Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue

Customer Reviews:

Important collection if essays on Frantz Fanon.......2002-03-22

Anyone interested in Frantz Fanon and post colonial studies would do well to start here. This well rounded critical volume discusses Fanon's thought and its contexts as well as current debates. The collection includes essays by Said, Gates, Bhabha, McClintock and Fuss as well as important essays by less well known authors including Bulhan, Sharpley-Whiting, Gibson (who also writes a provocative introduction) and Turner. It has a good number of essays on the debates around Fanon and Feminism. 460 pages at this price, it's a deal.

Frantz Fanon and his legacy.......2001-01-28

Forged in the colonialism of Martinique, confirmed by the racism of Paris and vividly enlivened by the Algerian revolution, Frantz Fanon's all too brief life (1925-1961) and thought were inextricably linked to the transformation of reality. Fanon's historical importance as a Black theorist with a total critique of imperialism has made him a crucial figure in the Black struggles in the U.S., the fight against apartheid in South Africa and postcolonial theory.

RETHINKING FANON: THE CONTINUING DIALOGUE is a new collection of essays, edited by Nigel Gibson, which highlights Fanon's significance by airing controversies over his legacy. The issues which generate the most controversy concern the meaning of Fanon's humanism and his assessment of the role of women in the Algerian revolution. The two issues are intimately linked.

Fanon's famous critique of "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness" outlines the ways in which a revolution can stop short or turn into its opposite if a narrow vision of the past is imposed as a substitute for the ongoing development of a new culture. In one of the most moving pieces in the collection, Algerian feminist Marie-Aimée Helie-Lucas relates the hideous damage done by delaying women's liberation until after the revolution. The building of a "national culture" falls disproportionately on women, who become symbolic carriers of traditions which are "seen as ahistorical and immutable" (275). "Defending women's rights 'now'-this now being any historical moment-is always a betrayal of the people, the nation, the revolution, religion, national identity, cultural roots" (280).

Helie-Lucas holds Fanon partly responsible for this bind in which women were placed after the revolution, claiming that he created a myth of Algerian women's "revolutionary virtue of the veil" (275). T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting considers this argument, but rejects it, saying that Fanon was not trying to make a stagnant principle out of the veil. Instead, he was dialectically recording a fluid revolutionary situation, relating "Algerian women's resistance in a way that can be remembered, recalled, and corrected by women in their present quests for self-actualization" (350).

The debate on women's liberation is the most exciting section of the book, framed as it is by the voices of Algerian women liberationists. Zouligha, described as an activist, writes movingly of the silences that pervade an Algeria terrorized by armed Islamist groups, but she warns that it is not enough to simply oppose religious fundamentalism. Those "women's associations who limited themselves to the struggle against the Islamists ended up allying themselves with the state power" (366).

A NEW HUMANISM

The issues Zouligha raises are key to understanding the dialectic of revolution for which Fanon was reaching. As Nigel Gibson writes, "in contrast to an 'Islamic' nation, Fanon posited not simply secularism but a 'new humanism'" (29). This concept is taken up by Lou Turner and John Alan in an excerpt from the News and Letters pamphlet, FRANTZ FANON, SOWETO AND AMERICAN BLACK THOUGHT. They stress that the culture that mattered to Fanon was not an invented Black past or idyllic utopia, but the new ideas and new human relations forged in revolution: "To Fanon, culture without revolution lacks substance" (117).

Postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha takes a dimmer view of Fanon's humanism, which he dismisses as being "as banal as it is beatific," reductively equating this humanism to psychological categories like "overcompensation" (191). Edward Said traces the logic in Fanon's humanism, though he fears it has been "too strenuous for the new postcolonial states to actualize" (213).

Nigel Gibson understands Fanon's humanism as the dialectic pulse of "the social and democratic processes of becoming historical protagonists" (435). He contends that Fanon saw decolonization as the process of how a "culture becomes reinvigorated as a FIGHTING culture...(which) rather than valorize 'tradition' seeks to forge totally new relations between people" (420).

