“It is too soon… or too late:” Frantz Fanon’s Legacy in the French Caribbean

• Main Author: Andrew M. Daily
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholm University Press 2015-11-01
• Series: Karib
• Online Access: https://www.karib.no/articles/28

The Martinican psychiatrist and theorist Frantz Fanon’s work is foundational to studies of imperialism, decolonization, and postcolonial studies, with new articles, books, and conferences dedicated to his thought appearing year after year. Yet, despite his outsized influence and impact in the academy, observers have suggested that in his native Antilles Fanon was largely forgotten. Close attention to the archival record casts doubt on this reading of his legacy in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Guyane. Rather than disappearing into obscurity following his premature death in 1961, Fanon’s work and his life shaped French Caribbean students, activists, intellectuals, and writers. His sharp critique of the Antillean situation and the Antillean psyche, as well as his committed revolutionary example, proved a fecund resource for Antillean student activists, whether Marxist or Catholic, for poets and writers such as Maryse Condé, Sonny Rupaire, Bertène Juminer, and Daniel Boukman, and for critics and social scientists like Edouard Glissant, Roland Suvélor, Michel Giraud, and others. Fanon’s work was not forgotten, but remained explosive and provocative, the subject of intense political and intellectual organization and debate.