Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis , 2024
Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis Manuscript 1107 Review of Frantz Fanon: Comb... more Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis Manuscript 1107 Review of Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing by Nigel Gibson (Polity Press, 2024) Review of Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing by Nigel Gibson (Polity Press, 2024) Rose A. Owen
This book is the latest offering by Professor Nigel C. Gibson on the work and relevance of Frantz... more This book is the latest offering by Professor Nigel C. Gibson on the work and relevance of Frantz Fanon. A recognised expert in Africana thought and postcolonialism, in "Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing", Gibson facilitates readers' application and assessment of Fanon's approach around revolution and liberation-particularly in terms of anticolonial and pro-humanism activity-with attention to some contemporary global events, e.g. Black Lives Matter movement, Gaza strip conflict. This is a book in which Gibson seeks to inform, critically engage and demonstrate the continued relevance of Fanon's ideas for the next generation of thinkers and activists, as he promises from the outset " … you will see how Fanon's analysis and vision remain vital and speak powerfully to our situation" (xv). This review will evaluate Gibson's approach and delivery in doing this. Following standard proceeding sections, i.e. Preface, Acknowledgements and an Introduction chapter, this book is succinctly divided into eight core subject-specific chapters, before succeeding with a Conclusion chapter, Notes, References and Index. The book attempts to chronologically present Fanon's development of ideas, or his most popular "domains", highlighting how his theoretical approach was so powerfully influenced by the socio-political conditions in which he was situated. Although context-specific, these chapters manage to link the local to the global, highlighting the wider scope of Fanon's work. The somewhat biographical style that Gibson uses, makes the book manageable and more importantly, it aids the deconstruction and digestion of Fanon's work. Although Fanon wrote / presented for a variety of audiences and geographies, it is not always a simple task for students at the earlier stage of their learning journey to understand his works corpus. This book is neatly structured, and presented in such a way that permits the reader to embark on a less challenging analysis of Fanon's life and work; whether that be the psychological insights of his Black Skin, White Masks (1952), his sociological analysis in Wretched of the Earth (1961), or the somewhat militant political cries of Towards the African Revolution (1964). All these are to varying degrees, covered in this book with enough detail to transfer knowledge and trigger a desire to read further. Every chapter of this book is relevant. However, chapters 1 to 8 are key to the book's overall purpose, and I would mark these all out as strong chapters. That said, the analytical detail of chapters 2 and 3 stood out for me, but maybe that is because they especially spoke more poignantly to my social science background? Regardless, if such a thing can or should be said in a scholarly review, these chapters, along with the Conclusion, were by far my "favourite" chapters! The key arguments in chapters 1 to 8 clarify Fanon's core ideas and in places, ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES
Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing (part of Polity's Black Lives series) will be published later this... more Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing (part of Polity's Black Lives series) will be published later this month. Please check the attached generous discount.
This is a review essay on two edited volumes titled Fanon Today and Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psy... more This is a review essay on two edited volumes titled Fanon Today and Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology. The essay reflects on the diverse ways in which Frantz Fanon's ideologies and philosophies have been explored by the authors in different racial, social, cultural, historical, political, economic, gendered, and geographical contexts. The essay also argues how the contributions collectively voice toward building a transcultural and transcontinental solidarity of "Fanonian Turn."
otherness, and the deaths we endure on such a regular basis that we are often unaware that it is ... more otherness, and the deaths we endure on such a regular basis that we are often unaware that it is happening to ourselves' (p. 100). Finally, Chapter 5 entitled 'Individuation, Privilege and Otherness' becomes much more personal to Turner himself. Instead of using client material, he uses a heuristic process to examine himself, his own dreams, personal diary entries and personal discussions with colleagues. Over a number of months, he slowly and at times painfully came to terms with attempts at his own individuation and othering, pulling together the strands of self, as they affected his own notions of privilege and otherness. I was really struck and moved by his honesty and the example of his own family who as immigrants tried to fit in and did not allow themselves to be othered. This has made Turner himself, both as a child and an adult, to repress his own rage, anger and 'internalised whiteness and patriarchy' (p. 132). This book is dense with complex ideas, academic rigour, and some considerable personal pain for Turner, expressed in a metered but by no means apologetic way. This book and its complex intersection of ideas around privilege and race in psychotherapy and other forms of psychological training, such as dramatherapy, should be required reading for students, practitioners and especially those of us who manage such training institutions, as we slowly and hopefully begin to decolonise dramatherapy teaching programmes over the next decade or two.
