The Wretched of the Earth

The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanising effects of colonization upon the individual, and the nation, from which derive the broader social, cultural, and political implications inherent to establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people. The French-language title derives from the opening lyrics of "The Internationale", the 19th-century anthem of the Left Wing.

In his introduction to the 1961 edition of The Wretched of the Earth, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre supported Frantz Fanon’s advocacy of justified violence by the colonized people against the foreign colonizer, as necessary for their mental health and political liberation; Sartre later applied that introduction in Colonialism and Neocolonialism (1964), a politico–philosophic critique of France’s Algerian colonialism. The political focus derives from the first chapter of the book, “Concerning Violence”, wherein Fanon indicts colonialism and its post-colonial legacies, for which violence is a means of catharsis and liberation from being a colonial subject. Nonetheless, in the foreword to the 2004 edition of The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Homi K. Bhabha criticized Sartre’s introduction, stating that it limits the reader’s approach to the book to focus on its promotion of violent resistance to oppression.