Child talks back

Abstract

ABSTRACT Erica Burman’s Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method published (Paperback) in 2019 continues to gain ground in cultural and social critique, research, policy and practice. No review so far, however, has addressed the book’s avowed and evident resonances with, and contributions to postcolonial theory/studies. This essay intends to highlight the book’s exceptional import on postcolonial critique, albeit in a selective and limited manner, given the work’s wide breadth of postcolonial themes, resources and study areas. This reviewer’s intent, I argue, can be pursued through the prism of key critical points raised by Benita Parry back in the 1980s to 1990s, on the false starts and mis-directions treaded by the burgeoning field of deconstructionist ‘colonial discourse theory.’ Fanon, Education, Action goads deconstructive critiques to be conceptually provocative and workable at the same time for resistance, change and emancipation. Fanon was a highly influential precursor of anti-colonial and liberationist critique, who is moreover engaged by Burman in ways heretofore unprecedented in Fanonian scholarship. By focusing her analytical lens on the forward-looking and decolonizing Fanon, Burman revivifies and mobilizes the postcolonial project towards policy and actionality in education, and other forms of individual and socio-political transformation.