Concerning Violence: Fanon, Africa and temporality

Abstract

This article examines the political significance of temporal structures in Om våld (Concerning Violence) (), a documentary that takes its title from the chapter of the same name in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. The film comprises archive footage shot by Swedish television crews in Africa between the mid-1960s and 1987. It pairs images with extracts from Fanon’s book, read by singer and activist Lauryn Hill. This assemblage both celebrates African campaigns of liberation and complicates the claim to be ‘here and now’ embedded in archival material by overlaying it with a retrospective (often melancholic) vantage point, that of a postcolonial moment. On occasion, Concerning Violence comes close to reproducing a temporal framing that consigns Black Africans to the symbolic immobility critiqued by Fanon and, more recently, Achille Mbembe. How does the film endeavour to avoid this? How successful is it in arguing for the enduring relevance of Fanon’s thought?