Philosophy

Frantz Fanon

1925–1961 · Martinican-French (Algerian by adoption)

Anti-colonial thought; existential phenomenology of race

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist from Martinique who became the most influential theorist of decolonisation. Trained in France, he ran a psychiatric hospital in French Algeria, resigned in disgust, joined the Algerian National Liberation Front, and wrote two books that have never stopped being argued over: one on the psychological wound colonialism inflicts on the colonised, the other on the violence by which they throw it off. He died of leukaemia at thirty-six, weeks after finishing the second.

How to spot them

▸Martinique-born psychiatrist who became a spokesman for the Algerian FLN
▸The 1961 book on decolonisation and violence, prefaced by a French existentialist
▸'Look, a Negro!' — the scene on a train that opens his account of the racial gaze
▸The Blida-Joinville hospital, the 1956 resignation letter, El Moudjahid
▸Died aged 36 in a hospital in Maryland; buried in Algeria as a martyr of the revolution

Key works

A 1952 first book by a young psychiatrist on the psychic wound of racism, turning on a child's cry on a train and on the demand that a colonised man wear another people's face (1952)

Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire, masques blancs) — originally submitted, and rejected, as a doctoral dissertation.

A 1961 book on decolonisation and violence whose title is taken from the opening line of the Internationale, dictated as its author was dying of leukaemia and prefaced by a French existentialist (1961)

The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la terre) — the preface was by Jean-Paul Sartre.

A 1959 study of the fifth year of the Algerian revolution, containing celebrated essays on the veil and on the radio set (1959)

A Dying Colonialism (L'An V de la révolution algérienne) — its first chapter is 'Algeria Unveiled'.

A posthumous 1964 gathering of political journalism from the Algerian struggle, including the 1956 letter resigning from a colonial psychiatric hospital (1964)

Toward the African Revolution (Pour la révolution africaine).

A 1956 address to the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris, arguing that racism is not an accident of colonialism but its working machinery (1956)

'Racism and Culture' — delivered at the Sorbonne congress organised by Présence Africaine.

Key ideas

The colonised subject is made to see himself through the coloniser's eyes; the 'white mask' is worn over a self that has been taught to despise itself
Language carries the wound: to speak the coloniser's language is to take on his world
Decolonisation is 'always a violent phenomenon' — colonial rule was installed by force and its removal reverses that force on the same terms
The national bourgeoisie is the great danger after independence: an unproductive intermediary class that inherits the colony rather than transforming it
Colonial rule makes people ill, and psychiatry cannot cure patients while the system that damaged them is intact — the reasoning behind his resignation
National culture is not a return to a pre-colonial past but something made in the struggle itself

Quick-fire facts

•Born in Fort-de-France, Martinique, in 1925; his teacher at the Lycée Schoelcher was the poet Aimé Césaire
•Volunteered for the Free French Forces in the Second World War, was wounded in Alsace and awarded the Croix de guerre — and was disgusted by the racism he met in the army
•Studied medicine and psychiatry at Lyon, where he also attended lectures in philosophy
•Appointed head of psychiatry at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria in 1953; he resigned in 1956 in a letter to the Resident Minister
•Joined the FLN, wrote for its paper El Moudjahid from Tunis, and served as ambassador to Ghana for the Algerian provisional government
•Survived an assassination attempt and a car crash on the Morocco–Algeria frontier before his illness
•Died of leukaemia in Bethesda, Maryland, on 6 December 1961, having been flown to the United States for treatment
•He was buried in Algeria, in the cemetery for martyrs of the revolution near Aïn Kerma
•The Wretched of the Earth was seized by the French authorities on publication and became a founding text for anti-colonial and Black Power movements

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Sources

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon — The Wretched of the Earth