Fanon and Torture
Type de matériel :
3
During his practice at Blida Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria, Frantz Fanon found himself confronted with patients who had undergone torture. He meticulously describes the colonial universe, because torture was an integral part of the colonial dynamics that routinely denied the colonized their own culture and personality. The Algerian is perceived through the prism of a racist ideology that advocates a hierarchy of races. Fanon was the first to describe in detail the psychiatric consequences of torture: neurotic disorders, psychoses, traumatic neuroses, and psychosomatic pathologies. He also highlighted the reactive psychic pathologies of the torturer. From his work we can draw a psychopathology of these inhuman practices. Thus the settlers not only make of the colonized a quintessence of evil, but also consider them as a non-being. Fanon argues that the colonialist experiences a feeling of guilt that he does not accept. Subsequently, they project their aggressive and sadistic impulses onto the native people. Reduced to the rank of a scapegoat, these people are then subjected to all kinds of abuse. Torture affects not only the biological body, but also the corps propre, in Merleau-Ponty’s sense.
Réseaux sociaux