Such an engaged battle of ideas marks the entire book and Fanon's legacy. For instance, the relationship of violence and revolution that Fanon developed theoretically is often taken as a blanket justification for violence. But Fanon was a dialectician and a revolutionary: all actions take place in the context of concrete historic particularities. Thus, he writes that the uprisings against colonialism are "not a treatise on the universal, but the untidy affirmation of an original idea propounded as an absolute" (quoted 209). As Tony Martin writes, "the most eloquent testimony to the depravity of French colonialism is provided by the fact that it could have driven a man as desirous of justice and a true humanism as Fanon was to the inescapable conclusion that violence was the only answer" (85).

'ABSENCE OF IDEOLOGY'

This untidy affirmation of struggle evidences itself in the social organization of movements for freedom. Lou Turner brings all the issues together in his article on "Dialectics of Organization and the Algerian Revolution," tracing the organizational struggles of the FLN, showing how the focus shifted from "the new Algerian society to come" to "diplomatic and military concerns" (373).

Turner shows Fanon's revolutionary practice: how he fought this betrayal by going directly to those fighting in the countryside and how THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH was written to warn of the dangers ahead. Turner concludes that the "crisis in FLN-governed Algeria today is haunted by the specter of this retreat from defining the ideological ground of the revolution," which left an "ideological void...filled by Arab nationalism and Islamicist tendencies" (379).

It was Fanon who warned that "the great danger that threatens Africa is the absence of ideology" (379). The voices of the women's liberationists in this book make clear the cost of settling for anything other than totally new human relations and a new society. The battle of ideas matters; lives are at stake.

Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (Path in Psychology)
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Oppression from the Human Perspective

For anyone interested in psychology

A must have for true enlightenment

Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (Path in Psychology)
Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Black Skin, White Masks

The Wretched of the Earth

Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy

A Dying Colonialism

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Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology, Third Edition

ASIN: 0306484382

Customer Reviews:

Oppression from the Human Perspective.......2001-06-17

This book is expensive but it is worth it. Bulhan explicates Fanon's theory of oppression and violence from the perpsective of the oppressed as well as the oppressor. Observations and perspectives of oppression have generally come through rational thinking - here Bulhan opens the door of Fanon's mind and heart to show us what the experience of oppression and violence feels like and the damage it does to the psyche of the oppressed.

Violence is redefined as "any relation, process, or condition by which or a group violates the physical, social, and/or physical integrity of another person." This definition is then explained from the personal, institutional and structural levels where violence is an often sanctioned and legitimatized activity.

The chapter on the Master Slave Paradigms provides powerful insights into the development of the inferiority/superiority complexes. This chapter will take you past the socioeconomic causes of slavery and oppression into the human cause.

And there is much more. If you want a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of oppression, read this book.

For anyone interested in psychology.......1999-12-28

This book is a must read. Bulhan takes the reader on a tour beginning with a "Quest for a Paradigm", to suggestions for practical solutions. The index is also packed with valuable references that will educate the reader and give a more in-depth understanding of Bulhan's and Fanon's thinking. The most interesting and captivating chapter is the one on the 'Master and Slave Paradigms.' This is not a one time read. This book book must be studied over and over due to the in-depth analysis and research that it possesses. For anyone interested in psychology and is looking for new answers to the issues facing us today, this is a must have book.

A must have for true enlightenment.......1999-09-19

This book is an in depth look into the complexities of oppression including the master/slave relationship.

Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

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A superb and accessible contribution to Fanon scholarship

Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Key Contemporary Thinkers)
Nigel C. Gibson
Manufacturer: Polity Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Toward the African Revolution (Fanon, Frantz)
Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue
A Dying Colonialism
Fanon's Dialectic of Experience
The Wretched of the Earth

ASIN: 0745622615

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

A superb and accessible contribution to Fanon scholarship.......2003-09-12

With the publication of Nigel Gibson's 'Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination' we now have a third good book on Fanon to go with Lewis Gordon's 1995 'Fanon and the Crisis of European Man' and Ato Sekyi-Otu's 1996 'Fanon's Dialectic of Experience'.

