logo
Frantz Fanon at 100: the teachings of the 20th century thinker and psychiatrist remain chillingly contemporary

Frantz Fanon at 100: the teachings of the 20th century thinker and psychiatrist remain chillingly contemporary

The Hindu6 days ago
As we mark the centenary of his birth, Frantz Fanon's voice resonates with a more urgent clarity than ever before — within universities, on streets, and within the innermost consciousness of those compelled to defy the enduring legacies of empire.
A French-trained psychiatrist of Martinican origin, Fanon [1925-1961] later became an Algerian revolutionary, standing as one of the most influential and contested intellectuals of the post-World War era. While he was often caricatured, as a mere 'apostle of violence', in the words of Edward Said, a closer reading of his work reveals a rigorous and nuanced humanist, deeply committed to confronting injustice.
Traumas of colonisation
For me, Fanon has never been simply an author to teach; he is a thinker whose work unremittingly demands engagement, offering a framework through which to confront the complexities of our world. My introduction to the spirit behind his book, The Wretched of the Earth (1963), came not from a formal academic curriculum, but from the profound moral unrest and social upheavals that surrounded me. In those moments, traditional classrooms seemed to perpetuate silence and complicity, failing to provide a language to effectively address the structural violence and systemic discriminations that existed beyond their walls. It was Fanon, the intransigent revolutionary idealist, who gave me and my generation a vocabulary for that dissonance.
Later, as I began teaching postcolonial cultural theory, The Wretched and his earlier book, Black Skins, White Masks,transcended their role as mere texts, instead serving as a catalyst to unsettle the sterile academic environment and confront the harsh realities of colonial distress, while simultaneously igniting deep undying hope.
His work in Algeria powerfully exposed the psychological and political violence of French colonial rule, a dual perspective of a psychiatrist tending to the psychic traumas inflicted by colonisation, and a revolutionary theorist unflinchingly diagnosing the structural afflictions of empire and 'the systematic negation of the other'.
Challenging power structures
For students in India, Palestine, Africa, and beyond, his ideas, therefore, do not remain mere abstractions. In recent years, many across the world see in his writings a mirror to their own condition of militarised occupation, psychic ordeal, and a yearning for self-expression. In classroom conversations about Gaza, Fanon's examination of the coloniser's violence and the colonised's rage feels chillingly contemporary, when confronted by the vexing question: why, if people of Gaza are dying in such horrific numbers, does Israel persist in its relentless bombardment?
As Fanon would have answered, colonial violence is rarely about territorial control; it is theatrical, a grotesque display of supremacy, a ritualised annihilation feeding on breaking the human spirit. Similarly, the immigrant detention system in the United States is precisely based on Fanon's view of colonialism as a system of compartmentalisation, of dividing, isolating, and controlling bodies based on race, geography, and power.
This is why Fanon cannot be treated as a mere historical figure, frozen in 1961, the year he died. His centenary is not a commemoration but a confrontation at a time when the right-wing assault on universities intensifies, as dissent stands criminalised and academic freedom widely curtailed. Fanon offers not comfort but clarity, with a reminder that the university itself is a site of contestation where knowledge and power intersect and where dominant narratives reinforce existing power structures. However, universities also offer a platform for resistance, critique and transformation. His famous dictum that 'Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it' is a challenge that we must pass on to our students.
The questions remain
Understandably, Fanon's insistence on agency resonates powerfully with Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), another formative text in the intellectual journey of many radical activists. Like Fanon, Freire had emphasised that liberation is not a gift bestowed from above but a mutual process of becoming, through what he called conscientização, the practice of dialogue, critical consciousness, and praxis. Under their influence, the classroom ceased to be a sterile, apolitical space and revealed itself as a site of struggle where dominant ideologies nudge each other and where students do not remain passive recipients but turn into insurgent co-authors of knowledge and their own histories.
Fanon, as we all know, wrote in a time of war, exile, and revolutionary ferment. We, too, live in a time of mass displacement, resurgent fascism, and intellectual repression. His questions remain ours, challenging us to think critically about power, identity and freedom, encouraging us to strive for a world where individuals and communities can flourish without the shackles of oppression. His contemporary relevance is both clear and compelling.
The writer taught postcolonial cultural theory at Panjab University.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Why India's potato production misses out on its true potential despite being a global giant
Why India's potato production misses out on its true potential despite being a global giant

