However, Fanon’s work was never widely known in his lifetime in France, or, more broadly, in the metropoles. In addition, Fanon fostered relationships with French intellectuals, most famously Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Further, dying of leukemia at the young age of 36, Fanon was robbed of the opportunity to more fully develop and synthesize his diverse and fragmented work.ĭuring his lifetime, Fanon was first and foremost known as an associate of the FLN, the leading party of the Algerian Revolution, a proponent of the Algerian Revolution as a model of anti-colonial revolution, and a critic of the emerging national bourgeoisie. Another reason for the conflicting interpretation of his work may be the conditions under which his writings were produced, often addressing the immediate theoretical issues of the day, whether in France, Algeria, the Caribbean, or the anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Part of the reason lies in the hybrid nature of his work, which draws from, among other fields of knowledge, philosophy, psychiatry, literature, anthropology and marxism. At the same time, Fanon remains one of the most misunderstood revolutionary thinkers. Malcolm X, Speech at the Founding of the OAAUįrantz Fanon is one of the most important 20th century thinkers on race, and any serious theory and strategy dealing with the reality of race has to grapple with his work. 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 He who is reluctant to recognize me is against me – W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others We thereby hope to grasp in the diversity of the figures insight into how Fanon can inspire us today.A printable PDF of this piece is available for download here. Broadly, we will contrast Homi Bhabha’s poststructuralist and postcolonialist reading of Fanon with Achille Mbembe’s rather more ethical reading and with the more directly political readings that we see in the likes of Peter Hallward. We will look at the way that Fanonian discourse is woven into various theoretical and political agendas. This lesson will be devoted to contemporary readings of Fanon. Reading: excerpts from The Psychiatric Writings of Frantz Fanon. Here we touch on themes such as: the role of culture in mental illness and the refusal of all forms of naturalization of mental illness Fanon’s strong notion of alienation his critique of ethno-psychiatry and mental illness as a ‘pathology of freedom’. Little has been written about Fanon’s radical psychiatric work and practice, which he based on an understanding on the role of sociality and culture in the formation of mental illness. Reading: A Dying Colonialism and Toward the African Revolution If Fanon’s focus here shifts from Algeria to Africa at large and a call for African unity, this is because his call for solidarity in action is based on an approach to (anti-colonial) struggle that is anti-essentialist, one that is consonant with his work from the beginning and still relevant for us today. Here we continue to read about Fanon’s political work and his broader takes on the necessity of African unity in the struggle against coloniality as a system. Lesson 3 – Fanon, political revolutionary The Wretched of the Earth is essential Fanon reading. While Black Skin, White Masks lays out the basic structure of his decolonial work, once in Algeria, surrounded by the anticolonial struggle of the Algerians, he develops a broader theory of the oppressed, colonialism and revolutionary resistance to its systemic reach. Moving to Algeria to take up a position as a psychiatric, Fanon’s political ideas (we come to his psychiatric praxis in Lesson 4) shift focus. Lesson 2 – Fanon, political revolutionary: Algeria (or the nation) as a political category For those wanting something more comprehensive, read David Macey’s excellent Frantz Fanon: A Biography. Fanon’s essential emphasis is always on futurity: how in an anti-black world can the problem of blackness and whiteness be overcome toward a different human futurity.īiographical details will be provided shortly before the class. Delving into how he understands the structure of an anti-black world and how it impacts the body and psyche of the colonized, we look at his arguments for a revised conception of the human. We will touch here on Fanon’s background and some of the key turning points in his life, before exploring, chapter by chapter, the structure, methods and arguments of the work, his first, that Black Skin, White Masks. Lesson 1 – Aspects of Fanon’s biography and Black Skin, White Masks
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