Frantz Fanon and his Blueprint for African Cultures

In this lecture and conversation we explore the work of Dr Frantz Fanon, Martinican psychiatrist, revolutionary, and political thinker.

The debate about the place of both “tradition” and “modernity” in African cultures has been raging since the 19th century. In emerging from colonialism, should African cultures retreat to the “precolonial”, embrace the “western”, or carve out something new?

Dr Fanon proposes the last – but why?

Fanon was a key ideological leader of the Algerian resistance during the war of independence from France. A realist, he challenged Africans to attain the necessary consciousness to construct the new sense of self he felt was essential to their success in the post-colonial world. We dive into Fanon’s life, unpack his work during the Algerian war, and deconstruct his blueprint for postcolonial African culture.