Volume 41, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 59-78
Department of History, Northern Illinois University, United States
Abstract
This article
considers two famous works published in France during the Algerian War
and forever after interpretively linked: Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of
the Earth and Jean-Paul Sartre’s
Preface to Fanon’s book. It argues that yoking together the two texts
has distorted key features of each, in particular as they relate to the
multiform problem of violence. To overcome a misreading of Fanon’s
position by Sartre, the
analysis presented here uses the under-examined clinical case studies in
the final chapter of Wretched to emphasize Fanon’s acknowledgment of
violence as a source of trauma, not only a means by which trauma is
transcended. It then attempts to explain Sartre’s
reinterpretation of Fanon’s message in light of ongoing postwar debates
within the French intellectual Left about the revolutionary potential
of violence in metropolitan France. © 2015, Berghahn Journals, Ltd. All
rights reserved.
Author keywords
Algerian War; Frantz Fanon; Jean-Paul Sartre; Trauma; Violence
ISSN: 03157997Source Type: Journal
Original language: English
DOI: 10.3167/hrrh.2015.410305Document Type: Article
Publisher: Berghahn Journals, Ltd
