“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.”
Frantz Fanon · Postcolonial philosophy
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Paraphrase or translation
Philosopher
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Frantz Fanon
1925–1961 · Postcolonial philosophy · Modern
Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist from Martinique who worked in Algeria and wrote Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. He analyses how colonial domination gets inside recognition, language, and the body, not only into statutes. The early book is phenomenological and psychiatric. Its introduction describes a split self, one dimension with one's fellows and another under the white gaze.
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Translations differ, and a compression in this library is marked as a compression. The Wretched of the Earth, in the last year of his life, is about colonial violence, national culture, and the pitfalls of a national bourgeoisie. The sentence about a generation discovering its mission, or betraying it, belongs to that fight. It is not a personal brand.
He was used, after his death, as a general theorist of violence. The books are more specific than the use. Constance Farrington and Richard Philcox are among the English translators of the late book, and they do not match word for word. Name them if you quote. A sentence without a translator is a rumour with a good cause.
Three passages are included. The mission sentence and the opening of Concerning Violence, in Constance Farrington's English, are from The Wretched of the Earth. The two-dimensions passage from Black Skin, White Masks stays a compression. Further lines in these books are arguments in French with more than one English. This profile does not invent a fourth.
Start here
The introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, in a named translation, then the opening of The Wretched of the Earth.
The psychology and the politics are one writer. Meeting only the late book makes the mission sentence grander and vaguer than it is.
Quotations
“The black person has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white person. A black person behaves differently with a white person and with another black person.”
Frantz Fanon · Postcolonial philosophy
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Paraphrase or translation
“National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”
Frantz Fanon · Postcolonial philosophy
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Paraphrase or translation
Key ideas
The gaze
Under colonial racism the self is split. The split is a wound in a world, not a private quirk.
Decolonisation
A historical struggle, not a metaphor for any personal change.
National culture
The late book warns against a bourgeoisie that inherits the form and not the liberation.
Major works
Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
Language, desire, recognition. Read it before the late book.
The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Violence, culture, and the national bourgeoisie. Name the translation.
A Dying Colonialism (1959)
Essays from the Algerian revolution. Not a book of maxims.
Influences
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- G. W. F. Hegel
- Karl Marx
- Aimé Césaire
Influenced
Common misreadings
- The mission sentence is about a generation in a decolonising struggle, not about finding your passion.
- The two dimensions are not 'everyone has two selves'. The colony is the point.
- He is not a permission slip for every later violence done in his tone of voice.
Famous lines Frantz Fanon never said
None of the lines this library files for Frantz Fanon is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
FAQ
What is the best book to start with?
The introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, in a named translation, then the opening of The Wretched of the Earth. The psychology and the politics are one writer. Meeting only the late book makes the mission sentence grander and vaguer than it is.
What is the most famous quote?
This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Frantz Fanon that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” (The Wretched of the Earth, Paraphrase or translation).
What is the most misquoted line?
None of the lines this library files for Frantz Fanon is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
What is one key idea, in a sentence?
The gaze: Under colonial racism the self is split. The split is a wound in a world, not a private quirk.