Frantz Fanon, born on this day in 1925, was a West Indian Pan-Africanist philosopher and Algerian revolutionary most known for his text The Wretched of the Earth.
Fanon was born to an affluent family on the Caribbean island of Martinique, then a French colony which is still under French control today. As a teenager, he was taught by communist anti-colonial thinker Aimé Césaire (1913 - 2008).
Fanon was exposed to much European racism during World War II. After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, a Nazi government was set up in Martinique by French collaborators, whom he describedas taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists".
Fighting for the Allied forces, Fanon also observed European women liberated by black soldiers preferring to dance with fascist Italian prisoners rather than fraternize with their liberators.
While completing a residency in psychiatry in France completing, Fanon wrote and published his first book, "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people.
Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, a nationalist Algerian party. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French troops who carried out torture to suppress anti-colonial resistance, as well as their Algerian victims.
While organizing for Algerian independence in Ghana, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia that would ultimately kill him. He spent the last year of his life writing his most famous work, "The Wretched of the Earth" (French: Les Damnés de la Terre). The text provides a psychiatric analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization and examines the possibilities of anti-colonial liberation
Following a trip to the Soviet Union to treat his leukemia, Fanon came to the U.S. in 1961 for further treatment in a visit arranged by the CIA. Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland on December 6th, 1961 under the name of "Ibrahim Fanon", a Libyan nom de guerre he had assumed in order to enter a hospital after being wounded during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front.
"In the World through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself."
Biography :fanon:
- 🐻Link to all Hexbear comms https://hexbear.net/post/1403966
- 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies
- 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread https://hexbear.net/post/5554224
- ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread https://hexbear.net/post/5485455
- ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread https://hexbear.net/post/5550316
- 👊 New Weekly Improvement thread https://hexbear.net/post/5548340
- 🧡 Disabled comm megathread https://hexbear.net/post/5552737
- ☕ Parenting Chat https://hexbear.net/post/5546588
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
The fast group is outpacing the slow group and I wanted us to stay together, so I'm in between and not getting to enjoy being with any of them. But everyone else can just stumble around looking at stuff. I care about leaving space so other groups and visitors can see/walk and it's just not conducive to that. I'm directing traffic instead of looking at things. It kinda feels like I'm here by myself, yet I cannot set my own pace. Sucks.
Like maybe my brain is cooked from gas station weed and pushing carts around a department store but you have to on some level observe the path you are taking and the direction you are moving in, and I just see people who are like "uhhhhhh how the fuck to get there?" idk, maybe pick a direction and walk, dumbass
Edit: I'm sure I'm a gremlin or codependent or something, I just think when you observe a pattern like "oh, this person always gets left behind" "oh, this person says they're fine but has problems" "oh this person is always looking after others" you have information that you can then act upon, and not acting on that information makes you complicit.