Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who both experienced and analysed the impact of colonial violence. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961) he developed an account of politics that sought to channel violent resistance to colonialism as a force for change. It is a deliberately shocking book. David explores what Fanon’s argument says about the possibility of moving beyond the power of the modern state.

Free online version of the text:

• http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/573/57385/the-wretched-of-the-earth/9780141186542.html

Going Deeper:

• Megan Vaughan for the LRB on Fanon and psychiatry in North Africa
• Frantz Fanon, Toward the African revolution: political essays
• Frantz Fanon, Black skin, white masks (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008).
• (Video) Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers [film] (1966)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2001)
• Alice Cherki, Frantz Fanon: a portrait, Nadia Benabid, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

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