Fanon on Racism, Culture, and Social Reproduction

A discussion of Frantz Fanon's 1956 essay "Racism and Culture," which argues for the entanglement of racism and culture - both as a feature of culture and a condition of all cultural production. In particular, I am interested here in how arguments about culture function, per Fanon's insight, as deep political engagement: the reproduction of society is at stake in cultural change and conservation. So, what does this mean for revolutionary practice? It means embracing cultural struggle as a foundational struggle. 

What is Black Existentialism?

Podcasted process pieces from my course Black Existentialism. The course introduces one of the most important and potent mid-century intellectual movements - the existentialist movement - through a series of black Atlantic thinkers. Our keystone will be Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, which is arguably the most important work of Black existentialism from this period. Across the semester we will see why existentialism, with its focus on the ambiguities and ambivalences of lived-experience, had such a deep impact on Black thinkers across the diaspora. We will see these existentialist insights register in literature, philosophy, and film. Old and new.