Frantz Fanon

the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon's two major
works, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, were pioneering studies of
the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer.Fanon here defined the
colonial relationship as the psychological non-recognition of the subjectivity of the
colonized. Soon after taking a position at a psychiatric hospital in Algeria, Fanon became
involved in the bitter Algerian civil war, eventually leaving his post to become a full-time
militant in the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Out of this struggle, Fanon wrote his
most influential book, The Wretched of the Earth, which Stuart Hall describes as the "bible of
the decolonization movement."

In France while completing his residency, 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. In the book, Fanon described the unfair
treatment of black people in France and how they were disapproved of by white people.
Black people also had a sense of inferiority when facing white people. Fanon believed that
even though they could speak French, they could not fully integrate into the life and
environment of white people.

Black Skin, White Masks was published in 1952 and is one of Fanon's most important works.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon psychoanalyzes the oppressed Black person who is
perceived to have to be a lesser creature in the White world that they live in, and studies
how they navigate the world through a performance of White-ness.[16] Particularly in
discussing language, he talks about how the black person's use of a colonizer's language is
seen by the colonizer as predatory, and not transformative, which in turn may create
insecurity in the black's consciousness.[33] He recounts that he himself faced many
admonitions as a child for using Creole French instead of "real French," or "French French,"
that is, "white" French.[16] Ultimately, he concludes that "mastery of language [of the
white/colonizer] for the sake of recognition as white reflects a dependency that
subordinates the black's humanity".[33]

Chapter 1 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled “The Negro and Language."[34] In this
chapter, Fanon discusses how colored people were perceived by the whites. He says that the
black man has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro
behaves differently with a white man than with another Negro. That this self-division is a
direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question. To speak a language is to take on
a world, a culture. 

Ch 5 The fact of blackness He says that because Blackness was created in, and continues to
exist in, negation to whiteness, that ontology is not a philosophy that can be used to
understand the Black experience. Fanon states that this ontology can't be used to
understand the Black experience because it ignores the "lived experience." He argues that a
black man has to be black, while also being black in relation to the white man.

Chapter 6 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled "The Negro and Psychopathology".[34] In
this chapter, Fanon discussed how being Black can and does affect one's psyche. He makes it
clear that the treatment of Black people causes emotional trauma. Fanon argues that as a
result of one's skin color being Black, Black people are unable to truly process this trauma or
"make it unconscious" (466). Black people are unable to not think about the fact that they
are Black and all of the historical and current stigma that come with that.

In The Wretched of the Earth (1961, Les damnés de la terre), published shortly before

Fanon's death, Fanon defends the right of a colonized people to use violence to gain
independence. In addition, he delineated the processes and forces leading to national
independence or neocolonialism during the decolonization movement that engulfed much
of the world after World War II. In defence of the use of violence by colonized peoples,
Fanon argued that human beings who are not considered as such (by the colonizer) shall not
be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the colonizer. the
colonizer's presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this
strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only "language" the colonizer
speaks. Thus, violent resistance is a necessity imposed by the colonists upon the colonized.
The relevance of language and the reformation of discourse pervades much of his work,
which is why it is so interdisciplinary, spanning psychiatric concerns to encompass politics,
sociology, anthropology, linguistics and literature.

Fanon uses the Jewish people to explain how the prejudice expressed towards blacks cannot
not be generalized to other races or ethnicities. He discusses this in Black Skins, White
Masks, and pulls from Jean-Paul Sartre's Reflections on the Jewish Question to inform his
understanding of French colonialism relationship with the Jewish people and how it can be
compared and contrasted with the oppressions of Blacks across the world. In his seminal
book, Fanon issues many rebuttals to Octave Mannoni's Prospero and Caliban: The
Psychology of Colonization. Mannoni asserts that "colonial exploitation is not the same as
other forms of exploitation, and colonial racialism is different from other kinds of racialism."
Fanon responds by arguing that racism or anti-Semitism, colonial or otherwise, are not
different because they rip away a person's ability to feel human.

Fanon's influence extended to the liberation movements of the Palestinians,

the Tamils, African Americans and others. His work was a key influence on the Black Panther
Party, particularly his ideas concerning nationalism, violence and the lumpenproletariat.
More recently, radical South African poor people's movements, such as Abahlali
baseMjondolo (meaning 'people who live in shacks' in Zulu), have been influenced by
Fanon's work.