Engaging the life and work of Fanon is in itself a reverberation of the struggle for a more equal and just society. It is also a call to embark on a radical process to reflect on the shifting sands that make our society lose balance as it wiggles its way towards freedom. Helping us to frame the lenses, we are introduced to the first two articles by Peter Hallward and Michael Neocosmos.
In this second serving in the series, Neocosmos moves beyond the context of struggles for independence on the African continent which informed a great deal of Fanon's work. He looks at NOW, postcolonial and in the case of South Africa, post-apartheid. He re-reads Fanon's predictions and ideas of nation-state, nationalism and the PEOPLE with the view to asking where the emancipatory project sits now, both in terms of politics and political actions (Neocosmos, 2011).
Argued from varying angles both Hallward (in the previous padkos serving) and Neocosmos refute the idea that the state, the party or the heroic leaders are the possessors of the emancipatory project. Neocosmos' concept of subjectivation, like Hallward, directs us to the logic of ordinary people, beyond barriers of race, gender, nationality and class as being the right place to help us learn and participate in the project of true freedom.
David Ntseng
Click Here to Read the Paper by Michael Neocosmos
