When did Frantz Fanon die?
Frantz Fanon. First published Thu Mar 14, 2019. Born on the island of Martinique under French colonial rule, Frantz Omar Fanon (1925–1961) was one of the most important writers in black Atlantic theory in an age of anti-colonial liberation struggle.
What is Fanon's full name?
Frantz Fanon ( /fəˈnɒn/, French: [fʁɑ̃ts fanɔ̃]; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, political philosopher, revolutionary, and writer from the French colony of Martinique, whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies,...
What was Frantz Fanon's father's job?
His father, Félix Casimir Fanon, was a descendant of African slaves, and worked as a customs agent. His mother, Eléanore Médélice, was of Afro-Martinican and white Alsatian descent, and worked as a shopkeeper. Frantz was the third of four sons in a family of eight children.
What is the Frantz Fanon Prize?
The Caribbean Philosophical Association offers the Frantz Fanon Prize for work that furthers the decolonization and liberation of mankind. Fanon's writings on black sexuality in Black Skin, White Masks have garnered critical attention by a number of academics and queer theory scholars.
Where was Fanon born?
Fort-de-France, MartiniqueFrantz Fanon / Place of birth
What did Frantz Fanon believe?
Fanon perceived colonialism as a form of domination whose necessary goal for success was the reordering of the world of indigenous (“native”) peoples. He saw violence as the defining characteristic of colonialism.
What religion was Fanon?
Fanon regarded Catholicism as the State religion of France which at the time was intimately intertwined with the French assimilationist policies in the colonial context, unlike Islam, in the form of Sufism, which he felt was innately anti-colonial in character.
Where is Frantz Fanon buried?
Fanon was given a hero's burial on Algerian soil in a forest just across the border from Tunisia. After Algeria won its independence his name was inscribed into the symbolic order of the new society. The avenue on which the National Library of Algeria sits, a school and a hospital were all named in his honour.
What did Fanon mean by violence?
According to the Martinican author and political theorist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), violence fundamentally defined the meaning and practice of colonialism, and as such violence was central to the effort to resist and overthrow colonial rule. For Fanon, violence was both the poison of colonialism and its antidote.
What Fanon means?
Definition of fanon : any of several articles used in religious ceremonials: such as. a : maniple. b : an oblation cloth for carrying vessels and bread for the Eucharist. c : corporal entry 1. d : a vestment that resembles a short cape and is worn by a Roman pontiff at solemn pontifical mass.
What is the meaning of Black Skin White Masks?
The color of skin defines people's cultural identity. This provoking statement summarizes Frantz Fanon's key message of his concept 'Black Skin, White Masks'. It addresses how non-white people are judged and culturally identified based only on the color of their skin.
What is Decolonial theory?
“Decolonial Theory” is a title coined to describe the intellectual work articulating a broad rejection of Western European supremacy by colonial/racial subjects.
What did Frantz Fanon argue?
The Wretched of the Earth In defence of the use of violence by colonized peoples, Fanon argued that human beings who are not considered as such (by the colonizer) shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the colonizer. His book was censored by the French government.
Where is Algeria country?
North AfricaAlgeria, large, predominantly Muslim country of North Africa.
When did Fanon write wretched of the earth?
1961The Wretched of the EarthCover of the first editionAuthorFrantz FanonPublication date1961Published in English1963Media typePrint9 more rows
Was Frantz Fanon a psychiatrist?
The psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, best known for his works Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, is a theorist famous for his impassioned writings on revolution and the psychological impacts of racial inequality and colonization.
Who is Frantz Fanon?
Frantz Fanon, in full Frantz Omar Fanon, (born July 20, 1925, Fort-de-France, Martinique—died December 6, 1961, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.), West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher known for his theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation of colonial peoples.
Where did Fanon go to school?
His critiques influenced subsequent generations of thinkers and activists. After attending schools in Martinique, Fanon served in the Free French Army during World War II and afterward attended school in France, completing his studies in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Lyon.
What was Fanon's other writing?
Fanon’s other writings include Pour la révolution africaine: écrtits politiques (1964; Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays) and L’An V de la Révolution Algérienne (1959; also published as A Dying Colonialism, 1965), collections of essays written during his time with El Moudjahid.
Who wrote the preface to Fanon's book?
The publication shortly before his death of his book Les Damnés de la terre (1961; The Wretched of the Earth) established Fanon as a leading intellectual in the international decolonization movement; the preface to his book was written by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Where did Frantz Fanon grow up?
