Fake news: a colonization resource par excellence

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on Frantz Fanon’s critical approach to technology, based on the 1959 text Ici la voix d’Algérie. In this critique, Fanon allows us to associate the colonizing project with the dissemination of distorted ideas about the original populations of the territories invaded during the colonial invasions. To carry out this reflection, we propose a methodological approach divided into four parts. The first part aims to contextualize the work that we chose as the main reference for this article. In the second part, our focus is on the role of language in the establishment of colonization, fulfilling the function of historically erasing the contributions of the indigenous people. In the third part, we will highlight how the Algerian people appropriated technological resources from foreign culture for the process of liberation in relation to the French colony. Finally, we seek to relate the colonial context observed by Fanon, in Algeria, with the context of Brazil, in the relationship between colonizers and original peoples. With this reflection, we understand how mechanisms of erasure of popular cultures and expressions are associated with this colonialist strategy of domination. In this way, we can relate the contemporary problem of Fake News to the colonial resources of distortion and erasure.