Short answers questions

What does Fanon mean when he says that decolonization’s objective is a blank slate?

Fazon suggests that colonialism and decolonization may be nothing more than a mental void.

Give one (1) instance from The Stranger or The Meursault Investigation where the “look” or “gaze” was in action.

However, now that I think about it, I think that he already loved us back then in the manner of the deceased, with no pointless words and an expression that belonged in the afterlife.

Non-physical eye gaze: observing others and passing judgment.

Why, in a few words, does Césaire reject the claims of better civilization made by colonialism?

Civilization is just a disguise and is simply designed “… to exploit, by trickery and force, people and their lands.

7) According to Fanon in ”Concerning Violence,” what are the ”tools of oppression” in a colonial society?

Army barracks, police stations and segregated schools.

8) What might the speaker of ”A Far Cry from Africa” mean when he claims to be ”poisoned with the blood of both,” and ”divided to the vein”?

Walcott has mixed blood – African and British- thus, unable to identify his own culture. He feels foreign in both cultures due to his lack of ”pure” blood.

9) According to Ashcroft, what is nativeism?

Nativism is a term used to describe the desire to return to indigenous practices and cultural forms as they existed in pre-colonial society.

12) What country and specific historical event does the poem ”A Far Cry from Africa” reference?

Kenya and the Mau Mau uprising in 1950s.

18) Why do the French soldiers at the checkpoints in The Battle of Algiers fail to identify the women bombers?

The women are depicted as more ‘Europeanized’ and docile and unsuspecting. French could not imagine that they would be carrying explosives.

24) Why is it significant that Meursault takes particular note of Raymond’s mistress/girlfriend being ”Moorish”?

On this one, Meursault wanted to cement his new found friendship in Raymond, by helping him teach her ex-girl friend a lesson.

21) The Algiers that Meursault inhabits is a deeply segregated world, in which the city’s French/European population has little contact with the Arab majority. How does this lack of contact enable the Europeans’ stereotypical view of the city’s Arabs?

The settlers viewed as colonizing authority as racially superior to the inhabitants, and view them as “ignorant”, “illiterate”, “and backward” and claim that they are impoverished and underdeveloped because of their own lack of economic and agricultural skills.

23) Although Meursault does not directly express any hatred of Arabs, a certain reading of the novel makes his—and his fellow Europeans’—racism very clear. Give one (1) example, from before the murder, of implicit or explicit racism toward Arab Algerians.

Raymond just gets off with a warning inferring that Raymond just got off with a warning because he was a French citizen, and the girl was not.

30) Cite one (1) example of an exact or near-exact phrase from The Stranger appearing in The Meursault Investigation.

”Arab. I never felt Arab, you know. Arab-ness is like Negro-ness, which only exists in the white man’s eyes. In our neighborhood, in our world, we were Muslims. We had given names, faces, and habits. The others were ”the strangers,” God brought here to put us to the test

31) What is the title of Meursault’s memoir in The Meursault Investigation? Why is that title significant?

THE STRANGER this is because Meursaults victim is nameless.

25) In Chapter 5 of The Stranger, why do the Arabs simply stalk Raymond? Why do they not act more directly, as Raymond would probably have done?

The Arab stalked Raymond to intimidate him. He did not intend to kill him.

26) In Chapter 6, Raymond does not seem to consider the possibility of prison if he shoots the Arab. Based on his previous encounter with police, is he right not to worry?

Raymond just gets off with a warning when He beat his ex-girlfriend. He knew that if he had a good explanation, would therefore be manifested as a justified cause and be released.

35) In ”The Day They Burnt The Books,” why do the narrator’s classmates call her a ”horrid colonial”?

Because he had not visited England, he was born and brought up in the locality.

36) Also in Rhys’s story, why do the books that the narrator and her friend Eddie save from burning turn out to be a disappointment?

She felt out of place in among the real English children and yet ridiculed by the black children for having English roots but growing in the locality.

37)What are the ”reactionary psychoses” that Fanon refers to in ”Colonial War and Mental Disorders”?

Fanon set out to ascertain the human cost of colonization by drawing upon his medical practice to provide an account of selected clinical cases that were classified as ”reactionary psychoses”

38) Cite one (1) example of a trauma-induced mental disorder in “Colonial War and Mental Disorders” that specifically afflict colonizers.

The story of an Algerian resistance fighter whose wife was raped because she protected his identity when question by French police.

39) Cite one (1) example from Capecia’s I Am AMartinican Woman that Fanon neglects to mention in his critique of her work.

He fails to see that Mayotte works as a laundress.