Biko on non-white and black: improving social reality

This paper examines Steve Biko’s distinction between black and non-white as a project in the “amelioration” of social concepts and categories. Biko himself—it has been persuasively argued by Mabogo More and Lewis Gordon—writes in the tradition of existential phenomenology. More and Gordon explore Biko’s continuity with Frantz Fanon, and in this paper I draw on their interpretations, attempting to complement and elaborate on these continuities. I also, however, attempt to show how Biko moves beyond Fanon in crucial ways, solving problems that Fanon confronted. By examining Fanon’s and Biko’s categories in light of recent work in social metaphysics, I explore the ways Biko attempts to transform an existing set of oppressive social categories in the world into new social categories

Book review: the books that inspired Harry Goulbourne: “Fanon’s black skin, white masks suggested that I attended to the question of who I was”

Harry Goulbourne has written many books on race relations and ethnicity and identity. Harry talks us through his fragmented school days in South London, how his engagement in student politics drove his interest in American History, and how the work of Frantz Fanon had a big impact on how he thought about himself

Identity and identification in Azouz Begag’s Le Gone du Chaâba and Béni ou le paradis privé

"Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be recognised by him [...] It is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend." (Fanon 216-17)The dependence of one’s “human worth and reality” on mutual recognition, highlighted by Frantz Fanon in his seminal text Black Skin White Masks, first published in 1952, plays a central role in the construction of identity in Azouz Begag’s first two novels, Le Gone du Chaâba and Béni ou le paradis privé, published in 1986 and 1989 respectively. Using contemporary post-colonial criticism to carry out a close reading of these two texts, this article will take into account the memory of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), which marked Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule, and its connection to France’s current attitude towards ethnic difference. Subsequently, the effect of these factors on considerations of contemporary Franco-Algerian selfhood will be examined, and the analysis will go on to demonstrate how an Algerian presence in France, forty-eight years after the end of the Algerian War, continues to come into conflict with the French Republic’s constitutional definition of nationhood, which favours unity of the nation by uniformity rather than an embracing of multiple identities

Frantz Fanon and the location of "national culture"

El artículo presenta la reflexión de Frantz Fanon sobre la "nación" y, en particular, sobre la "cultura nacional". La obra de Fanon es una llave genealógica para discutir los procesos críticos del colonialismo contemporáneo. Sus textos analizan la racialización de las relaciones sociales en el mundo colonial y proponen que la tarea descolonizadora es una que afecta las tramas más profundas de la subjetividad. En tal sentido, su reflexión reconoce momentos cruciales de este proceso en la lengua colonial y en los cuerpos sometidos a las operaciones de la racialización. Ambos escenarios conforman el medio desde donde Fanon imagina una política descolonizadora que desemboca en el espacio de la cultura nacional.The article presents Frantz Fanon´s thoughts about postcolonial "nation" and, particularly, about "national culture". Fanon’s work is a genealogical key to discuss the critical processes of contemporary colonialism. His texts analyze the racialization of social relations in the colonial world and propose that the decolonization task is one that affects the deepest frames of subjectivity. As such, Fanon´s ideas embody and recognize crucial moments of this process in the colonial language and bodies subjected to the processes of racialization. Both scenarios shape the medium from where Fanon imagines a decolonizing policy which flows into the space of national culture.Fil: De Oto, Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica

Postcolonial Theory

Colonialism and its aftermath prompt a form of cultural studies that seeks to address questions of identity politics and justice that are the ongoing legacy of empires. Postcolonial theory has its origins in resistance movements, principally at the local, and frequently at nonmetropolitan, levels. Among its early thinkers, three seem of special importance: Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, and Frantz Fanon. Antonio Gram sci ( 1891- 193 7) was a founder of the Communist Party in Italy. In his Prison Notebooks (1971 ), he wrote insightfully about the proletariat, designated by him as subalterns; his thoughts regarding the responsibilities of public intellectuals inspired many, and his notion of hegemony and resistance proved influential. Paulo Freire ( 192 1- 97) was a Brazilian with a special interest in education. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed ( 1970) seeks to restore subjectivity to objectified, oppressed classes in society. Frantz Fanon ( 1925- 6 l) was a psychiatrist of Caribbean descent who participated in the Algerian independence movement. His two books, The Wretched of the Earth ( 1963) and Black Skin, White Masks ( 1967) inspired many anticolonial struggles and investigations of racism\u27s many manifestations

