Frantz Fanon stands as one of the most uncompromising critics of racism and colonialism. Translated into English by Daniel Nethery, this biography by Fanon's brother, Joby, is an intimate, passionate and very human account of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.

Frantz Fanon stands as one of the most uncompromising critics of racism and colonialism. Translated into English by Daniel Nethery, this biography by Fanon's brother, Joby, is an intimate, passionate and very human account of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.

The Voices of Liberation series celebrates the lives and writings of African Liberation activists and heroes. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy, to discover where we come from and to explore how we, too, can choose to shape our destiny.

Gratitude, a significant Christian value, is regarded as a duty among Indians. The present study examines the role played by spiritual development in gratitude among the Indian population. The participants were emerging Indian male adults, aged between 18 and 30 years. The first sample is from 495 Catholic Indian seminarians with intensive spiritual training, and the second is from 504 Catholic Indian nonseminarians. We use the Gratitude Questionnaire-6 and the Spiritual Assessment Inventory in the study. The results show that the (...) factors of SAI, Awareness and Realistic Experience, had medium-size correlations with gratitude in both samples. Awareness predicted gratitude in both samples and Realistic Acceptance predicted gratitude only in seminarians. The study shows that individuals with an awareness of God's presence tend to be highly grateful. Spiritually mature individuals who undergo spiritual training were also more grateful. (shrink)

The recent Ebola virus disease outbreak in Western African countries has raised questions regarding the feasibility of adopting conventional trial designs such as randomized controlled trials for conducting experimental trials in the midst of a fatal epidemic. In the context of Ebola ça Suffit trial conducted in Guinea for testing the efficacy and effectiveness of rVSV–ZEBOV, a candidate vaccine, I argue that the trial design and the methodologies adopted for the trial have been rightly chosen for their ethical appropriateness and (...) social utilities rather than only epistemic advantages. In this paper, I propose and defend the view that in varying scientific research contexts, it is entirely legitimate that non-epistemic values may be prioritized over epistemic considerations. Two vital methodological choices scientists should make while designing a clinical trial are: the choice of appropriate control group and the choice of appropriate randomization. Given this background, I show that the choice of delayed vaccination arm as the control group over placebo control group and the choice of cluster randomization over individually controlled randomization for conducting Ebola ça Suffit trial are perfect instances of such a scenario where addressing social and ethical issues have been justifiably prioritized over epistemic values so that the research in a specific scientific context could be conducted in a socially relevant manner. (shrink)

The essays in Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy all trace different aspects of the mutually supporting histories of philosophical thought and colonial politics in order to suggest ways that we might decolonize our thinking. From psychology to education, to economic and legal structures, the contributors interrogate the interrelation of colonization and philosophy in order to articulate a Fanon-inspired vision of social justice. This project is endorsed by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, in the book's preface.

In this essay, I argue that at least in two phases of pharmaceutical research, especially while assessing the adequacy of the accumulated data and its interpretation, the influence of non-epistemic values is necessary. I examine a specific case from the domain of pharmaceutical research and demonstrate that there are multiple competing sets of values which may legitimately or illegitimately influence different phases of the inquiry. In such cases, the choice of the appropriate set of values—epistemic as well as non-epistemic—should be (...) made on the basis of the set’s viability to promote specific epistemic and social aims of the research, in the case at hand, rather than other competing aims. I put forth an account which addresses two philosophically significant and interrelated questions in the context of values in science debates: which aim should be prioritized when there are different stakeholders who try to achieve competing but, sometimes, conflicting goals; and what should be the criteria according to which the prioritization of a particular goal over other competing goals can be determined? I argue that both these questions can be addressed by invoking the principle of non-arbitrariness and the mere means principle and self-determination right. The philosophical import of raising and addressing these questions from an ethical perspective is that this approach leads to a better understanding of problems in today’s pharmaceutical research and guides us in efforts to alleviate these problems. (shrink)

This paper examines the case of Ebola, ça Suffit trial which was conducted in Guinea during Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in 2015. I demonstrate that various non-epistemic considerations may legitimately influence the criteria for evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of a candidate vaccine. Such non-epistemic considerations, which are social, ethical, and pragmatic, can be better placed and addressed in scientific research by appealing to non-epistemic values. I consider two significant features any newly developed vaccine should possess; (1) the duration (...) of immunity the vaccine provides; and (2) safety with respect to the side effects of the vaccine. Then, I argue that social and ethical values are relevant and desirable in setting the parameters for evaluating these two features of vaccines. The parameters that are employed for setting up the criteria for assessing the features might have far-reaching implications on the well-being of society in general, and the health conditions of several thousand people in particular. The reason is that these features can play a decisive role during the evaluation of the efficacy and effectiveness of the vaccine. I conclude by showing why it is necessary to reject the concept of epistemic priority, at least when scientists engage in policy-oriented research. (shrink)

A general criterion for distinguishing between epistemic and non-epistemic values is that the former promotes the attainment of truth whereas the latter does not. Daniel Steel is a proponent of this criterion, although it was initially proposed by McMullin. There are at least two consequences of this criterion; it always prioritizes epistemic values over non-epistemic values in scientific research, and it overlooks the diverse aims of science, especially the aims of regulatory or policy-oriented science. This criterion assumes the lexical priority (...) of truth or lexical priority of evidence. This paper attempts to show a few inadequacies of this assumption. The paper also demonstrates why epistemic priority over non-epistemic values is a problematic stance and how constraining the role of non-epistemic values as ‘tiebreakers’ may undermine the diverse aims of science. (shrink)

This paper examines the different aspects of meaning in life from a theoretical perspective of philosophy and psychology. It deals mainly with the dynamism ofmeaning in life on the basis of contextual perspectives and its emergence from different sources. In this regard, religion plays an important role in the formation of meaning in life, especially in relation to its competence. Moreover, the praxis of meaning in life is processoriented and is different from the purpose of life. It also remains as (...) a connector between the existential vacuum and the reality of life, promoting stability in life. The expression of meaning in life can be based on both low and high levels. Above all, meaning in life can be seen from two different aspects of presence of meaning and search for meaning, specifically from the empirical and Indian contexts. (shrink)

This paper proposes a functional approach to characterize epistemic and nonepistemic values. The paper argues that epistemic values are functionally homogeneous since they act as criteria to evaluate the epistemic virtues a hypothesis ought to possess, and they validate scientific knowledge claims objectively. Conversely, non-epistemic values are functionally heterogeneous since they may promote multiple and sometimes conflicting aims in different research contexts. An incentive of espousing the functional approach is that it helps us understand how values can operate in appropriate (...) and inappropriate ways in scientific research and inappropriate influences can eventually be prevented. The idea is to argue that since non-epistemic values are functionally heterogeneous, they cannot provide objective reasons for the acceptance of a hypothesis. However, their involvement is necessary in certain research contexts and the problem is the involvement of these need not be always legitimate. By analyzing a case from chemical research, I demonstrate that how non-epistemic values might influence scientific research and, then, I go on to demonstrate that how a proper understanding of the functions of different kinds of values might promote the attainment of multiple goals of a particular research in a legitimate and socially relevant way. (shrink)

The Principle of common cause has its significance in providing explanations of phenomena in terms of causal theories. Though the principle has its own epistemological advantages, there can be certain situations where the principle might fail. In the first part of the paper, I offer a preliminary assessment of the PCC and then I turn to make an attempt to illustrate those scenarios where the PCC might misguide us in providing explanation of phenomena in terms of common cause.

The Principle of Common Cause (PCC) puts forward the idea that events which occur simultaneously and are correlated have a prior common cause which screens off the correlation. I endorse the view that the PCC does qualify as a principle that can be used as a tool in explaining improbable coincidences. However, though there are epistemological advantages in common cause explanations of correlated events, the PCC is not impeccable. This paper offers a preliminary assessment of the PCC advocated by Reichenbach, (...) and then attempts to illustrate three scenarios in which the principle might be inadequate in explaining correlated events. The paper also compares the Common Cause Principle and the Causal Markov Condition (CMC), and examines the advantages of CMC over the Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

