ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 tackles large questions of violence and nation as they collude with the moment of decolonization and the Cold War. This chapter examines speeches, writings, and biographies of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Frantz Fanon, two leaders of massive anticolonial movements in India/Pakistan and Algeria respectively. Both represent two unique and complex paradigms of anticolonial and postcolonial theory due to their focus on the question of violence and the question of nationalism. The push-pull dynamic brought about by their dual roles of leader and thinker, as well as the strong-arming by Cold War actors, reveal ruptures in their theories of nation too. Cumulatively, these ideas had a direct effect on the way in which the paths of new countries were charted and envisioned. By re-investigating Gandhi and Fanon, the chapter identifies a problem called an “epistemic bifurcation.” Understanding the formation of both figures and the specific nature of their theories reveals the challenging nature of performing the parallel roles of leader and thinker. This leads to an epistemic crisis and potentially embeds failure in their theories that has a direct impact on how responses to the Cold War were shaped and the postcolonial futures that were brought into being.
