Reason in Revolt: An Introduction to the Thought of Frantz Fanon

A postgraduate course in the Department of Politics & International Relations at Rhodes

University. This course will be taught on Friday afternoons during the first semester in 2016.
Frantz Fanon died in 1961. In the years that have passed since his death he has become a
canonical thinker in a number of academic fields including postcolonial studies, critical race
theory and Africana studies. In South Africa his ideas continue to animate some of the most
compelling theoretical innovation that is being produced in the academy and to inspire and
shape the thinking of political militants.
However Fanons name is often used in a manner that has very little to do with his political
work or writings. This course situates Fanons work in the broader Caribbean and black
radical intellectual traditions and gives students an opportunity to engage with Fanons key
writings as well as the most important secondary literature developed in response to his
work. After completing this course students will have a solid foundation on which to
develop an ongoing engagement with both Fanon's work and the key debates in the best
secondary literature on Fanon.
Seminars will be held in the Marian Lacey Seminar Room in the Politics Departments on
Fridays between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Requirements
Each student will be required to:
1. Attend all the weekly seminars
2. Do the reading for each seminar in advance of the seminar and contribute to the
discussions in the seminar
3. Write a thousand word response to the text prescribed for each seminar
4. Write and present a two thousand word response to one of the prescribed texts
5. Read at least two of the recommended texts

6. Write a seven to eight thousand word journal article to be handed in on the last day of
the second term
There is no exam for this course.

Preparatory Reading
There is no obligation to do any reading prior to the start of the course. However students
wishing to begin to begin to familiarise themselves with Fanons life and work during the
holidays will find these books useful:

Nigel Gibson Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (2003)

Peter Hudis Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades (2015)

Christopher Lee Frantz Fanon: Towards a Revolutionary Humanism (2015)

Students wishing to familiarise themselves with the black radical tradition will find these
books useful:

Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the
Politics of Empowerment (1990)

Lewis Gordon An introduction to Africana Philosophy (2008)

Cedric Robinson Black Marxism: The making of the black radical tradition (1983)

Seminar Programme
Term 1 five teaching weeks

Seminar One: Introduction

Seminar Two: C.L.R. James The Black Jacobins (1936)
Seminar Three JeanPaul Sartre AntiSemite & Jew (1943)
2

 Seminar Four: Aim Csaire Discourse on Colonialism (1955)

Seminar Five: Alice Cherki Frantz Fanon: A Portrait (2000)

Term 2 eight teaching weeks

Seminar One: Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White Masks (1951)

Seminar Two: Frantz Fanon A Dying Colonialism (1959)
Seminar Three: Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Seminar Four: Lewis Gordon What Fanon Said (2015)
Seminar Five: T. Denean SharpleyWhiting Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms
(1999)
Seminar Six: Ato SekyiOtu Fanon's Dialectic of Experience (1996)
Seminar Seven: Michael Neocosmos From "Foreign Natives" to "Native Foreigners":
Explaining Xenophobia in Postapartheid South Africa (2010)
Seminar Eight: Nigel Gibson Fanonian Practices in South Africa (2011)

Compulsory Reading

Alice Cherki Frantz Fanon: A Portrait (2000)

Aim Csaire Discourse on Colonialism (1955)

Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Frantz Fanon A Dying Colonialism (1959)

Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Nigel Gibson Fanonian Practices in South Africa (2011)

Lewis Gordon What Fanon Said (2015)

3

C.L.R. James The Black Jacobins (1936)

Michael Neocosmos From "Foreign Natives" to "Native Foreigners" Explaining

Xenophobia in Postapartheid South Africa (2010)

JeanPaul Sartre AntiSemite & Jew (1943)

T. Denean SharpleyWhiting Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (1999)

Ato SekyiOtu Fanons Dialectic of Experience (1996)

Recommended Reading
Students are expected to be able to show a working knowledge of at least two of the
recommended texts.

