{"id":384,"date":"2016-06-16T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmushava.wordpress.com\/2016\/06\/16\/frantz-fanon-race-and-the-power-triangle\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T12:41:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:41:33","slug":"frantz-fanon-race-and-the-power-triangle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"Frantz Fanon, Race and the Power Triangle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41N2pTIesRL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\"<\/figure><\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Peter Hudis <\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher: Pluto Press (2015)<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ISBN: 978 07453 3630 5<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frantz Fanon\u2019s crusade against the shady tendencies of power crosses racial and ideological bounds. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His foremost accomplishment is, perhaps, the precedence of humanity over ideology in his work ethic.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this, his intellectual strivings remain audible long after the curtain of history has fallen over transitory arenas and disbanded convenient alliances.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon deploys moral eloquence and revolutionary fervour against racism, alienation and imperialism with a precision ahead of his time. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With inequality and racism once again emerging among the defining questions of our time, the spectre of Fanon seems bent to stalk the public square much longer. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Hudis discusses the contemporary implications of Fanon\u2019s ideas in his 2015 book, \u201cFrantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The critical biography makes the essential Fanon accessible to the ordinary reader and engages a range of scholarship on the revolutionary, while making a connection to the present. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2014, a rehashed Frantz Fanon quote lit up social media as a dissenting meme after the courts acquitted a white policeman accused of murdering a black teenager.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hudis opens his book with the episode, in which tens of thousands Black Lives Matter activists poured into the streets, declaring with Fanon: \u201cwe can no longer breathe,\u201d to illustrate that Fanon is alive and relevant in today\u2019s agora. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Fanon, racism is not a biological condition but the product of political structures, not a remote abstraction but evident in social and economic conditions, not past remedy but where it persists, conflict is inevitable.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStill, the fact that Fanon\u2019s words were quoted a bit out of context \u2013 a problem that has arisen repeatedly since his death in 1961 \u2013 is less important than the fact that his ideas are seen by many to speak to the urgency of the moment,\u201d Hudis observes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat the moment we are living through is urgent is clear \u2013 and most of all to blacks and Latinos in the U.S, as well as immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East facing heightened police abuse and racial and religious discrimination throughout Europe.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTime seems to be marching backward in many respects as xenophobic \u2013 as well as subtler but no less insidious \u2013 forms of racism seem to define the very shape of globalized capitalism in the twenty-first century,\u201d he contends. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Hudis, Fanon\u2019s incisive critique of racism is necessary for shape-shifting today\u2019s hate-riven societies.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Fanon\u2019s dark prognosis of the post-colony in relation to the imperialist establishment leaves no room for a sunny outlook, it is because he pursues the problems of race and power to their logical conclusions.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hudis argues such an approach is the condition for optimism because racism cannot be decisively dealt with outside the knowledge of its extent and potential. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dark the prognosis, the more potent the prescription: hence the case for Fanon\u2019s resurgence.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon\u2019s philosophical influences, or rather correspondences, for everything is mediated to fit the African reality, are brought to life in the biography.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre\u2019s \u201cBeing and Nothingness\u201d Hegel\u2019s \u201cPhenomenology of the Spirit\u201d and Mannoni\u2019s \u201cProspero and Caliban,\u201d all received against an insistence that every idea has to justify its currency in the context of lived experience, are of particular interest.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon probed the problem of race in light of its socio-economic trappings, a method still pertinent as blacks are still the overwhelming majority at the base of the pyramid. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, his psychiatric practice compelled him to probe the working of racism in the inner man. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you are judged as less than human because of the language you speak, the religious belief you uphold, or the color of your skin, there is a breakdown in the structure of mutual recognition,\u201d Hudis discusses Fanon\u2019s treatment of the idea of \u201cSelf and Other.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. Your sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. It is formed and developed by being acknowledged and recognized by others. When that breaks down, you suffer a weaken sense of self, a loss of self-esteem,\u201d writes Hudis. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon\u2019s psychiatric practice and philosophical work cross-pollinated each other and share a conscientious gene which foregrounds the oppressed, shatters down walls and bares power of its cosmetics.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The critical biography discusses Fanon\u2019s major titles, \u201cBlack Skin, White Masks,\u201d \u201cA Dying Colonialism\u201d and \u201cThe Wretched of the Earth\u201d in light of events in Fanon\u2019s life and the underlying current of revolution which aggregates his strivings from start to finish.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shuttling between his revolutionary watch posts in North and West Africa, Fanon witnesses the tendency of inhumanity to propagate itself across political dispensations and ideological frontiers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several ironies of history stand out in this regard, overtly informing the tenor of Fanon\u2019s intellectual strivings. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, massacre of 30, 000 Algerians by France shortly after the Second World War in which the latter supposedly fought to defend democracy and humanity against the menace of fascism.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Free French Army was operating in North Africa during the war and Africans, including Fanon, had enthusiastically joined it for the cause of freedom. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the threshold of a post-Nazi world, Algerians justifiably hoping that freedom will be extended to Africa found themselves being massacred, a brutal expression of France\u2019s determination to keep its stranglehold on Africa.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon was attentive to the contradiction. It went to a European conviction that all races are not being qualified for freedom, negating the cause for which nations had collaborated against the Nazi war machine. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after, the socialist tendency of French politics which Fanon had warmly regarded endorsed the country\u2019s atrocious retaliation against the liberation movement in Algeria.  <\/span>Over a million Algerians were killed.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, race was central to the contradiction. The socialists of imperial Europe, ostensibly fronting an international class struggle, could play down their own core message and let racism lead when it came to Africa.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon, however, refutes a tendency current among other writers to deploy race as a principle of moral judgement. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quest for power for its own sake within liberation movements, the emergence of totalitarianism and plutocracy in liberated Africa and the readiness with which many leaders made their nations vassals of European neo-colonialism in return for an easy route to independence are sites of disillusion.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/span>The betrayal, hypocrisy and atrocity inundate across the former side of history have made their way to independent Africa and Fanon is unsparing in his assessment of the nationalist bourgeoisie.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the bourgeoisie, nationalization signifies very precisely the transfer into indigenous hands of privileges inherited from the colonial past,\u201d Fanon writes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For him, underdevelopment in Africa is not exclusively a problem of race but equally a problem of class.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He perceives a power triangle whereby the long-suffering African majority has not only the millstone of global capitalism and imperialism to saddle but also indigenous elite which value profit and power over people. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanon has few equals in his penetrating critique of power, but I take exception to his fetishising violence as the only way to self-actualisation<\/a>and negation of the African past bordering on the postmodernism.