Frantz Fanon

Abstract

Frantz Fanon (b. 1925–d. 1961)—psychiatrist, political theorist, poet, polemicist, diplomat, journalist, soldier, doctor, playwright, revolutionary—is one of the foremost writers of the 20th century on the topics of racism, colonialism, and decolonization. In his short lifetime, he produced two enduring books: Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire, masques blancs), still regarded as the preeminent study of the lived experience of racism, and The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre), regarded at the time of its publication as “the handbook of decolonization,” and presenting itself to us today as both a clear-eyed prediction of the lasting legacy of neocolonialism, and as a visionary account of a truly postcolonial condition yet to come. These two books encapsulate the major themes not only of Fanon’s writing but also of his extraordinary life. Black Skin, White Masks captures Fanon’s experience as a native of Martinique and thus as the product of a colonial education who came to experience metropolitan racism upon his arrival in France (Fanon, having fought in Europe during the Second World War, returned to France to study medicine). The book draws upon Fanon’s training in psychiatry and psychoanalysis but also upon Marxism, existentialism, the work of the négritude movement, and a number of literary texts in order to analyze the lived experience of racism. Having completed his medical studies, Fanon took up a position at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria in November 1953. While working in Algeria, Fanon introduced a number of innovative programs and also authored and coauthored many articles on the practice and theory of psychiatry (many of these texts are available in English, thanks to the publication of Fanon’s previously uncollected writings in Alienation and Freedom, published in 2018). However, as he recounts in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon was responsible for treating both Algerians fighting for independence and also French police and army officers—both the tortured and the torturers. This experience was to shape his remarkable theorization of colonial and anticolonial violence, one of the key themes of The Wretched of the Earth, which has inspired ongoing critical debate. In 1956 Fanon resigned his position and joined the FLN (National Liberation Front) in Tunis, where he served as an editor of the movement’s newspaper, El Moudjahid. It was during this time that Fanon wrote L’an V de la révolution algérienne (Year V of the Algerian Revolution, translated as A dying colonialism), his sociological study of the Algerian liberation struggle. Shortly after its publication, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. While undergoing treatment, Fanon worked to produce in a period of ten weeks his last (and what would come to be his most famous) book, The Wretched of the Earth. Published only weeks before his death in December 1961, The Wretched of the Earth remains a key text for postcolonial studies. Fanon’s unsparing analysis of the movement for decolonization and the struggle toward what he called the “African Revolution”—as well as his call for a new form of humanism not overdetermined by the crimes of racism, slavery, and colonialism—continues to resonate with readers.