Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher, from the French colony of Martinique. His works have become influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, and critical theory. As well as being an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, and Pan-Africanist, concerned with the psychopathology of colonization and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.
In the course of his work as a physician and psychiatrist, Fanon supported the Algerian War of independence from France and was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. Fanon has been described as "the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time". For more than five decades, the life and works of Fanon have inspired national liberation movements and other freedom and political movements in Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the United States.
Fanon formulated a model for community psychology, believing that many mental health patients would have an improved prognosis if they were integrated into their family and community instead of being treated with institutionalized care. He also helped found the field of institutional psychotherapy while working at Saint-Alban under Francois Tosquelles and Jean Oury.
Biography
Early life
Frantz Omar Fanon was born on 20 July 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, which was then part of the French colonial empire. His father, Félix Casimir Fanon, worked as a customs officer, while Fanon's mother, Eléanore Médélice, who was of Afro-Caribbean and Alsatian descent, was a shopkeeper. Fanon was the third of four sons in a family of eight children. Two of his siblings died young, including Fanon's sister Gabrielle, with whom he was very close. As they were middle class, his family could afford to send Fanon to the Lycée Victor Schœlcher, the most prestigious secondary school in Martinique, where Fanon came to admire one of his teachers, Aimé Césaire. The young Frantz Fanon was an avid football player, and played the sport in Martinique, later organizing football matches for patients and staff while working at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in Algeria.World War II
After the Battle of France resulted in the French Third Republic capitulating to Nazi Germany in July 1940, Martinique came under the control of French Navy elements led by Admiral Georges Robert who were loyal to the collaborationist Vichy regime. The disruption of imports from Metropolitan France led to major shortages on the island, which were exacerbated by an American naval blockade imposed on Martinique in April 1943. Robert's authoritarian regime repressed local Allied sympathizers, hundreds of whom escaped to nearby Caribbean islands. Fanon later described the Vichy regime in Martinique as taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists". In January 1943, he fled Martinique during the wedding of one of his brothers and travelled to the British colony of Dominica in order to link up with other Allied sympathizers.Robert's regime was overthrown by a local uprising in June of that year, which Fanon would later acclaim as "the birth of the proletariat" as a revolutionary force. After the uprising, Fanon "enthusiastically" returned to Martinique, where Free French leader Charles de Gaulle had appointed Henri Tourtet as the colony's new governor. Tourtet subsequently raised the 5th Antillean Marching Battalion to serve in Free French Forces, and Fanon soon joined the unit in Fort-de-France. He underwent basic training before boarding a troopship bound for Casablanca, Morocco in March 1944. After Fanon arrived in Morocco, he was shocked to discover the extent of racial discrimination in the FFL. He was subsequently transferred to a Free French military base in Béjaïa, Algeria, where Fanon witnessed firsthand the antisemitism and Islamophobia of the pieds-noirs, many of whom had supported racist laws promulgated by the Vichy regime.
In August 1944, he departed on another troopship from Oran to France as part of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of German-occupied Provence. After the US VI Corps secured a beachhead, Fanon's unit came ashore at Saint-Tropez and advanced inland. He participated in several engagements near Montbéliard, Doubs and was seriously wounded by shrapnel, which resulted in him being hospitalized for two months. Fanon was awarded a Croix de Guerre by Colonel Raoul Salan for his actions in battle, and in early 1945 rejoined his unit and fought in the Battle of Alsace. After German forces had been pushed out of France and Allied troops crossed the Rhine into Germany, Fanon and his fellow black troops were removed from their formations and sent southwards to Toulon as part of de Gaulle's policy of removing non-white soldiers from the French army. He was subsequently transferred to Normandy to await repatriation.
Although Fanon had been initially eager to participate in the Allied war effort, the racism he witnessed during the war disillusioned him. Fanon wrote to his brother Joby from Europe that "I've been deceived, and I am paying for my mistakes... I'm sick of it all." In the fall of 1945, a newly-discharged Fanon returned to Martinique, where he focused on completing his secondary education. Césaire, by now a friend and mentor of his, ran on the French Communist Party ticket as a delegate from Martinique to the first National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic, and Fanon worked for his campaign. Staying in Martinique long enough to complete his baccalauréat, Fanon proceeded to return to France, where he intended to study medicine and psychiatry.