Frantz Fanon grew up in a middle-class family in the French colony of Martinique. His father, Casimir Fanon, worked as a customs inspector, and his mother, Eléanore Médélice, owned a hardware store. He spent much of his youth immersed in French culture, learning about French history.
Who is the president of the Frantz Fanon Foundation?
Through the Frantz Fanon Foundation, Fanon's work lives on. His daughter Mireille Fanon-Mendes serves as president of the foundation, which advocates for reparations for the descendants of enslaved African people and supports the Palestinian Independence Movement.
What did Fanon do during the war?
In the independent government Algeria formed during the war, Fanon served as ambassador to Ghana and traveled around the vast African continent, which helped him get supplies to the FLN forces. After traveling from Mali to the Algerian border in 1960, Fanon fell gravely ill. He learned leukemia was the cause.
What was Fanon exposed to?
During high school at Lycée Schoelche, Fanon was exposed to the French movement known as Négritude. This cultural moment was started in the 1930s by Black intellectuals, such as Aime Césaire, living in France or French colonies in the Caribbean or Africa.
What did Fanon write about?
Fanon wrote about the effects of colonialism and oppression in books such as “Black Skin, White Masks” and “Wretched of the Earth.”. His writings, as well as his support of the Algerian War of Independence, have influenced anti-colonial movements across the world, including in South Africa, Palestine, and the United States.
What was the job of Fanon?
After receiving a job offer in 1953 to serve as chief of staff in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Algeria, Fanon relocated there. The next year, Algeria, which was colonized by the French, went to war against France in a quest for independence.
Where did Fanon study?
When the war ended, Fanon studied psychiatry and medicine at the University of Lyon. On the largely Black island of Martinique, Fanon had been exposed to the form of skin color bias known as colorism, but he hadn’t experienced the full force of white racism.
Where did Fanon die?
Central Intelligence Agency) for treatment and died at the National Institute for Health facility on December 6, 1961. 1. The Problem of Blackness. 2.
How long did Fanon write?
We could say that, in many ways, Fanon’s legacy and influence outsizes his modest output as a writer. Fanon wrote for about a decade, which, in any comparison with other major thinkers, is almost no time at all. The pages produced, as well, are modest. Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth are substantial books composed of original chapters and analysis, but the other two works A Dying Colonialism (1959) and Toward the African Revolution (posthumously published in 1964) are comprised of short essays, preliminary analyses, and occasional pieces. While those shorter, preliminary, and occasional works are fascinating and important, they are a portrait of a thinker in motion, a thinker whose commitment to diverse and unfolding revolutionary sites required both quick takes and patient contemplation. Fanon moved very quickly through the Algerian struggle and did not hesitate to be declarative, and his work on black Africa is very much the same, albeit without the same concrete engagement and intellectual background. Yet, Fanon is also patient and reflective, something we see in the psychiatric studies that simultaneously underpin his broader analyses and suggest other productive avenues for thought.
What does Fanon argue about?
As well, Fanon argues in some detail against the capacity of European psychoanalysis to understand the colonial situation. Blackness requires modifications in method, especially if that method is to open space for resistance, rebellion, and liberation.
What is Fanon's critical view of dialectical thinking?
Fanon is deeply critical of dialectical thinking, while at the same time drawing deep, important lessons from it. In particular, Fanon is concerned with how a dialectics of recognition might simply mean elevation of the Black person to a sense of humanity created by and modeled on white people.
What is Fanon's psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis, like his original readings of interracial relationships, provides Fanon a language for describing all the effects and affects on desire under anti-Black racism, and how gendered notions of power, embodiment, and selfhood are structured from the inside by the colonial practice of racism.
What is Lewis Gordon's work on Fanon?
Lewis Gordon’s work on Fanon has argued for the centrality of existentialism and existential framing of key questions across his oeuvre, especially in Gordon’s early work Fanon and the Crisis of European Humanity (1995) and recently in What Fanon Said (2015).
Why does Fanon reject reparations?
Fanon rejects the idea of reparations, for example, precisely because that idea would link Black people to the past in a crucial way and make that link inextricable from imagining justice. In place of the past, Fanon appeals to the openness and undetermined character of the future.
Who is Frantz Fanon?
Fair use image. Psychiatrist and anti- colonial cultural theorist, Frantz Fanon was born in the French West Indies, in Fort-de-France, Martinique on July 20, 1925. His father, Félix Casimir Fanon, was a black customs service inspector. His mother, Eléanore Médélice, was half French and owned a hardware and drapery shop.
Where did Frantz Fanon study?
