Fanon's Rebel Fifty Years Later*

Neil Roberts

doi:10.16993/karib.29

Abstract

This article examines two milestones separated by eight months: the fifty-year anniversaries of Frantz Fanon’s passing and the independence of Jamaica. Although Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago each achieved independence from the United Kingdom the same year, the latter became a republic whereas the former, similar to the Bahamas, has remained a British Commonwealth polity. The article contends that Fanon, in an appropriation of Aime Cesaire, develops an archetypal figure of the Rebel as central to his overall political thought and one that, when applied at the macro-level to contemporary Jamaica, presents a challenge applicable to the heated discourse on whether Jamaica should become a republic. It explores Fanon’s Rebel, the independence-freedom distinction, the Rebel’s role in achieving freedom, and what Fanon would say today about the political future of late modern Jamaica under incumbent Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller.

Highlights

This article examines two milestones separated by eight months: the fifty-year anniversaries of Frantz Fanon’s passing and the independence of Jamaica
It was early December 2011 in Nassau, The Bahamas, and our hosts picked us up from the hotel en route to the opening ceremonies of a symposium at The College of the Bahamas where I would be among the guest speakers
As we drove in the car, we passed the lavish Atlantis Resort, a mega-complex positioned on a tiny island oasis just off the main coastal borders of the road

Summary

Williams College

This article examines two milestones separated by eight months: the fifty-year anniversaries of Frantz Fanon’s passing and the independence of Jamaica. The article contends that Fanon, in an appropriation of Aimé Césaire, develops an archetypal figure of the Rebel as central to his overall political thought and one that, when applied at the macro-level to contemporary Jamaica, presents a challenge applicable to the heated discourse on whether Jamaica should become a republic It explores Fanon’s Rebel, the independence-freedom distinction, the Rebel’s role in achieving freedom, and what Fanon would say today about the political future of late modern Jamaica under incumbent Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller. This article explores Fanon’s Rebel, the distinction between independence and freedom, the role of the Rebel in achieving freedom, and what Fanon would say today about the political future of late modern Jamaica under incumbent Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller.

The Rebel as Archetype

Architecture of Freedom

Jamaica at Fifty

Late Modern Challenges

Findings

Works Cited