Abstract

In this second part of our study dealing with encounters between the Marxist criticism of colonialism and the Freudian analysis of the colonial condition, the focus is here on the pioneering work of Octave Mannoni, Psychologie de la colonisation (1950), written during the great Malagasy revolt of 1947. In Mannoni’s book the colonial condition is for the very first time apprehended as an enduring, long-term phenomenon, and which, both for the Master and for the Slave, extends beyond the colonial era. Looking beyond the strong opposition voiced by Fanon to Mannoni’s hypothesis in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), the aim of the article is to highlight the complexity of the transferential relationship between Fanon et Mannoni. It was Mannoni’s book which, to some extent, authorised Fanon’s production of his own analysis of the colonial condition. And, in turn, it was Fanon’s prise de parole which made it possible for Mannoni to achieve a kind of catharsis, leaving the colonial world where he had spent almost thirty years of his life and choosing psychoanalysis as a new mission.