greater depth.
In spite of these shortcomings, the main goal of this dissertation has been
achieved. I have been able to highlight the limitations of Arendts conception of
the political realm, which includes the public/private distinction.
I have
demonstrated how these limitations manifest themselves in her analysis of anti

black racism, American slavery, and European colonialism in Africa. Finally, I
made the case that Arendts critique of violence is not in opposition to all
violence, but only the violence of the oppressed against their oppressors. I have
also argued, with the support of Sartre and Fanon, that the revolutionary violence
of the colonized natives against the colonial system is both a legitimate and
justified method of confronting the violent system of colonialism.
Violence is
intrinsic within colonialism and consequently decolonization is always a violent

phenomenon.
187
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From Political Space to Political Agency:

Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon on Race and Revolutionary Violence

Kathryn Teresa Gines

UMI N um ber: 3095660

All rights reserved.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company

Copyright 2003 Kathryn Teresa Gines

To the Graduate Council:

Robert Bemasconi, Ph.D.

We have read this dissertation and

Ronald Sundstrom, Ph.D.

KahsaD. Weddle-West, Ph.D.

This dissertation challenges Hannah Arendts conception of the political

Against this background I present the alternative viewpoints of Jean-Paul

Looking at Sartres Black Orpheus (1948) and

Chapter One: Hannah Arendts Political Exclusivity................................... 9

Hannah Arendt has had such a tremendous impact on contemporary

I argue that Arendts

conception of the political is further limited by her analysis of economics,

and economic oppression from the political realm is (paradoxically) both a

analyzes colonial oppression in terms of race and class oppression in Black

The result is that Arendt

killed as a result of economic or racial oppression). Arendt denies the oppressed

This is the case not only in

I begin with Arendts account of political equality and

I challenge Arendts description of anti-black racial

oppression as social discrimination and I refute her arguments concerning the

Finally, I argue against

I also underscore the fact that Arendt

In my analysis of Sartre and Fanon I focus on their

critiques of Western humanism, the characterization of the colonizer and the

I conclude with the political aspects of

I also examine the role of violence in recreating and unifying the

colonized and their internalization of the colonizers violence.

Chapter One: Hannah Arendts Political Exclusivity

In The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt presents a notion of the

Consequently, while the public/private distinction is

often rehearsed, it retains its importance and relevance in several of Arendts

In the third section I

Toward that end, I address how this distinction imposes

limitations on political agency and action, as well as the problematic paradox of

Revolution and the Social Question

Not only are these inappropriate causes for a revolution, Arendt

The downfall of any revolution is accelerated when the

social question is its aim.

For Arendt, this is perhaps not a judgment, but a

Arendt equates the social question with poverty by straightforwardly

Arendt does not accept Marxs politicization of these

issues that she labels as social or private rather than political.

When conceived in this way, the political realm

Here Arendt acknowledges that all revolutions are about a

struggle against tyranny and oppression.

But the systematic exploitation of

Arendt condemns the French Revolution for focusing on necessity and

She adds, Because all human beings are subject to

14 SQ, 91. (My emphasis.)

If Arendt is to follow her account of

This predicament of poverty is not just

deprivation and misery, but inhumanity. Poverty is a dehumanizing agent; to be

For this reason the

To her credit, Arendt acknowledges that, the

The Public Realm and the Political Concept of Freedom