Frantz Fanon – Gender, torture and the biopolitics of colonialism

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a visionary thinker whose legacy continues to shape conversations on identity, power, and resistance. Here, leading Fanon scholar Azzedine Haddour explores themes of gender, revolutionary struggle, and the decolonization of the mind in the first comprehensive study of Fanon’s lesser-known work, Studies in a Dying Colonialism (1959). Drawing on archival material, the author explores the historical developments that determined the colonial consensus and the social transformation prompted by the Algerian liberation struggle. Haddour engages with the biopolitics of French colonialism to support Fanon’s claim that the medical establishment acted in complicity with colonialism. He recounts various assimilationist laws that resulted in the gendering of colonial space and shows how the wars altered the perception of the colonized population through modern Western technologies like the radio. In an era where global struggles for independence and self-determination persist, this book is an essential journey into the mind of a groundbreaking philosopher and icon of revolution.