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The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
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About This Book
A revelatory biography of the writer-activist who inspired today's movements for social and racial justice In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city. Fanon went on to practice a novel psychiatry of "dis-alienation" in rural France and Algeria, and then join the Algerian independence struggle, where he became a spokesman, diplomat, and clandestine strategist. He died in 1961, while under the care of the CIA in a Maryland hospital. Today, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth have become canonical texts of the Black and global radical imagination, comparable to James Baldwin's essays in their influence. And yet they are little understood. In The Rebel's Clinic , Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon's extraordinary life―and a guide to the books that underlie today's most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs
Reviews
"Fanon's attention to the lived scale of everyday life, as well as to how bodies and minds are socially produced, still offers us examples for rethinking and rebuilding a lived politics of both care and critique."
"He is an erudite writer, and not afraid to show off his erudition."
"The range is impressive (if gendered) and has the virtue of putting Fanon into conversation with a variety of perspectives, but Fanon sometimes gets lost in the crowd ..."
"A useful, readable adjunct to anyone studying Fanon's life and work."
"...a superb example of historical biography ..."
"In his effort to demythologize Fanon as a revolutionary, Shatz sometimes obscures the reasons why Macey called him the "apostle of violence" ..."
"The result is a striking appraisal of a towering thinker."
"Nimble and engrossing ..."
"But it delivers a smoother, often engrossing, narrative, one that deserves to be the first stop for anyone looking for an introduction to Fanon's life and work."
"A deep meditation on the transformative power and influence of one radical philosophical writer on the continuing fight for justice on many fronts."
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