Like Marx, who famously said that he was "not a Marxist," Fanon was critical of the parties assoc... more Like Marx, who famously said that he was "not a Marxist," Fanon was critical of the parties associated with Marxism, which paid little serious attention to the "National Question." "His concern [was] with what the masses do and say and think," argued Adolfo Gilly. Gilly caught something of Fanon's Marxism in his introduction to the American edition of A Dying Colonialism when he wrote Fanon's "belief [was] that it is the masses, and not leaders nor systems, who in the final analysis make and determine history" (Fanon 1967c, 2). Sensitivity to Fanon's Marxism is ably demonstrated in Tony Martin's essay "Rescuing Fanon from the Critics." Martin grounds Fanon's thought in Marx's famous phrase from The Eighteenth Brumaire that people make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Martin calls it the "leitmotif" of Fanon's philosophy. Lou Turner and John Alan (chapter 3) also recognize that an affinity between Fanon and their Marxist-Humanist philosophy requires a "complete break" with much of what is considered Marxism. For Turner and Alan, Fanon's philosophy came alive again in the revolutionary movement of Black Consciousness in South Africa. According to Turner and Alan philosophies of liberation "travel" subterraneously and along noninstitutional lines: Just as the white rulers "denuded a continent via the infamous triangular trade in slave, rum, and molasses, the [Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Black-Americans] were exchanging ideas the ideas of freedom, the experiences of Black masses in action, and their aspirations for a new world." Fanon was essentially out of print in early 1970s Britain. In fact, one port of entry for Fanon's ideas was the post-Soweto (1976) arrival of South African exiles, especially the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), who set up office in London in the late 1970s and published the journal Solidarity. The BCM community engendered a new interest in Fanon that had also been displayed in Steve Biko's book I Write What I Like. Nevertheless, while Fanon remained decidedly marginal in Britain, he continued to be discussed by both African-American and African intellectuals in the United States inside and outside the Black Skin, White Masks that Bhabha himself has declined doing. McClintock finds two types of nationalism in Fanon, a "mechanical nationalism" sanctioned by "structural logic," and a more open-ended and strategically difficult and unpredictable view of national agency. With this latter national "subject" in mind, McClintock (like Helie-Lucas) criticizes Fanon for crediting RETHINKING FANON 21 blocked, but it is a history that should not be allowed to rewritten. Fanon is too often misread, she declares, and inscribed in myths that are grounded in ''historico-textual revisionisms." A "defense" of Fanon is needed, and Sharpley-Whiting offers one. The section ends with the chapter, "Challenging the Social Order: Women's Liberation in Contemporary Algeria,'' an interview with feminist activist Zouligha. When one of the interviewers gave me a draft of the interview in June 1998, I immediately thought that it would be a good way to conclude this section. Though she does not discuss Fanon, Zouligha brings the dehumanization, depersonaliz:ation, and "nonviability" of contemporary Algeria into focus, echoing Fanon's description of colonial totalitarianism. The increasingly repressive society, a result of the war between armed Islamic fundamentalist groups, the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) and the GIA (Groupes Islamiques Armee), and the government, has fundamentally silenced the people. The picture Zouligha draws of relations at the school where she works is particularly striking. Of the murders, "it is impossible to mourn." Of life in Algeria, "we cannot talk, everything is repressed, we keep everything inside. .. . It is a sick society." In Fanon's words, it is a nonviable society and one that needs to be replaced. RE-READING FANON'S IDEA OF LIBERATION IN THE FACE OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN ALGERIA Colonialism and its derivatives do not, as a matter of fact, constitute the present enemies of Africa. For my part, the deeper I enter into the culture and political circles the surer I am that the great danger that threatens Africa is the absence of ideology. Fanon The leader. .. uses every means to put {the people] to sleep. Fanon RETHINKING FANON 23 independence, the claim to Islamic orthodoxy became important for some FLN leaders in the struggle to establish political hegemony within the party I state organization. Reading today's Islamic fundamentalism back into Algerian history (and one could find a history of pronouncements for the "return to a pure Islam" going back a thousand years), means that one forgets that the current fundamentalism is the result of a number of factors, among them the numerous pragmatic political decisions of FLN leaders (including making Islam the state religion in 1976) made so as to hold onto state power. In other words, one needs to consider the contested ideas (and lack of ideas) behind this hybrid, and the failure to open national liberation along the lines Fanon suggested. 8 Despite all the rhetoric about "Islam and Socialism," about proving the "Islamic roots of socialism," about "Arabization" and "Islamization," at independence the FLN lacked coherence on the question of Islam, as it did on ideology in general. Whereas the FLN leaders' references to Islam were for factional and pragmatic reasons, conservatives used their alliance with the clerics to attack dissent and individual rights. Among the first victims were women. The FLN's Soummam Platform (1956) had encouraged an open society although it was limited in its idea of women's role in the revolution. Even before gaining independence FLN conservatives sought to close down that openness. One expression of this can be seen in the FLN response to the 1959 French family law as a "Koranic issue," and so bespeaking the degeneration of national liberation. After independence, Islamic reformists encouraged attacks on unveiled women on the streets of Algiers, while the nationalist leadership called for the abolition o(an autonomous trade union movement. Both clerics and nationalists saw the usefulness of each other in strangling Revolutionary Algeria. While "orthodox" reformist Islam, and a modernizing nationalism using socialist language, found an elective affinity, Fanon attempted to provide an alternative direction. Forty years later, in the face of fundamentalism, Fanon's critique of national chauvinism and his vision of a new humanism remain cogent. With the advent of the Soummam Platform the division RETHINKING FANON more, he KNEW; he knew everything, from the diagnostic to the prognostic. He was in the habit of laughing when with us. We used to try to force ourselves to smile, and he would laugh even more to stimulate us to do so. But how could we dare when we were so afflicted by the imminence of his disappearance? Once Olivier came into the room: "Papa, a gentleman downstairs is asking for you." ''What is his name?" "He said his name is Mr. X." "Ah! Mr. X. Good. Go and tell him I left with Mr. Y." And he laughed again. Several days later he came to my house. He was visibly in bad shape. We had prepared a West Indian meal for him. He did not make much of it. Leaning towards my wife, he told her: "Next time Michele, no West Indian dinner please." "We'll make you some couscous next time." "Good," he replied. The next time! I stole a glance at his wife. She appeared to be calm, but I knew that this courageous Josy, like everyone who loved Frantz, was suffering, and she knew that I knew it. One October morning he entered my laboratory. He was accompanied by a colonel of the A.L.N. "Analyze my blood, I feel fatigued," I pierced his finger and a drop of blood immediately formed. ''You don't seem to lack any" I told him. He didn't seem concerned. "When can you give me the results?" ''Tomorrow." I did not know that this tomorrow would have been a day of hope for me, but for Frantz, a day of despair. In fact, everything was normal. And I was naively hoping that the previous diagnoses were erroneous. Maybe he was only overworked or parasitic. He dashed my hopes to the ground. "The result does not surprise me, I am under treatment. It's the Russian medicine, which has diminished the rate of the white globules. My illness nevertheless is going on. I'm going to leave for America." (1962, 139-42)• 41
About the Book Over sixty years after his death, the social philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz F... more About the Book Over sixty years after his death, the social philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) remains a towering intellectual figure. Born in Martinique and trained as a psychiatrist in France, Fanon rejected his French citizenship to join the Algerian liberation movement in the 1950s. In the short decade from 1952 to 1961 this brilliant and engaged intellectual composed three books Black Skin, White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, and The Wretched of the Earth, which continue to spur intellectual awakenings across the world.