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrantz Fanon: The Philosopher of the Barricades\u201d is an intelligent reconstruction of one of the developing world\u2019s foremost thinkers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades Author: Peter Hudis Publisher: Pluto Press (2015) ISBN: 978 07453 3630 5 Frantz Fanon\u2019s crusade against the shady tendencies of power crosses racial and ideological bounds. His foremost accomplishment is, perhaps, the precedence of humanity over ideology in his work ethic. For this, his intellectual strivings remain audible long after the curtain of history has fallen over transitory arenas and disbanded convenient alliances. Fanon deploys moral eloquence and revolutionary fervour against racism, alienation and imperialism with a precision ahead of his time. With inequality and racism once again emerging among the defining questions of our time, the spectre of Fanon seems bent to stalk the public square much longer. Peter Hudis discusses the contemporary implications of Fanon\u2019s ideas in his 2015 book, \u201cFrantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades.\u201d The critical biography makes the essential Fanon accessible to the ordinary reader and engages a range of scholarship on the revolutionary, while making a connection to the present. In December 2014, a rehashed Frantz Fanon quote lit up social media as a dissenting meme after the courts acquitted a white policeman accused of murdering a black teenager. Hudis opens his book with the episode, in which tens of thousands Black Lives Matter activists poured into the streets, declaring with Fanon: \u201cwe can no longer breathe,\u201d to illustrate that Fanon is alive and relevant in today\u2019s agora. For Fanon, racism is not a biological condition but the product of political structures, not a remote abstraction but evident in social and economic conditions, not past remedy but where it persists, conflict is inevitable. \u201cStill, the fact that Fanon\u2019s words were quoted a bit out of context \u2013 a problem that has arisen repeatedly since his death in 1961 \u2013 is less important than the fact that his ideas are seen by many to speak to the urgency of the moment,\u201d Hudis observes. \u201cThat the moment we are living through is urgent is clear \u2013 and most of all to blacks and Latinos in the U.S, as well as immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East facing heightened police abuse and racial and religious discrimination throughout Europe. \u201cTime seems to be marching backward in many respects as xenophobic \u2013 as well as subtler but no less insidious \u2013 forms of racism seem to define the very shape of globalized capitalism in the twenty-first century,\u201d he contends. For Hudis, Fanon\u2019s incisive critique of racism is necessary for shape-shifting today\u2019s hate-riven societies. If Fanon\u2019s dark prognosis of the post-colony in relation to the imperialist establishment leaves no room for a sunny outlook, it is because he pursues the problems of race and power to their logical conclusions. Hudis argues such an approach is the condition for optimism because racism cannot be decisively dealt with outside the knowledge of its extent and potential. The dark the prognosis, the more potent the prescription: hence the case for Fanon\u2019s resurgence. Fanon\u2019s philosophical influences, or rather correspondences, for everything is mediated to fit the African reality, are brought to life in the biography. Sartre\u2019s \u201cBeing and Nothingness\u201d Hegel\u2019s \u201cPhenomenology of the Spirit\u201d and Mannoni\u2019s \u201cProspero and Caliban,\u201d all received against an insistence that every idea has to justify its currency in the context of lived experience, are of particular interest. Fanon probed the problem of race in light of its socio-economic trappings, a method still pertinent as blacks are still the overwhelming majority at the base of the pyramid. However, his psychiatric practice compelled him to probe the working of racism in the inner man. \u201cWhen you are judged as less than human because of the language you speak, the religious belief you uphold, or the color of your skin, there is a breakdown in the structure of mutual recognition,\u201d Hudis discusses Fanon\u2019s treatment of the idea of \u201cSelf and Other.\u201d \u201cYour sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. Your sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. It is formed and developed by being acknowledged and recognized by others. When that breaks down, you suffer a weaken sense of self, a loss of self-esteem,\u201d writes Hudis. Fanon\u2019s psychiatric practice and philosophical work cross-pollinated each other and share a conscientious gene which foregrounds the oppressed, shatters down walls and bares power of its cosmetics. The critical biography discusses Fanon\u2019s major titles, \u201cBlack Skin, White Masks,\u201d \u201cA Dying Colonialism\u201d and \u201cThe Wretched of the Earth\u201d in light of events in Fanon\u2019s life and the underlying current of revolution which aggregates his strivings from start to finish. Shuttling between his revolutionary watch posts in North and West Africa, Fanon witnesses the tendency of inhumanity to propagate itself across political dispensations and ideological frontiers. Several ironies of history stand out in this regard, overtly informing the tenor of Fanon\u2019s intellectual strivings. Firstly, massacre of 30, 000 Algerians by France shortly after the Second