Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change

Gavin Arnall

Published by Columbia University Press 2019

Subterranean Fanon

An Underground Theory of Radical Change

Gavin Arnall

https://doi.org/10.7312/arna19364

Overview
Contents

About this book

The problem of change recurs across Frantz Fanon’s writings. Gavin Arnall traces an internal division throughout Fanon’s work, contending that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive underground theory of transformation.

Author / Editor information

Gavin Arnall is assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the translator of Emilio de Ípola’s Althusser, The Infinite Farewell (2018).

Reviews

Gary Wilder, author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World:
Subterranean Fanon is grounded in Arnall's expertise in Fanon's writings, which he reads carefully and creatively. He develops an important argument about a central tension in Fanon's thinking between Hegelian-dialectical and Nietzschean-ruptural orientations, each of which expresses a certain kind of radical universalism. This exemplary work of scholarship should shift the ground of debate about this canonical thinker. It is also a welcome example of next-generation postcolonial and political theory.

Natalie Melas, Cornell University:
Written with clarity, subtlety, and purpose, Subterranean Fanon is the first book to undertake an analysis of Fanon's thought on the basis of the whole of his corpus. In this tour de force, Gavin Arnall makes a compelling case for the disjunctive and translational presence of two Fanons throughout the writings, two modalities for conceptualizing and acting upon the radical change decolonization calls for. The book is essential reading for Fanon scholars and for all those engaged in the urgency of thinking through the grounds and the ramifications of change in our times.

Achille Mbembe, author of Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization:
Arnall's Subterranean Fanon is a unique combination of close reading and theoretical sophistication. This unprecedented work of intellectual inquiry is one of the most comprehensive, consistent, and cogently argued books on Frantz Fanon. It will reset the terms of further debates on Fanon's multiple legacies.

Robin D. G. Kelley, University of California, Los Angeles:
Frantz Fanon has reemerged as the radical thinker of the twenty-first century. We turn to Fanon to understand interminable global racism, state violence, and capitalism’s ability to weather ongoing crises. But which Fanon? The dialectical thinker who imagined a new humanity emerging from the shell of the old antagonisms? Or the nondialectical thinker who called for the complete and total destruction of colonial structures of oppression, who imagined with almost eschatological fury a new beginning from the ashes of the old world? Gavin Arnall’s provocative and superb study insists that we need not choose nor attempt to reconcile Fanon’s divided thought. But if we confront his contradictions directly, embrace his unique mode of thinking and imagination, we will surely discover the true depths of Fanon’s radical emancipatory vision.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction. Two Fanons Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter One. The Psychiatric Papers and Parallel Hands Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
Chapter Two. Black Skin, White Masks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
Chapter Three. Writings on the Algerian Revolution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Chapter Four. The Wretched of the Earth (Part I) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Chapter Five. The Wretched of the Earth (Part II) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	204
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: September 30, 2020
ISBN: 9780231550437