ENGL 74.06 Frantz Fanon: Colonial War and Mental Disorders
This course is an introduction to postcolonial theory through an exploration of the writings of Frantz Fanon, a Martiniquan psychiatrist and anticolonial thinker, who wrote extensively on the political and psychical impact of colonization on both the colonizers and the colonized. In the course, we will read Fanon’s early essays on black subjectivity in Black Skin, White Masks; his more overtly political writings on violence and revolution in Wretched of the Earth; and, his clinical writings on madness, institutionalization, and psychotherapy, collected in the newly translated Alienation and Freedom. Throughout the course of the term, we will pay close attention to questions of racial and sexual difference in Fanon’s work as well as the way his writing remains critical for postcolonial political thought.
Department-Specific Course Categories
Senior Seminar: Course Group IV