Fanon via Lacan, or: Decolonization by Psychoanalytic Means … ?

ABSTRACT

Lacanian psychoanalysis is often considered antithetical to Frantz Fanon's decolonizing political project. This paper argues, by contrast, that by exploring hitherto under-explored aspects of the Fanon-Lacan relation we are able to re-articulate many of Fanon's most crucial political insights. The paper adopts three routes of enquiry. Firstly, it investigates Fanon's earliest citations of Lacan, noting how Fanon utilizes Lacan's ideas of historically-situated forms of madness, (mis)recognition, paranoia and psychic causality. Secondly, it highlights a series of conceptual affinities that exist between the work of the two theorists including idea of sociogeny, the importance of symbolic (or social) structure, the notion of fantasy and of a social (or transindividual) unconscious. Thirdly, it provides an instructive example of how Fanon's theorizations of colonial oppression might be supplemented by means of Lacanian social theory especially in respect of how the colonized are positioned as "non-subjects" relative to the master-signifier of whiteness.

KEYWORDS:

• Lacan
• decolonization
• Fanon
• psychiatry
• psychoanalysis
• whiteness

Notes

1 David Macey, “The Recall of the Real”, p. 98.

2 Nigel Gibson, “Losing Sight of the Real”, p. 130.

3 Macey, “The Recall of the Real”, pp. 101–02.

4 Kelly Oliver, The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of Oppression, p. 4.

5 Oliver, The Colonization of Psychic Space.

6 Erica Burman, “Fanon’s Lacan and the Traumatic Child”, p. 77.

7 Christopher Lee, Frantz Fanon: Toward a Revolutionary Humanism, pp. 62–63.

8 Jean Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 171.

9 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”.

10 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 266.

11 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 264.

12 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 265.

13 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 267.

14 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 80.

15 Erica Burman, “Fanon’s Lacan and the Traumatic Child”, p. 85.

16 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 269.

17 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”, p. 267.

18 Khalfa, “Fanon, Revolutionary Psychiatrist”.

19 Nigel Gibson and Roberto Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, p. 43.

20 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics.

21 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, pp. 42–43.

22 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, p. 43.

23 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics.

24 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, p. 44.

25 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics.

26 Gibson and Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics.

27 Nigel Gibson, Decolonizing Madness: Frantz Fanon’s Psychiatric Writings.

28 Chloë Taylor, “Fanon, Foucault, and the Politics of Psychiatry”, p. 66.

29 Taylor, “Fanon, Foucault, and the Politics of Psychiatry”, p. 62.

30 Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, “Fanonian Musings: Decolonizing/Philosophy/Psychiatry”, p. 42.

31 Nissim-Sabat, “Fanonian Musings”, p. 43.

32 David Marriott, Whither Fanon? p. 70.

33 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Desiring Whiteness, p. 32.

34 Seshadri-Crooks, Desiring Whiteness.

35 Franz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, p. 38.

36 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 146.

37 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 145.

38 Peter Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 264.

39 Kelly Oliver, The Colonization of Psychic Space, p. 21.

40 Peter Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 264.

41 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 265.

42 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 265.

43 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 265.

44 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 266.

45 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 267.

46 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 268.

47 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 268.

48 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, pp. 268–69.

49 Hudson, “The State and the Colonial Unconscious”, p. 269.