Beyond manicheanism: Dialectics in the thought of Frantz Fanon

Abstract

Fanon is perhaps best remembered for his powerful descriptions of, and prescriptions for, a violent engagement with colonialism whose manichean logic, derived from ‘belonging or not belonging to a certain race, a given species’, inexorably determines an individual's social position. However, to begin to understand Fanon's conception of ideology necessitates an exploration of how a dialectical response to manicheanism expresses the liberatory idea of Fanon's new humanism. A study of Fanon's essays on medicine and the radio in his A Dying Colonialism illustrates that the movement toward a new humanism is grounded in the anti‐colonial social struggles. Additionally, Fanon's contribution to the construction of ideology in revolutionary situations is contrasted to post‐modern and post‐colonial uses of Fanon which tend to narrow the construction of ideology to a manichean determination.