The post-colonialist condition, suspicion, and social resistance during the West African Ebola epidemic: The importance of Frantz Fanon for global health

Abstract

The scholarship of Frantz Fanon has been recognized across numerous disciplines as a unique and necessary intervention for critical analyses of the (post)colonial condition. Yet, thus far, his oeuvre has largely been ignored in global health research. In this article we introduce and demonstrate the relevance of Fanon's work for the field of global health. To illustrate, we draw from Fanon's conceptual framework and observations to analyze the 2014–16 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak response in West Africa. During this Ebola epidemic, although not necessarily as widespread as Western media made it seem, numerous instances of “resistance”—sometimes violent—were levied by members of the community toward foreign outbreak response teams. In this article, we argue that the keen insights proffered by Fanon more than half a century ago help facilitate a deeper understanding of some of the reactions of community members and public health officials during the Ebola response. In calling attention to colonial histories and structural relations of power, poverty, and violence, Fanon's work can help us to effectively move towards “decolonizing” global health interventions, thus providing a framework with which to better understand and more humanely intervene in future epidemic outbreaks in the Global South.