Fanon

The Postcolonial Imagination

Nigel C. Gibson

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780745622613, 9780745622606
• eBook ISBN: 9781509526758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

Frantz Fanon was a French psychiatrist turned Algerian revolutionary of Martinican origin, and one of the most important and controversial thinkers of the postwar period. A veritable "intellect on fire," Fanon was a radical thinker with original theories on race, revolution, violence, identity and agency.

This book is an excellent introduction to the ideas and legacy of Fanon. Gibson explores him as a truly complex character in the context of his time and beyond. He argues that for Fanon, theory has a practical task to help change the world. Thus Fanon's "untidy dialectic," Gibson contends, is a philosophy of liberation that includes cultural and historical issues and visions of a future society. In a profoundly political sense, Gibson asks us to reevaluate Fanon's contribution as a critic of modernity and reassess in a new light notions of consciousness, humanism, and social change.

This is a fascinating study that will interest undergraduates and above in postcolonial studies, literary theory, cultural studies, sociology, politics, and social and political theory, as well as general readers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations for Fanon’s Works
• Introduction
• 1 The Racial Gaze: Black Slave, White Master
• 2 Psychoanalysis and the Black’s Inferiority Complex
• 3 Negritude and the Descent into a “Real Hell”
• 4 Becoming Algerian
• 5 Violent Concerns
• 6 Radical Mutations: Toward a Fighting Culture
• 7 Crossing the Dividing Line: Spontaneity and Organization
• 8 Nationalism and a New Humanism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement