Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was perhaps the preeminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization. His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements throughout the world for the past forty-two years.

Work

Although Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks while still in France, most of his work was written while in North Africa. It was during this time that he produced his greatest works, Year 5 of the Algerian revolution (later republished as A Dying Colonialism) and perhaps the most important work on decolonization yet written, The Wretched of the Earth. The Wretched of the Earth was first published in 1961 by François Maspero, and is fronted with a preface by the Jean-Paul Sartre. In it, Fanon lucidly analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. Both books firmly established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World as the leading anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century.

Related Topics:
Black Skin, White Masks - The Wretched of the Earth - Third World

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Fanon's three books were supplemented by numerous psychiatric articles, as well as radical critiques of French colonialism in journals like, L'Espritand El Moudjahid His work has been partly misunderstood due to flawed English translations which contain numerous ommissions and errors. Moreover, his unpublished work, including his important doctoral thesis, has been ignored. The result has been simplistic and derogatory comments on Fanon's supposed advocacy of violence. In fact, his work is interdisciplinary, broadening out from his psychiatric basis to encompass politics, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and literature. His participation in the Algerian FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) from 1955 determined his audience as the Algerian colonised. It was to them that his final work, Les damnes de la terre (translated into English by Constance Farrington as The Wretched of the Earth) was directed. It constitutes a warning to the oppressed of the their present dangers as they face the whirlwind of decolonisation and the transition to a neo-colonialist/globalised world.

Related Topics:
Front de Libération Nationale - The Wretched of the Earth

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