As the first book to analyze the work of Fanon as an existential-phenomenological of human sciences and liberation philosopher, Gordon deploys Fanon's work to illuminate how the "bad faith" of European science and civilization have philosophically stymied the project of liberation. Fanon's body of work serves as a critique of European science and society, and shows the ways in which the project of "truth" is compromised by Eurocentric artificially narrowed scope of humanity--a circumstance to which he refers (...) as the crisis of European Man. In his examination of the roots of this crisis, Gordon explores the problems of historical salvation and the dynamics of oppression, the motivation behind contemporary European obstruction of the advancement of a racially just world, the forms of anonymity that pervade racist theorizing and contribute to "seen invisibility," and the reasons behind the impossibility of a nonviolent transition from colonialism and neocolonialism to post colonialism. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms represents a bold examination of previous feminist criticisms of Fanon and argues that Fanon's writings on women and resistance provide the formative kernels of a liberating praxis for women existing under colonial and neocolonial oppression. Sharpley-Whiting skillfully brings together approaches from a broad range of academic fields, including critical race theory, literary and cultural criticism, and psychoanalysis as she assesses the relevance of Fanon's theories of oppression to a feminist politics of (...) resistance. (shrink)

Fanon’s insistence that the oppressed retain their ability to resist and (re)configure their subjectivity has political, ethical, and philosophical import, as it highlights the fact that the subjugated are not mere things determined from the outside. To the contrary, just as several contingent factors coalesced to create the historical situation in which the colonized subject finds herself, other equally contingent factors can emerge and help to bring about socio-political transformations. Like Aimé Césaire, Fanon understood that the process of (...) decolonization would occur over time and in various stages. By studying Fanon’s complex relationship to the Négritude movement, his resistance tactics come into sharper focus. In short, I argue that Fanon’s employment of essentialized narratives can be interpreted as a variant of “strategic essentialism” (Spivak). Consequently, Fanon’s historically attuned strategy signals a movement beyond a mere reactionary response trapped within an abstract Manichaean binary. (shrink)

El ensayo siguiente consiste en una reinterpretación de la obra de Frantz Fanon a partir de la problemática biopolítica iniciada por Michel Foucault. Se analizan los procesos a través de los cuales las vidas de los colonizados se determinan como inhumanas, y se insertan dentro de un "lenguaje de pura violencia", es decir de una red de poderes violentos, soberanos y totalizantes. Fanón va a pensar una puesta en jaque de aquel estado de excepción permanente colonial a partir de (...) la violencia misma, ya que se tratara para él de transformar, sobre la práctica de las luchas, la violencia en ejercicio del descubrimiento de la verdad. In this essay we approach Franz Fanon's work from a biopolitical standpoint as initiated by Michel Foucault. We analyze the processes that lead to the notion of colonized people's life as less than human with a "language of pure violence", that is, within a network of violent powers at the same time sovereign and totalizing. Fanón intends to check that permanent "state of emergency" of the colonies by means of violence itself, since fighting can be transformed from violence alone to the fight for the discovery of truth. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Fanon works to interrupt specular and spectacular renderings of suffering and colonial violence. The touch that Fanon advocates is neither optimal grip, violent grasp, nor uniform pressure, nor can it be predicted in advance. His writing touches colonial wounds; by palpating these wounds and dwelling in them, it resuscitates colonial wounds as feelings that are flesh, and does not leave them behind as if their scar tissue was merely a numb object of the past. (...) Fanon seems to reiterate Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological discovery in Ideas II that the hand that touches the surface of a table, as it moves across it, also feels itself touched. Fanon’s aim is not simply to calculate the destructive effects of colonization, against arguments for its partial “civilizing” benefits. (shrink)

This article examines the different ways in which torture can be seen to have shaped the political and theoretical outlook of Frantz Fanon and that of his enthusiastic reader, the former Auschwitz prisoner Jean Améry. Building on the latter’s suggestion that torture was the essence of the Third Reich, the reader is asked to apply that insight to an unconventional interpretation of the routinization of torture in contemporary statecraft.

