Colonised

Frantz Fanon wrote Wretched of the Earth in 1961. This deservedly famous book deals with the psychology of individuals and groups in a colonised nation and in the process of decolonisation; and with the destructive tension in the mind of the individual between traditional views of reality and those appropriate to the colonising power. Fanon was born in Martinique, trained in psychiatry and worked in Algeria where he became caught up in its struggle for independence from France.

This passage in Chapter 2 caught my attention:

The country people are suspicious of the townsman. The latter dresses like a European; he speaks the European's language, works with him, sometimes even lives in the same district; so he is considered by the peasants as a turncoat who has betrayed everything that goes to make up the national heritage. The townspeople are 'traitors and knaves' who seem to get on well with the occupying powers, and do their best to get on within the framework of the colonial system. This is why you often hear the country people say of town-dwellers that they have no morals. Here, we are not dealing with the old antagonism between town and country; it is the antagonism which exists between the native who is excluded from the advantages of colonialism and his counterpart who manages to turn colonial exploitation to his account.

This is from Chapter 2, Spontaneity: its Strength and Weakness and he is addressing the tensions that exist among the colonised people, between those who cling to their rural identity and a traditional world view, and people who have been able to reconcile themselves to the colonising power.

I amused myself by changing some of the words, replacing "country people" with "teaching and researching academics", "townspeople" with "managing academics", "Europeans" with "Administration". You know exactly the sort of conversations you'd overhear in the staff club: "We never see him any more. He's always in his other office, in the main building. He does almost no teaching nowadays. He spoke up in Senate in favour of that departmental closure and the redundancies. You can't talk to him about ideas any more, you can see him glaze over and this thoughts already on the next committee meeting, how they're going to meet their KPI's or move us one more place up the Times Higher league table."

I had similar thoughts reading many other sentences, passages. As has been noted, Fanon's discussion has a significance well beyond the specific context it emerged from. Divisions, psychological tensions found in higher education mirror those found in a country that has been colonised. But universities are not countries. They have not been "invaded" by colleges, or high schools, or hospitals. Maybe this is no more than an amusing parallel but if it is, what has done the colonising? When universities conduct themselves increasingly like corporations, is the phrase "slow AI" relevant?