Leftist Reading: The Wretched of the Earth Part 19

Episode 74:Content Warnings this episode for:Mental health, trauma, child violence, child murder, torture, violence, body violation, medical malpractice, involuntary drugging, gaslighting, brainwashing.See below for timestamps indicating some specific CWs.This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz FanonThe full book is available online here:https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf[Part 1-5]Concerning Violence[Part 6]Violence in the International Context[Part 7 - 9]Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness[Part 10 - 14]The Pitfalls of National Consciousness[Part 15-17]On National Culture-Poem-Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom[Part 18]Colonial War and Mental DisordersSeries A[Part 19 - This Week]Series B - 1:17Case 1 [CW Child violence and murder] - 01:31Case 2 - 05:27Case 3 [CW Torture] - 10:58Case 4 - 15:18Case 5 - 16:39Series C [CW Torture] - 19:37Category 1 [CW Violence, body violation] - 20:08Category 2 - 24:42Category 3 [CW Medical malpractice, involuntary drugging and gaslighting] - 25:49Category 4 [CW Brainwashing and gaslighting] - 29:27[Part 20?]Series D[Part 22?]ConclusionFootnotes:1) 4:29Rivet is a village which since a certain day in the year 1956 has become celebrated in the region around Algiers. For on that evening the village was invaded by the militia who dragged forty men from their beds and afterward murdered them.2) 10:56During the year 1955, cases of this type were very numerous in Algeria. Unfortunately not all the patients had the good fortune to be sent to a hospital.3) 21:07This type of torture is the cause of a very large number of deaths. After these enemas given at high pressure, the mucous mem­brane of the intestine becomes in fact the seat of numerous lesions which provoke minute perforations of the intestine. Gaseous em­bolisms and cases of peritonitis are thus very frequently caused.4) 22:09We are here speaking of course of those Algerians who, know­ing something, have not confessed under torture; for it is well known that an Algerian who confesses is killed immediately afterward.5) 23:28The medical attendants are obliged to sit by the patient night and day working to explain matters to him. We can understand that the formula of "treating him a bit rough" is of no possible value here.6) 24:19This preventive torture becomes in certain districts "preventive repression." Thus at Rivet, though peace reigned, the settlers did not want to be taken unawares (the neighboring districts were beginning to stir) and decided purely and simply to do away with all eventual members of the FLN. Over forty Algerians were killed in a single day.7) 26:25In fact, it is not "foreign" at all. A conflict is only the result of the dynamic evolution of the personality, and here there can be no "foreign body." We ought rather to say that the problem is one of a "badly integrated body."8) 27:31We can cite in the same way the case of psychiatrists who were prime movers in "Presence frangaise," who when they were called in to give an expert opinion on a prisoner had the habit from the very first of proclaiming their great friendship with the defending lawyer, and of assuring the prisoner that the two of them (the bar­rister and the psychiatrist) would get him out of there. All the prisoners who had the benefit of expert opinions were guillotined. These psychiatrists boasted in front of us of their elegant method of overcoming "resistance."9) 30:00We know that in the United States of America a trend toward psycho-sociology has developed. Supporters of this school think that the tragedy of the contemporary individual is contained in the fact that he has no longer any part to play, and that present-day social conditions force him to exist only as a cog in the machine. From this comes the proposal of a therapeutic which will allow a man to take various roles in a veritable game of activity. Anyone can play any role; it even happens that in a single day a person's role may be changed; symbolically you may put yourself in the place of anyone you please. The factory psychiatrists in the United States are, it seems, making huge strides in group psychotherapy among workers. The latter are in fact able to identify themselves with heroes. Strained relations between employers and workers are considerably diminished.