Educators as decolonial intellectuals: revolutionary thought from Gramsci to Fanon

ABSTRACT

For several decades, the Gramscian notion of the intellectual has been a popular framework to view the potentiality of educators as counter-hegemonic cultural workers. While this was an invaluable contribution to the field of critical education, notions of the intellectual have largely focused on class conflict. For a deeper theorization of the intellectual and race, we turn to the work of decolonial thinker Frantz Fanon. In his work, Fanon theorizes the role of the intellectual amid the struggle against colonialism. In this article, we examine Fanon’s intellectual work as well as his writing on the ‘colonized intellectual’ to articulate what we describe as a Fanonian decolonial intellectual. We conclude by highlighting the importance of Fanon’s contributions on the intellectual for educators of color, who presently find themselves compromised by a hegemony characterized by neoliberal multiculturalism in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Fanon
• Gramsci
• intellectual
• hegemony
• decolonial
• coloniality
• neoliberal multiculturalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term ‘native intellectual’ is used in Constance Farrington’s 1963 translation of The Wretched of the Earth.

2. This intellectual, medical, and militant work led France to expel Fanon from Algeria in January 1957. He would return to north Africa with forged documents shortly after (Gordon, 2015, p. 91).

3. Beyond Fanon, women of color feminists have been instrumental in developing theories of the body to think with and through difference as a way to imagine alternative possibilities. In education, scholars offering this example include Cruz’s (2001) epistemology of the brown body, hooks (1994) transgressive knowledges, and Grande’s (2004) red pedagogy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael V. Singh

Michael V. Singh is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis. He received his PhD in education from UC Berkeley where he was a NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow and later a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow. His research examines the ways the intersections of race, gender, and neoliberalism influence the learning experiences and teaching practices of Latino men and boys.

Zeus Leonardo

Zeus Leonardo is Professor of Education, and Faculty of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and a past Vice President of AERA’s Division G, Social Context of Education (2017–2020). He has received several recognitions, including the Derrick Bell Legacy Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association and the Scholars of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award from AERA. He is a member of the American National Academy of Education. Leonardo has authored or edited ten books, such as Race Frameworks; the 2^nd edition of Education and Racism (with Norton Grubb); Race, Whiteness and Education; and his most recent book, Edward Said and Education. His articles and book chapters critically engage race, class, and gender stratification in education; democratic schooling; and diversity in multiple forms, including epistemological and ideological difference. His work is interdisciplinary and brings together insights from sociology, contemporary philosophy, and race/ethnic studies. In addition to invitations in the U.S., Professor Leonardo has delivered keynotes in England, Sweden, Canada, and Australia.