Frantz Fanon, born on this day in 1925, was a West Indian Pan-Africanist philosopher and Algerian revolutionary most known for his text The Wretched of the Earth.
Fanon was born to an affluent family on the Caribbean island of Martinique, then a French colony which is still under French control today. As a teenager, he was taught by communist anti-colonial thinker Aimé Césaire (1913 - 2008).
Fanon was exposed to much European racism during World War II. After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, a Nazi government was set up in Martinique by French collaborators, whom he describedas taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists".
Fighting for the Allied forces, Fanon also observed European women liberated by black soldiers preferring to dance with fascist Italian prisoners rather than fraternize with their liberators.
While completing a residency in psychiatry in France completing, Fanon wrote and published his first book, "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people.
Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, a nationalist Algerian party. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French troops who carried out torture to suppress anti-colonial resistance, as well as their Algerian victims.
While organizing for Algerian independence in Ghana, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia that would ultimately kill him. He spent the last year of his life writing his most famous work, "The Wretched of the Earth" (French: Les Damnés de la Terre). The text provides a psychiatric analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization and examines the possibilities of anti-colonial liberation
Following a trip to the Soviet Union to treat his leukemia, Fanon came to the U.S. in 1961 for further treatment in a visit arranged by the CIA. Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland on December 6th, 1961 under the name of "Ibrahim Fanon", a Libyan nom de guerre he had assumed in order to enter a hospital after being wounded during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front.
"In the World through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself."
Biography :fanon:
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Listening to a podcast about history, and the fact that being so racist you kinda supported decolonialism was a sorta-kinda prevalent ideology in France in parts of the 20th century is interesting.
Like you're so racist you want to limit the country to just the metropole and have nothing to do with outsiders, barely even other Frenchmen.
Edit: This is not meant to be an endorsement.
Something to this effect surfaced momentarily in A Certain Idea of France, Julian Jackson's de Gaulle biography, the idea that France could be colonised by its colonies depending on how the constitution of the fifth republic shook out.
France appears to be a very silly place
Well that does make sense seeing as De Gaulle flirted with Maurassism in the interwar period., and Maurras was one of the racists so racist he wasn't entirely convinced of the colonialism thing, and didn't consider most French people to be properly French or really human.
Aaanyway Macron has been airing rehabilitating Maurras for a while now.
I had no idea. The degree to which Maurras' bonkers racism has not come up during this book is making me reconsider finishing it.
Really? Not even in pasing is stuff like anti-France or the "confederated states of jews, protestants, masons and foreigners" mentioned?
French far right is still about this idea. One of their big talking point is "The Great Replacement Theory" which is basically a spin on white genocide. They say France and Europe indigenous population (ie whites) will be replaced (ie genocided by not making enough white children compared to non-whites coming into the country). Zemmour is a prominent mainstream figure always talking about it. They say it on mainstream TV with no repercussion.
isn't great replacement the OG white genocide?
Yes, just trying to contextualize for people in the US as I think they are the majority there and probably not everyone is up to date on european racism (especially french ones as it originated with Renaud Camus a spiritual descendant of Maurras). I can’t wait for this pos to die, hopefully not peacefully.