Pilar Aguilera Chile: The Other September 11: Reflections and Commentaries on the
1973 Coup in Chile (2006)

Kevin Anderson Marx at the Margins (2010)

Paige Arthur Unfinished Projects: Decolonization and the Philosophy of JeanPaul

Sartre (2010)

James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (1955)

James Baldwin The Fire Next Time (1963)

James Baldwin The Price of the Ticket (1985)

Donald L. Barnett & Karari Njama Mau Mau From Within (1968)

Crystal Bartolovich & Neil Lazarus (Eds.) Marxism, Modernity & Postcolonial Studies
(2004)

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (1949)

Steve Biko I Write What I Like (1978)

Stefan Bird-Pollen Hegel, Freud & Fanon (2015)

Robin Blackburn The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery (2011)

Hugo Blanco Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru (1972)

Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (1985)

Amilcar Cabral Return to the Source (1974)

Albert Camus The Rebel (1951 )

4

Albert Camus Algerian Chronicles (2013)

Fidel Castro The Declarations of Havana (2008)

Aim Csaire Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1939)

Aim Csaire The Tempest (1969)

Patrick Chamoiseau Texaco (1992)

Shimmer Chinodya Harvest of Thorns (1990)

George CiccarielloMaher We Created Chvez (2013)

Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me (2015)

Charles Cobb This Nonviolent Stuffll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights
Movement Possible (2015)

Angela Davis Women, Race & Class (1983)

Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1881)

W.E.B. du Bois The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

Enrique Dussel Twenty Theses on Politics (2008)

Enrique Dussel Philosophy of Liberation (2003)

Patrick Ehlen Frantz Fanon a Spiritual Biography (2000)

Stephen Ellis External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 19601990 (2012)

Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952)

Frantz Fanon Towards the African Revolution (1969)

Grant Farred (ed.) Imperative of the Now, Special Issue of South Atlantic Quarterly
on Fanon (2012)

James Ferguson Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (2006)

Sujatha Fernandes Who Can Stop the Drums? (2010)

Carolyn Fick The Making of Haiti (1990)

Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

Eduardo Galeano Open Veins of Latin America (1971)

Nomboniso Gasa (ed.) Women in South African History (2004)

Irne Gendzier Frantz Fanon (1973)

Mark Gevisser Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred (2008)

Nigel Gibson (ed.) Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Legacy (1999)

Nigel Gibson Frantz Fanon: The PostColonial Imagination (2003)

5

Nigel Gibson (ed.) Living Fanon (2011)

David Goldberg Racist Culture (1993)

David Goldberg Are We Post Racial Yet? (2015)

Jane Ann Gordon Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau Through Fanon
(2014)

Lewis Gordon & Jane Anna Gordon Of Divine Warning: Disaster in a Modern Age
(2010)

Lewis Gordon Bad Faith and AntiBlack Racism (1995)

Lewis Gordon Fanon & the Crisis of European Man (1995)

Lewis Gordon Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (2000)

Lewis Gordon An introduction to Africana Philosophy (2008)

Lewis Gordon (ed. with T. Denean SharpleyWhiting and Rene T. White) Fanon: A
Critical Reader (1996)

Lewis Gordon (ed.) Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy

(1997)

Richard Gott Britains Empire (2011)

Pumla Gqola What is Slavery to Me? (2010)

Puma Gqola Rape: A South African Nightmare (2015)

Antonio Gramsci The Prison Notebooks (19291935)

Ranajit Guha The Small Voice of History (2013)

Ernesto Che Guevara The Che Guevara Reader (2003)

Ernesto Che Guevara Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1963)

Ernesto Che Guevara The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in
the Congo (2011)

Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar Rhythms of the Pachakuti (2014)

Paget Henry Calibans Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (2000)

Peter Hallward Absolutely Postcolonial (2001)

Peter Hallward Damming the Flood (2007)

G.W.F. Hegel 'The Master Slave Dialectic' from The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

bell hooks Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre (1984)

bell hooks Feminism is for Everybody (2000)

