Fanon

Frantz Fanon is one of the greatest and most influential thinkers about Africa of the twentieth century, and best known for 'The Wretched Of The Earth'. His writings span political philosophy, ideology of history and race; psychology and social psychiatry; and he was an active revolutionary. Born in Martinique, he fought for the French in the European war, but became disaffected by the unrelenting oppression of black and North Africans with whom he grew to identify. He engaged in the liberation war in Algeria, working as a psychiatrist with torture victims and writing about the psychological effects and traumas of racism, whilst expounding his revolutionary ideologies for the Third World. He was a contemporary of Aime Cesaire, and Jean Paul Satre was an important intellectual and personal influence until his death. This is a welcome critical study of Fanon by an African academic, published in Africa. Jinadu introduces Fanon as a political thinker, and sociologist of the common African experience, emphasising the moral context in which Fanon's theories of revolutionary change developed. He draws out Fanon's analyses of relations in the colonial and post-colonial periods to inform an understanding of the continent's political conflicts.