Date of Award
2024
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Religion, PhD
Program
Center for the Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Darrell Moore & Kevin Wolfe
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Mukasa Mubirumusoke
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Dorival Pimenta do Nascimento
Keywords
Afro-Brazilian Religions, Decolonial Theory, Frantz Fanon, Liberation Theology, Philosophy, Religious Language
Subject Categories
African American Studies | Practical Theology | Religion
Abstract
How does religious language influence Frantz Fanon’s Decolonial theory and ethics onviolence in the struggle for decolonization and disalienation? This is the question I address in this dissertation carefully observing Patrick Crowley's mention of the presence of religious language in Fanon's work. Crowley’s argument is that Fanon’s thought is apocalyptical in structure and is marked by a dramatic sense of temporality prior to his arrival in Algeria. Crowley develops his article focusing on the messianic question, while the religious language in Fanon's work he ends up relegating to a second plan. In this sense, this dissertation is developed with the intention of being an addition to Crowley's work. Therefore, I argue that religious language influences Fanon's decolonial theory and his ethics about violence in the struggle for disalienation and decolonization. Because Fanon is the one who makes use of religious language, whether consciously or unconsciously this same language I argue, made his work even more receptive within the political and social context in which he was living prompting his readers to action. There had been an outcry for some time, on the part of the colonized in the third world. At the end of the Second World War, with the beginning of the Cold War, therefore, with the bipolarization of the world, communism was not a good option for many emerging nations that had strong connections with Catholicism, in terms of resistance and struggle, the work Fanon's work was absorbed by many intellectuals, by many revolutionaries who surely saw in him the figure of a prophet, a liberator, with a work that fully satisfied Christian yearnings, as well as non-Christian ones, given its practicality in terms of revolution, resistance and overthrow of European hegemony. It is precisely at this point that the importance of looking more closely at Fanon's work, especially from a religious point of view, becomes even more evident. I argue that Fanon's work was absorbed by social movements, such as liberation theology, by proponents of an education aimed at the oppressed, by black movements, especially in the diaspora, in the middle east, Asia, due to the use he makes of a religious language common to all. The religious language in Fanon's work, and the specific way in which he uses it, through allusions, examples, comparisons, analogies, allows a more comprehensive assessment of its interdisciplinary influence which inspire religious and nonreligious subject to action against the colonial regime and racism against the black people in the diaspora. The religious language in his work, in this dissertation, is the central axis around which Fanon's relationship with liberation theology and Afro-Brazilian religions will be treated. Were it not for the presence of religious language, and therefore its influence on his work, these epistemologies and geographic spaces could not be adequately explored in the way intended here.
ISBN
9798302880994
Recommended Citation
do Nascimento, Dorival Pimenta. (2024). The Influence of Religion in Frantz Fanon’s Decolonial Theory and Ethics on Violence. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 918. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/918.
