Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The three paradigms: negritude, ethnopsychiatry and African socialism
- Chapter 2 Negritude
- Chapter 3 Ethnopsychiatry and the psychopathology of colonialism: Fanon's account of colonised man in ‘Black Skin White Masks’
- Chapter 4 From psychiatric practice to political theory
- Chapter 5 Culture and personality
- Chapter 6 Class conflict and the liberation of Africa
- Chapter 7 The failed revolution
- Chapter 8 The neo-colonial state
- Chapter 9 Towards a critique of Fanon's class analysis
- Chapter 10 Conclusion
- Appendix I Fanon and Mannoni: conflicting psychologies of colonialism
- Appendix II Mental health in Algeria
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 10 - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The three paradigms: negritude, ethnopsychiatry and African socialism
- Chapter 2 Negritude
- Chapter 3 Ethnopsychiatry and the psychopathology of colonialism: Fanon's account of colonised man in ‘Black Skin White Masks’
- Chapter 4 From psychiatric practice to political theory
- Chapter 5 Culture and personality
- Chapter 6 Class conflict and the liberation of Africa
- Chapter 7 The failed revolution
- Chapter 8 The neo-colonial state
- Chapter 9 Towards a critique of Fanon's class analysis
- Chapter 10 Conclusion
- Appendix I Fanon and Mannoni: conflicting psychologies of colonialism
- Appendix II Mental health in Algeria
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Because Fanon's work is polemical he has often been dismissed as a writer of little consequence. Conversely Fanon's admirers have cited this characteristic of his work in order to excuse even those glaring faults that abound in his most popular writings. In either case disinterest is assumed to be the virtue fundamental to serious political enquiry. Unfortunately Fanon's style has encouraged a preoccupation with his biography and with specific aspects of his theory, to the detriment of a recognition of his major intellectual achievements. All too often Fanon has been attacked for his advocacy of violence yet rarely has he been criticised for the inadequacy of the psychological economy with which he is supposed to justify its use.
So much of Fanon's appeal in the years immediately following his death was due to his personality rather than to the substance of his writings and to the mood which his tragically short life evoked. Fanon became an emblematic figure for Africa's first decade of revolution who seemed to embody something of the spirit of the age, and yet Fanon was not a significant political actor. His role in the Algerian revolution was modest and appears far larger to western eyes than it does to Algerians. He was the servant of an epoch which, from the distance of twenty years, appears to have made only modest gains. The world which Fanon knew has changed, but almost without exception it has changed for the worse.
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- Black Soul, White ArtifactFanon's Clinical Psychology and Social Theory, pp. 205 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983