Fractured Legacy: Historicizing the Biographies of Frantz Fanon

• Published in: Méthod(e)s : African review of social science methodology Vol. 2; no. 1-2; pp. 79 - 92
• Main Author: Guba, David Alan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02-07-2017
• Subjects: 20th Century France; Biographie; Biography; France du 20ème siècle; Frantz Fanon; French Imperial History; Histoire impériale française; historiographie; Historiography
• ISSN: 2375-4745; 2375-4753
• DOI: 10.1080/23754745.2017.1354552

In universities on both sides of the Atlantic, students learn of many Frantz Fanons. In history courses on decolonization or the Cold War, one learns of Fanon the "apostle of violence" and author of The Wretched of the Earth whose fiery words resonated loudly in liberation and protest movements across the globe in the 1960s. In courses on post-colonial studies, one encounters another Fanon, author of Black Skin, White Masks and co-founder of an anti-imperial philosophy that promotes critical engagement with non-Eurocentric identities, value systems, and modes of representation. In psychology and psychiatric medicine, advanced students might be introduced to Fanon the clinician, advocate of Tosquelle's socio-therapy, ardent opponent of the "Algiers School," and innovator of colonial medicine. While often productive in the narrow contours of their academic specialties, these snapshots of Fanon's life and work do little to illuminate the intertwined biographical and intellectual developments of the man himself or the historical milieu within which he lived and thought. Moreover, next to nothing has been written in English or in French on Fanon's significance for or place within 20th century French history-a history still confronting an omnipresent but silenced colonial past. To understand how these fractured Fanons came to roam the halls of academia, this essay charts the multiple lives of Frantz Fanon within Anglo-American discourse and argues that though much has been written on Fanon, relatively little has been done to set the evolution of his life and thought within sufficient historical and intellectual contexts.