6

Alistair Horne A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954 1962 (1977)

Paulin J. Hountondji African Philosophy (1983)

Peter Hudis Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades (2015)

George Jackson Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (1970)

Abdul JanMohammed Manichean Aesthetics (1983)

Jennifer Johnson The Battle for Algeria (2015)

Peniel E. Joseph Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in
America (2007)

R.D.G. Kelly Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994)

R.D.G. Kelly Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002)

Jomo Kenyatta Facing Mount Kenya (1938)

Stathis Kouvelakis Philosophy & Revolution (2003)

Toussaint L'Ouverture The Haitian Revolution (2008)

Mandla Langa The Texture of Shadows (2014)

Neil Lazarus The Postcolonial Unconsciousness (2010)

Christopher Lee Frantz Fanon: Towards a Revolutionary Humanism (2015)

Peter Linebaugh & Markus Rediker The Many Headed Hydra (2001)

Dominico Losurdo Liberalism: A CounterHistory (2011)

Dominico Losurdo War & Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century (2015)

Rosa Luxemburg The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (2004)

Tanya Lyons Guns and Guerrilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation
Struggle (2004)

Mahmood Mamdani Citizen & Subject (1996)

Nelson Mandela No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965)

Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

Xolela Mangcu Biko: A Biography (2012)

N. Chabani Manganyi Being Black in the World (1973)

Manning Marable Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is a biography of Malcolm X

(2012)

Albert Memmi The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)

Nivedita Menon Seeing Like a Feminist (2012)

7

Walter Mignolo The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial
Options (2011)

V. Y. Mudimbe The Invention of Africa (1988)

Ousmane Sembne Gods Bits of Wood (1960)

Uday Singh Metha Liberalism & Empire (1999)

Walter Mignolo The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial
Options (2011)

Karl Marx The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Karl Marx The Civil War in France (1871)

Achille Mbembe On the Postcolony (2001)

Ben Maclennan A Proper Degree of Terror (1986)

Bloke Modisane Blame Me on History (1963)

Moeletsi Mbeki Architects of Poverty (2009)

Noel Mostert Frontiers (1992)

Nick Nesbitt Universal Emancipation (2008)

Nick Nesbitt Caribbean Critique (2013)

Julius Nyerere Freedom & Unity (1967)

George Orwell Animal Farm (1945)

Larose Parris Being Apart (2015)

Reiland Rabaka Forms of Fanonism (2010)

Claudia Rankine Citizen: An American Lyric (2015)

Alvaro Reyes (Ed.) Special Issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, Autonomy &
Emancipation in Latin America (2012)

Neil Roberts Freedom as Maroonage (2015)

Cedric Robinson Black Marxism (1983)

Kristin Ross Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French
Culture (1995)

Kristin Ross May 68 and its Afterlives (2002)

James Yaki Sales Meditations on Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth (2010)

JeanPaul Sartre Being and Nothingness (1943)

JeanPaul Sartre Colonialism & NeoColonialism (1964)

8

JeanPaul Sartre Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960)

Lopold Senghor On African Socialism (1964)

Assata Shakur An Autobiography (1987)

Stathis Kouvelakis Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx (2003)

Todd Shepard The Invention of Decolonisation: The Algerian War & the Remaking of
France (2008)

Jeanne Theoharis The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2013)

Ngg wa Thiong'o Wizard of the Crow (2006)

Peter Thomas The Gramscian Movement (2010)

MichelRolf Trioullot Silencing the Past (1995)

Sojourner Truth Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave (1850)

Akinyele Omowale Umoja We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi
Freedom Movement (2013)

Alejandro Velasco Barrio Rising (2015)

Jeffery Webber Red October: LeftIndigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (2012)

Gary Wilder Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonisation and the Future of the World
(2015)

Ral Zibechi Dispersing Power (2010)

Ral Zibechi Territories in Resistance (2012)

Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

-----------------------------