Gibson's prose is elegant and clear and his book is, by far, the best introduction to Fanon's life and work. But it does much more than this. Gibson explains Fanon's theorization of racism and anti-racism through existential and pyschoanalytic theory, his exploration of the promises and dangers of both Negritude and nationalist resistance to colonialism and his thinking about intellectuals, nationalism and humanism. In each case Gibson is able to draw on an understated but expert knowledge of the philosophical and historical contexts in which Fanon wrote as well as the realities of contemporary Africa. The key idea that runs throughout the book is that of the dialectic. Gibson argues, persuasively, that there is an `unstable, critical, and creative element' at the heart of Fanon's thought that seeks to move through apparently `absolute, irreconcilable contradictions' by working in a critical and actional mode for reciprocal and critical agency in the `fluctuating movement' of the objectified towards humanity. This kind of analysis is what we would expect from any responsible engagement with Fanon's work and Gibson develops it very well. But he goes further and makes an original and significant contribution to thinking about Fanon by showing that for Fanon this kind of progress requires the development of a fighting culture.

Gibson works with this idea throughout his book but deals with it most explicitly in a chapter on Fanon's theorization of the lived experience of resistance in the Algerian revolution. Gibson shows that for Fanon military strategies must be subordinated to the political task of bringing into being a `whole universe of resistances'. In Mexico the Zapatista army uses its guns only to create the space for politics and in Durban the movements against disconnections and evictions use their legal arsenal in the same way. In each case the refusal of an elite politics is premised on the desire to develop radically democratic alternatives that are just too large, too multiple and too immediate to be co-opted or mediated. Gibson goes on to show that for Fanon this process requires a constant defense of imagination and creation of the spaces and attitudes necessary for self-creating cultural regeneration. Gibson also explores, in illuminating depth, how Fanon sees the openness, fluidity and instability of this kind of social movement as the key to transcending the Manichean binaries of both colonialism and many responses to it. So for example if colonialism employs its medical technologies in its project of domination the colonized will often develop a deep suspicion of these technologies. But when, in Fanon's words, the doctor is `sleeping on the ground with the men and women of the mechatas, living the drama of the people' then, in Gibson's words `lived experience...liberates and transgresses the restrictive physical and mental boundaries of the colonial...order.'

State seeks to mobilize particular nationalist discourses to produce good citizens - citizens who only take what they can afford and are obedient and docile in the face of the systematic and often violent exclusion of the poor from the means to life. Citizens, who, in other words, wait patiently for things to get better while they get worse. The World Bank, and its academics, journalists and NGOs, seek to mobilize a universalizing set of discourses to produce The Poor - a universal category of people
whose material circumstances are a consequence of the venality of other poor people, inefficiencies on the part of the state and the delusion that they are victims of larger structural forces. Overcoming this delusion and developing entrepreneurship and survivalist organizations that offer mutual support are presented as the only grounds for hope. As these ideological pincers close more tightly the courage and imagination recommended by Fanon and very eloquently explored by Nigel Gibson become ever more necessary and generative.

Book Description

"Fanon was consummately incapable of telling the story of himself. He lived in the immediacy of the moment, with an intensity that embodied everything he evoked. Fanon's discourse pertained to a present tense that was unburdened by its narrative past. The little we knew about his personal life had been gleaned from passing allusions, brief glimpses that vanished as quickly as they appeared. . . . Fanon had a profound talent for life; he was a man who wanted to be the subject and actor of his own life, and it was for this reason that he was so engaging and disarming—so alive."—from the Introduction

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was born in Martinique, and in 1943 left to fight in Europe with Free French forces. After 1945 he studied medicine and psychiatry in Lyons and began to write. His first analysis of the effects of racism and postcolonialism, Black Skin, White Masks, appeared in 1952 and would become a foundational text for the liberation movements of the 1960s and later for postcolonial studies. In 1952 he moved to Algeria and practiced at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in French Algeria until 1957. From that year he worked full time for the Algerian independence movement, including a brief appointment as the movement's ambassador in Ghana.

