What if Fanon read Biko?

by Eric Harper, Fondation Frantz Fanon

Let’s begin with the question what if? What if Fanon and Biko were alive today, what questions would they be asking? What would they say to each other when South African’s speak of Afrika as if belonging elsewhere? Would they see any affinity between the new emerged elite in Afrika and the sense of ubuntu that prevailed in the days of struggle? What would they be thinking when they see a young black child on the tube in London turn to her mother with the words, ‘look a Muslim, I am scared’? At that moment the Muslim is hypervissible and invissble at the same moment. Both men knew what it was like when the black man was reduced to flesh and had to function as a screen of the white man’s projections. To be placed into a position in which the body becomes fixed, immobile and then made to speak on behalf of all. Finally, what would they say to each other about the images of prioner abuse in Iraq?