Healer and Humanist: Frantz Fanon the Revolutionary

Description

It is fair to characterize Frantz Fanon as one of the most influential and one of the most controversial thinkers of his time. To some he was a liberator. To others he was a warmonger. In this course we will explore Fanon the humanist and Fanon the healer. One of Fanon's most notable contributions, the one highlighted in the course, is his understanding of the link between the individual's mental health and the socialization process for which he/she is embedded. A socialization process is a tool societies use to reproduce itself. It defines right; it defines wrong. A socialization process delimits normal human behavior, but more ominously, it circumscribes what is and thus names what is not human. Its purpose is to make and remake the society or rather to make and remake the individuals that inhabit the society throughout time. It's a survival mechanism. We will argue that Fanon believed that the socialization process could also be a process of individual un-making. Through his concepts of humanity, power, and violence, Fanon constructs a theory of social un-making or rather a theory of how the non-human is made. We will follow Fanon through his intellectual process by conducting an extensive analysis of his five major texts: Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth, Dying Colonialism, and Toward the African Revolution. Ultimately, we will attempt to locate Fanon's thought amongst other influential humanists of his time including: Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci, Malcolm X, Steve Biko, James Baldwin, Aimee Cesaire, and Patrice Lumumba. [Prerequisite: Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors only.]