One of Fanon's few surviving contemporaries, Alice Cherki worked closely with Fanon at the psychiatric hospital in Blida and then later for the Algerian cause in Tunisia. This book is a record of "an epoch, a life, and a body of work often viewed as inadmissible." Cherki offers a unique assessment of Fanon's complex personality, illuminating both his psychiatric practice—of which she says, "Fanon possessed a tremendous intuition about the unconscious and a great erudition in psychoanalytic theory"—and the sources of his political activism, of his intellectual career as a pivot of the quickly changing world.

Given the continuing relevance of Fanon's insights into the enduring legacy of colonialism on the psyches of the colonized, this compelling and personal account of his life and work will be required reading for anyone interested in the consequences of empire.

Fanon, Frantz (Panaf Great Lives)
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Fanon Lives

Fanon, Frantz (Panaf Great Lives)
Panaf
Manufacturer: Panaf Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0901787302

Customer Reviews:

Fanon Lives.......2007-01-24

This book is about one great pan-African, Frantz Fanon, who during his short life on this earth (1925-1961), proved to be one of the foremost thinkers and fighters of African liberation. Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who was born in Martinique in the West Indies in 1925. He is one of the foremost writers and intellectuals on black liberation from racial oppression and revolutionary armed struggle. Fanon was not just an armchair theorist with an incisive mind but a practical man who elected to get involved in the fight for freedom in the Algerian war of independence. He participated in the Algerian Liberation movement, the FLN, in the Algerian war of independence against the French in the 1950s.

One of Fanon most well known book is "The Wretched of the Earth" first published in 1961. Fanon's thinking was influenced by his analysis of testimonies that he got from Algerian and French patients that he treated during the Algerian war that had been traumatized by the war. The testimonies included the French troops and police torturing innocent civilians, mass killings and assassinations and rapes of defenceless men, women and children.

The Wretched of the Earth is a classic book written in the Communist framework that analyses the psychology of colonized people and eloquently explains their anger and frustration. He explains the techniques that imperialists use to subjugate the colonized peoples. Fanon discusses the social and economic basis of colonialism. He highlights the willingness of colonial powers to use violence, their attack on African culture and way of life, among other things. He concluded that violence was the only way to free the oppressed people.

In "Black Skin, White Masks", Fanon develops his thesis about the impact of inferiority complex of subjugated peoples and the alienation of some of them from their kind resulting in their wish to identified with the colonialists or imitate the European.

"A Dying Colonialism" is one of the lesser known books by Franz Fanon. In this book, Fanon espouses his beliefs and ideas that it is only through violent revolution that colonial repression and cultural trauma in the Third World can be ended. He argued that violence is a cleansing force which frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction, making him fearless and restoring his self-respect.

In his teenage years, Fanon was politically active and participated in the guerrilla struggle against the supporters of the pro-Nazi French Vichy government. He served in the Free French forces. After the war he studied medicine and psychiatry in Paris and Lyons.

Fanon's ideas have been very influential to all the subsequent liberation wars on the African continent and elsewhere, the civil rights movement and black consciousness movements worldwide. Fanon's ideas about how the coloured people can liberate themselves (physically and mentally) influenced many leaders of revolutionary movements that were fighting colonialism. Some organisations in the USA, such as the Nation of Islam, appear to embrace a lot of Fanon's ideas and thinking. His influence extended as far afield as the Tamil Tigers fighting in Sri Lanka for an independent homeland, the Palestinians fighting for independence and dignity, among others.

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Highly recommended
Fascinating!
In Depth look at the origins of the civil rights movement

Frantz Fanon: A Biography
David Macey
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue
A Dying Colonialism
Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Key Contemporary Thinkers)
Black Skin, White Masks
Toward the African Revolution (Fanon, Frantz)

ASIN: 0312300425

Book Description

Born in Martinique, then as now a departement of France, Frantz Fanon (l925-61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyons before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a soldier in the Free French Army, for which he had volunteered and in whose ranks he saw combat during the liberation of France. In Algeria, he came into contact with the Front de Liberation National whose ruthless struggle for an independent Algeria was met with quite exceptional violence by the French Army. Fanon identified completely with the FLN and soon became a marked man. Forced to flee Algeria when he resigned his post, Fanon subsequently worked with the FLN as a propagandist and ambassador.