World War in which the latter supposedly fought to defend democracy and humanity against the menace of fascism. The Free French Army was operating in North Africa during the war and Africans, including Fanon, had enthusiastically joined it for the cause of freedom. On the threshold of a post-Nazi world, Algerians justifiably hoping that freedom will be extended to Africa found themselves being massacred, a brutal expression of France\u2019s determination to keep its stranglehold on Africa. Fanon was attentive to the contradiction. It went to a European conviction that all races are not being qualified for freedom, negating the cause for which nations had collaborated against the Nazi war machine. Not long after, the socialist tendency of French politics which Fanon had warmly regarded endorsed the country\u2019s atrocious retaliation against the liberation movement in Algeria.  Over a million Algerians were killed. Again, race was central to the contradiction. The socialists of imperial Europe, ostensibly fronting an international class struggle, could play down their own core message and let racism lead when it came to Africa. Fanon, however, refutes a tendency current among other writers to deploy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-theory"],"yoast_head":"\nFrantz Fanon, Race and the Power Triangle | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frantz Fanon, Race and the Power Triangle | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades Author: Peter Hudis Publisher: Pluto Press (2015) ISBN: 978 07453 3630 5 Frantz Fanon\u2019s crusade against the shady tendencies of power crosses racial and ideological bounds. His foremost accomplishment is, perhaps, the precedence of humanity over ideology in his work ethic. For this, his intellectual strivings remain audible long after the curtain of history has fallen over transitory arenas and disbanded convenient alliances. Fanon deploys moral eloquence and revolutionary fervour against racism, alienation and imperialism with a precision ahead of his time. With inequality and racism once again emerging among the defining questions of our time, the spectre of Fanon seems bent to stalk the public square much longer. Peter Hudis discusses the contemporary implications of Fanon\u2019s ideas in his 2015 book, \u201cFrantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades.\u201d The critical biography makes the essential Fanon accessible to the ordinary reader and engages a range of scholarship on the revolutionary, while making a connection to the present. In December 2014, a rehashed Frantz Fanon quote lit up social media as a dissenting meme after the courts acquitted a white policeman accused of murdering a black teenager. Hudis opens his book with the episode, in which tens of thousands Black Lives Matter activists poured into the streets, declaring with Fanon: \u201cwe can no longer breathe,\u201d to illustrate that Fanon is alive and relevant in today\u2019s agora. For Fanon, racism is not a biological condition but the product of political structures, not a remote abstraction but evident in social and economic conditions, not past remedy but where it persists, conflict is inevitable. \u201cStill, the fact that Fanon\u2019s words were quoted a bit out of context \u2013 a problem that has arisen repeatedly since his death in 1961 \u2013 is less important than the fact that his ideas are seen by many to speak to the urgency of the moment,\u201d Hudis observes. \u201cThat the moment we are living through is urgent is clear \u2013 and most of all to blacks and Latinos in the U.S, as well as immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East facing heightened police abuse and racial and religious discrimination throughout Europe. \u201cTime seems to be marching backward in many respects as xenophobic \u2013 as well as subtler but no less insidious \u2013 forms of racism seem to define the very shape of globalized capitalism in the twenty-first century,\u201d he contends. For Hudis, Fanon\u2019s incisive critique of racism is necessary for shape-shifting today\u2019s hate-riven societies. If Fanon\u2019s dark prognosis of the post-colony in relation to the imperialist establishment leaves no room for a sunny outlook, it is because he pursues the problems of race and power to their logical conclusions. Hudis argues such an approach is the condition for optimism because racism cannot be decisively dealt with outside the knowledge of its extent and potential. The dark the prognosis, the more potent the prescription: hence the case for Fanon\u2019s resurgence. Fanon\u2019s philosophical influences, or rather correspondences, for everything is mediated to fit the African reality, are brought to life in the biography. Sartre\u2019s \u201cBeing and Nothingness\u201d Hegel\u2019s \u201cPhenomenology of the Spirit\u201d and Mannoni\u2019s \u201cProspero and Caliban,\u201d all received against an insistence that every idea has to justify its currency in the context of lived experience, are of particular interest. Fanon probed the problem of race in light of its socio-economic trappings, a method still pertinent as blacks are still the overwhelming majority at the base of the pyramid. However, his psychiatric practice compelled him to probe the working of racism in the inner man. \u201cWhen you are judged as less than human because of the language you speak, the religious belief you uphold, or the color of your skin, there is a breakdown in the structure of mutual recognition,\u201d Hudis discusses Fanon\u2019s treatment of the idea of \u201cSelf and Other.