Even the sincere black man (le Noir) is a slave of the past. However, I am a man, and in that sense the Peloponnesian War is as much mine as is the discovery of the compass. ...
The problem I envisage here is located in temporality. Black and white people will be disalienated when they have refused to let themselves be locked up in a Tower of the Past that they've built for themselves ...
I am a man and it's the whole past of the world that I have to recover. I'm not just responsible for the rebellion of Saint-Domingue.
Each time a man allowed the dignity of spirit to triumph, each time a man said no to reducing his equal to servitude, I feel solidarity with his act.
In no way do I have to take my calling from the past of the peoples of colour.
In no way do I have to set myself to reviving an unjustly forgotten black civilisation. I don't make myself the man of any past. I don't want to sing the past at the expense of my present or my future.
Frantz Fanon, Peau Noire Masques Blancs (Paris 1952), pp.182-3 (my [clunky and loose] translation)