'anno 5. della rivoluzione algerina, trans. Filippo Del Lucchese, 2007
English translation of the postface to L'anno 5. della rivoluzione algerina, trans. Filippo Del L... more English translation of the postface to L'anno 5. della rivoluzione algerina, trans. Filippo Del Lucchese, ed. Miguel Mellino, Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2007, 188 pp. (Italian)
Nancy Luxon, review of FRANTZ FANON, PSYCHIATRY, AND POLITICS BY NIGEL C. GIBSON AND ROBERTO BENE... more Nancy Luxon, review of FRANTZ FANON, PSYCHIATRY, AND POLITICS BY NIGEL C. GIBSON AND ROBERTO BENEDUCE; WHITHER FANON? STUDIES IN THE BLACKNESS OF BEING BY DAVID MARRIOTT; ALIENATION AND FREEDOM BY JEAN KHALFA AND ROBERT C. YOUNG
Decolonization is one of the most profound political changes of the past century, a transformation with effects touching nearly every part of the world. Alongside the anticolonial movement, it has drastically reshaped how those living in the twenty-first century experience global power and politics. Only recently have scholars begun tackling the conceptual challenge that decolonization and anticolonial struggle raise, perhaps fueled by an increasing awareness of the structural racial inequalities that remain. In his preface to Frantz Fanon's collected works (published in French), Achille Mbembe divides Fanon's reception into three, roughly chronological stages: those who read him for his anticolonial praxis in the 1960s; those who saw him as contributing to the development of postcolonial studies in the 1980s ... Cultural Critique 113-Fall 2021-Copyright 2021 Regents of the University of Minnesota
Many struggles today find resonance with the words of Frantz Fanon because he wrote so searchingl... more Many struggles today find resonance with the words of Frantz Fanon because he wrote so searchingly and presciently about the wounds of the colonised, and the road to freedom.
From Leswin Laubscher, Derek Hook, and Miraj U. Desai, Fanon, Phenomenology and Psychology (Routl... more From Leswin Laubscher, Derek Hook, and Miraj U. Desai, Fanon, Phenomenology and Psychology (Routledge, 2021). Originally the 2014 introduction to the unpublished translation of Fanon psychiatric papers titled Decolonizing Madness.
“Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the worl... more “Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the world takes on urgent significance in this moment of global movements for Black Lives after the police murder of George Floyd”
Excerpt From: Nigel C Gibson. “Fanon and the ‘rationality of revolt.” iBooks.
Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis , 2024
Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis Manuscript 1107 Review of Frantz Fanon: Comb... more Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis Manuscript 1107 Review of Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing by Nigel Gibson (Polity Press, 2024) Review of Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing by Nigel Gibson (Polity Press, 2024) Rose A. Owen
This book is the latest offering by Professor Nigel C. Gibson on the work and relevance of Frantz... more This book is the latest offering by Professor Nigel C. Gibson on the work and relevance of Frantz Fanon. A recognised expert in Africana thought and postcolonialism, in "Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing", Gibson facilitates readers' application and assessment of Fanon's approach around revolution and liberation-particularly in terms of anticolonial and pro-humanism activity-with attention to some contemporary global events, e.g. Black Lives Matter movement, Gaza strip conflict. This is a book in which Gibson seeks to inform, critically engage and demonstrate the continued relevance of Fanon's ideas for the next generation of thinkers and activists, as he promises from the outset " … you will see how Fanon's analysis and vision remain vital and speak powerfully to our situation" (xv). This review will evaluate Gibson's approach and delivery in doing this. Following standard proceeding sections, i.e. Preface, Acknowledgements and an Introduction chapter, this book is succinctly divided into eight core subject-specific chapters, before succeeding with a Conclusion chapter, Notes, References and Index. The book attempts to chronologically present Fanon's development of ideas, or his most popular "domains", highlighting how his theoretical approach was so powerfully influenced by the socio-political conditions in which he was situated. Although context-specific, these chapters manage to link the local to the global, highlighting the wider scope of Fanon's work. The somewhat biographical style that Gibson uses, makes the book manageable and more importantly, it aids the deconstruction and digestion of Fanon's work. Although Fanon wrote / presented for a variety of audiences and geographies, it is not always a simple task for students at the earlier stage of their learning journey to understand his works corpus. This book is neatly structured, and presented in such a way that permits the reader to embark on a less challenging analysis of Fanon's life and work; whether that be the psychological insights of his Black Skin, White Masks (1952), his sociological analysis in Wretched of the Earth (1961), or the somewhat militant political cries of Towards the African Revolution (1964). All these are to varying degrees, covered in this book with enough detail to transfer knowledge and trigger a desire to read further. Every chapter of this book is relevant. However, chapters 1 to 8 are key to the book's overall purpose, and I would mark these all out as strong chapters. That said, the analytical detail of chapters 2 and 3 stood out for me, but maybe that is because they especially spoke more poignantly to my social science background? Regardless, if such a thing can or should be said in a scholarly review, these chapters, along with the Conclusion, were by far my "favourite" chapters! The key arguments in chapters 1 to 8 clarify Fanon's core ideas and in places, ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES
Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing (part of Polity's Black Lives series) will be published later this... more Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing (part of Polity's Black Lives series) will be published later this month. Please check the attached generous discount.
