Pambazuka News Issue 561 Focuses on 50 Years of Frantz Fanon
Issue 561 of Pambazuka News is specially dedicated to Frantz Fanon, as 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of his death and the 50 years since the initially publication of Wretched of the Earth. In this special edition, a wealth of authors discuss how the ideas of Frantz Fanon continue to permeate our lives and live on through the revolutions we’ve seen happen over the past 12 months.
One of the contributors to the issue is Nigel C Gibson, author of Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo, whose article, entitled “Living Fanon: The rationality of revolt”, we featured earlier this year. In “Living Fanon: The rationality of revolt”, Gibson reflects on Fanon’s interpretations of post-colonial politics in light of the revolutions in North Africa.
Here are two articles from Issue 561:
“Living Fanon: The rationality of revolt” by Nigel Gibson:
What better way to celebrate, commemorate and critically reflect on the fiftieth year of Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’[1] than with a new North African syndrome: revolution – or at least a series of revolts and resistance across the region. Fanon begins The Wretched writing of decolonisation as a program of complete disorder, an overturning of order – often against the odds – willed collectively from the bottom up. Without time or space for a transition, there is an absolute replacement of one ‘species’ by another (1968:35). In a period of radical chance such absolutes appear quite normal, when, in spite of everything thrown against it, ideas jump across frontiers and people begin again ‘to make history (1968: 69-71). In short, once the mind of the oppressed experiences freedom in and through collective actions, its reason becomes a force of revolution. As the Egyptians said of January 25th: ‘When we stopped being afraid we knew we would win. We will not again allow ourselves to be scared of a government. This is the revolution in our country, the revolution in our minds.’[2]
“Fanon’s enduring relevance” by Ama Biney:
Fifty years since the untimely death on 6 December 1961 of Frantz Fanon, he continues to have immense relevance in our times. His writings were focused on the dialectics of the colonised and the coloniser during the era of the 1960s. Whilst that era has passed, new forms of colonialism between Africa and the former colonial powers, or Africa and the developed world, now manifest in the 21st century.
Fanon had a clear grasp of the problems confronting emerging African states. The core themes pervading his radical perspective forged from his role as a scholar, psychiatrist and political activist are: The indispensability of revolutionary violence to decolonisation, class struggle in Africa, neocolonialism, alienation and his profound commitment to freedom. What he would make of the myriad socio-economic and political problems facing Africans and people of African descent today with the intellectual tools of analysis he bequeathed is the focus of this article.
Book details
- Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo by Nigel Gibson
EAN: 9781869141974
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