France
Fanon was educated at the University of Lyon, where he also studied literature, drama and philosophy, sometimes attending Merleau-Ponty's lectures. During this period, he wrote three plays, of which two survive. After qualifying as a psychiatrist in 1951, Fanon did a residency in psychiatry at Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole under the radical Catalan psychiatrist François Tosquelles, who invigorated Fanon's thinking by emphasizing the role of culture in psychopathology.In 1948, Fanon started a relationship with Michèle Weyer, a medical student, who soon became pregnant. He left her for an 18-year-old high school student, Josie, whom he married in 1952. At the urging of his friends, he later recognized his daughter, Mireille, although he did not have contact with her. Paulin Joachim, who knew Fanon, said that on a number of occasions he had seen Fanon hit Josie.
In France, while completing his residency, Fanon wrote and published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people. Originally, the manuscript was the doctoral dissertation, submitted at Lyon, entitled Essay on the Disalienation of the Black, which was a response to the racism that Fanon experienced while studying psychiatry and medicine at the University in Lyon; the rejection of the dissertation prompted Fanon to publish it as a book. In 1951, for his doctor of medicine degree, he submitted another dissertation of narrower scope and a different subject. Left-wing philosopher Francis Jeanson, leader of the pro-Algerian independence Jeanson network, read Fanon's manuscript and, as a senior book editor at Éditions du Seuil in Paris, gave the book its new title and wrote its epilogue.
After receiving Fanon's manuscript at Seuil, Jeanson invited him to an editorial meeting. Amid Jeanson's praise of the book, Fanon exclaimed: "Not bad for a nigger, is it?" Insulted, Jeanson dismissed Fanon from his office. Later, Jeanson learned that his response had earned him the writer's lifelong respect, and Fanon acceded to Jeanson's suggestion that the book be entitled Black Skin, White Masks.
In the book, Fanon described the unfair treatment of black people in France and how they were disapproved of by white people. Frantz argued that racism and dehumanization directed toward black people caused feelings of inferiority among black people. This dehumanization prevented black people from fully assimilating into white society and, further, into full personhood. This caused psychological strife among black people, as even if they spoke French, obtained an education, and followed social customs associated with white people, they would still never be regarded as French, or a Man; instead, black people are defined as "Black Man" rather than "Man".
Algeria
After his residency, Fanon practised psychiatry at Pontorson, near Mont Saint-Michel, for another year and then in Algeria. He was chef de service at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria. He worked there until his deportation in January 1957.Fanon's methods of treatment started evolving, particularly by beginning socio-therapy to connect with his patients' cultural backgrounds. He also trained nurses and interns. Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, after having made contact with Pierre Chaulet at Blida in 1955. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French soldiers and officers who carried out torture in order to suppress anti-colonial resistance. Additionally, Fanon was also responsible for treating Algerian torture victims.
Fanon made extensive trips across Algeria, mainly in the Kabylia region, to study the cultural and psychological life of Algerians. His lost study of "The marabout of Si Slimane" is an example. These trips were also a means for clandestine activities, notably in his visits to the ski resort of Chrea which hid an FLN base.
Joining the FLN and exile from Algeria
By summer 1956, Fanon realized that he could no longer continue to support French efforts, even indirectly, via his hospital work. In November, he submitted his "Letter of Resignation to the Resident Minister", which later became an influential text of its own in anti-colonialist circles.
There comes a time when silence becomes dishonesty. The ruling intentions of personal existence are not in accord with the permanent assaults on the most commonplace values. For many months, my conscience has been the seat of unpardonable debates. And the conclusion is the determination not to despair of man, in other words, of myself. The decision I have reached is that I cannot continue to bear a responsibility at no matter what cost, on the false pretext that there is nothing else to be done.
Shortly afterwards, Fanon was expelled from Algeria and moved to Tunis, where he joined the FLN openly. He was part of the editorial collective of Al Moudjahid, for which he wrote until the end of his life. He also served as Ambassador to Ghana for the Provisional Algerian Government. He attended conferences in Accra, Conakry, Addis Ababa, Leopoldville, Cairo and Tripoli. Many of his shorter writings from this period were collected posthumously in the book Toward the African Revolution. In this book, Fanon reveals war tactical strategies; in one chapter, he discusses how to open a southern front to the war and how to run the supply lines.
Upon his return to Tunis, after his exhausting trip across the Sahara to open a Third Front, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. He went to the Soviet Union for treatment and experienced remission of his illness. When he came back to Tunis once again, he dictated his testament The Wretched of the Earth. When he was not confined to his bed, he delivered lectures to Armée de Libération Nationale officers at Ghardimao on the Algerian–Tunisian border. He traveled to Rome for a three-day meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, who had greatly influenced his work. Sartre agreed to write a preface to Fanon's last book, The Wretched of the Earth.