Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Racial Subjectivity: Unmasking, Resistance, and Pedagogy

This module of the course Power Relations and Postcolonialism in the Caribbean (LA4411) focuses on the enduring relevance of Frantz Fanon’s thought for understanding racial subjectivity, colonial violence, and resistance in Caribbean and global contexts. It brings together three presentations that engage with Fanon’s seminal work Black Skin, White Masks through different pedagogical and analytical lenses.

The presentation, "Anticolonial Politics and Self-Esteem", explores the intersections between identity formation, colonial history, and the politics of recognition. Drawing on the works of Frantz Fanon and Lilian Thuram, it examines the concept of “white thinking” as a pervasive ideological structure that maintains racial hierarchies through cultural norms, media, and institutions. The presentation contextualizes these ideas through historical and contemporary figures—Nellie Bly, John Howard Griffin, Günther Walraff, Megan Rapinoe—and emphasizes the ethical responsibility of scholars to challenge academic extractivism and work in long-term solidarity with marginalized communities.

The presentation, "Group Activities: Close Reading Fanon", is designed as an interactive teaching module that invites students to engage directly with Fanon’s writing. It divides the introduction of Black Skin, White Masks into thematic passages, assigning each group a close reading task. Students are encouraged to analyze Fanon’s rhetorical strategies and theoretical insights—such as alienation, disalienation, dual narcissism, and historical trauma—while linking these to contemporary issues like police violence, identity politics, and media representation. This pedagogical approach seeks to foster collective inquiry and critical engagement rather than passive reception.

The presentation, "Unmasking the Self: Fanon’s Paradoxes of De-alienation in Black Skin, White Masks", offers a deeper theoretical exploration of Fanon’s work through the lens of existential phenomenology and discourse analysis. It situates Fanon within his historical and intellectual context—his Martinican upbringing, participation in WWII, psychiatric practice in colonial Algeria, and revolutionary activism with the FLN. Key concepts such as the "epidermal racial schema," the colonial gaze, and discursive violence are analyzed in detail. The presentation connects Fanon’s insights to modern instances of systemic racism, migrant exclusion, and the dehumanization of racialized subjects, emphasizing the need for psychic as well as political decolonization.

Together, these three components provide a rich, multidimensional engagement with Fanon’s legacy. They examine how colonial power operates through language, perception, and institutional frameworks, while foregrounding the ethical and pedagogical imperatives of postcolonial scholarship. The aim is to understand not only how power is exercised, but how it can be resisted—through narrative agency, critical pedagogy, and decolonial thought.