Abstract

Frantz Fanon's revolutionary psychiatry aimed to help constitute a postcolonial Algeria that recognised the humanity of all its members and, more widely, a Third World liberated of the shackles of colonial misrecognition. Fanon offers us an account of how a politics of misrecognition can give way to a politics of recognition. However, the violent means by which he thought a society guided by the ideal of mutual recognition could be achieved from the remnants of a colonial order cannibalised his democratic aims. I contrast Fanon's views with Hanna Arendt's on the role of violence and her republicanism. I argue that her views are more promising than Fanon's because they foster mutual recognition if adequately embodied in the political sphere. However, tragically, colonial Algeria did not present the conditions for a new democratic order to thrive, mainly due to France's protracted and uncompromising brutality.