De-authenticating Fanon : self-organised anti-racism and the politics of experience

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    Abstract

    This chapter proposes that the work of Frantz Fanon, on both the process of racialisation and the realisation of anti-colonialist self-determination, are key to a sociology of contemporary anti-racism. In particular, Fanon's ideas on the insufficiency of the visibility of the racialised without their contemporaneous freedom from colonial/racist oppression lends significant insight into the emphasis placed on representation by anti-racist organisations led by the actual or potential victims of racism. As my research on the discourse and practice of anti-racism in Western Europe has demonstrated, the importance placed on self-representation is grounded in a politicised approach to the challenge to racism. Such an approach opposes itself to the dominant discourse of culturalism that has come to replace politics both as a means of conceptualising difference in western societies and as a tool for framing collective action in a public sphere increasingly less concerned with the state. The ascription of the roots of "culturalism" to the anti-colonialist project in general, and to Fanon more specifically, is based on the failure of most scholars to historicise the emergence of the culturalist idea in the post-war world. What aspects of Fanon's writings have been misrepresented in the construction of such explanations of culturalist identity politics? To answer this question, I examine Fanon's ambivalence towards the notion of an authentic black identity and connect his exploration of a phenomenological emphasis on lived-experience to the findings of my research on European anti-racism. This reveals the clear difference drawn in Fanon between the idea of an authentic cultural or national identity and the necessity of using the lived-experience of the racialised as a means for understanding and overcoming oppression. The fluidity of experience as opposed to the rigidity of authenticity may be shown to be a vital legacy of an anti-racist project grounded in the self-representation of the racialised. My argument is that experience today is profoundly political in that, by revealing the unavoidable ambiguity of belongingness and unveiling the sources of persistent racism, it challenges the easy classification of human difference that is facilitated by concern with “identities”.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationRace and State
    EditorsAlana Lentin, Ronit Lentin
    Place of PublicationU.K.
    PublisherCambridge Scholars
    Pages53-70
    Number of pages18
    ISBN (Print)9781847187741
    Publication statusPublished - 2008

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