Economic Times

time8 hours ago

  • Economic Times

Why India's potato production misses out on its true potential despite being a global giant

Synopsis Despite being the world's second-largest potato producer, India still misses out on the true potential of the crop. Per capita consumption remains low compared to countries like Belarus or Nepal, partly because potatoes in India are treated as a side vegetable rather than a staple. The varieties grown here are optimized for warmer climates and long storage, often at the cost of flavour. As a result, most Indians consume generic, flavourless potatoes, with little exposure to high-quality, fresh varieties. Despite High Output, India's Potato Production Has Key Gaps My father wasn't fond of eating meat but didn't like most vegetables either. Essentially, he felt potatoes were the perfect food and would have been happy eating them all the time. India is now the world's second largest producer of potatoes, most of it consumed internally. Clearly, many of us feel that way is remarkable for a crop whose widespread cultivation in India barely goes back two centuries. Our per capita consumption is still relatively low. Belarus tops that list, at a whopping 155 kg per person each year, with Ukraine, Kyrg yzstan and Kazakhstan all crossing 100 kg. India's per capita consumption is just 25 kg per a clearinghouse for desi aloo information, suggests this is partly due to the influence of Jainism, which abjures all root vegetables. Another, slightly more plausible reason, is that we eat potatoes as a vegetable in itself, in curries, stir-fries or stuffed in breads. The high consumption countries are eating it as a starchy staple, rather than grains, and also distilling it into vodka.A third reason for low per capita consumption might be that potatoes aren't really suited for growing in India. They originated in the high, cool valleys of the Andes, where more than 3,000 varieties can still be found, with many variations of shape and colour. 'These high-altitude potatoes are smaller, but they keep better, are more nutritious and have much more flavour,' writes Edward Behr in 50 Foods: A Guide to Deliciousness. The top consuming countries are all temperate ones, while Nepal, where per capita consumption is over 90 kg, offers cool climates and high has managed its massive potato production by breeding varieties that can handle warmer climates, but at the cost of flavour — which isn't seen as important because taste will come from the spices and other ingredients with which they are cooked. We also grow them as a winter crop in northern states and then keep them in cold storages for the rest of the year to supply across the country. Prolonged storage affects taste and cooking quality, but again, the cooking methods cover this explains why potatoes in India are usually sold as standard aloo , not specific varieties. Behr writes about varieties like 'the creamy, flavourful French La Ratte, a fingerling, meaning it's small, long, knobby, tender, and waxy' or the large russet potatoes which 'make a nutty puree with perceptible grains of starch'. The nearest you get to that here is in hilly areas where people have access to fresh potatoes and will tell you that those from certain areas are particularly growth of potato processors has increased our distance from actual tubers. By handling storage, peeling and cutting for products like French fries, so that chefs need to only open bags and do final frying, these companies remove any pressure to produce good potato dishes. They are so skilled at standardisation that you won't get bad potato dishes from them — but you won't get great ones and, the real sadness, you forget how good potatoes can be.I was reminded of this recently in Sublime, a Goa restaurant where chef Chris Aga still makes confit potatoes. The tubers are sliced thin, close packed in a tin, cooked with plenty of butter and then pressed to compact them further. Then they are unmoulded, sliced and fried again, giving you a layered product that manages to be both crisp and creamy at the same also makes wonderful mashed potatoes, carefully boiled and mashed with plenty of butter. Mashed potatoes seem to have vanished from restaurants because most processors don't market a version in India and it's easier just to use their pre-processed fries or wedges. Potato lovers, like my father, will always be happy in India, but the plain perfection of dishes made with good potatoes reminds us of what we are still missing out.

