Papers by Anthony Alessandrini
The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies
This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the work of Michel Foucaul... more This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the work of Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon in opposition. This has obscured the real, and potentially very productive, similarities between them. The most important of these links has to do with their shared critique of the sovereign subject of humanism: for Fanon and Foucault, this critique of the traditional humanist subject provides a way of opposing what they both see as the dangerous nostalgia for a lost moment of origin. Furthermore, Fanon and Foucault both end in a moment of ethics, but it is an ethics without the sort of stable subjects assumed by humanism. I offer a consideration of some of the links that can be found in several texts by Fanon and Foucault. I then attempt to define the term I will be using to describe their shared strategy of an ethics without subjects: the ‚humanism effect.‛ I conclude by trying to suggest some of the strategic possibilities of an ethics without subjects in the postco...
, the Occupy Wall Street movement has been linked to the revolutions and popular uprisings throug... more , the Occupy Wall Street movement has been linked to the revolutions and popular uprisings throughout North Africa and the Middle East that have gone under the name of the Arab Spring. This connection reflected in the official OWS website, which declares: "We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants." While the rich and complex set of popular struggles across North African and the Middle East cannot be reduced to a single "tactic," this acknowledgement the Arab Spring as an inspiration for the Occupy movement represents my point of departure for considering OWS within current conversations about global solidarity. More specifically, the claims and practices of Occupy highlight an important distinction between the movement's self-understanding of being inspired by the Arab Spring versus the even more important question of how a U.S.-based movement can stand in solidarity with popular movements throughout North Afric and the Middle East, as well as the less publicized popular movements throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. This distinction indicates how Occupy's engagement with the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring has the potential to transform political consciousness in the U.S. when it comes to the Middle East. Yet the relationship of Occupy to the Ara Spring also serves as a reminder of the ongoing political work that still needs to be done. This work is particularly crucial
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
Frantz Fanon (b. 1925–d. 1961)—psychiatrist, political theorist, poet, polemicist, diplomat, jour... more Frantz Fanon (b. 1925–d. 1961)—psychiatrist, political theorist, poet, polemicist, diplomat, journalist, soldier, doctor, playwright, revolutionary—is one of the foremost writers of the 20th century on the topics of racism, colonialism, and decolonization. In his short lifetime, he produced two enduring books: Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire, masques blancs), still regarded as the preeminent study of the lived experience of racism, and The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre), regarded at the time of its publication as “the handbook of decolonization,” and presenting itself to us today as both a clear-eyed prediction of the lasting legacy of neocolonialism, and as a visionary account of a truly postcolonial condition yet to come. These two books encapsulate the major themes not only of Fanon’s writing but also of his extraordinary life. Black Skin, White Masks captures Fanon’s experience as a native of Martinique and thus as the product of a colonial education who came...
Foucault Studies, 2009
This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the work of Michel Foucaul... more This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the work of Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon in opposition. This has obscured the real, and potentially very productive, similarities between them. The most important of these links has to do with their shared critique of the sovereign subject of humanism: for Fanon and Foucault, this critique of the traditional humanist subject provides a way of opposing what they both see as the dangerous nostalgia for a lost moment of origin. Furthermore, Fanon and Foucault both end in a moment of ethics, but it is an ethics without the sort of stable subjects assumed by humanism. I offer a consideration of some of the links that can be found in several texts by Fanon and Foucault. I then attempt to define the term I will be using to describe their shared strategy of an ethics without subjects: the “humanism effect.” I conclude by trying to suggest some of the strategic possibilities of an ethics without subjects in the postco...
Journal of Pan African Studies, Nov 1, 2011
In this essay, I engage with an aspect of Fanon's life and work that has generally been elided by... more In this essay, I engage with an aspect of Fanon's life and work that has generally been elided by even the most appreciative analysts: Fanon as, among the many other things that he was and is, a Caribbean writer, and, even more specifically, a Martinican writer. However, this is not intended as a way to simply lock Fanon into a particular place and time or to keep him trapped in the historical past. Quite the opposite, in fact, since, as I will argue, a re-evaluation of Fanon's life and work through this framework can provide us with a particular set of lessons about solidarity, lessons that are crucial for the contemporary political struggles that face us today. But this understanding of Fanon and solidarity can in turn only be understood through an engagement with his singularity. Introduction: Remembering Un écorché vif The current special issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies reminds us that 2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the untimely death of Frantz Fanon. It is an anniversary worth marking, and yet conjuring with numbers in this way can sometimes be a dangerous thing. Anniversaries, especially those commemorating the passing of those close to our hearts yet no longer with us, can all too easily become occasions for sentimentality, for burying the one being celebrated in meaningless praise. In the case of a figure such as Fanon, it is particularly important to avoid this danger. His work calls us to attention; it makes demands upon us. Upon first meeting Fanon in Paris in 1946, Edouard Glissant described his fellow Martinican as "extremely sensitive." Fanon was, to use Glissant's phrase, "un écorché vif," literally a man who has been flayed alive, whose every nerve and fiber has been exposed. 1 The characterization of Fanon, who was twenty years old at the time, as a man literally without skin is painfully apt in more ways than one.
Books and other publications Extended Review A. Alessandrini: Frantz Fanon and the future of cult... more Books and other publications Extended Review A. Alessandrini: Frantz Fanon and the future of cultural politics: finding something different.
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy
A critical engagement with Black Skin, White Masks in the wake of social construction theory and ... more A critical engagement with Black Skin, White Masks in the wake of social construction theory and controversies over critical race theory.
Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom, editors ... more Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom, editors Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 (548 pages, index) $65.00 (cloth), $29.95 (paper)*Edward Said''s Rhetoric of the Secular Mathieu E. Courville Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 (548 pages, index) $65.00 (cloth), $29.95 (paper)Reviewed by Anthony AlessandriniOn the back cover of Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom's edited collection Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation is a quote from Cornel West: "Edward Said was the greatest public intellectual in the late twentieth-century United States. Yet the many dimensions of his genius have yet to be fully appreciated." It would be hard to dispute the first half of this formulation; with the exception of Said's friend and colleague Noam Chomsky, it is impossible to think of an intellectual who had as much influence upon US public life during this period as Said. It is equally di...
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry
jadaliyya.com, 2020
This roundtable is part of a special bouquet on the interrelationship between the COVID-19 pandem... more This roundtable is part of a special bouquet on the interrelationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and social mobilization in the Middle East, North Africa, and the United States. Click here to view the entire listing of entries.
the minnesota review, 1997
Uploads
Papers by Anthony Alessandrini