Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Frantz Fanon was a radical psychologist and revolutionary writer whose books exposed European imperialism, elucidated the psychopathology of colonization, and influenced radical social movements throughout the world from the 1960s on. He advocated for decolonization, Pan-African unity, and revolutionary transformation of colonial societies. In his most popular and influential book, The Wretched of the Earth , Fanon famously argued that “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.” Fanon was born in Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean, in 1925. Although he was the fifth of eight children born to a lower-middle-class family, he was able to attend the Lycée Schoelcher, a prestigious high school that was at the same time typical of the colonial school system: students were taught European values at odds with the social reality of Martinique, which entailed a colonial class structure based on a hierarchy of skin color. At the Lycée, Fanon was a student of Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), architect of the concept of Négritude (black consciousness), which he would later in life reject due to its non-economic analysis of the social position of blacks and its acquiescence to colonial repression: the idea that it was possible to be black and proud in the social ... log in or subscribe to read full text