Dialectics of Freedom in Frantz Fanon and Its Releveance in Contemporary Africa (original) (raw)
Related papers
Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2017
The objective of this article is to compare the philosophy of decolonization and violence of Frantz Fanon to social processes in the present African societies, and to determine how it might be applicable in addressing the social decay in Africa. In this article, it is observed that there is a seeming semblance between the Fanonian philosophy of violence and the operations of revolutionary groups in Africa. In conclusion, this article contends that in a philosophical analysis manner that African intellectuals and intelligentsia have the obligation and should involve themselves in guiding society to obtain freedom from oppressors.
Fanon on Decolonization and Revolution: Bodies and Dialectics
Globalizations (Taylor and Francis), 2016
This article sets up a conversation with Frantz Fanon about his stretching of dialectics. Against a backdrop where multiple dominant epistemologies of political theory and international relations presume and are shaped by a segregation of the world into anarchy and the desire for an ordered global, Fanon’s reading of imperialism’s effects in the Wretched of the Earth is of utmost relevance. First, Fanon’s work allows us to think dialectics along with ‘globality’ and to confronting dominant presumptions about a Manichean world: anarchy, order, and ‘bodies.’ He focuses on colonization and the White – Black relation and the radical dehumanization of the Other (Black, colonial slave, non-European, etc.). Second, his engagement of colonial violence pushes him to stretch dialectics, reactivating the ‘partially neutralized antagonisms.’ In addition, Fanon wants to think revolutionary practice as a kind of internationalism which will reunite into its own humanness in an open-ended-way—a world where no human being will be subject to dehumanization. I conclude with some ideas on what a revolutionary thinking about a revolutionary subjectivity, movement and thought entails for revolutionary struggles and dialectics today.
The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2014
Introduction In the book Living Fanon: Global Perspectives, edited by Gibson (2011), the key to this volume is to understand struggles for freedom, independence and survival by Africans in the colonial and postcolonial milieus. It is a book that is handy in understanding African revolutions against the colonial racial, apartheid dispensations that had untold consequences on African subjectivities and African suffering that was induced by the colonial visitations. While cognizant of the significance of Frantz Fanon's work in African struggles for liberation from the colonial structures, the authors of this eighteen chapter book also draws on Fanon to inspire the contemporary struggles against resilient (neo)colonial structures that continues to provide the matrix for postcolonial African governments. This volume also shows the relevance of Fanon's work not only to Algeria, but also reflects Fanon's Pan-African thrust in which he held that the independence of Algeria was w...
THE BORDER OF FORCED LIBERATION: Africa's Freedom as a Right to Permission
Africa's political chaos reflects subversive experiences of leaders who relegate Liberation to; territorial power, the status quo and foreign helping hands. The reduction legitimized exchange of Freedom for Permission. This routine practices, Africa's Struggle for leadership, overlooked task of drawing a line between 'Freedom' and 'Permission.' Africa's liberation justified confirmation made in submission. Making Intensive review, the article links this to deep-seated 'Colonial will' against the frozen essence of freedom. Formulating basic questions, it identifies Africa's quest for liberation from politics of liquidation. It discuss this as Euro-centric interest of limiting Africa to 'myth of the given.' The author highlight root of the rift between Africans' quest for independence and the 'myth' from this view point. The hypothesis is; failures of compromising Liberation by Democracy continued reassuring colonial legacies in the Globalization as the symbolic embodiment of all, in its self-evident constitutive model. Unchecked applications of global interventions to border tensions, ethno-identity crisis, terrorized poverty and structured dependence attest to the aftereffects reflected in the Africans' survival by divided nations of perpetual combats. Alternatively, the author proposes Liberation as a rudder for managing new agenda in the proposal for the United States of Africa. Finally, anticipating resistance from collective pessimists, the article propose massive task of mental re-engineering as mandate of the United States of Africa.
The Paradox in Frantz Fanon's Liberation Contestation in the Context of Humanism
EJMSS Volume 3 NO 3, 2023
Various dimensions have emerged in man's understanding of humanism, and ample space has been accorded thoughts about violence and pacifism. African philosophers like Frantz Fanon and Nelson Mandela have taken a position in this debate. The question that has remained unanswered is whether the endorsement of violence as a tool of liberation is not dialectically opposed to the trappings of humanism. The struggle for political evolution in various nations in African presently is one of the numerous motivations of this study. Across history and even in contemporary times, various violent activities have been justified by allusions to liberation and restoration of humanism. Frantz Fanon's contestation and advocacy of violence, in his quest for decolonization in Algeria, represent a liberation philosophy that raises questions about the pursuit of humanism with seemingly nonhumane means. Could such actions be contextualized in humanism? Is it not a camouflage? What is humanism? Is there in-humanism in humanism? This paper engages critical analysis examine what appears to be contradictions in Fanon's humanism. The paper traces how Fanon's theory of violence has affected humanity and to what extent this contributes to sharpening the struggle for national integrity and egalitarianism in Africa.
Foreign Intervention Predicament in Africa: Deploying Fanonian Psychoanalysis
This work concedes that from the time of independence to date, Africa has been dogged by a predicament of reliance on foreign intervention and tutelage and Africa's quest to be a sovereign continent. Hence, this work states that Western influence has played a crucial role in stymying concepts that suggest African solutions to African problems, although African leaderships have failed to arrest all manners of decline in Africa. Using Frantz Fanon's reading of the post-colonial mindset as a tool for analysis, this work seeks to provide an understanding of the aforementioned predicament. However, it does not offer absolute solutions to foreign interventions in Africa; but merely attempts to point where limitations might lie so that appropriate solutions can be searched via a qualitative approach based on primary and secondary data to fortify its arguments.