\u201d \u201cYour sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. Your sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. It is formed and developed by being acknowledged and recognized by others. When that breaks down, you suffer a weaken sense of self, a loss of self-esteem,\u201d writes Hudis. Fanon\u2019s psychiatric practice and philosophical work cross-pollinated each other and share a conscientious gene which foregrounds the oppressed, shatters down walls and bares power of its cosmetics. The critical biography discusses Fanon\u2019s major titles, \u201cBlack Skin, White Masks,\u201d \u201cA Dying Colonialism\u201d and \u201cThe Wretched of the Earth\u201d in light of events in Fanon\u2019s life and the underlying current of revolution which aggregates his strivings from start to finish. Shuttling between his revolutionary watch posts in North and West Africa, Fanon witnesses the tendency of inhumanity to propagate itself across political dispensations and ideological frontiers. Several ironies of history stand out in this regard, overtly informing the tenor of Fanon\u2019s intellectual strivings. Firstly, massacre of 30, 000 Algerians by France shortly after the Second World War in which the latter supposedly fought to defend democracy and humanity against the menace of fascism. The Free French Army was operating in North Africa during the war and Africans, including Fanon, had enthusiastically joined it for the cause of freedom. On the threshold of a post-Nazi world, Algerians justifiably hoping that freedom will be extended to Africa found themselves being massacred, a brutal expression of France\u2019s determination to keep its stranglehold on Africa. Fanon was attentive to the contradiction. It went to a European conviction that all races are not being qualified for freedom, negating the cause for which nations had collaborated against the Nazi war machine. Not long after, the socialist tendency of French politics which Fanon had warmly regarded endorsed the country\u2019s atrocious retaliation against the liberation movement in Algeria.  Over a million Algerians were killed. Again, race was central to the contradiction. The socialists of imperial Europe, ostensibly fronting an international class struggle, could play down their own core message and let racism lead when it came to Africa. Fanon, however, refutes a tendency current among other writers to deploy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-16T17:48:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-26T12:41:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/images-1.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"588\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"390\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta 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\/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Frantz Fanon, Race and the Power Triangle | Blockspace","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Frantz Fanon, Race and the Power Triangle | Blockspace","og_description":"Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades Author: Peter Hudis Publisher: Pluto Press (2015) ISBN: 978 07453 3630 5 Frantz Fanon\u2019s crusade against the shady tendencies of power crosses racial and ideological bounds. His foremost accomplishment is, perhaps, the precedence of humanity over ideology in his work ethic. For this, his intellectual strivings remain audible long after the curtain of history has fallen over transitory arenas and disbanded convenient alliances. Fanon deploys moral eloquence and revolutionary fervour against racism, alienation and imperialism with a precision ahead of his time. With inequality and racism once again emerging among the defining questions of our time, the spectre of Fanon seems bent to stalk the public square much longer. Peter Hudis discusses the contemporary implications of Fanon\u2019s ideas in his 2015 book, \u201cFrantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades.\u201d The critical biography makes the essential Fanon accessible to the ordinary reader and engages a range of scholarship on the revolutionary, while making a connection to the present. In December 2014, a rehashed Frantz Fanon quote lit up social media as a dissenting meme after the courts acquitted a white policeman accused of murdering a black teenager. Hudis opens his book with the episode, in which tens of thousands Black Lives Matter activists poured into the streets, declaring with Fanon: \u201cwe can no longer breathe,\u201d to illustrate that Fanon is alive and relevant in today\u2019s agora. For Fanon, racism is not a biological condition but the product of political structures, not a remote abstraction but evident in social and economic conditions, not past remedy but where it persists, conflict is inevitable. \u201cStill, the fact that Fanon\u2019s words were quoted a bit out of context \u2013 a problem that has arisen repeatedly