Frantz Fanon

Date

1925–1961

Description

City of birth: Fort-de-France
Country of birth: France, otherwise known as Martinique
Field of activity: Politics — activism

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Quotes

‘This is what Fanon explains to his brothers in Africa, Asia and Latin America: we must achieve revolutionary socialism all together everywhere, or else one by one we will be defeated by our former masters. He hides nothing, neither weaknesses, nor discords, nor mystification. Here, the movement gets off to a bad start; then, after a striking initial success it loses momentum; elsewhere it has come to a standstill, and if it is to start again, the peasants must throw their bourgeoisie overboard. The reader is sternly put on his guard against the most dangerous will o’ the wisps: the cult of the leader and of personalities, Western culture, and what is equally to be feared, the withdrawal into the twilight of past African culture. For the only true culture is that of the Revolution; that is to say, it is constantly in the making. Fanon speaks out loud; we Europeans can hear him, as the fact that you hold this book in your hand proves; is he not then afraid that the colonial powers may take advantage of his sincerity? … They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself.’

Author

Jean-Paul Sartre

Speaker

Jean-Paul Sartre

Title of the publication

‘Preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth; original: Les Damnes de lat Terre’

Other contributors

n/a

Publisher (or journal name with vol. and number)

Francois Maspero

City of publication

Paris

Country of publication (modern nation-state equivalent)

France

Publication date

1961

Location [pp. or web]

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/1961/preface.htm

Original language

French

Genre

Book

Context

In 1960, Frantz Fanon met Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Rome. Sartre wrote the preface for Wretched of the Earth which was published shortly before Fanon succumbed to leukemia in December 1961.

‘Negrophobes exist. It is not hatred of the Negro, however, that motivates them; they lack the courage for that, or they have lost it. Hate is not inborn; it has to be constantly cultivated, to be brought into being, in conflict with more or less recognized guilt complexes. Hate demands existence and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behavior; in a sense, he has to become hate. That is why Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching. Each to his own side of the street.’

Author

Frantz Fanon

Speaker

Frantz Fanon

Title of the publication

Black Skin, White Masks; original: ‘Peau Noire, Masques Biancs’

Other contributors

Charles Lam Markmann, translator

Publisher (or journal name with vol. and number)

Pluto Press; original: Editions de Seuil

City of publication

London; original: Paris

Publication date

1986; original 1952

Location [pp. or web]

p. 53

Other location

https://bit.ly/3dQYxqW

Original language

French

Genre

Book

Context

Fanon was studying psychiatry in France when he wrote Black Skin, White Masks. Originally the manuscript was written as a doctoral dissertation, and was rejected.