This is a review essay on two edited volumes titled Fanon Today and Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psy... more This is a review essay on two edited volumes titled Fanon Today and Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology. The essay reflects on the diverse ways in which Frantz Fanon's ideologies and philosophies have been explored by the authors in different racial, social, cultural, historical, political, economic, gendered, and geographical contexts. The essay also argues how the contributions collectively voice toward building a transcultural and transcontinental solidarity of "Fanonian Turn."
otherness, and the deaths we endure on such a regular basis that we are often unaware that it is ... more otherness, and the deaths we endure on such a regular basis that we are often unaware that it is happening to ourselves' (p. 100). Finally, Chapter 5 entitled 'Individuation, Privilege and Otherness' becomes much more personal to Turner himself. Instead of using client material, he uses a heuristic process to examine himself, his own dreams, personal diary entries and personal discussions with colleagues. Over a number of months, he slowly and at times painfully came to terms with attempts at his own individuation and othering, pulling together the strands of self, as they affected his own notions of privilege and otherness. I was really struck and moved by his honesty and the example of his own family who as immigrants tried to fit in and did not allow themselves to be othered. This has made Turner himself, both as a child and an adult, to repress his own rage, anger and 'internalised whiteness and patriarchy' (p. 132). This book is dense with complex ideas, academic rigour, and some considerable personal pain for Turner, expressed in a metered but by no means apologetic way. This book and its complex intersection of ideas around privilege and race in psychotherapy and other forms of psychological training, such as dramatherapy, should be required reading for students, practitioners and especially those of us who manage such training institutions, as we slowly and hopefully begin to decolonise dramatherapy teaching programmes over the next decade or two.
Like Marx, who famously said that he was "not a Marxist," Fanon was critical of the parties assoc... more Like Marx, who famously said that he was "not a Marxist," Fanon was critical of the parties associated with Marxism, which paid little serious attention to the "National Question." "His concern [was] with what the masses do and say and think," argued Adolfo Gilly. Gilly caught something of Fanon's Marxism in his introduction to the American edition of A Dying Colonialism when he wrote Fanon's "belief [was] that it is the masses, and not leaders nor systems, who in the final analysis make and determine history" (Fanon 1967c, 2). Sensitivity to Fanon's Marxism is ably demonstrated in Tony Martin's essay "Rescuing Fanon from the Critics." Martin grounds Fanon's thought in Marx's famous phrase from The Eighteenth Brumaire that people make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Martin calls it the "leitmotif" of Fanon's philosophy. Lou Turner and John Alan (chapter 3) also recognize that an affinity between Fanon and their Marxist-Humanist philosophy requires a "complete break" with much of what is considered Marxism. For Turner and Alan, Fanon's philosophy came alive again in the revolutionary movement of Black Consciousness in South Africa. According to Turner and Alan philosophies of liberation "travel" subterraneously and along noninstitutional lines: Just as the white rulers "denuded a continent via the infamous triangular trade in slave, rum, and molasses, the [Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Black-Americans] were exchanging ideas the ideas of freedom, the experiences of Black masses in action, and their aspirations for a new world." Fanon was essentially out of print in early 1970s Britain. In fact, one port of entry for Fanon's ideas was the post-Soweto (1976) arrival of South African exiles, especially the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), who set up office in London in the late 1970s and published the journal Solidarity. The BCM community engendered a new interest in Fanon that had also been displayed in Steve Biko's book I Write What I Like. Nevertheless, while Fanon remained decidedly marginal in Britain, he continued to be discussed by both African-American and African intellectuals in the United States inside and outside the Black Skin, White Masks that Bhabha himself has declined doing. McClintock finds two types of nationalism in Fanon, a "mechanical nationalism" sanctioned by "structural logic," and a more open-ended and strategically difficult and unpredictable view of national agency. With this latter national "subject" in mind, McClintock (like Helie-Lucas) criticizes Fanon for crediting RETHINKING FANON 21 blocked, but it is a history that should not be allowed to rewritten. Fanon is too often misread, she declares, and inscribed in myths that are grounded in ''historico-textual revisionisms." A "defense" of Fanon is needed, and Sharpley-Whiting offers one. The section ends with the chapter, "Challenging the Social Order: Women's Liberation in Contemporary Algeria,'' an interview with feminist activist Zouligha. When one of the interviewers gave me a draft of the interview in June 1998, I immediately thought that it would be a good way to conclude this section. Though she does not discuss Fanon, Zouligha brings the dehumanization, depersonaliz:ation, and "nonviability" of contemporary Algeria into focus, echoing Fanon's description of colonial totalitarianism. The increasingly repressive society, a result of the war between armed Islamic