Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), psychiatrist and philosopher, is an unavoidable name in postcolonial studies and the anti-racist struggle.
He was born into a large family of the petty bourgeoisie of the French Antilles, on the island of Martinique. A descendant of enslaved Africans forcibly transported to this area – which had once ensured the wealth and balance of payments in France – he was the fifth child of a customs official and nevertheless had a carefree childhood, with access to a careful education. In his youth, however, he lived traumatic experiences when, in 1943, he left Martinique and joined the Free French troops in World War II. At that time, Fanon discovered that the equality proclaimed by the French Republic was an illusion, and quickly realized that he was not seen as an equal, a fact that contributed to his going to study medicine in the metropolis, the destination of the most ambitious or gifted, as had already happened with his mentor and friend Aimé Césaire – Fanon's teacher in his high school days –, benefiting from the fact that he is a former combatant.
In addition to his work as a physician and psychiatrist, Fanon supported the Algerian War of Independence from France and was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. He left a body of work that greatly influenced postcolonial studies and the anti-racist struggle, addressing the human, social and cultural consequences of decolonization. A great intellectual of his time and a Marxist humanist, he elaborated with Jean-Paul Sartre radical critiques of the strategies of violence and dehumanization that affected the colonized.
He died prematurely, in 1961, at the age of 36, victim of leukemia.