Social:By any means necessary
By any means necessary is an English phrase or a translation of a French phrase that has been attributed to at least three famous sources. The earliest of these three sources is French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands. The second is Martinican intellectual Frantz Fanon who used the French phrase in his 1960 Address to the Accra Positive Action Conference "Why we use violence".[1] Later, it entered American popular civil rights culture through a speech given by Malcolm X at the Organization of Afro-American Unity founding rally on June 28, 1964. It is generally considered to mean to leave open the option of all available tactics, strategies or methods for attaining of achieving desired ends, including any form or degree of violence as well as other methods typically considered unethical or immoral.
It is part of a broader political idea that radical social change or liberation cannot be obtained by limiting one’s means to that which are considered "acceptable", debatably encapsulated in the suggestion by Audre Lorde that "The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house"[2]
Jean-Paul Sartre
The phrase is also a translation of a sentence used in French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre's 1948 play Dirty Hands:
I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary. [en usant de tous les moyens]—Jean-Paul Sartre, Dirty Hands: act 5, scene 3. (1963 translation)[3]
Frantz Fanon
The phrase is a translation of a sentence used in revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon's 1960 Address to the Accra Positive Action Conference, "Why we use violence", defending actions during the Algerian War:
Violence in everyday behaviour, violence against the past that is emptied of all substance, violence against the future, for the colonial regime presents itself as necessarily eternal. We see, therefore, that the colonized people, caught in a web of a three-dimensional violence, a meeting point of multiple, diverse, repeated, cumulative violences, are soon logically confronted by the problem of ending the colonial regime by any means necessary. [par n'importe quel moyen] —Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom: part 3, chapter 22, "Why we use violence". 1960[4]
Malcolm X
It entered the popular culture through a speech given by Malcolm X in the last year of his life.
We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.—Malcolm X, 1965[5]
Mandela recusal
In the final scene of the 1992 movie Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela—then recently released after 27 years of political imprisonment—appears as a schoolteacher in a Soweto classroom reciting Malcolm X's speech.[6][7] Yet Mandela informed director Spike Lee that he could not utter the famous final phrase "by any means necessary" on camera, fearing that the apartheid government would use it against him if he did. Lee obliged, and the final seconds of the film feature black-and-white footage of Malcolm X himself delivering the phrase.[7]
See also
- The end justifies the means
- By hook or by crook
- Nation of domination
- Contentious politics
References
- ↑ Rédaction, la (2020-08-26). "Relire Fanon aujourd'hui" (in fr-FR). https://lvsl.fr/relire-fanon-aujourdhui/. "«résistance noire par tous les moyens nécessaires»"
- ↑ Bowleg, Lisa (2021-06-01). ""The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House": Ten Critical Lessons for Black and Other Health Equity Researchers of Color" (in en). Health Education & Behavior 48 (3): 237–249. doi:10.1177/10901981211007402. ISSN 1090-1981. PMID 34080476.
- ↑ "NUMBER: 48220". The Columbia World of Quotations. http://www.bartleby.com/66/20/48220.html.
- ↑ Fanon, Frantz (2018). Alienation and Freedom. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 654. ISBN 978-1-4742-5021-4.
- ↑ Malcolm X (1992). By Any Means Necessary (Malcolm X Speeches & Writings). New York: Pathfinder Press. ISBN 0-87348-754-0.
- ↑ Cunningham, Matthew (3 June 2004). "Creme cameos". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/jun/03/features.matthewcunningham.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Guerrero, Ed (1993). Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University Press. p. 202. ISBN 1-56639-126-1. https://archive.org/details/framingblackness0000guer.
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