How a professionals slash writer disrupts readers' expectations

Professionals fandom is a fertile ground for AU stories. At face value, Rhiannon's The Larton Chronicles is a pleasant, cozy AU that bears only a token resemblance to the show that inspired it. On closer examination, though, it disrupts a number of the themes that thread through The Professionals, including those of sexuality, race, and class

‘They Called Them Communists Then … What D'You Call ‘Em Now? … Insurgents?’. Narratives of British Military Expatriates in the Context of the New Imperialism

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which the colonial past provides material for contemporary actors' understanding of difference. The research from which the paper is drawn involved interview and ethnographic work in three largely white working-class estates in an English provincial city. For this paper we focus on ten life-history interviews with older participants who had spent some time abroad in the British military. Our analysis adopts a postcolonial framework because research participants' current constructions of an amorphous 'Other' (labelled variously as black people, immigrants, foreigners, asylum-seekers or Muslims) reveal strong continuities with discourses deployed by the same individuals to narrate their past experiences of living and working as either military expatriates or spouses during British colonial rule. Theoretically, the paper engages with the work of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. In keeping with a postcolonial approach, we work against essentialised notions of identity based on 'race' or class. Although we establish continuity between white working-class military emigration in the past and contemporary racialised discourses, we argue that the latter are not class-specific, being as much the creations of the middle-class media and political elite

Usos de Fanon. Un recorrido por tres lecturas

La circulación de la escritura de Frantz Fanon en Argentina, en medios intelectuales y políticos de los años sesenta y setenta, ofrece la oportunidad de analizar dos dimensiones centrales de sus tesis sobre el colonialismo: por un lado, el carácter revisionista que ellas tienen con respecto a visiones eurocéntricas de la modernidad y, por otro, las formas específicas en que se articularon con algunas posiciones intelectuales del período. Recorremos algunos aspectos de tres lecturas de Fanon, la de Francisco Delich, José Sazbón y Carlos Fernández Pardo y las ponemos en relación con los debates poscoloniales y descoloniales acerca de la colonialidad del saber y la diferencia colonial. Palabras clave: Fanon- Colonialidad- Filosofía latinoamericana-Poscolonial-Descolonial Abstract The circulation of Frantz Fanon`s writings in the political and intellectual milieu of the sixties and seventies in Argentina offers the opportunity to analyze two central dimensions of his theses about colonialism: first, their revisionist nature in relation to Eurocentric visions of modernity, and second, the specific ways in which they articulated with some intellectual points of view from that period. We visit here three readings of Fanon, by Francisco Delich, Carlos Fernández Pardo, and José Sazbón, and place them in relation to postcolonial and decolonial debates about the coloniality of knowledge and colonial difference.The circulation of Frantz Fanon`s writings in the political and intellectual milieu of the sixties and seventies in Argentina offers the opportunity to analyze two central dimensions of his theses about colonialism: first, their revisionist nature in relation to Eurocentric visions of modernity, and second, the specific ways in which they articulated with some intellectual points of view from that period. We visit here three readings of Fanon, by Francisco Delich, José Sazbón and Carlos Fernández Pardo, and place them in relation to postcolonial and decolonial debates about the coloniality of knowledge and colonial difference.Fil: de Oto, Alejandro José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico - CONICET - Mendoza. Instituto de Ciencias Humanas, Sociales y Ambientales; Argentina

[Review of] Joanne V. Gabbin. Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition

Numerous and diverse agendas have competed for consideration in attempts to establish and set the parameters of the black aesthetic tradition. W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson are only two of several prominent Americans who have participated in this continuing and frequently intense dialogue. Yet perhaps no voice has been more consistently consulted and valued than that of Sterling A. Brown, distinguished teacher, scholar, poet, and critic. Despite the general acknowledgement of Brown\u27s contributions to American literature in general and black American literature in particular, comprehensive scholarly analyses of his unique contributions have been limited. Joanne V. Gabbin addresses this void in the scholarship in Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition, a work that includes an analysis of Brown\u27s own creative efforts as well as an outline and discussion of his critical views