QuoteProject
The gaze that the colonized subject casts at the colonist's sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possession. Every type of possession; of sitting at the colonist's table and sleeping in his bed, preferably with his wife. The colonized man is an envious man.
Frantz Fanon
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects on the feelings of envy and desire for possession that colonized subjects have towards their colonizers.

Frantz Fanon's quote explores the complex emotions of the colonized, who experience a deep yearning for the privileges and lifestyle of their colonizers. This longing fosters feelings of envy and lust, as the colonized imagine occupying the colonizer's space, both materially and personally, demonstrating the psychological impact of colonization on identity and aspiration.

Themes

ColonizationEnvyDesireIdentityOppressionPsychology

In practice

Example use cases

In a lecture about post-colonial theory, one might quote Fanon to illustrate the psychological effects of colonization.

More from Frantz Fanon

A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.
Frantz FanonRead
When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.
Frantz FanonRead
Certain things need to be said if one is to avoid falsifying the problem.
Frantz FanonRead
I want the world to recognize with me the open door of every consciousness
Frantz FanonRead
Hate demands existence, and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behaviors; in a sense, he has to become hate. That is why the Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching.
Frantz FanonRead
Violence is man re-creating himself.
Frantz FanonRead

Similar quotes

But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.
Malcolm BradburyRead
Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: Don't do to other nations what we don't want happening to us. We endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?
Ron PaulRead
The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.
Edward AbbeyRead
The endless, useless urge to look on life comprehensively, to take a bird's-eye view of ourselves and judge the dimensions of what we have or have not done: this is life as landscape, or life as résumé. But life is incremental, and though a worthwhile life is a gathering together of all that one is, good and bad, successful and not, the paradox is that we can never really see this one thing that all of our increments (and decrements, I suppose) add up to.
Christian WimanRead
A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisRead
Fundamentally, our Lord's message was Himself. He did not come merely to preach a Gospel; He himself is that Gospel. He did not come merely to give bread; He said, "I am the bread." He did not come merely to shed light; He said, "I am the light." He did not come merely to show the door; He said, "I am the door." He did not come merely to name a shepherd; He said, "I am the shepherd." He did not come merely to point the way; He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
J. Sidlow BaxterRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.