Frantz Fanon 50 years later: a ‘Thinking Africa’ conference

Richard Pithouse

by Richard Pithouse, Social Dynamics, Vol. 37, No, 3, 2012

The Thinking Africa Project in the Department of Politics & International Relations at Rhodes University hosted its inaugural annual conference in July 2011. It was decided to dedicate the conference to an examination of the contemporary meanings of Frantz Fanon due to the fact that 2011 is the fiftieth year since Fanon’s death and, also, the ongoing centrality of Fanon’s work to the thinking of emancipatory political possibilities in Africa.

Fanon died, in Washington, in December 1961. In his 36 years, the arc of his life moved from the Caribbean to Europe and North Africa. He had been a soldier with the Free French Forces, a student in France, a psychiatrist in the French colonial system and a revolutionary in the Algerian National Liberation Movement. Black Skin, White Masks, written while he was a student, is a canonical text in critical race studies. The Wretched of the Earth, written through failing health in 10 weeks in Tunis, stands as a foundational text in the critique of colonialism, the description and assessment of anti-colonial struggle and the diagnosis of the pathologies of the postcolonial state.

Photographs from the 'Frantz Fanon Fifty Years Later' Conference

Gillian Hart & Nigel Gibson

Lewis Gordon

Reflections on the Frantz Fanon Fifty Years Later Colloquium

by Camalita Naicker, Thinking Africa Newsletter

There are many clichés one could devolve into when speaking about an event like this, I will try my best to refrain from doing so, however clichés have become such because of their overuse but also their ability to describe feelings and emotions fairly appropriately. What I will say is that for me it was an extremely novel, profound experience. Reading Frantz Fanon and engaging with people who have known him and engaged with his work over so many years and still recognise not only his relevance to our society today but how we, through our fidelity to him and in living Fanon, can recognise the possibility for the creation of a new humanity.

What does it mean to be young, black and South African?

by Danielle Bowler and Chantelle Malan

Playing on Nina Simone’s lyrics, the African Music Channel, has adopted “Young, gifted and African” as their slogan, which is now frequently featured on t-shirts of the hip and trendy. The slogan aims to highlight the view that, contra the white world’s systematic denigration of the black world, the black world, and its youth in particular, have much to offer the world.

S’bu Zikode’s Presentation at the Fanon Colloquium, Rhodes University July 9, 2011 (rough transcription)

The idea that shack dwellers can think and that Abahlali can sustain its autonomy has created a crisis. There is a price to be paid for such thinking, for such autonomy.

The university is slowly opening spaces for grassroots organizations and some of us have fought hard for a relationship of equality between grassroots organizations and the university. We appreciate that Nigel Gibson has brought Fanon into conversation with us, with our struggle and our thinking. The conversation has been very rich and also difficult. We speak of Fanon from our own working environment. What hasn’t been covered in these 4 days is that Fanon was an activist, committed to daily work with people, talking with people.

Thinking and Living Fanon

by Chantelle Malan and Danielle Bowler, Pambazuka & The Daily Dispatch

People are still laying bottles of alcohol outside her house and she’s been a trending topic on twitter and Facebook. Additionally, she has been ushered in as a new member of the “27 club” of artists who have died at the tragically young age of 27 and across the world, her music is being bought and downloaded in remembrance. Few would dispute the importance of Amy Winehouse a week after her death, but what will her legacy be in 50 years time? In a small part of South Africa, young people have been contemplating the legacy of Frantz Fanon and the fiftieth anniversary of his death by choosing this week instead, to buy his books. While most people are largely unaware of the significance of the man from Martinique, as opposed to a singer from North London, the question is perhaps who is more relevant for contemporary South Africa?

Frantz Fanon Fifty Years On - Course Outline

Frantz Fanon Fifty Years On

A post-graduate course in the Department of Political Studies & International Relations at Rhodes University, to be taught by Richard Pithouse as part of the Thinking Africa project During the Second Semester, 2011

Frantz Fanon died in 1961. In the fifty years that have passed since his death he has become a canonical thinker in a number of academic fields including postcolonial studies and critical race theory. His ideas continue to animate some of the most compelling theoretical innovation that is being produced in the South African academy and in Africana studies more generally.

Rhodes hosts experts for Thinking Africa

by Sarah-Jane Bradfield

A three-day colloquium under the theme “Fanon 50 years later” was hosted by Rhodes’ Department of Political and International Studies’ last week as part of their launch of their flagship project, Thinking Africa.

On Thinking Africa: the perpetual question

by Siphokazi Magadla, Address at the opening night of the Frantz Fanon Fifty Years Later Colloquium

 

It was in our first Fanon reading group in preparation for this launch that I learnt that Frantz Fanon dictated most of his books to his wife Josie Fanon who was doing the typing. Richard Pithouse explained that it is perhaps because of this that much of his work is so declarative compared to usual strict academic language. Immediately I could picture this man pacing up and down his living room wondering loudly questions that would haunt us today in our own living rooms, “what does man want? What does a black man want?” Indeed Fanon continues to dictate us “towards a new humanism” as he puts it in Black Skin White Masks.

The Frantz Fanon Winter School 11 - 15 July 2011

The Frantz Fanon Winter School, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 11 - 15 July 2011

Monday 11 July: Lewis Gordon - Requiem on a Life Well Lived: In Memory of Frantz Fanon
Tuesday 12 July: Mabogo More - Fanon & the Land Question in (Post) Apartheid South Africa
Wednesday 13 July: Lewis Gordon - Living Fanon
Thursday 14 July: Nigel Gibson - Unfinished Struggles for Freedom
Friday 15 July: Ato Sekyi-Otu - Fanon & the Post-Colonial Imagination

Frantz Fanon Fifty Years Later: Full Programme for the Colloquium, Grahamstown, 6 - 9 July 2011

6 July: Public Lecture & Launch

17:00 Public Lecture by V.Y. Mudimbe (Duke University) (Eden Grove Blue)

-          Chair: Leonhard Praeg (Thinking Africa steering committee)

-          Introduction:  Saleem Badat (Vice-Chancellor, Rhodes University)

Thinking Africa Frantz Fanon Film Festival, Grahamstown: 7 - 10 July 2011

Four films on or relating to Fanon will be screened as part of the Frantz Fanon Fifty Years On conference and in partnership with the 2011 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

7 July: Frantz Fanon: his life, his struggle, his work, Cheikh Djemai, 2001

8 July: Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Masks, Isaac Julien, 1996

9 July: The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966

10 July: Driving with Fanon, Kwena Mokwena, 2010