The scholarship on Frantz Fanon’s theorization of violence is crowded with interpretations that follow the Arendtian paradigm of violence. These interpretations often discuss whether violence is instrumental or non-instrumental in Fanon’s work. This reading, I believe, is the result of approaching Fanon through Hannah Arendt’s framing of violence, i.e. through a binary paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. Even some Fanon scholars who question Arendt’s reading of Fanon, do so by employing a similar binary logic, hence repeating the same either/or paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. I aim to challenge such interpretations of Fanon by demonstrating that in the context of anticolonial armed struggle in which Fanon writes, the either/or framework of the instrumental/non-instrumental binary of violence cannot fully capture his perspective. Violence can indeed be conceived as having both constructive and instrumental aspects. My argument is supported by Fanon’s corpus, including his 1960 Accra speech, “Why We Use Violence” in Alienation and Freedom. This piece, I suggest, together with Fanon’s other writings, poses a direct challenge to the Arendtian binary of violence. My analysis resists positioning the difference between Arendt and Fanon through the instrumental/non-instrumental binary. By using Judith Butler’s notion of “frame” I complicate their difference and argue Arendt’s framing of violence prevents her from apprehending Fanon and – more importantly – interpretations of Fanon based on this Arendtian frame of violence inevitably lead to misinterpretations.

关于弗朗茨法农的暴力理论的学术研究充斥着遵循阿伦特暴力范式的解释。这些解释经常讨论暴力在法农的作品中是工具性的还是非工具性的。我相信，这种解读是通过汉娜·阿伦特 (Hannah Arendt) 的暴力框架来接近法农的结果，即通过工具暴力与非工具暴力的二元范式。甚至一些质疑阿伦特对法农的解读的法农学者，也是通过使用类似的二元逻辑来这样做的，因此重复了工具暴力与非工具暴力的相同或/或范式。我的目的是通过证明在法农所写的反殖民武装斗争的背景下，来挑战对法农的这种解释，工具性/非工具性的暴力二元框架不能完全捕捉他的观点。暴力确实可以被认为具有建设性和工具性两个方面。我的论点得到了法农的语料库的支持，包括他 1960 年在阿克拉发表的演讲，《异化与自由》中的“我们为什么使用暴力”。我认为这件作品与法农的其他作品一起，对阿伦德式的暴力二元论提出了直接挑战。我的分析拒绝通过工具/非工具二元来定位阿伦特和法农之间的差异。通过使用朱迪思·巴特勒的“框架”概念，我使他们的差异复杂化，并认为阿伦特的暴力框架阻止了她理解法农，更重要的是，基于这种阿伦特暴力框架对法农的解释不可避免地会导致误解。