Frantz Fanon, the Martinican psychiatrist, prolific scholar, and active participant in the Algerian war of independence against France would have been 100 years old this year. He wrote about a wide range of topics yet it is his reflections on colonial violence and the counter-violence of the colonized that loom large even today, 64 years later.

Despite filmmaker Hassane Mezine’s and my own fairly immersive knowledge about Fanon’s life and work, our conversation inevitably turns to Fanon’s theory about violence. Fanon believed that the colonized have the right to use violent means to fight their colonizers, and that, in fact, this violence can be “cleansing” and transformative for those oppressed by colonialism.

For Hassane, growing up in an Algerian family in France meant that the conversation about the war of liberation was all around him yet many aspects of it were also taboo. As a teenager, Hassane had come across Fanon’s work and instinctively knew that it carried the “keys” to the real story of the Algerian-French war as well as to colonialism, slavery and racism; explosive topics that Hassane had become introduced to from listening to reggae music and books like Alex Haley’s Roots. 

As Hassane went deeper into Fanon’s works and began working on a documentary project about Fanon, he had a poignant realization: “Fanon is talking about love. And the path toward love in a very violent system is to defend yourself.” Influenced by the writer and activist Houria Bouteldjia’s ideas about revolutionary love (and who also appears in the documentary), Hassane finds that Fanon is advocating for dignity through self-defence and is advocating living together peacefully, without any hate and supremacism.

Hassane’s empathetic approach to Fanon is apparent in his 2018 documentary film Fanon Hier, Aujourd’hui (Fanon Yesterday, Today). It is divided into two sections; the first half is biographical (yesterday) and the second half is focused on theory and praxis (today). The first section combines intimate portraits of Fanon’s life with a historical overview of French colonialism, and the Algerian liberation war in which Fanon became involved. The second section features a vibrant global journey that excavates the pertinence of Fanon’s ideas in Algeria, South Africa, Niger, Palestine, Martinique, France, Portugal and the United States. Hassane interviews writers, activists and artists who view themselves as the “wretched of the earth” whether due to oppressive conditions in the Global South or as mistreated migrants in the Global North. Fanon’s ideas unequivocally offer them a path towards liberatory futures.

I ask Hassane to look back at the documentary’s journey of the last five years. The film has been screened in several countries and Hassane has been invited to speak about it in slick Western academic auditoriums, as well as in scrappier settings in Niamey and Bethlehem. The screenings and encounters in the Global South are the most memorable to him because even if people may not have read Fanon, they connect with the documentary instinctively.

We come to the question of Palestine and wonder about the potency as well as the futility of Fanon’s prophetic writings, since it has now been 22 months of a broadcasted genocide.. Palestine was central to Hassane’s film about Fanon and he concluded Fanon Hier, Aujourd’hui with an interview with Samah Jabr, the only woman psychiatrist out of about a couple of dozen practicing psychiatrists in the West Bank. Hassane explains that in Palestine, “we have a typical 19th century type of European colonialism with 21st century technologies” and this is why Fanon’s ideas continue to resonate.

As Fanon turns 100 years old, revival might be in the air but Hassane warns against “fetishism” around the thinker. Rather, Fanon must be viewed as a “toolkit.” Hassane’s hope is that his film can inspire people to read more Fanon and if they are able to see the “future with a different perspective, then to me, this is mission accomplished.” 

Watch the documentary film Fanon Hier, Aujourd’hui (2019) directed by Hassane Mezine: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fanonhieraujourdhui/487559888

 Further reading:

“The radical afterlives of Frantz Fanon” by Bhakti Shringarpure, Africa is a Country https://africasacountry.com/2019/06/the-radical-afterlives-of-frantz-fanon

Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love by Houria Bouteldja, MIT Press https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900033/whites-jews-and-us/

Hosted by Bhakti Shringarpure

Editing: Didier David Moutou

Title Music: “Cottonstorm” by Bayern Boom Beat