Fanon studied at Lycée Schoelcher, the secondary school in Fort-de-France until it closed down due to Vichy rule. The heavy-handed command of Vichy formed the young Fanon’s perspective on race relations. When Lycée Schoelcher re-opened in 1941, Frantz Fanon studied under the t poet Aimé Césaire.
What was the name of the book that Fanon wrote?
Fanon’s work in North Africa established him in the political domain. His subsequent books, Studies in a Dying Colonialism (1959) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), would give a voice to the Third World liberation struggles of that time.
What was the name of the book that Fanon published in 1952?
This application is seen in his published book, Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), 1952.
Who was Fanon married to?
Fanon married Marie-Josephe Dublé in 1952, with whom he had his second child Olivier in 1955. His first child, Mireille, was born in 1948 to another woman. By 1956, he exiled himself to Tunis where he was the editor of Al Moujahid, a revolutionary Algerian newspaper.
Where did Fanon serve in the war?
In 1943, Fanon left for Dominica to enlist in the Free French forces. He served in Morocco and Algeria in 1944 and 1945, and then participated in the battle for Alsace. Though Fanon was commended for his bravery, the racism he experienced in the army led him to reject WWII as a white man’s war.
Where was Fanon born?
Frantz Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique. He volunteered for the French army during World War II, and then, after being released from military service, he went to France, where he studied medicine and psychiatry from 1945 to 1950.
Who was Fanon deeply identified with?
Alienated from the dominant French culture, except for that represented by such radicals as the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, Fanon deeply identified with Algeria's revolutionary struggle for independence.
What was Fanon's theory of the Third World?
He worked on the revolutionaries' newspaper, becoming one of the leading ideologists of the revolution, and developed a theory of anticolonial struggle in the "third world.". Using Marxist, psychoanalytic, and sociological analysis, Fanon summed up his views in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), arguing that only a thorough, ...
Is Fanon a biography?
Peter Geismar, Fanon (1971), is a useful biography. David Caute, Fanon (1970), is not a full biography but a study of Fanon's ideas. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961; trans. 1965) has an interesting introduction by Jean Paul Sartre.
Who was the father of Frantz Fanon?
Frantz Fanon. 1925 CE – 1961 CE. Fr Frantz Fanon antz Fanon was born in Fort-de-France, the capital of the French colony of Martinique. His father, Félix, was a customs inspector and his mother, Eléanore, a shopkeeper.
Where did Fanon die?
Fanon died in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland weeks after The Wretched of the Earth was published.
What happened to Fanon after France fell to Germany?
After France fell to Germany in 1940, the colonial administration of the West Indies came under the influence of the Vichy regime and a return to more visible forms of official racism ensued. In 1943 Fanon enlisted in the Free French army under exiled general and statesman Charles de Gaulle.
When did Fanon become ill?
In 1960, at the age of 35, Fanon became ill with leukemia and began racing feverishly to complete The Wretched of the Earth .
What did Fanon find himself disillusioned by?
Above all, Fanon found himself disillusioned by the racial hierarchy within the military. “The French," he wrote, "do not like the Jews, who do not like the Arabs, who do not like the Negroes.”.
Where was Fanon born?
Childhood and Youth. Frantz Fanon was born in Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, on July 20, 1925. Located toward the southern reaches of the Lesser Antilles near South America, Martinique experienced French rule beginning in the 17th century.
What country did Fanon live in?
World War II and University Education. With the exception of Martinique, Fanon spent more years of his life in France than in any other country, including Algeria. The Second World War initiated this period. The war affected Martinique as it did the rest of the French Empire.
What was the name of the book that Frantz Fanon wrote?
Trained as a psychiatrist, Fanon achieved fame as a philosopher of anti-colonial revolution. He published two seminal books, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), that addressed the psychological effects of racism and the politics of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962), respectively. He also wrote a third book, Year Five of the Algerian Revolution (1959, reprinted and translated as A Dying Colonialism in 1967), as well as numerous medical journal articles and political essays, a selection of which appear in the posthumous collections Toward the African Revolution (1964) and Alienation and Freedom (2015).
How long did Fanon live in Algeria?
Fanon lived and worked in Algeria from 1953 to 1956 —only three years, despite his strong identification with the country. Furthermore, the time between his professional arrival in Blida via a letter of appointment dated October 22, 1953 and the start of the Algerian War of Independence on November 1, 1954 was brief.
What was the last book of Fanon?
