Colonialism Poisons Both Sides: Fanon on Race, the Psyche, and the Violence of Decolonization
Fanon on colonial alienation, Black Skin White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth. Race, psyche, and decolonization.
Steps
- 1
- Reading· ~13 min
Black Skin, White Masks: The Psychology of Colonial Alienation
Fanon's first great book, his analysis of how colonialism gets inside the psyche of both the colonized and the colonizer, producing specific pathologies in both, and why neither can be healed without dismantling the colonial structure that produced them.
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- Reading· ~11 min
The Manichean World: How Colonialism Structures Space, Bodies, and Consciousness
The spatial, political, and ontological analysis of the colonial world in The Wretched of the Earth, and why Fanon says the colonial world is not just unjust but constitutively violent.
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- Reading· ~12 min
Violence, Catharsis, and the Pitfalls of National Consciousness
The most controversial argument in Fanon, violence as a form of psychic regeneration for the colonized, and his far less discussed but equally important critique of what happens after independence if national consciousness fails to become genuine social transformation.
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- Reading· ~10 min
National Culture, the Intellectual, and the New Humanism
The constructive side of Fanon's project, what genuine decolonization of culture looks like, what the role of the colonized intellectual should be, and what Fanon means by a new humanism that is not just European humanism with different personnel.
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- Text Explore· ~8 min
Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth: Key Passages
Read Fanon's most important passages, the train scene, the analysis of the Manichean world, the catharsis argument, and the call for a new humanism, in their full complexity.
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- Argument Map· ~10 min
From the Psyche to the Revolution: Fanon's Complete Architecture
Map Fanon's full philosophical project across both major works, from his intellectual formation through his clinical practice to his revolutionary theory and its legacy.
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- Dialogue· ~10 min
Dialogue: Was Fanon Right About Violence?
The argument that has generated more heat than any other in Fanon, and the question of whether his analysis of its cathartic function entails its political endorsement.
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- Reflection· ~8 min
Reflection: The Colonial Inside
Fanon's most enduring contribution is not a historical analysis of colonialism that ended in 1961. It is a set of diagnostic tools for understanding how structures of domination get inside the psyche and organize experience from within.
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