Fanon’s other children: psychopolitical and pedagogical implications

Abstract

Discussions of the writings of theorist, psychiatrist and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, in the fields of education and childhood typically focus on his account of a traumatic encounter with a white child, whose fear at the sight of a black man is said to create a vilified, racialised identity and installs an irreversible social and corporeal alienation. Yet Fanon’s writings include a range of other depictions of children, childhood and education which reflect his broader views of colonial and decolonisation processes that include recognisable tropes of classic developmentalism, including gender chauvinisms. Nevertheless, it is suggested that the diversity and complexity of child-related allusions across his texts allow for other critical readings that can inform educational debates on anticolonial analyses, of children, childhood and of their more general role in post and anti-development discourse.