A hybrid political education collaboration between Haymarket Books and the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction.
Hailed by supporters as the preeminent prophet of midcentury decolonization and decried by his adversaries as an apostle of bloody violence, Frantz Fanon means dramatically different things to different people. Born in the French Antilles and trained as a psychiatrist in Europe, Fanon eventually dedicated himself, in word and deed, to the anticolonial revolution in Algeria. As a result, Fanon stands apart not only because he sought to understand reality, but because he dedicated himself wholly to changing it. “Each generation,” Fanon famously writes, “must discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” Join us as we seek to discover our mission together.
This 12-week course seeks to understand Fanon’s intellectual and political trajectory as a whole, reading selections from his four major English-language publications, with an eye to the following questions: What is the relationship between racism and (de-)colonization? What does it mean to “stretch” Marxist concepts, as Fanon puts it? What is the role of violence in history? What does Fanon teach us about contemporary struggles, and Palestinian liberation in particular?
