Why Frantz Fanon Still Matters

Nigel Gibson, The Critique

I

Living Dream And Nightmare

Over sixty years ago, Frantz Fanon wrote Black Skin White Masks in hopes that it would aid disalienation. He submitted the work as the thesis for his medical degree at the University of Lyon in France. It was not accepted by his supervisor and thus failed as a thesis. However, Black Skin White Masks has had a remarkable afterlife as a foundational text across academic disciplines and essential for radical social activists.

Nigel Gibson on Fanon's writings on psychiatry

A Wholly Other Time? Fanon, the Revolutionary and the Question of Organization

Nigel C Gibson: "A Wholly Other Time? Fanon, the Revolutionary, and the Question of Organization" by puzzelle

Nigel Gibson & Teodros Kiros: African Ascent 7/08/2014

Fanon in South Africa, from Biko to the shackdwellers' movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo)

Open Letter to James Nxumalo, Senzo Mchunu & Jacob Zuma on the Repression in Cato Crest, Durban

To:

James Nxumalo, Mayor, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
Senzo Mchunu, Premier, KwaZulu-Natal
Jacob Zuma, President, Republic of South Africa

We are writing to you to express our grave concern at events unfolding in the Cato Crest shack settlement in Durban.

After an illegal eviction in Cato Crest by the eThekwini Municipality in March this year, shackdwellers occupied an adjacent piece of land. They named the settlement “Marikana”. Since then, two activists have been assassinated -Thembinkosi Qumbelo and Nkululeko Gwala. A third, Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, is in critical condition after being shot by the Land Invasions Unit. A number of activists have been seriously beaten by the police. Other activists, including Bandile Mdlalose and S’bu Zikode of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been supporting the residents, have been threatened with death. 

Marx, Fanon & Biko: Touchstones in a Time of Crisis?

Unemployed People’s Movement

Marx, Fanon & Biko: Touchstones in a Time of Crisis?

Arts Major, 5:00p.m., Tuesday 16 September

Our country is slipping into serious crisis. The state has been captured by a ruthless and predatory elite bent on plunder. The people’s struggles are being seriously repressed. From Ficksburg to Marikana and Durban activists are being murdered.

Last week we marked the anniversary of the assassination of Steven Bantu Biko. This week we are hosting a public discussion on the light that Biko, and other radical humanists like Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon, can shine into our darkening present.

Following Fanon: Fanonian Practices in South Africa,

Following Fanon: A review of Nigel Gibson's Fanonian Practices in South Africa - From Steve Biko to Abahlal... by TigersEye99

Unpacking Fanon’s books and putting them back again …

by Nigel Gibson, June 2013, Algiers

When Sliman Hachi, the director of the Centre National de Recherche Préhistorique Anthropologiques et Historique (CNRPAH), announced that Olivier Fanon had donated his parents’ books to the Centre, the question that Matthieu Renault and I asked was, “When could we take at look at them?” We were in Algiers for a conference on “Africa Today and Fanon” organized by CNRPAH and Matthieu was leaving the next day. The library was a mixture of Frantz and Josie Fanon’s books, so during a break in the conference I asked Olivier Fanon about the collection. Apparently, these were the books that his father had left when he left the country in December 1956 and, as far as I understand, Josie had boxed them up and taken them to Lyon. We can only assume that they developed a new library in Tunis. Certainly, notes Alice Cherki, Fanon liked to frequent the bookstore owned by a Monsieur Levy and at one point asked his assistant Marie-Jeanne Manuellan to purchase everything in the shop by Freud.

Finding Fanon, Looking for second liberations

Nigel C. Gibson, Presentation at the Algiers conference on Fanon and Africa, June 2013

Finding Fanon, Looking for second liberations

[I]f action does not transform individual consciousness then it is nothing more than incoherence and agitation … Have faith in your people and devote your life to their dignity and betterment. For us there is no other way. Your brother, Franz

Fanon, Dedication to Bertène Juminer

A second phase of total liberation is necessary because [it] is required by the popular masses.