fundamentalist groups, the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) and the GIA (Groupes Islamiques Armee), and the government, has fundamentally silenced the people. The picture Zouligha draws of relations at the school where she works is particularly striking. Of the murders, "it is impossible to mourn." Of life in Algeria, "we cannot talk, everything is repressed, we keep everything inside. .. . It is a sick society." In Fanon's words, it is a nonviable society and one that needs to be replaced. RE-READING FANON'S IDEA OF LIBERATION IN THE FACE OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN ALGERIA Colonialism and its derivatives do not, as a matter of fact, constitute the present enemies of Africa. For my part, the deeper I enter into the culture and political circles the surer I am that the great danger that threatens Africa is the absence of ideology. Fanon The leader. .. uses every means to put {the people] to sleep. Fanon RETHINKING FANON 23 independence, the claim to Islamic orthodoxy became important for some FLN leaders in the struggle to establish political hegemony within the party I state organization. Reading today's Islamic fundamentalism back into Algerian history (and one could find a history of pronouncements for the "return to a pure Islam" going back a thousand years), means that one forgets that the current fundamentalism is the result of a number of factors, among them the numerous pragmatic political decisions of FLN leaders (including making Islam the state religion in 1976) made so as to hold onto state power. In other words, one needs to consider the contested ideas (and lack of ideas) behind this hybrid, and the failure to open national liberation along the lines Fanon suggested. 8 Despite all the rhetoric about "Islam and Socialism," about proving the "Islamic roots of socialism," about "Arabization" and "Islamization," at independence the FLN lacked coherence on the question of Islam, as it did on ideology in general. Whereas the FLN leaders' references to Islam were for factional and pragmatic reasons, conservatives used their alliance with the clerics to attack dissent and individual rights. Among the first victims were women. The FLN's Soummam Platform (1956) had encouraged an open society although it was limited in its idea of women's role in the revolution. Even before gaining independence FLN conservatives sought to close down that openness. One expression of this can be seen in the FLN response to the 1959 French family law as a "Koranic issue," and so bespeaking the degeneration of national liberation. After independence, Islamic reformists encouraged attacks on unveiled women on the streets of Algiers, while the nationalist leadership called for the abolition o(an autonomous trade union movement. Both clerics and nationalists saw the usefulness of each other in strangling Revolutionary Algeria. While "orthodox" reformist Islam, and a modernizing nationalism using socialist language, found an elective affinity, Fanon attempted to provide an alternative direction. Forty years later, in the face of fundamentalism, Fanon's critique of national chauvinism and his vision of a new humanism remain cogent. With the advent of the Soummam Platform the division RETHINKING FANON more, he KNEW; he knew everything, from the diagnostic to the prognostic. He was in the habit of laughing when with us. We used to try to force ourselves to smile, and he would laugh even more to stimulate us to do so. But how could we dare when we were so afflicted by the imminence of his disappearance? Once Olivier came into the room: "Papa, a gentleman downstairs is asking for you." ''What is his name?" "He said his name is Mr. X." "Ah! Mr. X. Good. Go and tell him I left with Mr. Y." And he laughed again. Several days later he came to my house. He was visibly in bad shape. We had prepared a West Indian meal for him. He did not make much of it. Leaning towards my wife, he told her: "Next time Michele, no West Indian dinner please." "We'll make you some couscous next time." "Good," he replied. The next time! I stole a glance at his wife. She appeared to be calm, but I knew that this courageous Josy, like everyone who loved Frantz, was suffering, and she knew that I knew it. One October morning he entered my laboratory. He was accompanied by a colonel of the A.L.N. "Analyze my blood, I feel fatigued," I pierced his finger and a drop of blood immediately formed. ''You don't seem to lack any" I told him. He didn't seem concerned. "When can you give me the results?" ''Tomorrow." I did not know that this tomorrow would have been a day of hope for me, but for Frantz, a day of despair. In fact, everything was normal. And I was naively hoping that the previous diagnoses were erroneous. Maybe he was only overworked or parasitic. He dashed my hopes to the ground. "The result does not surprise me, I am under treatment. It's the Russian medicine, which has diminished the rate of the white globules. My illness nevertheless is going on. I'm going to leave for America." (1962, 139-42)• 41
About the Book Over sixty years after his death, the social philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz F... more About the Book Over sixty years after his death, the social philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) remains a towering intellectual figure. Born in Martinique and trained as a psychiatrist in France, Fanon rejected his French citizenship to join the Algerian liberation movement in the 1950s. In the short decade from 1952 to 1961 this brilliant and engaged intellectual composed three books Black Skin, White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, and The Wretched of the Earth, which continue to spur intellectual awakenings across the world.