Focusing on the contributions of Frantz Fanon's writing to the construction of a theory of the postcolonial subject, this book engages post-structuralist discussions on subjectivity and explores the most important readings and discussions of Fanon's work. Problems such as historicity, contingency, and the positions of the subject in postcolonial contexts receive special attention together with phenomenological approaches to Fanonian writing. The central idea is to give Fanon a privileged place in social, political, and cultural analysis. The objectives (...) of the book are to insert Fanon’s texts in contemporary critical theory on modernity and coloniality and to incorporate Fanon in the epistemological and conceptual context of the academy. This innovative work allows us to understand Fanon’s writing as key to linking the experiences and critical developments between the global south and the global north. (shrink)

This collection of essays marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Frantz Fanon’s classic study of anticolonial struggle, _The Wretched of the Earth_. Scholars explore the relevance of Fanon’s work for current modes of psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, and political thought. One contributor reposes a classic question of postcolonial scholarship: what does it mean for a colonial Caribbean man to practice a Continental intellectual tradition? Others identify Fanon’s experiences working at a mental institution in colonial French Algeria (...) as a powerful influence on his psychoanalytic perspective. This issue revitalizes Fanon’s canonical status as Third World theorist by asserting that the main imperatives of Fanon’s work remain as urgent as ever: combating the psychic and physical violence of colonialism, achieving real forms of liberation for colonized peoples, and ending the degradation of people of color. Contributors: Matthew Abraham, Gerard Aching, John E. Drabinski, Grant Farred, Nigel C. Gibson, Priyamvada Gopal, Joy James, Ranjana Khanna, Alfred J. López, Miguel Mellino, Simon Morgan Wortham, Richard Pithouse Grant Farred is Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University. He is the former editor of the _South Atlantic Quarterly_ and the author, most recently, of_ Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football_. (shrink)

Fanon’un düşüncesinde özgürleşmenin boyutlarını ortaya çıkarmayı amaçlayan bu çalışmaya göre, uyuşmazlığa dayanan siyaset özgürleşmenin öncelikli yoludur ve tam olarak bu sebeple Fanon’un düşüncesi özgürleşme siyaseti olarak adlandırılmayı doğrudan hak eder. Uyuşmazlık çıkarmak veyahut Fanon’daki biçimiyle, çelişkilerin farkında olma ve onları aşmak üzere evrenseli hedefleyen eylemlere girişme özgürleşme siyasetinin içeriğini oluşturur. Siyaseti inşa etmek için, öncelikle, kolonyal dünyanın çalışma şeklini anlamak gerekir. Kolonyal dünya sömürenin ve sömürülenin davranışları aracılığıyla işler. Fakat, özgürleşme siyasetinde özgürleşecek olanlar sömürülenler, siyahlar, kolonyal dünyanın (...) çoğunluğunu oluşturan öteki olduğu için, Fanon, özelde siyahların ve genelde de koloni halkının deneyimlerine odaklanır. Özgürleşmeyi ilk elde sömürülenin özgürleşmesi olarak gören Fanon aynı zamanda onu gerçek bir özgürleşme düzlemine doğru genişletir. Bu düzlemde efendi ve özne konumu dünyada artık bulunmaz ve evrensel eşitlik somutlaşır. Fanoncu özgürleşme siyaseti sömürülenlerin, yani tikelin özgürleşmesinden bütün dünyanın, evrenselin, bütün insanlığın özgürleşmesine doğru çok kapsamlı bir alana yayılır. Bu fikirden hareket eden bu çalışmanın ilk kısmı, kolonyal dünyanın mantığına, bu mantığın dayandığı kavramlara, unsurlara ve deneyimlere odaklanır. İkinci kısım ise, özgürleşmenin sömürülen (köle, siyah kişi) ve sömüren (efendi, beyaz kişi) ilişkisinin efendi ve köle arasındaki ilişki olmaktan çıkarılması ve köleliğe bir son verilmesi olduğundan hareketle, kolonyal dünyanın işleme şeklinin kesintiye uğramasıyla görünür olan özgürleşme siyasetine eğilir. Çalışmanın son kısmı da bu kesintiye uğratıcı/yıkıcı etkinliklerin nasıl Fanon tarafından şiddet ile birlikte düşünüldüğünden bahseder. Özgürleşme siyaseti açısından şiddetin şiddet olarak değil, fakat özgürleşme adına, bu mücadelenin sonucunda erişilecek yeni bir insanlık adına işlevselleştirildiğine dikkat çeker. Fanon düşüncesinde özgürleşmenin boyutlarıyla ilgilenen bu çalışma için özgürleşme sürecindeki yıkıcı etkinlikler ve dolayısıyla çatışmaya dayanan bu etkinliklerden biri olarak beliren karşı-şiddet, özgürleşmenin öncelikli yoludur. Bu etkinlikleri açık bir şekilde kapsayan Fanon düşüncesi de bu nedenlerle günümüzde özgürleşme siyasetinin düşüncesi olmanın yanı sıra bizatihi siyasal bir düşünce olarak hak eder. (shrink)

