Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanonwas a Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, Pan-Africanist, and a Marxist humanist concerned with the psychopathology of colonization, and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth20 July 1925
CountryFrance
If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then the bridge ought not to be built.
The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.
For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.
He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me.
A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.
Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality-finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.
I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be at origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects.
The gaze that the colonized subject casts at the colonist's sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possession. Every type of possession; of sitting at the colonist's table and sleeping in his bed, preferably with his wife. The colonized man is an envious man.
To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens.
In the World through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.
Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.
Get used to me, I am not getting used to anyone.
The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.
National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.