Table Of ContentIn this tremendously thoughtful and very engaging book, Patrycja
Sasnal offers a brilliant study of two of the most important political
theorists of the twentieth century, Fanon and Arendt, and then inter-
prets violence in the contemporary Arab world using their tools of
analysis. Her study is original, insightful, and challenging.
—Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of
Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
Arendt, Fanon and Political
Violence in Islam
This book looks at contemporary political violence, in the form of
jihadism, through the lens of a philosophical polemic between Hannah
Arendt and Frantz Fanon: intellectual representatives of the global
north and global south.
It explores the relationship of Arendt’s thought, mostly as expressed
in On Violence (1969), to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and
the transposition of that relationship to the contemporary phenom-
enon of violent Islamic extremism. The book reveals a greater com-
monality between Fanon and Arendt as well as the universal function
of jihadism that satisfies the conditions for political violence, as cate-
gorized by Fanon in the global south and Arendt in the global north.
Read in tandem, Arendt and Fanon help uncover the fundamental
problems of our European, American, Middle Eastern and African
political systems as well as north-south relations. By studying political
theory, the book finds global political commonalities in a postcolonial
reality.
Written in an accessible style, this book will be of great interest to
undergraduates and graduates in philosophy, political sciences and
international relations (IR), sociology and Middle Eastern studies as
well as scholars and professionals interested in radicalization; violent
extremism; and the foreign policies of European, Middle Eastern and
African countries.
Patrycja Sasnal is a political scientist, philosopher and Arabist special-
izing in IR in the Middle East, with a focus on radicalization, p olitical
violence, postcolonial theory and migration. She is currently the head
of the Middle East and Africa programme at the Polish Institute of
International Affairs.
Routledge Research on Decoloniality
and New Postcolonialisms
Series Editor: Mark Jackson, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial
Geographies, School of Geographical Sciences, University of
Bristol, UK
This series provides a forum for innovative, critical research into the
changing contexts, emerging potentials, and contemporary challenges
ongoing within postcolonial studies. Postcolonial studies across the so-
cial sciences and humanities are in a period of transition and innova-
tion. From environmental and ecological politics, to the development of
new theoretical and methodological frameworks in posthumanisms, on-
tology, and relational ethics, to decolonizing efforts against expanding
imperialisms, enclosures, and global violences against people and
place, postcolonial studies are never more relevant and, at the same
time, challenged. This series draws into focus emerging transdiscipli-
nary conversations that engage key debates about how new postcolonial
landscapes and new empirical and conceptual t errains are changing the
legacies, scope, and responsibilities of decolonising critique.
Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman
Edited by Mark Jackson
Unsettling Eurocentrism in the Westernized University
Edited by Julie Cupples and Ramón Grosfoguel
History, Imperialism, Critique
New Essays in World Literature
Edited by Asher Ghaffar
Arendt, Fanon and Political Violence in Islam
Patrycja Sasnal
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-on-Decoloniality-and-New-Postcolonialisms/
book-series/RRNP
Arendt, Fanon and Political
Violence in Islam
Patrycja Sasnal
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2020 Patrycja Sasnal
The right of Patrycja Sasnal to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-25959-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29075-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
To Marek
Contents
List of illustrations xi
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: violence and Europe-Middle East
coupling 1960s–2019 1
Notes on literature, purpose and structure 5
1 Fanon and Arendt: a black man and a Jewish woman 13
Philosophical influences: philosophers of beginnings 15
Reception of WotE and connection with jihadism 21
2 Violence vs. power 32
Sartre’s preface and the hijacking of Fanon 32
Fanon’s violence and power 33
Arendt’s violence and power 42
Rational and irrational violence 48
3 New humanism 54
Responsibility and commitment in the political sphere 58
Man creating himself in the public space 67
Political nation through bonds 74
4 Jihadism and other remains of colonisation 86
How big is jihadist appeal? 88
Plastic Islam and utopia: ideological and political
reasons behind the attractiveness of jihadism 90
