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Book completed
Mar. 19th, 2025 11:51 pmThe Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, by Adam Shatz. I had to check this book out of the library three times, because I kept resisting reading it until it was nearly due, then I’d return it and later check it out again. I figured eventually I would probably finish it, and I did. Yet Fanon’s life was quite interesting – he was born in Martinique, fought for the French in World War II, then became a psychiatrist at several clinics in France before concluding that France was irredeemably racist and he would be happier elsewhere. So he went to Algeria, which belonged to France then, and practiced psychiatry there while writing about racism and, especially, the many wrongs of colonialism. He was quite active in Algeria’s independence movement, believing that he was in a sense Algerian (although he was a Black atheist who was born on the other side of the Atlantic and didn’t speak Arabic). Eventually he was forced to leave the country, so he went to Tunis but also worked to collaborate with other African independence movements. Then he discovered that he was dying from leukemia and dictated his final book, The Wretched of the Earth, which brought inspiration to freedom fighters (and terrorists) throughout the Third World and to the oppressed peoples of the First World. He then died at age 36, in 1961.
Like probably most of the people who have opinions on the topic, I feel ambivalent about Fanon’s life work. He was personally fairly gentle but firmly believed that violence was an important way for a people to regain their sense of self-worth, after they’d been beaten down and impoverished by a colonial system – although he also noted in great detail the harm that violence did to individuals, both the victims and the perpetrators. One of his main contributions to 20th century thought was his focus on what happens after independence is achieved – the problems of the country don’t magically vanish, especially if the educated middle class just steps right into the government positions vacated by the departing colonizers. He was himself born into the educated middle class but idealized rural laborers, pretty much ignoring the problems of populism and religious fundamentalism among the less educated. I have to think that if he’d been able to live another 30 or 40 years and had written his final book when his thinking had matured a bit more, it would have been less problematic – but he had to write it in a panic, and after all, he was writing for people who he felt needed the information he had for them, as soon as possible, so maybe he wouldn’t have waited anyway.
As for this book, I found it rather hard to get into some of it, but other parts were quite interesting. I especially found the Algerian history a bit difficult to get through, partly because I wasn’t already familiar with it, and partly because of the many acronyms and the great many people who were mentioned briefly, often without context. The chapter about the woman who typed his books was good, though, and the commentary in the final chapters about his main book, and about the role his writings played in the decades that followed, was definitely worthwhile.
Like probably most of the people who have opinions on the topic, I feel ambivalent about Fanon’s life work. He was personally fairly gentle but firmly believed that violence was an important way for a people to regain their sense of self-worth, after they’d been beaten down and impoverished by a colonial system – although he also noted in great detail the harm that violence did to individuals, both the victims and the perpetrators. One of his main contributions to 20th century thought was his focus on what happens after independence is achieved – the problems of the country don’t magically vanish, especially if the educated middle class just steps right into the government positions vacated by the departing colonizers. He was himself born into the educated middle class but idealized rural laborers, pretty much ignoring the problems of populism and religious fundamentalism among the less educated. I have to think that if he’d been able to live another 30 or 40 years and had written his final book when his thinking had matured a bit more, it would have been less problematic – but he had to write it in a panic, and after all, he was writing for people who he felt needed the information he had for them, as soon as possible, so maybe he wouldn’t have waited anyway.
As for this book, I found it rather hard to get into some of it, but other parts were quite interesting. I especially found the Algerian history a bit difficult to get through, partly because I wasn’t already familiar with it, and partly because of the many acronyms and the great many people who were mentioned briefly, often without context. The chapter about the woman who typed his books was good, though, and the commentary in the final chapters about his main book, and about the role his writings played in the decades that followed, was definitely worthwhile.