With the flowering of postcolonialism, we return to Frantz Fanon, a leading theorist of the struggle against colonialism. In this thorough reinterpretation of Fanon's texts, Ato Sekyi-Otu ensures that we return to him fully aware of the unsuspected formal complexity and substantive richness of his work. A Caribbean psychiatrist trained in France after World War II and an eloquent observer of the effects of French colonialism on its subjects from Algeria to Indochina, Fanon was a controversial figure--advocating (...) national liberation and resistance to colonial power in his bestsellers, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. But the controversies attending his life--and death, which some ascribed to the CIA--are small in comparison to those surrounding his work. Where admirers and detractors alike have seen his ideas as an incoherent mixture of Existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, Sekyi-Otu restores order to Fanon's oeuvre by reading it as one dramatic dialectical narrative. Fanon's Dialectic of Experience invites us to see Fanon as a dramatist enacting a movement of experience--the drama of social agents in the colonial context and its aftermath--in a manner idiosyncratically patterned on the narrative structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. By recognizing the centrality of experience to Fanon's work, Sekyi-Otu allows us to comprehend this much misunderstood figure within the tradition of political philosophy from Aristotle to Arendt. Reviews of this book: "The goal of this often brilliant and always engaging book is to 'read Fanon's texts as though they formed one dramatic dialectical narrative'; the principal subject of this dramatic narrative, according to Sekyi-Otu, is 'political experience'. It is his deployment of a dialectical analysis of Fanon's 'dramatic personae' that permits Sekyi-Otu's fresh and insightful readings to take place." DD--Anthony C. Alessandrini, Minnesota Review "Ato Sekyi-Otu departs from the postmodernist paradigm and ushers in an alternative hermeneutic that primarily considers Fanon's texts as forming 'one dramatic dialectical narrative,' that is a narrative whose complexity is correlative of the intricate configurations of African social experience during the post-independent era...[His] book is an invaluable contribution that offers broader scope for a new appreciation of Fanon's political thinking." DD--Marc Mve Bekale, Revue AFRAM Review [UK] "[I]mportant...The author succeeds in...revealing the complexity and nuanced character of Fanon's thought." DD--Choice "Those who would dismiss or exult Fanon as the high priest of revolutionary violence will be chastened by this patient and completely convincing exposition of his work. Sekyi-Otu produces a reflexive, 'Gramscian' Fanon who, working as a 'detective of the politics of truth,' has produced insights that need to be taken over into the core of democratic political thought." DD--Paul Gilroy, University of London. (shrink)

Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy explores the range of ways in which Frantz Fanon's decolonization theory can reveal new answers to perennial philosophical questions and new paths to social justice. The aim is to show not just that Fanon's thought remains philosophically relevant, but that it is relevant to an even wider range of philosophical issues than has previously been realized. The essays in this book are written by both renowned Fanon scholars and new scholars (...) who are emerging as experts in aspects of Fanonian thought as diverse as humanistic psychiatry, the colonial roots of racial violence and marginalization, and decolonizing possibilities in law, academia, and tourism. In addition to examining philosophical concerns that arise from political decolonization movements, many of the essays turn to the discipline of philosophy itself and take up the challenge of suggesting ways that philosophy might liberate itself from colonial—and colonizing—assumptions. -/- This collection will be useful to those interested in political theory, feminist theory, existentialism, phenomenology, Africana studies, and Caribbean philosophy. Its Fanon-inspired vision of social justice is endorsed in the foreword by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, a noted human rights defender in the French-speaking world. -/- Contributions by Anna Carastathis; Nigel C. Gibson; Lewis R. Gordon; Peter Gratton; Ferit Güven; Mireille Fanon Mendès-France; Marilyn Nissim-Sabat; Olúfémi Táíwò; Mohammad H. Tamdgidi; Chloë Taylor and Sokthan Yeng. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore the role of violence in colonial rule and its role in decolonization struggle by posing the question, “what is alive in Fanon’s thought?” What can Fanon tell us about white settler state power and Fourth World decolonization struggles? I explore the relevance of Fanon’s account to the ongoing colonial situation on the northern part of Anówara Kawennote (Turtle Island), occupied by Canada. In this analysis, I am informed by Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) political philosopher (...) Taiaiake Alfred. I juxtapose Alfred’s theory of “nonviolent militancy” with Fanon’s concept of “violence in action.” I perform a reading of Fanon and Alfred to glean an understanding of the phenomenality of colonial state power. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the ‘white gaze’ nearly crushed him. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks, he develops his historico-racial and epidermal racial schemata as correctives to Merleau-Ponty’s overly inclusive corporeal schema. Experientially aware of the reality of socially constructed (racialized) subjectivities, Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted ‘blackness’. Through a re-telling of his own experiences (...) of racism, Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the ‘white gaze’. In this essay I bring Fanon’s insights into conversation with Foucault’s discussion of panoptic surveillance. Although the internalization of the white narrative creates a situation in which external constraints are no longer needed, Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of ‘blackness’ and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Lastly, I discuss Fanon’s historically attuned ‘new humanism’, once again engaging Fanon and Foucault as dialogue partners. (shrink)

