Frantz Fanon

Fanon left France for Algeria, where he had been stationed for some time during the war. He secured an appointment as a psychiatrist at Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in 1953. He radicalized his methods of treatment, particularly beginning socio-therapy to connect with his patients’ cultural backgrounds. He also trained nurses and interns. Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, after having made contact with Dr Pierre Chaulet atBlida in 1955. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French soldiers and officers who carried out torture in order to suppress anti-colonial resistance. Additionally, Fanon was also responsible for treating Algerian torture victims. Fanon then realized that he could no longer continue to support French efforts, so he resigned from his position at the hospital in 1956. After discontinuing his work at the French hospital, Fanon was able to devote more of his time to aiding Algeria in its fight for Independence.

In The Wretched of the Earth (1961, Les damnés de la terre), published shortly before Fanon’s death, the writer defends the right of a colonized people to use violence to gain independence. In addition, he delineated the processes and forces leading to national independence or neocolonialism during the decolonization movement that engulfed much of the world after World War II. In defence of the use of violence by colonized peoples, Fanon argued that human beings who are not considered as such (by the colonizer) shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the colonizer. His book was censored by the French government.

Fanon made extensive trips across Algeria, mainly in the Kabyle region, to study the cultural and psychological life of Algerians. His lost study of « The marabout of Si Slimane » is an example. These trips were also a means for clandestine activities, notably in his visits to the ski resort of Chrea which hid an FLN base. By summer 1956 he wrote his « Letter of resignation to the Resident Minister » and made a clean break with his French assimilationist upbringing and education. He was expelled from Algeria in January 1957, and the « nest of fellaghas [rebels] » at Blida hospital was dismantled.

Fanon left for France and travelled secretly to Tunis. He was part of the editorial collective of El Moudjahid, for which he wrote until the end of his life. He also served as Ambassador to Ghana for the Provisional Algerian Government (GPRA). He attended conferences in Accra, Conakry, Addis Ababa, Leopoldville, Cairo and Tripoli. Many of his shorter writings from this period were collected posthumously in the book Toward the African Revolution. In this book Fanon reveals war tactical strategies; in one chapter he discusses how to open a southern front to the war and how to run the supply lines.[15]

Death

Fanon’s final resting place in Aïn Kerma, Algeria

Upon his return to Tunis, after his exhausting trip across the Sahara to open a Third Front, Fanon was diagnosed withleukemia. He went to the Soviet Union for treatment and experienced some remission of his illness. When he came back to Tunis once again, he dictated his testament The Wretched of the Earth . When he was not confined to his bed, he delivered lectures to Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN) officers at Ghardimao on the Algero-Tunisian border. He made a final visit to Sartre in Rome. In 1961, the CIA arranged a trip to the U.S. for further leukemia treatment at a National Institutes of Health facility.^[18]

Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland, on 6 December 1961, under the name of « Ibrahim Fanon », a Libyan nom de guerre that he had assumed in order to enter a hospital in Rome after being wounded in Morocco during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front.[19] He was buried in Algeria after lying in state in Tunisia. Later, his body was moved to a martyrs’ (chouhada) graveyard at Ain Kerma in eastern Algeria. Frantz Fanon was survived by his French wife Josie (née Dublé), their son Olivier Fanon, and his daughter from a previous relationship, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France. Josie committed suicide in Algiers in 1989.[15] Mireille became a professor at Paris Descartes University and a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in international law and conflict resolution. She has also worked for UNESCO and the French National Assembly, and serves as president of the Frantz Fanon Foundation. Olivier worked through to his retirement as an official at the Algerian Embassy in Paris. He became president of the Frantz-Fanon National Association which was created in Algiers in 2012.[20] His wife, Valérie Fanon-Raspail, manages the Fanon website.

Bibliography

• Black Skin, White Masks (1952), (1967 translation by Charles Lam Markmann: New York: Grove Press)
• A Dying Colonialism (1959), (1965 translation by Haakon Chevalier: New York, Grove Press)
• The Wretched of the Earth (1961), (1963 translation by Constance Farrington: New York: Grove Weidenfeld)
• Toward the African Revolution (1964), (1969 translation by Haakon Chevalier: New York: Grove Press)

Source: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Frantz_Fanon