Based on extensive and original research, this is the most compete and objective biography of Fanon yet written. It sweeps away the myths that have grown up around him and reveals Fanon to be a complex figure, infinitely more interesting than the theorist of anti-colonial violence celebrated by the left in the 60s. Macey shows Fanon to have been a man formed in the context of the French Caribbean, with its history of slavery and racism, and traces Fanon's intellectual career as a political thinker and psychiatrist with great care, setting it against the background of post-war French culture.

David Macey has done justice for the first time to the extraordinary life of a complex figure, flawed in some respects but fundamentally a humanist committed to the eradication of colonialism, a man whose angry and eloquent writings are still of fierce relevance today.

Customer Reviews:

Highly recommended.......2005-07-26

A superb introduction to French colonial thought and literature. For those of you who are interested in understanding the historical context within which this remarkable figure lived, I highly recommend this book. David Macey carefully addresses the various misrepresentations of Fanon, such as that by Hannah Arendt (most of the French of the time and others), who portrayed Fanon as simply being synonomous with violence. Fanon was a much more complex person than that: Driven, highly intelligent, a product of the French educational system, of WWII, of racism, a psychiatrist, a writer, yet born in Martinique and, after accepting a position in Algeria (rather than stay in France or return to Martinique), finds himself embroiled in an anti-France Algerian nationalist movement. The influences on him, his various professional decisions, as well as those that led him to direct involvement in wider African affairs, are carefully considered and documented. The footnotes, bibliography, and index are all much appreciated by this reader.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and will surely refer to it again.

Fascinating!.......2005-04-21

This book, though enormous, was an easy and entertaining read. I have really only one objection. The book was a great history book but there weren't enough details about Fanon the man. I do think that historical contextualization is essential in biographies and in fact they're one of my favorite ways to learn history.

However, you do expect to read a narrative of someone's life, whereas most of the time, I was reading a history of the Algerian Revolution. Which I wanted to anyway and have no problem with, that's just not what I thought I was getting into. I was greatly moved by Fanon's tragic early death and by his humanist ideals, and I think Macey was right to emphasize, as the famous academic Homi Bhabha recently did, that Fanon's advocacy of anti-colonial violence is not the most important or enduring aspect of his legacy. First and foremost Fanon wanted to see a better and more just world, and his unrelenting passion to empower the poorest of the poor-the wretched of the earth-is a justly lasting, powerful, and evocative sentiment.

However, there just wasn't much about him. I didn't learn all that much about him. The details on his personal life or intimate relationships were very scarce. I understand that not many records remain that describe his relationship with his wife or family but when you pick up a biography you expect intimate personal details that help make a person fully human.

If not enough of that exists anymore, then Macey, a talented and sensitive writer, should have called this book an analysis of Fanon's WRITINGS, not his life. Because most of what Macey tells us about Fanon he gets out of Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" and his other writings-he provides few interviews and even fewer insights. Maybe it's too late to write that book, but if you want to call this a biography, you have to make it one.

I still recommend the book if you are interested in Fanon's writings and the Algerian Revolution, which I was and am. But if you want to learn about Fanon the man, forget about it. Nothing in the book made me feel as if I knew anything other than Fanon the theorist and revolutionary. You get no sense of any other dimension of him than you would get if you read all his books.

In Depth look at the origins of the civil rights movement.......2001-12-28

Bobby Seale gives virtually sole credit to Fanon's works as inspiration for the organization of the Black Panther Party with Huey Newton. Frantz Fanon led a brief yet complex life fighting racist communist French colonialism in his adopted homeland of Algeria. This biography is not a quick read, and is intended for people that are willing to take their time getting through this 500 page monstrosity. In order to understand the opposite views of African politics through French colonialism during the same time period, reading about Leopold Senghor is an absolute must. Bravo to anyone seriously reading these philosophies! It's uncanny how much of Fanon's principles still relate to modern politics.