The most important component of Fanon’s political psychology is the notion of emancipatory political will. In the context of Algeria’s national liberation struggle, Fanon develops an account of the militant ‘will of the people’ that warrants analysis in terms drawn from the legacies of Rousseau, Lenin and Mao.

L'auteur propose une réflexion sur le parcours et la pensée de Frantz Fanon, grande figure de l'anticolonialisme et du tiers-mondisme. Articulé autour de grands thèmes tels que la défense des cultures nationales ou la conscientisation de la jeunesse africaine, l'auteur entend ainsi répondre aux phénomènes d'aliénation ou de communautarisme qui caractérisent, selon lui, nos sociétés.

Cet ouvrage rassemble les contributions de la Rencontre internationale "Fanon 2011" organisée en Martinique en décembre 2011. Autour de quatre ensembles (Ouverture ; Fanon, l'Algérie ; Fanon la psychiatrie, l'anthropologie et la littérature ; Fanon et l'aujourd'hui du monde), ces textes nous montre la dimension universelle de la pensée subversive de Frantz Fanon.

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. (shrink)

Violence is a necessary factor in Frantz Fanon's concept of anti-colonial freedom. What does Fanon mean by violence? Why does he think violence is necessary or good? Is he correct? This article defends the opening statement through an exegesis of primary and secondary literature on Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, violence, and freedom. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth is the central text under analysis. References to Black Skin, White Masks and A Dying Colonialism receive critical scrutiny only (...) in relation to Fanon's overall theory of violence and freedom. I argue that Fanon views violence as intrinsically valuable in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom. (shrink)

The wide range of disciplines represented here enables the volume to stand as a contextualizing work in Fanon studies. It contains new original essays on Africana philosophy, the human sciences, dialectical humanism, women of color studies, neocolonial and postcolonial studies, violence, and tragedy.

Résumé Frantz Fanon s’est concentré principalement sur la violence comme moyen de résistance et de libération anticoloniale, mais aussi sur l’humanisme et les possibilités de sa réalisation. Il s’agit pour lui de dépasser la conception manichéenne de l’Europe, mais aussi de la Négritude à propos de l’homme et d’inventer comme il dit « l’homme total ». Le silence a régné assez longtemps sur la réception des œuvres de Fanon après sa mort, à l’exception de sa réhabilitation vingt ans (...) après aux Antilles lors d’une commémoration. Depuis sa disparition, on est passé de la simple critique du colonialisme à partir du champ économique et politique vers le champ culturel plus complexe et l’essai d’une compréhension plus approfondie de notions telles que celles de « nation », « identité », « imaginaire » ou « hybridité ». De plus, à cette évolution a participé aussi bien le discours foucaldien à propos des pouvoirs que les études abordées par Gilles Deleuze et Jacques Derrida sur la connaissance et le sujet. Ces thèmes ont influencé énormément les auteurs américains des Études postcoloniales dans leurs approches critiques du fait colonial et des phénomènes socioculturels qui en résultent. Ce fut surtout le cas pour Edward Said ainsi que pour d’autres penseurs tels Achille Mbembe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha et bien d’autres. Mais ce sont avant tout Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon et Albert Memmi qui furent les théoriciens pionniers de ce mouvement. Ils ont en effet vécu la situation coloniale de manière directe et l’ont problématisée conceptuellement de sorte qu’ils ont dévoilé les différents aspects d’oppression et d’exclusion du colonialisme et donné ainsi une voix aux colonisés, subalternes et marginalisés. Cet article va tenter tout d’abord de rappeler la part critique de Frantz Fanon à l’égard de l’humanisme classique européen, mais aussi à celui de la Négritude. Par la suite il essaie de présenter sa conception d’un humanisme radical qui prend en considération l’homme, dire même l’humanité dans toute sa totalité, et à la fin il aborde les répercussions de la pensée fanonienne sur l’évolution politique actuelle ainsi que sur les Études postcoloniales. (shrink)