Along with Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon’s last book, The Wretched of the Earth, defined his intellectual stature. Unlike its predecessor, The Wretched of the Earth received an immediate, enthusiastic reception—a fact that can be attributed to the relative fame Fanon had accrued by 1961, as well as to the auspicious timing of its appearance. Drawing its title from the Communist Party anthem “The Internationale” (“Arise ye prisoners of starvation! / Arise ye wretched of the earth !”), it not only summarized and theoretically expanded on the Algerian Revolution that would end shortly in 1962, but it also prefigured and rationalized armed struggles then emerging in Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and parts of Latin America. Furthermore, it would resonate with African American activists of the Black Panther Party, who embraced a militant ethos in the wake of the assassinations of Malcolm X ( 1925–1965) and Martin Luther King Jr. ( 1929–1968 ). The book presented a proactive alternative to the nonviolent resistance forged by King and others.
What is Fanon's analysis of colonialism?
Despite the brevity of his life and written work, Fanon’s analysis of colonialism and decolonization has remained vital , influencing a range of academic fields such that the term Fanonism has become shorthand to capture his interrelated political, philosophical, and psychological arguments.
What is Fanon's influence?
Yet, this intellectual range has also generated a distinction between Fanon and a secondary discourse about his work—what has commonly been referred to as Fanonism. This situation—a difference between his life and the life of his ideas—has generated debate, with scholars such Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cedric Robinson both praising and critiquing the appropriation and misappropriation of Fanon’s insights. 21 On the one hand, the use of Fanon has vitally underscored the pervasiveness of racism and colonialism in the making of the modern world. On the other hand, the frequent citation of Fanon has at times overwhelmed the discussion of these themes, to the exclusion of his contemporaries and other thinkers from different places and time periods—as well as to the exclusion of his own history.
Early Years
A Revolution in Algeria
- When he completed his medical studies, Fanon lived briefly in Martinique once more and then in Paris. After receiving a job offer in 1953 to serve as chief of staff in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Algeria, Fanon relocated there. The next year, Algeria, which was colonized by the French, went to war against France in a quest for independence. At that time, about a million Fre…
Controversies and Legacy
- The writings of Fanon have influenced a wide range of activists and intellectuals. As the Black consciousness movement gained momentum in the 1960s and ’70s, the Black Panther Partyturned to his work for inspiration, as did anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. “Wretched of the Earth” is considered one of the primary works that led to the creation of critical race studies. …
Sources
- “Why Fanon continues to resonate more than half a century after Algeria’s independence.” The Conversation, 5 July, 2015.
- Pithouse, Richard. “Violence: What Fanon really said.” 8 April, 2016.
- Shatz, Adam. “The Doctor Prescribed Violence.” The New York times, 2 September, 2001.
- “Négritude.” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2011.
The Problem of Blackness
- In 1952, Fanon published his first major work Black Skin, WhiteMasks. Though just 27 at the time of its publication, the workdisplays incredible literacy in major intellectual trends of the time:psychoanalysis, existentialism, phenomenology, and dialectics, as wellas, most prominently, the early Négritude movement and U.S.based critical race work i...
Algeria
- Fanon’s move to Algeria in 1953 marks an important turning pointin his thought. He continues to write on anti-blackness in selectessays and occasions, but Fanon’s shift is deep and meaningful.Whereas Black Skin, White Masks was concerned exclusivelywith the structure of an anti-black world and how that world bears onthe body and psyche of the colonized, Fanon’s tim…
Black Africa
- In terms of volume, Fanon’s turn to Africa in the yearsfollowing the publication of Black Skin, White Mask isoverwhelmingly occupied with North Africa, and Algeria in particular.However, he also gives some key attention to sub-Saharan Africa orwhat he called “black Africa” in key essays, editorials,and letters collected in Toward the African Revolution. Though there is some variety i…
The Wretched of The Earth
- Without question, the 1961 publication of The Wretched of theEarth (Les damnés de la terre) changedFanon’s global profile as a thinker of anti-colonial struggle,revolutionary action, and post-colonial statecraft andimagination. In many ways, Wretched is a fulfillment of the short,suggestive promissory notes on anti-colonial struggle found in themany essays, editorials, and letters writte…
The Case Studies
- Fanon’s training in psychiatry is a central part of his work,from the methodological approaches to and characterizations of thedynamics of anti-Black racism in Black Skin, White Masksthrough the attention to postcolonial anxieties of cultural formationand statecraft in The Wretched of the Earth. But apart from method alone, Fanon’s published and unpublishedworks offer case studie…
Legacy and Influence
- We could say that, in many ways, Fanon’s legacy and influenceoutsizes his modest output as a writer. Fanon wrote for about adecade, which, in any comparison with other major thinkers, is almostno time at all. The pages produced, as well, are modest. BlackSkin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth aresubstantial books composed of original chapters and analysis, but the…