'anno 5. della rivoluzione algerina, trans. Filippo Del Lucchese, 2007
English translation of the postface to L'anno 5. della rivoluzione algerina, trans. Filippo Del L... more English translation of the postface to L'anno 5. della rivoluzione algerina, trans. Filippo Del Lucchese, ed. Miguel Mellino, Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2007, 188 pp. (Italian)
Nancy Luxon, review of FRANTZ FANON, PSYCHIATRY, AND POLITICS BY NIGEL C. GIBSON AND ROBERTO BENE... more Nancy Luxon, review of FRANTZ FANON, PSYCHIATRY, AND POLITICS BY NIGEL C. GIBSON AND ROBERTO BENEDUCE; WHITHER FANON? STUDIES IN THE BLACKNESS OF BEING BY DAVID MARRIOTT; ALIENATION AND FREEDOM BY JEAN KHALFA AND ROBERT C. YOUNG
Decolonization is one of the most profound political changes of the past century, a transformation with effects touching nearly every part of the world. Alongside the anticolonial movement, it has drastically reshaped how those living in the twenty-first century experience global power and politics. Only recently have scholars begun tackling the conceptual challenge that decolonization and anticolonial struggle raise, perhaps fueled by an increasing awareness of the structural racial inequalities that remain. In his preface to Frantz Fanon's collected works (published in French), Achille Mbembe divides Fanon's reception into three, roughly chronological stages: those who read him for his anticolonial praxis in the 1960s; those who saw him as contributing to the development of postcolonial studies in the 1980s ... Cultural Critique 113-Fall 2021-Copyright 2021 Regents of the University of Minnesota
Many struggles today find resonance with the words of Frantz Fanon because he wrote so searchingl... more Many struggles today find resonance with the words of Frantz Fanon because he wrote so searchingly and presciently about the wounds of the colonised, and the road to freedom.
From Leswin Laubscher, Derek Hook, and Miraj U. Desai, Fanon, Phenomenology and Psychology (Routl... more From Leswin Laubscher, Derek Hook, and Miraj U. Desai, Fanon, Phenomenology and Psychology (Routledge, 2021). Originally the 2014 introduction to the unpublished translation of Fanon psychiatric papers titled Decolonizing Madness.
“Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the worl... more “Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the world takes on urgent significance in this moment of global movements for Black Lives after the police murder of George Floyd”
Excerpt From: Nigel C Gibson. “Fanon and the ‘rationality of revolt.” iBooks.
These are the galleys for an upcoming article in Spectre Journal. I will post the print version w... more These are the galleys for an upcoming article in Spectre Journal. I will post the print version when it comes out
Edited by Firoze Manji & Bill Fletcher Jr. Co-published by CODESRIA with Daraja Press. A unique c... more Edited by Firoze Manji & Bill Fletcher Jr. Co-published by CODESRIA with Daraja Press. A unique collection of essays from engaged intellectuals and activists from across the African continent and internationally on the critical importance of Amilcar Cabral, marking the 40th anniversary of Cabral's assassination in 1973. 2013 mark[ed] the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Amilcar Cabral, revolutionary, poet, liberation philosopher, and leader of the independence movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Cabral's influence stretched well beyond the shores of West Africa. He had a profound influence on the panAfricanist movement and the black liberation movement in the US. In this unique collection of essays contemporary thinkers from across Africa and internationally commemorate the anniversary of Cabral's assassination. They reflect on the legacy of this extraordinary individual and his relevance to contemporary struggles for selfdetermination and emancipation. His wellknown phrase "Claim no easy victories" resonates today no less than it did during his lifetime. The volume comprises sections on Cabral's legacy; reflections on the relevance of his ideas; Cabral and the emancipation of women; Cabral and the panAfricanists; culture and education; and Cabral's contribution to African American struggles. A selected bibliography provides an overview of Cabral's writings and of writings about Cabral.
A discussion of Raya Dunayevskaya's critique and appreciation of Rosa Luxemburg in Jane A Gordon ... more A discussion of Raya Dunayevskaya's critique and appreciation of Rosa Luxemburg in Jane A Gordon and Drucilla Cornell (eds) Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg
In this paper I will focus on the lived experience of the Algerian during the five-year period of... more In this paper I will focus on the lived experience of the Algerian during the five-year period of social revolution (1954-59) described in A Dying Colonialism as a social phenomenon that liberated and transgressed the restrictive physical and mental boundaries of the colonial spatial order. According to this conceptualization, lived experience is not only a social construct reflecting reality. It is also a result of the dialectic of subject and object, one that embodies tensions and contradictions that give rise to a struggle that shapes new actualities.
Resumo: Este artigo discute o "novo estágio" contemporâneo dos estudos de Fanon com foco nas inte... more Resumo: Este artigo discute o "novo estágio" contemporâneo dos estudos de Fanon com foco nas interconexões entre os escritos clínicos de Fanon e a política. A ideia de Fanon de que a revolução anticolonial deve afirmar uma "humanidade ilimitada" e, ao mesmo tempo, insistir que a psiquiatria política é considerada por meio de seu envolvimento com François Tosquelles e a socioterapia. Erica Burman’s Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method and David Marriott’s Whither Fanon and Nigel Gibson and Roberto Beneduce’s Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics ajudam esclarecer os diversos níveis de discussão de Fanon sobre trauma e transtornos mentais produzidos pela guerra colonial e a questão de responsabilidade " dentro de uma estrutura revolucionária”.
This paper discusses the contemporary “new stage” of Fanon studies focusing on the interconnections between Fanon’s clinical writings and politics. Fanon’s idea that the anticolonial revolution has to affirm a “limitless humanity” while at the same time insisting psychiatry has to be political is considered through his engagement with François Tosquelles and sociotherapy. Erica Burman’s Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method and David Marriott’s Whither Fanon and Nigel Gibson and Roberto Beneduce’s Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics help enlighten the myriad levels of Fanon’s discussion of trauma and mental disorders produced by colonial war and question of responsibility “within a revolutionary framework.”
