Historically famous critics

Frantz Fanon

1925-1961 · Martinican · 20th century

Martinican psychiatrist and theorist who dissected colonialism, racism, and revolt

Born in French-ruled Martinique, Frantz Fanon trained as a psychiatrist and turned his clinical eye on the mental wounds that colonialism inflicts on the colonized. In Black Skin, White Masks he mapped the racism embedded in colonial society, and in The Wretched of the Earth, written during the Algerian war, he argued that decolonization was a total remaking of the oppressed. His work became a foundational text for anti-colonial movements and for postcolonial and Black liberation thought worldwide.