(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Fanon was a psychiatrist and political philosopher from Martinique.
He was a polymath who “plunged himself into an extensive and phenomenal reading programme” encompassing “literature, political economics, medicine and philosophy”, but was “no armchair philosopher or academic theorist” (Fanon 2008, xi; Fanon 2016, 11). His work emerged directly from the “crucible of colonial experience” and was “put into practice, and used to aid the anti-colonial struggle” (Fanon 2008, xviii).
Having read psychiatry at university in France, Fanon struggled when he sought to apply these theories in his psychiatric practice in Algeria. He learned that Western sociotherapy failed because it “disregarded…neglected geographic, historical, cultural, and social particularities [of] mentally ill Muslim men” (Cherki 2006, 69). The theories of his field were implicitly those of the coloniser, so when a patients’ suffering did not conform to the colonizer’s established, often ethnocentric, medical frameworks, it was often invalidated or ignored. Fanon fought against this situation by engaging directly with his minority patients, by tirelessly questioning Arab nurses, and actively seeking to understand Algerian customs and values (p. 72). By exploring and conversing with the population, learning from the failures of culturally inappropriate interventions, he demonstrated his conviction that “psychopathological expression is grounded in cultural forms” (p. 34). Even ostensibly neutral scientific theories can function as tools of oppression and epistemic violence when detached from concrete, lived experience: they inevitably lead to misdiagnosis, misunderstanding, and ultimately, dehumanisation. In reading we must recognise the inherent limits of abstract, decontextualised knowledge and be willing to learn directly from those whose realities are being studied, prioritising their concerns.
This insistence on practical, embodied application of abstract knowledge dominated Fanon’s political thinking, too: “What matters is not to know the world but to change it” (Fanon 2008, 8). He viewed intellectuals who prioritise detail and “specialized areas and fields” over the “overall picture” of the people’s revolution as “vulgar opportunist[s]” who tend “to lose sight of the unity of the movement” (Fanon 2004, 13–14). Literature is “a jumble of dead words” when it has “nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged” (p. 11). For the colonized, “violence represents the absolute praxis” which “enlightens the militant because it shows him the means and the end” (p. 44). Books are weapons. It is in inspiring and informing practical action that the text becomes most useful, and there is a continuous, reciprocal relationship between action and understanding: action informs understanding, and understanding, in turn, refines action. Reading must be deeply integrated into action, which for Fanon was the “urgent and pressing thing on his mind: liberation” (Fanon 2008, xi).
Liberation, revolution is the “true culture”: “it is forged while the iron is hot” (Fanon 2004, xlvii). Culture “never has the translucency of custom”; it is “the very opposite of custom, which is always a deterioration of culture” (p. 160). That is, “seeking to stick to tradition or reviving neglected traditions is not only going against history, but against one’s people” (ibid.). If tradition works in this way, reading ancient texts and seeking to directly apply their lessons risks retarding the cultural progress of a revolutionary culture. Historical texts or ethnographic studies are not merely records of the past but potential catalysts for future action and transformation.
Revolutionary “action does not follow automatically from understanding or theorizing. Action requires aspiration and desire.” (Fanon 2008, xvii). Reading should cultivate not only intellectual comprehension but also the moral will, desire, and aspiration for concrete change. Fanon believed that “the more the people understand, the more vigilant they become, the more they realize in fact that everything depends on them and that their salvation lies in their solidarity, in recognizing their interests and identifying their enemies” (Fanon 2004, 133). The ultimate purpose of reading extends beyond individual enlightenment to encompass societal awakening and mobilization. His extensive journalism helped fulfil this function of collective political education, which in turn suggests the value of reading outside the theoretical, the timeless, the abstract. Perhaps reading contemporary journalism from minorities helps bridge the gap between theory and direct knowledge of the population?
He was “not satisfied with academic language”; his prose was characterised by its “poetry and rhythm” (Fanon 2016, 14). It “demands to be read aloud”, as a result, perhaps, of him often dictating it rather than writing it directly (Cherki 2006, 160; Fanon 2016, 14). He intended to “touch my reader in his emotions, i.e., irrationally, almost sensually”, aiming to “convey an experience by going ” and to write “inside the sensory dimension of language in order to give rise to a new way of thinking” (Macey 2001, 162). However, a writer can successfully appeal to the reader’s emotionality in this way only if the reader allows it: to be touched by this kind of writing we must be open to its language and affect. In reading solely for information we foreclose the possibility of being emotionally inspired to act.
In Fanon’s French Antilles, the societal pressure to speak “the French of France, the Frenchman’s French, French French”—and so escape “jungle status”—and the explicit scorn for native dialects like Creole exemplify internalised inferiority and the profound desire to appear “almost white” (Fanon 2008, 9–11, 25):
To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is.
For the Antillean, the French language and culture became the dominant and often exclusive frame of reference, shaping their very understanding of themselves and their world (pp. 8–27, 61–81). This linguistic and cultural imposition, Fanon argues, directly contributes to the “depersonalization of the colonized subject” and their profound inability to answer the fundamental question, “who am I?” (Cherki 2006, 87). This is not all obvious for native speakers and the majority, reading in their own culture; as readers we must recognise how our language sets our frame of reference in this way. Reading texts requires that we not passively accept the language and its inherent biases and power dynamics, but critically analyse the medium itself.
For example, the act of a black person speaking “properly” can be a potent form of resistance, disrupting established power dynamics and forcing the white colonizer to “give in” because the Negro has made himself “just as knowledgeable” (Fanon 2008, 23). When the colonised subject masters the coloniser’s language, the former strategically turns it against the latter, using it to articulate the former’s narratives of oppression and liberation. This represents a profound dialectical reversal: a tool of oppression is transmuted into a weapon of liberation. More generally, by reading the works of a particular entity, we can learn how they speak, and in this way emancipate ourselves from their control by fighting them on their own terms.
The need to realise this power of language, for reading to be a tool of liberation and to be integrated with cultural understanding, led to Fanon engaging with texts by critically appropriating them: to fundamentally transform their ideas to meet the needs of the colonised and to help in their struggle. He did not merely read Hegel, for example; he actively re-wrote Hegel’s philosophy for the specific context of colonial oppression. His “critical recovery” of Hegel’s dialectic demonstrates that his reading was not for simple comprehension, but for critical application and radical re-interpretation (Hudis 2015, 46). Likewise, he challenged the standard Marxist model by identifying the peasantry as the primary revolutionary force in Africa, a conclusion drawn from the specific social relations prevalent in colonial contexts (Fanon 2004, 5). This insistence on “stretching” Marx exemplifies a crucial aspect of Fanon’s use of texts: the imperative to critically contextualise seemingly universal theories (Hudis 2015, 9–10). This approach demands understanding the historical and social genesis of a theory and rigorously assessing its applicability (and inherent limitations) to different contexts, rather than dogmatically applying it without adaptation.
Reading, then, is never a neutral act; the language and cultural context of any text inherently shape the reader’s perception, interpretation, and ultimately, their understanding of the world. We must be aware of these implicit factors, and always have praxis in mind. We should select books that arm us for the struggle against oppression, use them to understand and dismantle problematic power structures, then move beyond them to join the people in action, creating a new reality, a new culture, a new human, that their authors couldn’t have even imagined:
The colonized intellectual…who strives for cultural authenticity, must recognize that national truth is first and foremost the national reality. He must press on until he reaches that place of bubbling trepidation from which knowledge will emerge. (Fanon 2004, 161)