Gender Agenda Newsletter: Are you settled?
Gender Agenda Newsletter: Are you settled?

The Hindu

time18 hours ago

  • The Hindu

Gender Agenda Newsletter: Are you settled?

'The more things change, the more they stay the same,' Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), the French journalist, had said in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guepes (The Wasps). When I was in school in the 1990s and lived in a neighbourhood of government-job professionals who mostly had two children, it surprised me to see that parents would send their sons to boarding schools in the hills, where the education was believed to be better, but also far more expensive than regular day schools. Their daughters often went to government-run KVs (Kendriya Vidyalayas), where the expectations and the fees were low. I am not surprised to see that fewer girls than boys are enrolled in private schools even today. The proportion of girls going to private schools was 33%, while that of boys was 39% boys, in 2023-24. Private schools in India still have the image of being better than state-run institutions. Government schools recorded 54% girls and 49% boys. When girls do get the opportunity to study, they are often subject to all kinds of other social prisons, like being asked to get back to college hostels a couple of hours before the men. Natasha Narwal was known for the Pinjara Tod movement, which took up discriminatory practices in girls' students hostels, 10 years ago. She inspired a nation-wide movement of protests and demands for equality. At roughly the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme focussing on 'challenging mindsets and deep rooted patriarchy in the societal system'. In 2021, a Parliamentary Committee on Empowerment of Women found that the government had spent 80% of the scheme's funds on media campaigns. Over the years, governments have initiated schemes to tackle female foeticide with cash transfers. But money, as they say, cannot buy everything. It can of course buy a 'good boy'. A girl, and by that corollary a woman, is seen as belonging to the family she will eventually marry into. Large loans must be taken for her wedding, to 'fund' the groom, leading families into deep debt. An unmarried woman in rural India is seen as an aberration; in urban India, she's seen as 'not settled' — her parents must worry about her future, relatives must 'look for a boy' for her. Most people don't see the irony in this — yes, she isn't 'settled' because she didn't settle. And that's cause for cheer. Toolkit Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print is a documentary on Hotstar about the feminist magazine Ms. launched in 1972 in America. The first issue had had an illustration of a blue Kali, with eight arms, each holding an iron, hand mirror, phone, steering wheel, typewriter, frying pan, duster, and clock. It sold 3 lakh copies. Ms. tackled issues of domestic violence, sexual harassment, and the repealing of laws that criminalised abortion. Wordsworth SOGIESC: Sexual Orientation (who you're attracted to), Gender Identity (what gender you identify with), Gender Expression (how you present yourself), and Sex Characteristics (biological attributes you're born with, like reproductive organs). This is an umbrella term for LGBTQAI+ communities. When the 19th Congress of the Philippines was adjourned, news organisations and those advocating for minority rights were disillusioned that the SOGIESC Equality Bill of 2022, formulated to ensure equality, was not taken up. Senator Risa Hontiveros, a health and women's rights advocate, hoped it would be passed in the next Congress, scheduled to convene next week. Ouch! Don't be afraid to be women, to allow yourselves to be led by a man.... Women, you are failing, you are eradicating masculinity, making society hypersensitive Javier 'Chicharito' Hernandez, Mexican footballer Woman we met Taanya Kapoor, 33, started the Women and Gender Book Club in June 2023, to 'get back to reading for fun'. She remembers putting out (what was then) a tweet, asking people if they'd like to read fiction and non-fiction by women, with her. 'I just had 200 or 300 followers then, and when I woke up in the morning, there were 80,000 retweets,' she says. Now, with over 700 members of all genders from across the world, the club picks a book to read each month based on suggestions and a final poll. Sometimes, authors attend the Zoom meetings to speak about their books: Shrayana Bhattacharya (Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh), Farah Bashir (Rumours of Spring), and Neha Dixit (The Many Lives of Syeda X). Kapoor herself is in the process of doing a PhD on the contradictions of modern daughterhood in middle-class India.