Frantz Fanon: A Spiritual Biography (Lives and Legacies)

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Better than "Scoring"
Smart and passionate writing from a man who understands.
Excellent; thought provoking
Fascinating

Frantz Fanon: A Spiritual Biography (Lives and Legacies)
Patrick Ehlen
Manufacturer: Crossroad 8th Avenue
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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A Dying Colonialism
Black Skin, White Masks
The Wretched of the Earth

ASIN: 0824523547

Book Description

The latest in our Lives and Legacies series of spiritual biographies pay tribute to Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) and commemorates the 40th Anniversary of his death.

Customer Reviews:

Better than "Scoring".......2004-06-19

This book is only as good as AND NO BETTER THAN first base. Trust me folks, I've been there. True, only once and yes it was about 18 years ago but I'm no dummy. The title is a clear cut case of the ol' Bait and Switch. Most of the book ends up being about one time when the author's basement flooded and how it ruined all his old "Prince Valiant" comics.

Smart and passionate writing from a man who understands........2002-02-06

This book was written with a depth of understanding of the human psyche that only a poet/psychologist could produce. When one reads an average biography one normaly can only gleen snippets of the reasoning in the subject's actions-Pat Ehlen has let me in on the reasoning of a man who's influence can be felt in all of modern black history. A terrific read.

Excellent; thought provoking.......2001-01-30

Though I was unfamiliar with Fanon before reading this book; I found this biography to be fascinating. Well written and very interesting.

Fascinating.......2001-01-15

A wonderful read all the way through. I knew little of Fanon's work outside the seminal "Wretched of The Earth" and even less of Ehlen with the exception of the compelling short prose of "Aunties". But after a friend reccomended this provocative, exceptionally well written biography I plan to investigate both Ehlen and Fanon thoroughly. An excellent piece of writing--I reccomend it to all.

Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Critical Readers)

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An excellent (critical) reader

Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Critical Readers)
Renee T. White
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue
Toward the African Revolution (Fanon, Frantz)
A Dying Colonialism
Black Skin, White Masks
The Location of Culture (Routledge Classics)

ASIN: 1557868956

Book Description

The wide range of disciplines represented here enables the volume to stand as a contextualizing work in Fanon studies. It contains new original essays on Africana philosophy, the human sciences, dialectical humanism, women of color studies, neocolonial and postcolonial studies, violence, and tragedy.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent (critical) reader.......2002-11-29

This book includes twenty-one articles on Fanon as well as a `Forward', an `Introduction' and an `Afterward' which are all valuable pieces in their own right. The standard of the work is generally high and a particular feature of this volume is that many of the contributions make use of the editors' new, and often illuminating, translations from Fanon's original French.

The introduction includes a brief but compelling biographical sketch and a useful five stage outline of the development of Fanon studies. This runs from the early engagement with Fanon's ideas by practical revolutionaries like Che Guevara and Paulo Freire through to biographical research; investigations into Fanon's contribution to political theory; the analysis of Fanon by postmodern and postcolonial thinkers like Said, Bhabha, Gates and Spivak and on to the recent attempts to use Fanon's thought to develop original work. The editors make it clear that this is where they locate this volume and that their purpose `is neither to glorify nor denigrate Fanon but instead to explore ways in which he is a useful thinker' (p. 7).

Fanon is clear about the necessity to develop `a voracious taste for the concrete' and it's no surprise that Marxists like Cedric Robinson have attacked Homi Bhabha, Louis Gates Jr and Gayatri Spivak for bringing `an imagined Fanon in (to) their self-referential debates on colonial discourse'. Most writing here takes the world outside the seminar room into account and the majority of the articles are valuable attempts to investigate how Fanon's work can help us to make sense of the world. Fanon's ideas are bought to bear on everything from the struggle to decolonise psychiatry and psychoanalysis through to the politics of identity, the sociology of resistance and the relationship between national and feminist struggles.

