Fanon: the Revolutionary as prophet / a biography by Peter Geismar.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York, NY, Grove Press Inc, 1971.Description: 214 pages black and white illustrations 18 cmISBN:
  • 0394173961
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 322/.42/0924 B
LOC classification:
  • CT 2750 .F3 G4 1971
Online resources:
Contents:
I Martinique -- II The Mother country -- III Interruptions -- IV Blida -- V The Algerian front -- VI The Tunisian front -- VII The oxygen of revolution -- VIII Black Africa -- IX Unfinished mission -- X Certain conclusions --
Review: "The early death of this Third World psychiatrist-cum-revolutionary has established him as a romantic, precursory enigma. Geismar's biography, part political, part personal, weaves the two dimensions too ineptly to illuminate Fanon's life and character or put his thought in historical context. Often relying on Fanon's own elliptical style with little of Fanon's explosive force, Geismar disjoints the narrative line and disorients the reader with his splicings of political interpretation. According to Geismar, Fanon was ""overwhelmed with shame and self-hatred"" as a student in Lyons (where he married a white French student) and ""turned away from the white world"" -- a turn which arguably reflects the strains of Fanon's childhood in Martinique more than his circumstances in France; but Geismar is seeking an immediate rationale for Fanon's first book, Black Faces, White Masks. Geismar later acknowledges that Fanon did not break with the colonialist world until he became a daily witness to French army tortures in his Algerian mental hospital. This drove him into the FLN, where, Geismar claims, he was a leading propagandist, though in fact his quite different role was that of literary spokesman. Geismar gives almost no Algerian War background, and minor factual errors recur, e.g. misdescription of the postwar Gaullist government and a claim that Bourgiba was totally pro-FLN. Focusing on Fanon's racial theories, Geismar treats only lightly and uncritically Fanon's notion of ""purgative violence,"" probably his most important concept for his worldwide radical audience; and indeed he neglects to explain Fanon's appeal to Western leftists. Though with its elaboration of Fanon's medical career it has more biographical substance than Caute's Frantz Fanon (1970), it is equally ill-structured, more rhetorical, and weaker on intellectual-historical connections." Kirkus review found on Amazon
List(s) this item appears in: LeAnna Cataloged
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode
BOOKS BOOKS Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library General Stacks The Karen Lee Wald Collection CT 2750 .F3 G4 1971 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Not For Loan NPML22070009

Resource includes bibliography (pages [203]-206) and index

I Martinique -- II The Mother country -- III Interruptions -- IV Blida -- V The Algerian front -- VI The Tunisian front -- VII The oxygen of revolution -- VIII Black Africa -- IX Unfinished mission -- X Certain conclusions --

"The early death of this Third World psychiatrist-cum-revolutionary has established him as a romantic, precursory enigma. Geismar's biography, part political, part personal, weaves the two dimensions too ineptly to illuminate Fanon's life and character or put his thought in historical context. Often relying on Fanon's own elliptical style with little of Fanon's explosive force, Geismar disjoints the narrative line and disorients the reader with his splicings of political interpretation. According to Geismar, Fanon was ""overwhelmed with shame and self-hatred"" as a student in Lyons (where he married a white French student) and ""turned away from the white world"" -- a turn which arguably reflects the strains of Fanon's childhood in Martinique more than his circumstances in France; but Geismar is seeking an immediate rationale for Fanon's first book, Black Faces, White Masks. Geismar later acknowledges that Fanon did not break with the colonialist world until he became a daily witness to French army tortures in his Algerian mental hospital. This drove him into the FLN, where, Geismar claims, he was a leading propagandist, though in fact his quite different role was that of literary spokesman. Geismar gives almost no Algerian War background, and minor factual errors recur, e.g. misdescription of the postwar Gaullist government and a claim that Bourgiba was totally pro-FLN. Focusing on Fanon's racial theories, Geismar treats only lightly and uncritically Fanon's notion of ""purgative violence,"" probably his most important concept for his worldwide radical audience; and indeed he neglects to explain Fanon's appeal to Western leftists. Though with its elaboration of Fanon's medical career it has more biographical substance than Caute's Frantz Fanon (1970), it is equally ill-structured, more rhetorical, and weaker on intellectual-historical connections." Kirkus review found on Amazon

Gift of Karen Wald.

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