Israel air drops humanitarian aid packages into Gaza
Israel air drops humanitarian aid packages into Gaza

Time of India

time20 hours ago

  • Time of India

Israel air drops humanitarian aid packages into Gaza

Israel said Saturday that it air dropped aid into the Gaza Strip and would open humanitarian corridors, as it faced growing international condemnation over the deepening hunger crisis in the Palestinian territory. Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2 after ceasefire talks broke down. In late May, it began allowing a small trickle of aid to resume. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Cybersecurity PGDM Product Management Data Science Digital Marketing Technology Public Policy Leadership Artificial Intelligence Operations Management healthcare MCA CXO MBA Healthcare Design Thinking Finance others Degree Others Management Data Analytics Data Science Project Management Skills you'll gain: Duration: 10 Months MIT xPRO CERT-MIT xPRO PGC in Cybersecurity Starts on undefined Get Details Before Israel announced the delivery of seven aid packages, the United Arab Emirates had said it would restart aid drops and Britain said it would work with partners including Jordan to assist them. The decision to loosen the flow of aid came as the Palestinian civil defence agency said over 50 more Palestinians had been killed in Israeli strikes and shootings, some as they waited near aid distribution centres. The same day, Israeli troops boarded a boat carrying activists from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition as it attempted to approach Gaza from the sea and deliver a small quantity of supplies to the aid-starved population. Live Events The humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory has gravely deteriorated in recent days, with international NGOs warning of soaring malnutrition among children. On Telegram, the Israeli military announced it "carried out an airdrop of humanitarian aid as part of the ongoing efforts to allow and facilitate the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip". Earlier, Israel said humanitarian corridors for UN aid convoys to deliver "food and medicine" would also be designated. This would improve the humanitarian situation, and disprove "the false claim of deliberate starvation in the Gaza Strip", it added. Israel's foreign ministry posted on X that a "humanitarian pause" would apply to certain parts of Gaza on Sunday morning to facilitate the aid deliveries. Humanitarian chiefs are deeply sceptical that air drops can deliver enough food to tackle the deepening hunger crisis facing Gaza's more than two million inhabitants. They are instead demanding that Israel allow more overland convoys. But British Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the idea, vowing to work with Jordan to restart air drops. Starmer's office said that in a call with his French and German counterparts the "prime minister set out how the UK will also be taking forward plans to work with partners such as Jordan to airdrop aid and evacuate children requiring medical assistance". The United Arab Emirates said it would resume air drops "immediately". "The humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached a critical and unprecedented level," Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a post on X. "Air drops are resuming once more, immediately." - 'Starving civilians' - A number of Western and Arab governments carried out air drops in Gaza in 2024, when aid deliveries by land also faced Israeli restrictions, but many in the humanitarian community consider them ineffective. "Air drops will not reverse the deepening starvation," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. "They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians." Israel's military insists it does not limit the number of trucks going into the Gaza Strip, and alleges that UN agencies and relief groups are not collecting the aid once it is inside the territory. But humanitarian organisations accuse the Israeli army of imposing excessive restrictions, while tightly controlling road access within Gaza. A separate aid operation is under way through the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but it has faced fierce international criticism after Israeli fire killed hundreds of Palestinians near distribution points. - Naval blockade - On Saturday evening, the live feed on the Handala boat belonging to pro-Palestinian activist group Freedom Flotilla showed Israeli troops boarding the vessel. The soldiers moved in as the boat approached Gaza and three video livefeeds of the scene broadcasting online were cut minutes later. Israeli forces last month intercepted and boarded another boat run by the same group, the Madleen. Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed over 50 people on Saturday, including 14 killed in separate incidents near aid distribution centres. Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency and other parties. Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza after Hamas's October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. The Israeli campaign has killed 59,733 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store