Black Soul, White Artifact
Fanon's Clinical Psychology and Social Theory

These papers examine the intellectual legacy of the political psychologist Frantz Fanon.

Jock McCulloch (Author)

9780521520256, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 May 2002

264 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.43 kg

The death of Frantz Fanon at the age of thirty-six robbed the African revolution of its leading intellectual and moral force. His death also cut short one of the most extraordinary intellectual careers in contemporary political thought. Fanon was a political psychologist whose approach to revolutionary theory was grounded in his psychiatric practice. During his years in Algeria he published clinical studies on the behaviour of violent patients, the role of culture in the development of illness and the function of the psychiatric hospital as a social milieu. These papers illuminate Fanon's political theory, expose weaknesses in his concept of political consciousness and liberation, and contain a 'secret history' explaining the tide of revolutionary movements in the Third World.

List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. The three paradigms: negritude, ethnopsychiatry and African socialism
2. Negritude
3. Ethnopsychiatry and the psychopathology of colonialism: Fanon's account of colonised man in 'Black Skin White Masks'
4. From psychiatric practice to political theory
5. Culture and personality
6. Class conflict and the liberation of Africa
7. The failed revolution
8. The neo-colonial state
9. Towards a critique of Fanon's class analysis
10. Conclusion
Appendixes
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]