Both Gandhi and Fanon used divergent medical models to come up with their analogies for political action. For Gandhi, non-invasive medicine (such as fasting), prayer, and vigil took a key role in his response to individual illness of the body. He counseled similar tactics to challenge ‘illness” or error in the body politic. Fanon, a psychiatrist trained also in medicine referred to colonialism as a gangrene germ that threatened the life of the body politic, and therefore needed to (...) be amputated or surgically removed. Hence, he had greater willingness to use violence to achieve the goals of liberation. Mandela respected both of these views and walked a fine line between them, deciding his movement would engage in violence against property while trying its best to minimize human casualties. (shrink)

Challenging the notion of theory as white and experience as black, Lewis Gordon here offers a philosophical portrait of the thought and life of the Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an example of "living thought" against the legacies of colonialism and racism, and thereby shows the continued relevance and importance of his ideas.

This paper revisits Fanon’s relationship with psychoanalysis, specifically Lacanian psychoanalysis, via a close reading of his rhetorics of childhood – primarily as mobilized by the ‘Look, a Negro!’ scenario from Black Skin, White Masks, the traumatogenic scene which installs the black man’s sense of alienation from his own body and his inferiority. While this scene has been much discussed, the role accorded the child in this has attracted little attention. This paper focuses on the role and positioning of the (...) child to reconsider Fanon’s ideas, in relation to his contribution to the social constitution of subjectivity, arguing that reading Fanon alongside both his citations of Lacan and some aspects of Lacanian theory opens up further interpretive possibilities in teasing out tensions in Fanon’s writing around models of subjectivity. Finally, it is argued that it is where Fanon retains an indeterminacy surrounding the child that he is most politically fruitful. (shrink)

What does it mean to develop psychiatric method in a colonial context? Specifically, if the aims of psychiatry have traditionally been couched in the language of ‘psychic integration’ and ‘healing’, then what does it mean to practice psychiatry within structures that organize and reinforce the exclusions of colonialism? With these questions, this article examines Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric practices in light of his radical political commitments. I argue that Fanon’s innovations with the institutional form of the psychiatric hospital serve (...) to intervene differently in psychic conflict. Notably, these changes offer different ways to diagnose and respond to patients, along with different strategies for managing psychic disintegration in colonial contexts. The result is a rethinking of the relation between material and imagined worlds, and so the emergence of the hospital as a waystation between a colonial context and a political freedom yet to come. (shrink)

Fanon: life in a revolution -- Influences and engagements -- Colonialism, race and the native psyche. Race, colonialism and identity -- The black man's inferiority complex and race -- The dependency complex -- "Mental disorders" and colonial psychiatry -- Colonialism, gender, sexuality. Colonialism and its sexual economy -- Colonialism and sexual violence -- Women, the anti-colonial struggle and the veil -- On violence I: the destruction of selfhood. Colonial violence -- Territory, geography and the violence of space -- Embodied (...) violence and the alienation of the self -- Hegemony, violence and cultural trauma -- On violence II: the reconstruction of selfhood. Anti-colonial struggles and instrumental violence -- Absolute violence, self-realization and humanism -- Decolonization. Black consciousness, negritude and national cultures -- Negritude -- National culture -- Intellectuals, poets and the peasantry -- The intellectual and the masses -- The peasantry, the masses and political organization -- Nationalism and its pitfalls. In the name of the nation -- Fanon's critique of negritude -- A new humanism? The "problem" of humanism -- The liberated postcolonial -- The ethics of recognition -- Collective ethics -- Beyond national consciousness, towards universalism -- After Fanon. (shrink)