49 Facts About Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon's works have become influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism.

Frantz Fanon has been described as "the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time".

For more than five decades, the life and works of Frantz Fanon have inspired national liberation movements and other freedom and political movements in Palestine, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the United States.

Frantz Fanon formulated a model for community psychology, believing that many mental health patients would have an improved prognosis if they were integrated into their family and community instead of being treated with institutionalized care.

Frantz Fanon helped found the field of institutional psychotherapy while working at Saint-Alban under Francois Tosquelles and Jean Oury.

Frantz Omar Fanon was born on 20 July 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, which was then part of the French colonial empire.

Frantz Fanon's father, Felix Casimir Fanon, worked as a customs officer, while Fanon's mother, Eleanore Medelice, who was of Afro-Caribbean and Alsatian descent, was a shopkeeper.

Frantz Fanon was the third of four sons in a family of eight children.

Frantz Fanon later described the Vichy regime in Martinique as taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists".

Frantz Fanon underwent basic training before boarding a troopship bound for Casablanca, Morocco in March 1944.

Frantz Fanon was transferred to a Free French military base in Bejaia, Algeria, where Fanon witnessed firsthand the antisemitism and Islamophobia of the pieds-noirs, many of whom had supported racist laws promulgated by the Vichy regime.

Frantz Fanon participated in several engagements near Montbeliard, Doubs and was seriously wounded by shrapnel, which resulted in him being hospitalized for two months.

Frantz Fanon was awarded a Croix de Guerre by Colonel Raoul Salan for his actions in battle, and in early 1945 rejoined his unit and fought in the Battle of Alsace.

Frantz Fanon was transferred to Normandy to await repatriation.

Cesaire, by now a friend and mentor of his, ran on the French Communist Party ticket as a delegate from Martinique to the first National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic, and Frantz Fanon worked for his campaign.

Frantz Fanon was educated at the University of Lyon, where he studied literature, drama and philosophy, sometimes attending Merleau-Ponty's lectures.

In 1948, Frantz Fanon started a relationship with Michele Weyer, a medical student, who soon became pregnant.

Frantz Fanon left her for an 18-year-old high school student, Josie, whom he married in 1952.

In France, while completing his residency, Frantz Fanon wrote and published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people.

Originally, the manuscript was the doctoral dissertation, submitted at Lyon, entitled Essay on the Disalienation of the Black, which was a response to the racism that Frantz Fanon experienced while studying psychiatry and medicine at the University in Lyon; the rejection of the dissertation prompted Frantz Fanon to publish it as a book.

Later, Jeanson learned that his response had earned him the writer's lifelong respect, and Frantz Fanon acceded to Jeanson's suggestion that the book be entitled Black Skin, White Masks.

Frantz Fanon argued that racism and dehumanization directed toward black people caused feelings of inferiority among black people.

Frantz Fanon was chef de service at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria.

Frantz Fanon worked there until his deportation in January 1957.

Frantz Fanon made extensive trips across Algeria, mainly in the Kabylia region, to study the cultural and psychological life of Algerians.

Frantz Fanon's lost study of "The marabout of Si Slimane" is an example.

Shortly afterwards, Frantz Fanon was expelled from Algeria and moved to Tunis, where he joined the FLN openly.

Frantz Fanon was part of the editorial collective of Al Moudjahid, for which he wrote until the end of his life.

Frantz Fanon served as Ambassador to Ghana for the Provisional Algerian Government.

Frantz Fanon attended conferences in Accra, Conakry, Addis Ababa, Leopoldville, Cairo and Tripoli.

Frantz Fanon went to the Soviet Union for treatment and experienced remission of his illness.

Frantz Fanon traveled to Rome for a three-day meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, who had greatly influenced his work.

Frantz Fanon subsequently died from double pneumonia in Bethesda, Maryland, on 6 December 1961 after finally having begun his leukemia treatment, although far too late.

Frantz Fanon was buried in Algeria after lying in state in Tunisia.

Frantz Fanon was survived by his French wife, Josie, their son, Olivier Fanon, and his daughter from a previous relationship, Mireille Fanon-Mendes France.

Frantz Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression.

In defence of the use of violence by colonized peoples, Frantz Fanon argued that human beings who are not considered as such shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the colonizer.

An often overlooked aspect of Frantz Fanon's work is that he did not like to physically write his pieces.

Frantz Fanon was influenced by a variety of thinkers and intellectual traditions including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, Negritude, and Marxism.

Frantz Fanon was first introduced to Negritude during his lycee days in Martinique when Cesaire coined the term and presented his ideas in Tropiques, the journal that he edited with Suzanne Cesaire, his wife, in addition to his classic Cahier d'un retour au pays natal.

Frantz Fanon quoted, for example, his teacher at length in "The Lived Experience of the Black Man", a heavily anthologized essay from Black Skins, White Masks.

Frantz Fanon has had an influence on anti-colonial and national liberation movements.

The Black Power group that Frantz Fanon had the most influence on was the Black Panther Party.

In 2015, Raul Zibechi argued that Frantz Fanon had become a key figure for the Latin American left.

Frantz Fanon's influence extended to the liberation movements of the Palestinians, the Tamils, African Americans and others.

Frantz Fanon's work was a key influence on the Black Panther Party, particularly his ideas concerning nationalism, violence and the lumpenproletariat.

Frantz Fanon's work was a key influence on Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire, as well.

Frantz Fanon's work serves as an important theoretical gloss for writers including Ghana's Ayi Kwei Armah, Senegal's Ken Bugul and Ousmane Sembene, Zimbabwe's Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Frantz Fanon's legacy has expanded even further into Black Studies and more specifically, into the theories of Afro-pessimism and Black critical theory.