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A remarkable life
MARJORIE MAYO is enthralled by a new biography of the Martiniquan anti-colonialist and psychiatrist
REVOLUTIONARY: Frantz Fanon (standing sixth from left) and his medical team at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria, where he worked from 1953 to 1956
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PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Frantz Fanon
by James S Williams, Reaktion Books £12.99
FRANTZ FANON (1925-1961) was a phenomenon, as this new biography sets out to explain.
In his short life (cut off by leukaemia at the age of 36) Fanon had been a soldier, fighting fascism in the second world war, a militant in North Africa during the Algerian war of Independence (1954-1962), an innovative psychiatrist, an ambassador, a journalist, a pan-Africanist internationalist and one of the most influential thinkers on anti-colonialism of his time.
Growing up in colonial Martinique, Fanon imbibed the assumption that French education would enable black students from the colonies, like himself, to become assimilated – and to think of themselves as being culturally white. He was only to discover the reality of racism when he reached France and experienced this for himself.
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