December 1

Today, we'll explore the existentialism of anticolonial activist, psychiatrist, and philosopher Frantz Fanon. Fanon, like Beauvoir and Sartre, blurred the lines between philosophy and politics. For all three, the question of good living is not an abstract question. Rather, the question is how real, existing human beings–you, and Beauvoir, and Fanon, and myself–live in the real, existing world around us. Sartre recognized that, for example, one asks "How do real working class people live?" Beauvoir asked "How do real women live?" And Fanon, famously, asked "How do the colonized live?"

Any of these particular questions could lead us to the central theme for the day. But Fanon's philosophical work spends directs special attention to the problem of other people. Existentialism describes this problem thusly: if others humans are, like ourselves, fundamentally free, but if those humans have some real power to shape the goodness of our living, then whether or not we live a good life is to some extent up to them. Existentialism continues: phenomena like capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism/racism are best described as situations (recall Jeanne Dielman) in which other people refuse to or are unable to recognize and acknowledge my humanity. But this means that those are not just violent or difficult to navigate; according to existentialism, they can make a good life impossible.

Today, Fanon will guide us through this existentialist theory of social life. We'll first examine the colonial context within which Fanon's work arises. Then, we'll consider how other people affect our good living. Finally, we'll explore Fanon's argument that colonialism/racism are situations of bad living, an argument based on the social relationships such situations make possible (and impossible).