Introduction to Frantz Fanon

39th Annual Marxist Summer Intensive

July 18, 2014Kazembe Balagun

kazembe@gmail.com

Goals of Session

• Understanding of Frantz Fanon’s life and time• Defining Colonialism and Imperialism• Looking closely at Fanon’s work Wretched of

the Earth

Who was Frantz Fanon?

• Born July 20 1925 in Martinique, a colony of France

• Grew up in a middle class household• Loved the football and the cinema’• His teacher was…..

Aime Cesaire 1913-2008

Founder of Negritude, Member of the Martinique Communist Party

Despite facing racism at home Fanon joins the Free French forces and fights in North Africa. His experience is similar to thousands of Black soliders from the Caribbean, Africa and North America who fought fascism abroad but lived with racism at home.

• Fanon relocates to France and attends medical school. He is drawn to the world of Parisian culture, particular the writings of philosopher Jean Paul Sarte.

Radical Psychiatry and National Liberation

Fanon and National Liberation

Fanon’s Influence

Key Themes of Fanon’s Work

• Turned Marx and Hegel on its head

• Looked at the depersonalizing effects of racism

• The role of violence and culture in revolutionary struggle

• Help shape Third World Marxism

What is Colonialism/Imperialism?• Imperialism is the point

when nation states become monopolized and foreign capital is exported from the home country (metropole) to the subordinate countries. It is monopoly capitalism at its highest stage

• Colonialism is a system of exploitation where a foreign power or powers controls the resources of a given terrority. It is settlement of land for the purpose of profit.

Triangle Slave Trade

Sugar Driving World Market

Invisibility of Colonialism/Imperialism

Master Slave Dialectic

Concerning Violence

• “Violence is a cleansing force for the oppressed”

• Violence is linked to a global strategy against imperialism

• Violence is the a link to creating a new people• The challenge of native leadership

Culture

• Culture is the consent of rule• Being Black is not enough

Examples of Algerian Revolution

This is the Voice of Algeria