Conceptualizing Fanon

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a French psychiatrist and existentialist thinker who grew up under French colonial rule in Martinique and later lived in France, Algeria, and Sub-Saharan Africa. He troubled fundamental societal issues around race, gender, sexuality, and social formation. Some of Fanon’s most influential works, two of which will be discussed here, emerged as a result of his experience during the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962). During this period, Fanon began to recognize the internalization of racism and the impacts of colonialism first-hand, which prompted him to begin theorizing about the anti-colonial struggle and the process of decolonization.

Black Skin, White Masks (Originally Published in 1952)

Drawing on the influences such as his fellow French intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre, Fanon provided an existentialist-phenomenological interpretation of “otherness” in Black Skin, White Masks (1952/2008). Here, Fanon highlighted the internalization of the “symbolic order” wherein the colonizer’s worldview is imposed upon the colonized person, which as a result traps them in their own inferiority complex. Thus, Fanon recognized racism as a psychological reality for the colonized. He famously advocated for the “liberation of the man of color from himself” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 2). This suggests that as a consequence of colonialism, race traps both Black and white people in their own subjectivities and only serves to perpetuate the colonial system through the colonization of the mind. Therefore, we must first consider the ways in which we might go about decolonizing our thinking to ignite the decolonization process within larger societal structures.

Wretched of the Earth (Originally published in 1961)

Wretched of the Earth (1961/2004), cements Fanon as a post-colonial thinker as he imagined a world freed from the tight grasp of the colonial system. Within the work, Fanon raised questions about the necessity of violence in the anti-colonial struggle, addressed capitalism as a “necessary evil,” and troubled the notion that a broken system can be infiltrated and restructured from the inside.

Fanon asserted that “decolonization is always a violent event” (p. 1), taking on a Manichaean view as he described decolonization as the substitution of one “species” of humankind to another. Much like Foucault’s (1980) notion of how power shifts from one form to another, Fanon (2004) illustrated that decolonization must be violent because colonialism inherently is. Thus, colonialism cannot be dismantled through some sort of “mutual” agreement because language alone will not convince a colonialist power to change or make concessions for those they seek to oppress. It is essential to be wary of an oversimplification of his theories and ideas, including the role of violence. His promotion of the role of violence is sometimes reduced to promoting any and all violent acts. However, for Fanon, violence is only effective when it is aimed at the colonial system itself. Therefore, we need to consider the ways that political/national conscious-raising must work in conjunction with political violence to dismantle the colonial system.

Fanon (1961/2008) highlighted the harm in suggesting that the colonized could infiltrate the institutions and change them from within in his discussion of the colonized intellectual. Not only is changing a system from within not possible according to Fanon, but also it would work to perpetuate the system of colonialism as the colonized person becomes a “mimic man.” Chari (2004) called attention to this point when she argued that, for Fanon, the very idea of recognition within a colonial system can serve as a vehicle for perpetuating the injustices it purports to combat (p. 116). Therefore, recognition of the colonized intellectual is not justice or freedom but rather only serves to define and evaluate the colonized within the existing terms of colonial power.

Following this argument, we must attempt to imagine a world beyond colonialism. As such, identity is not the problem, but rather inaction is. Therefore, it is up to the colonized to “act” and liberate themselves from the white gaze of colonialism instead of attempting to compete with their oppressors or ask nicely to be granted freedom.

Implications for Education

There is arguably a great deal of concern within contemporary education circles regarding how colonialism shapes curriculum and pedagogy. Fanon’s proposal for violence and political consciousness-raising is largely a radical suggestion for a system so deeply entrenched in the tales of colonialism. However, Fanon ultimately argues that what is needed is not a new adaptation of the current system but rather a whole new system. Therefore, asking ourselves as educators and researchers to contemplate our current conceptualizations of education is a reasonable starting place. To this end, educators might adopt what Dei and Simmons (2010) cite as a “Critical Fanonian Approach.” They suggest that such a framework draws on a critical analysis of the institutional structures within which the delivery of “social services and goods” occurs (p. xvi). In this sense, we might begin to acknowledge that social institutions, such as schools, reproduce societal inequality, ultimately contributing to the colonial machine. Finally, Dei and Simmons (2010) further assert that the focus should be on the liberation of the learner (p. xvii), which indicates that through generative dialogue and critical discourse, unequal power structures that act to colonize the minds of nearly every human being today can be exposed and actively challenged.

References

Chari, A. (2004). Exceeding recognition. Sartre Studies International, 10(2), 110-122.

Dei, G. J. S., & Simmons, M. (2010). The pedagogy of Fanon: An introduction. Counterpoints, 368, xiii-xxv. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980663

Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks (Trans. C. L. Markmann). (Original work published 1952). Pluto.

Fanon, F. (2004). The wretched of the Earth (Trans. R. Philcox) (pp. 1-62). Grove. (Original work published 1961)

Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Vintage.

Suggested Readings for Further Study

Aubrecht, K. (2010). Rereading the Ontario review of the Roots of Youth Violence report: The relevance of Fanon for a critical disability studies perspective. Counterpoints, 368, 55-78. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980666

Burman, E. (2016). Fanon and the child: Pedagogies of subjectification and transformation. Curriculum Inquiry, 46(3), 265-285. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2016.1168263

Crath, R. (2010). Reading Fanon in “homosexual territory”: Towards the queering of a queer pedagogy. Counterpoints, 368, 123-146. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980669

De Lissovoy, N. (2011). Education and violation: Conceptualizing power, domination, and agency in the hidden curriculum. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(4), 463-484. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.618831

Dei, G. J. S. (2010). Rereading Fanon for his pedagogy and implications for schooling and education. Counterpoints, 368, 1-27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980664

Impedovo, M. A., Ferreira-Meyers, K. (2021). Authority, collective learning and agentic action in teaching: Tracing a pedagogy from Franz Fanon. Education in the North, 28(1), 135-152. https://doi.org/10.26203/agdv-0563

Logan, C. (2010). Body politics and the experience of Blackness within the field of education. Counterpoints, 368, 29-54. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980665