In recent times, Fanon has often been appropriated and domesticated by commentators who chose to ignore his clear commitment to, as Cedric Robinson puts it, `locate and subsequently advertise a fixed and stable site of radical liberationist criticism and creativity' (p. 87). Moreover, as well as ignoring Fanon's commitment to revolutionary change in the economic structure of society, many commentators have also ignored, his understanding of the role of the intellectual as well as his critique of the national bourgeoisie's attempt to reduce the nation to itself, his Leninist theory of imperialism and his insistence that the struggles of black Africa and black America are not equivalent.

While not all of the papers in this book take Fanon's African radicalism as their central concern, none of them can be accused of writing as though Fanon were not a revolutionary. Only a few write as though Fanon saw no distinction between material conditions in America and Africa. The majority of the papers here, as well as the introduction and afterward which frame the collection, do give due and welcome recognition to the consciously and explicitly radical and African intellectual legacy of Frantz Fanon. Although all the contributors to Fanon: A Critical Reader were based in the USA at the time of writing their papers, at least five of the 21 papers in the volume are likely to be of particular value to readers seeking to think from Africa about Fanon has to say to Africa.

The first is by South African émigré David Goldberg. He contributes an excellent paper on race and in/visibility. He begins with a careful analysis of Fanon's highly nuanced phenomenology of invisibility (in terms of his excellent analysis of the significance of `the veil' in colonial context) and goes on to argue that `the value and virtue of in/visibility are contextually determined' (p. 189). And so, the invisibility of a group can make them powerless and shield them from power. Equally, the visibility of a group can make them powerful and leave them exposed and threatened. Goldberg applies this insight to a number of contemporary examples including the way in which the increased visibility of the racially marginalised in Los Angeles and Johannesburg has led the powerful to organise the entrenchment of spatial segregation and the insulation of racialised daily life experiences through `fences, alarms, and private armed response units' (p. 196).

Another useful paper is the one by Gail Presby who, at the time of writing, was working on the Sage Philosophy project in Nairobi. She develops a comparison on the role of violence in the thought of Gandhi, Mandela and Fanon. Her argument is that all three thinkers share a common diagnoses of the colonial condition and that, while their strategies for achieving a more human world have much in common, there are significant differences. In particular, Fanon aims at quick and total destruction of relations of domination, while Mandela seeks to `force the enemy to give in while preserving as much as possible the future hope of healing the community' (p. 296), and Gandhi advocated the preserving of the lives of the enemy in order to win them over. Her assessment is that the best strategy will be determined by `the concrete circumstances of each situation, where history and culture play a role in shaping the consciousness of the people' (p. 296)

Further contributions are by Olufemi Taiwo and Paget Henry. Taiwo applies Fanon's critique of the national bourgeoisie to Nigeria and Henry's piece is an interesting meditation on the failure of Caribbean Philosophy to cultivate (as has been achieved with other forms of expression, such as music) a Creole identity.

The volume closes with Lewis Gordon's excellent paper on Fanon's `Tragic Revolutionary Violence'. There is some overlap between this paper and Gordon's well-known contribution to Emmanuel Eze's Post-colonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader. That paper is a general investigation into the tragic dimensions of neo-colonialism but here, Gordon's focus is more specifically on Fanon and the idea of revolutionary violence as tragedy. Gordon begins, by way of Aristotle, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with some incisive observations on the nature and social function of tragedy. He then shows that colonialism is a state of institutional dehumanisation which is nevertheless inhabited by humans. Gordon points out that violence in support of, or against the system must, tragically, be directed at a `shrieking flesh-and-blood reality' (p. 305) rather than some dehumanised enemy. However, the struggle for liberation is morally distinct from the struggle to maintain oppression because in the accomplishment of the former's struggle is the possibility, fragile though it may be, of a world that is not by dint of its very structure violent (p. 306).

Gordon's paper will be of enormous value to anybody interested in trying to understand the ethical dimensions of struggle or the nature of post-apartheid reconciliation.

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