Fanon and Lacan

Derek Hook is professor of Psychology and a clinical supervisor at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA and Extraordinary Professor of Psychology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.Sinan Richards is a lecturer in French at University College Cork, Ireland and a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London, UK.

‘On the face of it, one can hardly imagine two more different figures than Jacques Lacan and Frantz Fanon, both mythical in their own right – the esoteric analyst in the rarefied atmosphere of the French intellectual life, the activist on the cutting edge of the anti-colonial struggle, inspiring generations of militants. Their encounter may seem improbable, but it is necessary, essential, and most productive, indeed electrifying. Fanon could only start on his path through his engagement with early Lacan, with psychoanalysis which he immediately used as a revolutionary tool; and the Lacanian teaching needs to be reconsidered through Fanon’s lessons in confronting the colonial legacy of racism, deeply embedded in our culture, and by espousing all the intricate dimensions of the black. The present volume, gathering an outstanding group of prominent scholars, addresses an extraordinary multifaceted range of aspects of this encounter where two very different ways of engaging with radical change engross each other and produce real novelty.’Mladen Dolar, author of A Voice and Nothing More.‘Fanon and Lacan: Decolonial Psychoanalysis is a bold rethinking of psychoanalysis from the colonial underside. It shows how Frantz Fanon and Jacques Lacan together open a path for a militant, decolonial critique that joins clinic and politics, desire and liberation.’Ahmad Fuad Rahmat, author of Decolonization and Psychoanalysis.‘Hook and Richards have put together an impressive collection of papers touching on the intellectual relationship between Fanon and Lacan - a much needed intervention facilitating a much needed and overdue dialogue. Bridging historical, clinical, psychosocial, and political perspectives, this book reveals the richness and revolutionary promise of a decolonial psychoanalysis. Hook and Richards have curated a must-read volume, with each chapter showing conclusively why the "New Fanon" is here to stay.’Daniel Gaztambide, author of Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique.‘Fanon and Lacan powerfully intervenes upon Fanonian studies to illuminate the dynamism of Frantz Fanon’s theorizing. Taking seriously Fanon’s decolonizing methodology of “dialectical substitution,” this collection’s rich array of essays teach us not only how to read Fanon in context of his contemporaries but also how to read Fanon’s contemporaries—and most especially Jacques Lacan—in the nachträglich of Fanon’s revolutionary theorizations.’Sheldon George, author of Trauma and Race.‘An excellent and timely collection that advances ongoing studies of the intellectual links between Fanon and Lacan; this collection, reimagines Lacanian psychoanalysis through what Hook and Richards call Fanon’s radical vernacularization of the discipline.’Gautam Basu Thakur, author of Postcolonial Lack‘Fanon and Lacan is a volume unusually and brilliantly equal to Fanon's insistence that his own thought, like the time of psychoanalysis, comes "too soon...or too late." Eschewing ordering claims to end and origin, readers are instead brought into and guided through the experimental working heart of Fanon's clinical and philosophic approach. Homing in on lesser-known influences, affective universes, and moments of impassioned textual investigation, these essays share the virtues they collectively assign to Fanon's decolonial psychoanalysis--vernacular, heterodox, and, most crucially in a time of genocide, praxis-oriented.’Nica Siegal, author of Politics and Exhaustion.‘An excellent and timely collection that advances ongoing studies of the intellectual links between Fanon and Lacan; this collection reimagines Lacanian psychoanalysis through what Fanon’s radical vernacularization of the discipline. Gautam Basu Thakur, author of Postcolonial LackHowever (and rightfully) ambivalent Fanon was about psychoanalysis he understood that dismantling a world needed it nevertheless. Certainly not a pure, uncritical psychoanalysis, but one augmented, rearticulated, de-ontologized, in what he called a ‘vehement confrontation of value.’ We have had enough critique: it is time for a newly made decolonial edifice. This marvelous collection is our handbook for the future.’Jamieson Webster, author of On Breathing.‘Of all the areas of Fanon’s thinking, none is more complex, contested or controversial than his conflictual relationship with psychoanalysis. The essays in this remarkable collection tease out the diversity of inventive paradoxical and paralogical forms developed in his psychoanalytic thought. Drawing on the full range of historical and creative critical possibilities, they explore the depths of Fanon’s strategic liaisons within the distinctive French psychoanalytic scene of his time, while teasing out the ways in which his psychoanalytic conceptions continued to inform his critiques of colonial domination. All scholars of Fanon will learn from the invaluable insights offered in this book.’Robert J.C. Young, co-editor, Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom