Frantz Fanon
Pour Fanon, le colonialisme abîme l’esprit des colonisés autant que leurs terres, et se libérer, c’est briser son emprise sur le corps et sur l’image de soi.
Repères
Psychiatre martiniquais qui dirigea un service à l’hôpital de Blida-Joinville en Algérie et rejoignit la guerre d’indépendance algérienne : le regard colonial fige les Noirs en objets (« Peau noire, masques blancs », 1952), et la décolonisation doit refaire les personnes, pas seulement les États (« Les Damnés de la terre », 1961).
Idées clés
- Regard colonial
- Décolonisation
Maîtres: Aimé Césaire
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Influence
Influences reçues de 7
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influencé par
Fanon reread Hegel’s dialectic of lord and bondsman for the colonial situation, where the master wants work, not recognition, from the slave (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952). F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), “Le Nègre et Hegel”; SEP “Frantz Fanon”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Karl Marx
influencé par
Fanon held that ‘Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched’ in the colonies, where the peasantry, not the proletariat, is revolutionary (Les Damnés de la terre, 1961). F. Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (1961); SEP “Frantz Fanon”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Sigmund Freud
influencé par
The introduction to Black Skin, White Masks (1952) starts from Freud, who against the constitutional psychiatry of his time took the individual’s history into account; beside phylogeny and ontogeny Fanon set sociogeny – the alienation of the colonised is not an individual question. F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), introduction
Attestation: brouillon IA
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Karl Jaspers
influencé par
Fanon cited Jaspers’ idea of a metaphysical guilt from The Question of German Guilt (1946) – a solidarity that makes everyone co-responsible for every wrong in the world – to hold Europe answerable for colonial racism; the passage in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) has not been checked here. F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952); K. Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage (1946; French La culpabilité allemande, 1948)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Karl Jaspers › 1883–1969
Jacques Lacan
influencé par
In Black Skin, White Masks (1952, ch. 6) Fanon took up Lacan’s mirror stage in a long note: once the mechanism Lacan described is grasped, the real Other for the white man is the Black man, perceived on the level of the body image. F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), ch. 6 “Le nègre et la psychopathologie”; J. Lacan, “Le stade du miroir” (1936/1949)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
influencé par
Fanon, who heard Merleau-Ponty in Lyon, found a ‘historico-racial schema’ beneath the phenomenological body schema in the lived experience of Black people (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952). F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952); M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (1945); SEP “Frantz Fanon”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Maurice Merleau-Ponty › 1908–1961
Aimé Césaire élève de
élève de ✓
Fanon was a pupil at the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, where Césaire, who taught there from 1939, was among his teachers. D. Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography (2000)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Aimé Césaire › 1913–2008
A influencé 17
Paulo Freire
a influencé
Freire drew on Fanon’s account of the colonised who internalise the oppressor and turn violence against their own (Pedagogia do oprimido, written 1968). P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (written 1968; Eng. 1970; Portuguese ed. 1974); F. Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (1961)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Paulo Freire › 1921–1997
Gilles Deleuze
a influencé
In Anti-Oedipus (1972, with Félix Guattari) Deleuze cited a case from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth – a persecution psychosis that seemed to concern the death of the patient’s mother, who had in fact been killed by a French soldier – to show that delusion invests the social and historical field, not only the family. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, L’Anti-Œdipe (1972), ch. 2; F. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961), ch. “Guerre coloniale et troubles mentaux”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Gilles Deleuze › 1925–1995
Charles Taylor
a influencé
In “The Politics of Recognition” (1992) Taylor named Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) as an influential source of the idea that misrecognition oppresses: the colonisers’ chief weapon was imposing their image of the colonised on the subjugated – a reading Coulthard later turned against Taylor with Fanon. C. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition”, in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” (1992); G. S. Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks (2014), ch. 1
Attestation: brouillon IA
Charles Taylor › né(e) en 1931
Judith Butler
a influencé
In “Violence, Non-Violence: Sartre on Fanon” (2006) Butler read The Wretched of the Earth together with Sartre’s preface, asking whom each text addresses and how colonial violence shapes the bodies and the masculinity of the colonised. J. Butler, “Violence, Non-Violence: Sartre on Fanon”, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 27:1 (2006); repr. in Senses of the Subject (2015)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Judith Butler › né(e) en 1956
Achille Mbembe
a influencé ✓
Mbembe read Fanon as a thinker of the universal, taking up his critique of colonial racism in a critique of ‘Black reason’ (Critique de la raison nègre, 2013). A. Mbembe, Critique de la raison nègre (2013); “L’universalité de Frantz Fanon”, preface to F. Fanon, Œuvres (2011)
Attestation: aussi dans Wikidata · Wikidata
Achille Mbembe › né(e) en 1957
Lewis Gordon
a influencé ✓
Gordon read Fanon as a philosopher of the human who asks what it means to be human when one is denied humanity, from Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (1995) to What Fanon Said (2015). L. R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (1995); What Fanon Said (2015); SEP “Contemporary Africana Philosophy” (P. C. Taylor)
Attestation: aussi dans Wikidata · Wikidata
Lewis Gordon › né(e) en 1962
Tout afficher (17)Afficher moins
Fausto Reinaga
a influencé
In his Indianist writings from 1969–70 Reinaga drew on Fanon’s analysis of colonial racism and the colonised mind and applied it to the Andes (La revolución india, 1970). F. Reinaga, La revolución india (1970); J. A. Lucero, “Fanon in the Andes: Fausto Reinaga, Indianismo, and the Black Atlantic”, International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 1 (2008)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Fausto Reinaga › 1906–1994
Sylvia Wynter
a influencé
Wynter took up Fanon’s claim that besides phylogeny and ontogeny there is sociogeny, holding that human experience is shaped by cultural codes (‘Towards the Sociogenic Principle’, 2001). S. Wynter, “Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, Identity, the Puzzle of Conscious Experience, and What It Is Like to Be ‘Black’” (2001); F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Sylvia Wynter › né(e) en 1928
Stuart Hall
a influencé
Hall reread Black Skin, White Masks (1952) for Fanon’s account of racism lived through the gaze and the body (‘The After-life of Frantz Fanon’, 1996). S. Hall, “The After-life of Frantz Fanon: Why Fanon? Why Now? Why Black Skin, White Masks?”, in A. Read (ed.), The Fact of Blackness (1996); SEP “Frantz Fanon”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Stuart Hall › 1932–2014
Ali Shariati
a influencé
Shariati read Fanon in Paris and, according to Abrahamian, wrote to him that the colonised must first regain their cultural identity; his role as Fanon’s translator is disputed. E. Abrahamian, “Ali Shariati: Ideologue of the Iranian Revolution”, MERIP Reports 102 (1982); A. Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian (1998); E. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “Who Translated Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth into Persian?”, Jadaliyya
Attestation: brouillon IA
Ali Shariati › 1933–1977
Edward Saïd
a influencé
Said read Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) as a theory of liberation that also warns against national elites repeating colonial rule (Culture and Imperialism, 1993). E. W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993); F. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961); SEP “Frantz Fanon”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Edward Saïd › 1935–2003
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
a influencé
Ngũgĩ drew on Fanon’s chapter on national culture in The Wretched of the Earth throughout Decolonising the Mind (1986); reading Fanon in the 1960s shaped his turn to anti-colonial politics. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind (1986); S. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2000)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Ngugi wa Thiong’o › 1938–2025
Walter Mignolo
a influencé
Mignolo took up Fanon’s sociogeny – Fanon learns that he is seen as a “Negro” – as an experience of border consciousness absent from Husserl’s theory of consciousness, partly through Wynter’s reading of Fanon. W. D. Mignolo, interview with E-International Relations (1 June 2017); “Sylvia Wynter: What Does It Mean to Be Human?” (2015)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Walter Mignolo › né(e) en 1941
Steve Biko
a influencé
Biko drew on Fanon’s analysis of colonised consciousness for Black Consciousness, holding that the oppressed must first free their own minds (I Write What I Like, 1978). S. Biko, I Write What I Like (1978); F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952); L. R. Gordon, What Fanon Said (2015)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Steve Biko › 1946–1977
Mahmood Mamdani
a influencé
Mamdani took up Fanon’s account of the violence of the colonised as an answer to the prior violence of the settler, and read the genocide of 1994 as a “native’s” violence. M. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (2001), ch. 1
Attestation: brouillon IA
Mahmood Mamdani › né(e) en 1946
Linda Tuhiwai Smith
a influencé
Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) draws on Fanon’s account of how colonisation reaches into the consciousness and culture of the colonised. L. Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999), introduction; F. Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (1961)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Linda Tuhiwai Smith › né(e) en 1950
Glen Coulthard
a influencé
Echoing Fanon’s title, Red Skin, White Masks (2014) uses his remark that the master wants ‘not recognition but work’ against recognition granted by the colonial state. G. S. Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks (2014); F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Glen Coulthard › né(e) en 1974
Critique
Critiques reçues de 3
Hannah Arendt
critiqué par
Arendt rejected the belief, drawn from Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, that violence creates a new humanity: violence can destroy power, never create it (On Violence, 1970). H. Arendt, On Violence (1970), with her sharpest criticism aimed at Sartre’s preface; R. J. Bernstein, “Violence”, Political Concepts 3.1 (2012)
Attestation: brouillon IA
Hannah Arendt › 1906–1975
Martin Luther King Jr.
