Concerning Violence

Stephanie Mott
NAS 332 Environmental Justice
2/1/10
Concerning Violence by Franz Fanon response paper



Discourtesy is first and foremost a manner to be used in dealings with the others, with the former colonists who come to observe and to investigate (Fanon 77). The “ex-native” too often gets the impression that these reports are already written (Fanon 77). I agree with this but I think that the term “ex-native” can be expanded to include anyone that has an idea that hasn’t been seen before, has been done before and failed or is not talked about within the mainstream culture. This is a situation that would be an example of how the term “ex-native” could be expanded. The Friends of the Dunes organization is adding an additional floor to the house. This requires deconstructing the first floor. There is an opportunity to put a heat pump system into a house that is already being constructed in a way that is going to require the place where the heat pump system would be placed to be reconstructed. It may be possible to get a grant that would pay for the whole system or 80% of the system. However, since there is not easily accessible explicit information on how to do this like there is with solar, The Friends of the Dunes organization gives the person that isn’t a member of the organization the impression that even if they found a cost effective way to install the heat pump system the report would already be written; The Friends of the Dunes organization would say that the heat pump system is too expensive and be treated with indifference and mild hostility.
I feel this way about the United States political scene sometimes.
The report intends to verify the evidence; everything’s going badly since we left (Fanon 77). Frequently reporters complain of being badly received, of being forced to work under bad conditions and of being fenced round by indifference or hostility: all this is quite normal (Fanon 77). The nationalist leaders know that international opinion is formed solely by the Western press (Fanon 77). Now, when a journalist from the West asks us questions, it is seldom in order to help us (Fanon 77).
This can happen in many types of conflicts even if they aren’t related to social or environmental justice. For example, I saw a documentary about a person who was a high school cheerleader coach and there was an accusation placed by a cheerleader on the squad (who was disciplined by the coach for having test notes written on her leg that she tried to cover by her shorts) and the cheerleaders parents against the high school cheerleading coach. The cheerleader coach was interviewed by an official who was interviewing the school officials also to help determine whether she needed to be fired. When the cheerleading coach first started being interviewed she was very hostile and indifferent. The interviewer noticed this and asked her why she was acting this way. She said that she felt like she was being badly received by him and being forced to interveiwed under bad conditions. One of these was because the interviewer was solely chosen by the school officials and she had no input.

In the Algerian war, for example, even the most liberal (state the facts from the natives pt of view) of the French reporters never ceased to use ambiguous (capable of being understood in more than one way) words when describing our struggle” (Fanon 77).
When we blamed them for not reporting from the natives perspective, “they replied in all good faith that they were being objective (Fanon 77). For the native, objectivity is always directed against him”/ used to describe the native in a negative way. In the examples above this seems to have happened too. The high school cheerleading coach said that she experienced this with the school officials and with the interviewer. The high school cheerleading coach said that her actions weren’t fully described and described the cheerleading coach in a negative way.
I think that ambiguous language can be used to prevent people from becoming involved in something in addition to making it easier to use a preplanned agenda to make a decision. I think that both of these statements could apply to The Friends of the Dunes example above. For example, if they just decline because it is “too expensive” this can make it very hard to determine how to solve this problem. It could be too expensive for many reasons. Two possible reasons are that they don’t have the money to pay for the system or they don’t have the money to pay for increased property taxes or some other type of tax. Another reason is that they don’t have the money to pay the architect to make a new plan that will include the drawing of the heat pump system. If it is hard to determine how to solve the problem then it much easier to use a preplanned agenda because it is usually much quicker to use a preplanned agenda than to figure out how to solve a problem that needs additional questions to be answered.





























We may in the same way come to understand the new tone which” overwhelmed “international diplomacy at the United Nations General Assembly in September, 1960 (Fanon 77). The representatives of the colonial countries were aggressive and violent, and carried things to extremes, but the colonial peoples did not find that they exaggerated (Fanon 77). The radicalism of the African spokesmen brought the abcess to a head and showed up the inadmissible (unacceptable) nature of the veto and the dialogue between the great powers, and above all the tiny role reserved for the Third World (Fanon 78).
































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