since his death in 1961 \u2013 is less important than the fact that his ideas are seen by many to speak to the urgency of the moment,\u201d Hudis observes. \u201cThat the moment we are living through is urgent is clear \u2013 and most of all to blacks and Latinos in the U.S, as well as immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East facing heightened police abuse and racial and religious discrimination throughout Europe. \u201cTime seems to be marching backward in many respects as xenophobic \u2013 as well as subtler but no less insidious \u2013 forms of racism seem to define the very shape of globalized capitalism in the twenty-first century,\u201d he contends. For Hudis, Fanon\u2019s incisive critique of racism is necessary for shape-shifting today\u2019s hate-riven societies. If Fanon\u2019s dark prognosis of the post-colony in relation to the imperialist establishment leaves no room for a sunny outlook, it is because he pursues the problems of race and power to their logical conclusions. Hudis argues such an approach is the condition for optimism because racism cannot be decisively dealt with outside the knowledge of its extent and potential. The dark the prognosis, the more potent the prescription: hence the case for Fanon\u2019s resurgence. Fanon\u2019s philosophical influences, or rather correspondences, for everything is mediated to fit the African reality, are brought to life in the biography. Sartre\u2019s \u201cBeing and Nothingness\u201d Hegel\u2019s \u201cPhenomenology of the Spirit\u201d and Mannoni\u2019s \u201cProspero and Caliban,\u201d all received against an insistence that every idea has to justify its currency in the context of lived experience, are of particular interest. Fanon probed the problem of race in light of its socio-economic trappings, a method still pertinent as blacks are still the overwhelming majority at the base of the pyramid. However, his psychiatric practice compelled him to probe the working of racism in the inner man. \u201cWhen you are judged as less than human because of the language you speak, the religious belief you uphold, or the color of your skin, there is a breakdown in the structure of mutual recognition,\u201d Hudis discusses Fanon\u2019s treatment of the idea of \u201cSelf and Other.\u201d \u201cYour sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. Your sense of self and dignity does not rest on you alone. It is formed and developed by being acknowledged and recognized by others. When that breaks down, you suffer a weaken sense of self, a loss of self-esteem,\u201d writes Hudis. Fanon\u2019s psychiatric practice and philosophical work cross-pollinated each other and share a conscientious gene which foregrounds the oppressed, shatters down walls and bares power of its cosmetics. The critical biography discusses Fanon\u2019s major titles, \u201cBlack Skin, White Masks,\u201d \u201cA Dying Colonialism\u201d and \u201cThe Wretched of the Earth\u201d in light of events in Fanon\u2019s life and the underlying current of revolution which aggregates his strivings from start to finish. Shuttling between his revolutionary watch posts in North and West Africa, Fanon witnesses the tendency of inhumanity to propagate itself across political dispensations and ideological frontiers. Several ironies of history stand out in this regard, overtly informing the tenor of Fanon\u2019s intellectual strivings. Firstly, massacre of 30, 000 Algerians by France shortly after the Second World War in which the latter supposedly fought to defend democracy and humanity against the menace of fascism. The Free French Army was operating in North Africa during the war and Africans, including Fanon, had enthusiastically joined it for the cause of freedom. On the threshold of a post-Nazi world, Algerians justifiably hoping that freedom will be extended to Africa found themselves being massacred, a brutal expression of France\u2019s determination to keep its stranglehold on Africa. Fanon was attentive to the contradiction. It went to a European conviction that all races are not being qualified for freedom, negating the cause for which nations had collaborated against the Nazi war machine. Not long after, the socialist tendency of French politics which Fanon had warmly regarded endorsed the country\u2019s atrocious retaliation against the liberation movement in Algeria.  Over a million Algerians were killed. Again, race was central to the contradiction. The socialists of imperial Europe, ostensibly fronting an international class struggle, could play down their own core message and let racism lead when it came to Africa. Fanon, however, refutes a tendency current among other writers to deploy","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2016-06-16T17:48:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-26T12:41:33+00:00","og_image":[{"width":588,"height":390,"url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/images-1.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"hardsouth","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=384"},"author":{"name":"hardsouth","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a336a678f28eacb341ce63c6b84b17d0"},"headline":"Frantz Fanon, Race and the Power 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