Frantz Fanon: Toward a postcolonial humanism

Abstract

This essay is an explication of Frantz Fanon as a humanist. Through a detailed reading of his four major works, it proposes that, despite his insistence on violence, Fanon was reaching forward to a new form of humanism, one that would be more inclusive and which would reject the European Enlightenment model. It argues that Fanon proposes an ethics of recognition of difference within the postcolonial paradigm as the first step on the route to the new humanism. Through mutual recognition, subjectitivities are forged, and from this point a humanist vision is possible. Once mutual recognition has been accorded, it can lead to a collective ethics, argues Fanon. Finally, Fanon calls for a shift in national consciousness-which ought not to stay confined to the national'. Fanon proposes that 'oppressed peoples join up with peoples who are already sovereign if a humanism that can be considered valid is to be built to the dimensions of the universe' in what is surely a universalism. © 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.