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2020
On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can we learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 ye... more On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can we learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years ago? This paper reviews Fanon’s active engagements with Marx throughout his work from Black Skin, White Masks to The Wretched of the Earth; from the importance of Marx’s 18th Brumaire in Fanon’s thinking, to what he calls stretching Marxian concepts. In this moment of crisis and retrogression, what can we learn from Fanon’s creative use of Marxian categories?
Two points about the process of translation seem to me to flow through this book, even though the... more Two points about the process of translation seem to me to flow through this book, even though the translations of Fanon's psychiatric work are not reproduced in full here. The first is the deeply unsatisfactory yet necessary choices and decisions that the act of translation demands. In other words, translating often means having to make choices even when no satisfactory solution presents itself. Taking some time to admit this seems to be part of the work of translation. As Jacques Derrida put it in his essay "What is a 'Relevant' Translation?" It is necessary either to resign oneself to losing the effect, the economy, the strategy (and this loss can be enormous) or to add a gloss, of the translator's note sort, which always, even in the best of cases, the case of the greatest relevance, confesses the impotence or the failure of the translation. (Derrida 2001: 181) The second point is looser and is perhaps more of a reading suggestion that came to me as I labored over these translations, and it is to consider reading Fanon (and his collaborators) as engaged in the process of cultural translation. That is, if these psychiatric writings do indeed fall into the category of critical ethnopsychiatry, and work against the cultural and racial reifications of colonial ethnopsychiatry, then one of its inherent methodological underpinnings is a critical cultural translation.
Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Thought edited by Byrd and Miri, 2019
This is an expanded and revised version of a paper I presented at the Feile an Pho bail [Festival... more This is an expanded and revised version of a paper I presented at the Feile an Pho bail [Festival of the People] on August 10, 2017, in Belfast, under the title "the Failures of Post-Apartheid South Africa: Frantz Fanon and the shack dwellers' revolt." Post-Apartheid South Africa has many resonances with post-good Friday agreement in the North of Ireland especially in the present (2017) interregnum when Stormont has fallen apart.
The world’s a mess. How do thoughtful people make sense of it all? In this series we’ve asked a n... more The world’s a mess. How do thoughtful people make sense of it all? In this series we’ve asked a number of our authors to suggest a book, philosopher, work of art – or anything else, for that matter – that will help to make sense of it all.
The world we live in is a dangerous and confusing place. In my quest to make sense of it, I’m returning to Marxism and Freedom – 40 years after reading it for the first time.
Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, 2010
Page 1. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy Revue de la philosophie française et de lang... more Page 1. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française Volume XVIII, Number 2 (2010) TABLE OF CONTENTS Special issue on Godard and Philosophy Edited by Burlin Barr and John E. Drabinski “Philosophy as a Kind of Cinema” John E. Drabinski 1 “Schizoanalyzing Souls: Godard, Deleuze, and the Mystical Line of Flight” David Sterritt 9 “Happiness is Not Fun: Godard, the 20th Century, and Badiou” Michael Walsh 29 “The Audible Life of the Image” David Wills 43 ...
This is an edited version of the Fanon and Marx piece for the South African newspaper, New Frame,... more This is an edited version of the Fanon and Marx piece for the South African newspaper, New Frame, that I was working on last summer for a keynote lecture at the University of Johannesburg
In The Meaning of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ing... more In The Meaning of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (Routledge 2019)
Introduction to Living Fanon (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Spanish translation: Traducto... more Introduction to Living Fanon (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Spanish translation: Traductor: Leandro Sánchez Marín Instituto de Filosofía, Universidad de Antioquia, in Marxismo y Revolción: Filosofía de la Praxis, February 2018.
On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years... more On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years ago? This paper reviews Fanon’s active engagements with Marx throughout his work from Black Skin White Masks to The Wretched of the Earth; from the seemingly minor to the importance of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire in Fanon’s rethinking, and what he calls stretching, Marxian concepts. In this moment of crisis and retrogression what can we learn from Fanon’s creative use of Marx’s categories?
Talk presented at Paper Nautilus bookstore in Providence RI to celebrate the publication of Fanon... more Talk presented at Paper Nautilus bookstore in Providence RI to celebrate the publication of Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics
This is a slightly revised version of a paper I presented at the Féile an Phobail [Festival of th... more This is a slightly revised version of a paper I presented at the Féile an Phobail [Festival of the People] on August 10, 2017, in Belfast under the title “the Failures of Post-Apartheid South Africa: Frantz Fanon and the shack dwellers’ revolt.” Post-Apartheid South Africa has many resonances post-good Friday agreement North of Ireland and the present interregnum when that agreement—and Stormont—has fallen apart. The new title better expresses the range of the paper and the discussion.
As we witness the colonial death drive smashing through Gaza, and now Lebanon too, Frantz Fanon’s... more As we witness the colonial death drive smashing through Gaza, and now Lebanon too, Frantz Fanon’s work takes on a painfully urgent intensity.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the narrowness of the crude anti-imperialist positio... more Russia's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the narrowness of the crude anti-imperialist positions that are silent about the actual invasion of an independent country.
The eKhenana occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, is a significant site in the struggle for a South ... more The eKhenana occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, is a significant site in the struggle for a South Africa that respects the humanity of all.
Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the world... more Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the world takes on urgent significance as climate extinction meets global pandemic.
The centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 is being marked in the dark days of a seemingly g... more The centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 is being marked in the dark days of a seemingly global counter-revolution. In the time of Recep Erdoğan, Theresa May, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Michel Temer, Donald Trump, Jacob Zuma, and all the rest, communist confidence in the future often appears as a form of faith unhinged from reality. The philosophical foundations of that confidence lie in a reading of Hegelian dialectics considered as a triadic system of thesis-antithesis-synthesis moving toward a definite end. Marxism, it is often said, repeats the logic of this abstract system in the material realm with each epoch of production understood to be laying the basis for its negation on the march to communism.
How to be human in a dehumanized society? This question haunted Fanon and it haunts our age. It w... more How to be human in a dehumanized society? This question haunted Fanon and it haunts our age. It was the question Fanon asked in his letter of resignation from Blida Hospital concluding that a colonial society, a dehumanized society, needed replacing. But how could a dehumanized people replace it? One of Fanon's contributions to revolutionary theory, a contribution that remains controversial today, is his belief that the "damned of the earth"-the poor, landless, unemployed, marginalized and less than human-are not only thinking and rational beings but can organize themselves as forces that can change the world and make it a more human place. In other words, those people who are considered outside of society, the cast-offs and dregs, worthless and stupid, lazy and uncivilized, irrational and ill-tempered, are the very people Fanon bases his hopes for a "new humanism." Being radical means getting to the root, and staying human means rejecting the pseudo-humanism of this world, a world where the human is massacred on every street corner (Fanon 2004:235).
Thinking of the relevance of Karl Marx on the 200th anniversary of his birth on 5 May 1818, takes... more Thinking of the relevance of Karl Marx on the 200th anniversary of his birth on 5 May 1818, takes me back to a wonderful picture of him in Algeria. It was taken in his final year in 1882. Underneath the full white beard is that familiar glint in his eye. He is up to something.
Soccer was always part of Fanon’s life. but his remarks on sport, which come in the central chapt... more Soccer was always part of Fanon’s life. but his remarks on sport, which come in the central chapter “Pitfalls of National Consciousness”, in *The Wretched of the Earth* have been little discussed.
The 1981 punk-rock song “The Magnificent Seven” isn’t about Yul Brynner and the 1960 all-star Wes... more The 1981 punk-rock song “The Magnificent Seven” isn’t about Yul Brynner and the 1960 all-star Western of the same name, but something even more mundane and also more threatening: the endless cycle of work, consumption and work.
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Books by nigel gibson
Decolonization is one of the most profound political changes of the past century, a transformation with effects touching nearly every part of the world. Alongside the anticolonial movement, it has drastically reshaped how those living in the twenty-first century experience global power and politics. Only recently have scholars begun tackling the conceptual challenge that decolonization and anticolonial struggle raise, perhaps fueled by an increasing awareness of the structural racial inequalities that remain. In his preface to Frantz Fanon's collected works (published in French), Achille Mbembe divides Fanon's reception into three, roughly chronological stages: those who read him for his anticolonial praxis in the 1960s; those who saw him as contributing to the development of postcolonial studies in the 1980s ...
Cultural Critique 113-Fall 2021-Copyright 2021 Regents of the University of Minnesota
The Polyphony: Conversations across the Medical Humanities, posted on Oct 22, 2021
Excerpt From: Nigel C Gibson. “Fanon and the ‘rationality of revolt.” iBooks.
https://theconversation.com/fanon-and-the-politics-of-truth-and-lying-in-a-colonial-society-102594
Decolonization is one of the most profound political changes of the past century, a transformation with effects touching nearly every part of the world. Alongside the anticolonial movement, it has drastically reshaped how those living in the twenty-first century experience global power and politics. Only recently have scholars begun tackling the conceptual challenge that decolonization and anticolonial struggle raise, perhaps fueled by an increasing awareness of the structural racial inequalities that remain. In his preface to Frantz Fanon's collected works (published in French), Achille Mbembe divides Fanon's reception into three, roughly chronological stages: those who read him for his anticolonial praxis in the 1960s; those who saw him as contributing to the development of postcolonial studies in the 1980s ...
Cultural Critique 113-Fall 2021-Copyright 2021 Regents of the University of Minnesota
The Polyphony: Conversations across the Medical Humanities, posted on Oct 22, 2021
Excerpt From: Nigel C Gibson. “Fanon and the ‘rationality of revolt.” iBooks.
https://theconversation.com/fanon-and-the-politics-of-truth-and-lying-in-a-colonial-society-102594
object, one that embodies tensions and contradictions that give rise to a struggle that shapes new actualities.
This paper discusses the contemporary “new stage” of Fanon studies focusing on the interconnections between Fanon’s clinical writings and politics. Fanon’s idea that the anticolonial revolution has to affirm a “limitless humanity” while at the same time insisting psychiatry has to
be political is considered through his engagement with François Tosquelles and sociotherapy. Erica Burman’s Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method and David Marriott’s Whither Fanon and Nigel Gibson and Roberto Beneduce’s Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics help enlighten the
myriad levels of Fanon’s discussion of trauma and mental disorders produced by colonial war and question of responsibility “within a revolutionary framework.”
present (2017) interregnum when Stormont has fallen apart.
The world we live in is a dangerous and confusing place. In my quest to make sense of it, I’m returning to Marxism and Freedom – 40 years after reading it for the first time.
http://www.rowmaninternational.com/book/frantz_fanon_psychiatry_and_politics/3-156-630973a1-c00c-470c-9369-db529846dd44
https://www.newframe.com/combat-breathing-the-spirit-of-rebellion-in-the-usa/
The podcast can be found at
https://www.newframe.com/episode-5-the-spy-who-cried-and-fanon-on-football/