Fanon, “First Truths on the Colonial Problem,” 1958

Finding Fanon

I was introduced to Fanon via Steve Biko, and it was in 1981 that I first met Black Consciousness émigrés from South Africa in London. 1981 was the year of the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. Bobby Sands and other prisoners were also reading Fanon finding the measure of national culture as a “combat culture” essential as, in the hellholes of the H blocks, they taught each other the Irish language as a conscious anti-colonial activity.

The Oxygen of Revolution: Gendered gaps and radical mutations in Frantz Fanon's 'A Dying Colonialism'

The Oxygen of Revolution: Gendered gaps and radical mutations in Frantz Fanon's 'A Dying Colonialism' by TigersEye99

New Preface to the Arabic translation of 'Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination'

New Preface to the Arabic translation of Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination

by Nigel Gibson

It is with great pleasure and a sense of great honor that I write this introduction to the Arabic translation of Fanon: A Postcolonial Imagination.  I am particularly indebted to Dr. Fayiz Suyyagh and all those associated with the Tarjuman Unit for this opportunity; I am also cognizant of the historic context of this translation, the massive and continuing revolts popularly known as the “Arab Spring” which have helped generate renewed interest in Frantz Fanon’s ideas.

Fanon: Imperative of the Now (Special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly on Fanon)

Fanon: Imperative of the Now

Volume 112, Number 1, Winter 2013Grant Farred, Special Issue Editor

Articles

• • Grant Farred

  Imperative of the Now

  South Atlantic Quarterly (2013) 112(1): 1-4; doi:10.1215/00382876-1900549
  • Full Text (PDF)
   
  • References
• Select this article
  • John E. Drabinski

  Fanon’s Two Memories

  South Atlantic Quarterly (2013) 112(1): 5-22; doi:10.1215/00382876-1891206
  • Abstract
   
  • Full Text (PDF)
   
  • References

A Wholly Other Times? Fanon, the Revolutionary and the Question of Organization

Nigel C Gibson: "A Wholly Other Time? Fanon, the Revolutionary, and the Question of Organization"... by puzzelle

Nigel Gibson interviewed on the Marikana Massacre on ckut25FM, Montreal

Click here to download this radio programme in mp3.

The War Against the Poor

The War Against the Poor by TigersEye99

Is Fanon Relevant? Toward an Alternative Foreword to “The Damned of the Earth”

06 - Gibson - Is Fanon Relevant - Toward an Alternative Foreword to 'the D by kmboon

The Marikana Massacre: A Turning Point for South Africa?

by Nigel Gibson, Truthout

It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things - but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces - but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty - but for the worker, deformity. -Marx, "Alienated Labor"

It's better to die than to work for that shit. People are coming back here tomorrow. I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won't move. -Thandubuntu Simelane, Lonmin miner. 

Beyond Manicheanism: Dialectics in the Thought of Frantz Fanon

Beyond Manicheanism: Dialectics in the Thought of Frantz Fanon by TigersEye99

Frantz Fanon and the Arab Uprisings: An Interview with Nigel Gibson

Nigel Gibson was interviewed by Yasser Munif in Jadaliyya

The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon’s magnum opus, was published in 1961, a few days after his death. The book was not only influential for several generations of grassroots movements and activists in Africa, the United States, and Latin America; it was also discussed and debated extensively in intellectual circles across the globe. The reception of the book was more mitigated in the Arab world. This might be due to Fanon’s sweeping criticism of national bourgeoisie, which seized power after decolonization and became an intermediary class between Western powers and local populations. The Martiniquan intellectual was skeptical of revolutions from above, as was the case with several anti-colonialist movements in the Arab World. Interestingly, while the Arabic translation of the The Wretched of the Earth came out shortly after its publication in French, it omitted many passages because they were critical of the national bourgeoisie. Fifty years later, Fanon is almost absent in public discourses in the Middle East and is still marginal in the Maghreb. The uprisings should have been an excellent opportunity for Arab intellectuals and activists to engage with Fanon’s work on the revolution and the subaltern in the new conjuncture. However, despite the significance of his political philosophy for the current revolts, his books are either out of print or conspicuously absent from many bookstores in the Arab world.