International meeting around Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
Centenary of the birth of Frantz Fanon
International meeting around Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
17 to 20 July 2025
Amphithéâtre Frantz Fanon
Université des Antilles
Campus de Schoelcher
Martinique
The Cercle Frantz Fanon Martinique is organizing an international meeting to mark one hundred years since Frantz Fanon’s birth, on 20 July 1925.
Humanity as we know it today is globally dominated by the powers of money (to put it briefly, the capitalist ideology circulating on a global scale). The forces that spread scientific progress in all fields create inequality and increasingly striking discrimination.
The economy is not structured in the same way everywhere in the world. And yet, in our world, interconnectedness is becoming more and more manifest (globalization, they say). In reality, this means extreme dependence for countries with ‘development problems’, and interdependence for so-called developed countries. And extreme dependence for countries that are still colonized: where natural resources should be made use of for the benefit of indigenous communities.
Many countries in struggle claim Fanon as their own and lay claim to his legacy. That’s why we think it’s useful and necessary to invite activists from these countries to share this heritage. How and why is The Wretched of the Earth both scouring and invigorating? How does it enrich our current struggles for liberation and emancipation?
Many struggling countries claim Fanon as their own and reclaim his legacy. This is why we feel it is useful and necessary to invite activists from these countries to share this legacy. How and why is The Wretched of the Earth both caustic and fortifying for us? How does it enrich our current struggles for liberation and emancipation?
For Cercle Frantz Fanon, organizing such an international meeting to mark the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth amounts to taking part in a ‘new way of thinking’ that draws its strength from what we believe to be his testament: The Wretched of the Earth.
This is why we would like to give priority to proposals in the following five areas:
1 – The Cercle Frantz Fanon invites activists from every continent to tell us how and in what way the content of Frantz Fanon’s analysis in The Wretched of the Earth enables them to give ethical content, political meaning and relevance to their struggle to ‘track down’ situations of domination and capitalist exploitation on their continent.
For example, we need to examine the mobilization of a ‘Fanonian anthropology’ on the
African continent. Thus, it is important to investigate the ways in which the forms of expression of socio-political struggles locate themselves in relation to Fanon’s proposals. This exploration will seek to identify the ways in which the forms and models of struggle that give rise to hopes for a sociability of solidarity are consistent with Fanon’s ethics, as expressed in The Wretched of the Earth. It is also important to establish the state of liberation from forms of mimicry vis-à-vis Europe, which is roundly condemned in the conclusion of The Wretched of the Earth: ‘We must leave our dreams, abandon our old beliefs and our friendships from before life’.
2 – Revisit our analyses of the colonial situation in what the French State calls the ‘overseas territories’. (In the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and even on the South American continent).
The idea is to question the relevance of Frantz Fanon’s propositions in approaching and resolving the problems facing these countries today. And whether Frantz Fanon still has something to offer today in these countries.
3 – The Cercle Frantz Fanon is calling on us to revisit the ways in which we take charge of our collective destiny here in Martinique.
Can The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon’s testamentary work, still feed, enliven and fertilize our anti-colonial and anti-capitalist analyses and practices? How does colonial domination manifest itself here and now? The words of the Cercle Frantz Fanon cannot be deprived of their action dimension. Hence the need for a liberating utopia and its corollary, action to break out of structural, institutional, political, economic and, of course, cultural subjugation.
Inspired by Fanon’s proposition: ‘The immobility to which the colonized is condemned can only be called into question if the colonized decides to put an end to the history of colonization’. The Cercle Frantz Fanon invites us to re-examine the following interrelated issues:
Violence/Religion/Culture/Political parties/Trade unions/Psychiatric cases/Negritude.
4 – This meeting also calls for a new reflection on the way in which Fanon the psychiatrist could ‘put us back on track’ towards a humanity based on solidarity.
5 – Listening to the voices of those dominated and crushed, and those excluded.
Considering that the dominant and tentacular order always manifests itself in negation of countless peoples of the world. The Cercle Frantz Fanon wishes to hear the voices of several of these dominated and crushed peoples, (for example: Palestine, Kanaky, the first peoples of Amazonia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere) as well as the voices of other dominated and excluded peoples.
The Cercle Frantz Fanon also welcomes proposals for papers exploring the following themes, based on ‘The Wretched of the Earth’:
‘In decolonization, therefore, there is a demand to fully question the colonial situation’ (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth).
- Violence in the national and international context (legitimate violence)
- Decolonization as a historical process
- Economic domination: structures and strategies of resistance.
- Cultural imposition
‘The immobility to which the colonized is condemned can only be called into question if the colonized decides to put an end to the history of colonization’, says Fanon. - Debts and reparations
‘Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth that suffocates it is that which has been stolen from the underdeveloped peoples’ (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth).
Criticism of the bourgeoisie in colonized countries - Greatness and weakness of spontaneity: knowledge as a collective practice Dialectic between political organizations and grassroots.
- National awareness: the role of intellectual and artistic elites
‘One can only move forward with determination if one is aware of one’s alienation’ (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth) - Societal and ontological impacts of colonialism on colonized or neo-colonized peoples today ‘Every effort is made to induce the colonized to confess the inferiority of his culture transformed into instinctive behavior, to recognize the unreality of his nation and, ultimately, the unorganized and unfinished nature of his own biological structure’ (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth).
- Colonial wars and mental disorders
‘The truth is that colonization, in its very essence, was already a purveyor for psychiatric
hospitals. Since 1954, in various scientific works, we have drawn the attention of French and international psychiatrists to the difficulty of correctly ‘curing’ a colonized person, that is to say, of making him homogeneous throughout with a social environment of the colonial type’ (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth).
Contributors are required to submit 300-word abstracts.
Abstracts should be sent to Victor Permal at the following two email addresses:
victor.permal@wanadoo.fr and cffanonscientifique@gmail.com by 15 February 2025.
