Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination

Frantz Fanon was a French psychiatrist turned Algerian revolutionary of Martinican origin, and one of the most important and controversial thinkers of the postwar period. A veritable “intellect on fire,” Fanon was a radical thinker with original theories on race, revolution, violence, identity and agency.

This book is an excellent introduction to the ideas and legacy of Fanon. Gibson explores him as a truly complex character in the context of his time and beyond. He argues that for Fanon, theory has a practical task to help change the world. Thus Fanon’s “untidy dialectic,” Gibson contends, is a philosophy of liberation that includes cultural and historical issues and visions of a future society. In a profoundly political sense, Gibson asks us to reevaluate Fanon’s contribution as a critic of modernity and reassess in a new light notions of consciousness, humanism, and social change.

This is a fascinating study that will interest undergraduates and above in postcolonial studies, literary theory, cultural studies, sociology, politics, and social and political theory, as well as general readers.

Abbreviations for Fanon’s Works.

Introduction.

1. The Racial Gaze: Black Slave, White Master.

2. Psychoanalysis and the Black’s Inferiority Complex.

3. Negritude and the Descent into a “Real Hell”.

4. Becoming Algerian.

5. Violent Concerns.

6. Radical Mutations: Toward a Fighting Culture.

7. Crossing the Dividing Line: Spontaneity and Organization.

8. Nationalism and a New Humanism.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index