critiqué par
King shared Fanon’s call for a new humanity but rejected his defence of violence as the way to it (Where Do We Go from Here, 1967, ch. 2). M. L. King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), ch. 2 “Black Power”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Martin Luther King Jr. › 1929–1968
bell hooks
critiqué par
In “Feminism as a Persistent Critique of History” (1996) hooks objected that Fanon’s vision of liberation is addressed to men and leaves out Black women and love between Black people, while stressing how much his work had meant to her. b. hooks, “Feminism as a Persistent Critique of History: What’s Love Got to Do with It?”, in A. Read (ed.), The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation (1996)
Attestation: brouillon IA
bell hooks › 1952–2021
Critiques adressées à 3
C. G. Jung
a critiqué
In Black Skin, White Masks (ch. 6) Fanon rejected Jung’s collective unconscious as an inherited structure: it is cultural and acquired – the prejudices, myths and collective attitudes of a group – which is how the European unconscious came to link blackness with evil. F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), ch. 6 “Le nègre et la psychopathologie”
Attestation: brouillon IA
C. G. Jung › 1875–1961
Jean-Paul Sartre influencé para influencé
influencé par ✓
Fanon adapted Sartre’s account of the antisemite’s gaze that ‘makes’ the Jew (Réflexions sur la question juive, 1946) to Black experience (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952). F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952); J.-P. Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (1946); SEP “Frantz Fanon”
a influencé
Sartre wrote the preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), taking up its argument that the colonised free themselves through the violence colonialism imposed on them, and addressing it to European readers. J.-P. Sartre, preface to F. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961); Situations V (1964)
Attestation: brouillon IA
a critiqué
Fanon objected that Sartre’s ‘Black Orpheus’ (1948) reduced négritude to the ‘minor term’ of a dialectic, robbing Black experience of its own weight (Black Skin, White Masks, 1952). F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), ch. 5 “L’expérience vécue du Noir”; J.-P. Sartre, “Orphée noir” (1948); SEP “Frantz Fanon”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980
Léopold Sédar Senghor
a critiqué
Fanon warned that négritude risks fixing culture as an essence instead of joining the living struggle for national liberation (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961). F. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961), ch. 4 “Sur la culture nationale”
Attestation: brouillon IA
Léopold Sédar Senghor › 1906–2001
Œuvres
L’expérience vécue des Noirs sous le regard colonial (le « Noir » de Fanon).
La décolonisation est toujours un phénomène violent – avec une préface de Sartre.
Position
Fanon combina la psychiatrie, la phénoménologie et l’analyse politique pour décrire le colonialisme de l’intérieur. Dans Peau noire, masques blancs, il montra comment le regard colonial et raciste fige les Noirs en objets et les force à adopter une image de soi blanche – une aliénation qui n’est pas individuelle, mais sociale et historique. Dans Les Damnés de la terre, écrit pendant la guerre d’Algérie, il soutint que le colonialisme est violence et que la décolonisation est donc toujours un processus violent, qui peut aussi rendre les colonisés à eux-mêmes. En même temps, il mettait en garde contre une bourgeoisie nationale qui ne ferait que remplacer les colonisateurs. Sartre en écrivit la préface. Ses livres furent lus dans les mouvements anticoloniaux, de l’Algérie à l’Afrique du Sud, et devinrent des textes fondateurs de la théorie postcoloniale.
Vie et contexte
Fanon naquit à Fort-de-France, en Martinique, en 1925 ; à l’école, il eut Aimé Césaire pour professeur. Il combattit avec les Forces françaises libres pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, étudia la médecine et la psychiatrie à Lyon et devint en 1953 chef de service à l’hôpital psychiatrique de Blida-Joinville, en Algérie. Il rejoignit la lutte de libération algérienne et mourut d’une leucémie en 1961, à 36 ans.
Autres œuvres principales
- L’An V de la révolution algérienne (1959)
Apparaît dans
- Voyage « Penser la liberté » · Étape 5 sur 9
- Débat « Race et racisme »
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