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Colonized peoples reject foreign medicine as an instrument of exploitation

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@fanon_dying_1959, loc. 24

5 min read

Colonized peoples reject foreign medicine as an instrument of exploitation

Evidence

Frantz Fanon tells how modern medical techniques, when they were brought in by imperialism, were resisted and rejected by the Algerian population—“ignorant, obstinate, backward” according to the cultured imperialists who were baffled by this rejection. But these same techniques were accepted with dizzying haste when the revolution adopted them. Culture, like truth, is concrete. And for the masses the most elevated form of culture, that is to say, of progress, is to resist imperialist domination and penetration, although this might come wrapped up in valid forms of “culture” or “civilization.” The Algerians kept their women behind veils, rejected the doctors, would not accept the radio. But they were not backward. In their way, they were defending civilization as well as they were able. Civilization, for them, meant first of all to resist imperialism and second to cast it into the sea at whatever cost. And they were right. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 24 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In all objectivity and in all humanity, it is a good thing that a technically advanced country benefits from its knowledge and the discoveries of its scientists. When the discipline considered concerns man’s health, when its very principle is to ease pain, it is clear that no negative reaction can be justified. But the colonial situation is precisely such that it drives the colonized to appraise all the colonizer’s contributions in a pejorative and absolute way. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 396 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Here again we hear the same refrain: “If I abandon what I am in the habit of doing when my wife coughs and I authorize the European doctor to give her injections; if I find myself literally insulted and told I am a savage [this happens], because I have made scratches on the forehead of my son who has been complaining of a headache for three days; if I tell this insulter he is right and I admit that I was wrong to make those scratches which custom has taught me to do—if I do all these things I am acting, from a strictly rational point of view, in a positive way. For, as a matter of fact, my son has meningitis and it really has to be treated as a meningitis ought to be treated. But the colonial constellation is such that what should be the brotherly and tender insistence of one who wants only to help me is interpreted as a manifestation of the conqueror’s arrogance and desire to humiliate.” — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 409 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Algerians rejected colonial medicine not from ignorance but as resistance; The colonial situation forces colonized people to reject even beneficial medicine categorically. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 396; Colonial domination itself, not tradition, shapes native resistance to medicine (+20 more)

Broader Connections

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