Frantz Fanon

Credit: Frantz Fanon
Unidentified photographer, n.d.
Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo

He demanded the full recognition of his humanity—and expected that his comrades do the same.

Frantz Fanon
1925–1961, b. Fort-de-France, Martinique
Worked in Paris and Algeria

He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me.
—Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.
—Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

• After serving in the Free French army in World War II, Frantz Fanon studied psychiatry, taking a position in French-ruled Algeria in 1953. There, he witnessed firsthand the traumatic effects of colonial violence on the human psyche.
• In books like Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Fanon analyzed the psychological impacts of colonial rule, framing them as a form of violent domination of the psyche—but also as a set of tools that the colonized could take up and reverse in self-defense.
• Fanon also critiqued many postcolonial governments for their perceived dependence on former colonial powers and failures to build a national consciousness in their people.
• Fanon’s writings were inspirations to a global swathe of anticolonial and liberation movements in the second half of the 20th century—setting the struggle for freedom first in the psyche and the imagination.