Fanon 101

Frantz Fanon, in full Frantz Omar Fanon, is a West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher known for his theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation of colonial peoples.

Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks) is a multidisciplinary analysis of the effect of colonialism on racial consciousness. 

 

Integrating psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism, and Negritude theory, Fanon articulated an expansive view of the psychosocial repercussions of colonialism on colonized people. 

 

The publication shortly before his death of his book Les Damnés de la terre (1961; The Wretched of the Earth) established Fanon as a leading intellectual in the international decolonization movement; the preface to his book was written by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Text: ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA