This Special Summer 2007 (vol. V) Issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge includes the proceedings of the fourth annual Social Theory Forum (STF), held on March 27-28, 2007, at UMass Boston. The theme of the conference was “The Violences of Colonialism and Racism, Inner and Global: Conversations with Frantz Fanon on the Meaning of Human Emancipation.” The Social Theory Forum sought to revisit Fanon’s insightful joining of the micro and the macro—the everyday life and the increasingly global and world-historical—insights into critical social psychological and imaginative social analysis and theorizing in favor of innovative discourses on the meaning of human emancipation and toward disalienated and reimagined inner and global landscapes. Keynote contributions by: Winston Langley, Lewis R. Gordon, Marnia Lazreg, Irene L. Gendzier, Nigel C. Gibson. Contributors include: José da Mota-Lopes, Luis Galanes Valldejuli, Philip Chassler, Mazi Allen, Andreas Krebs, George Ciccariello-Maher, Kavazeua Festus Ngaruka, Phillip Honenberger, Judith Rollins, H. Alexander Welcome, Dilan Mahendran, Festus Ikeotuonye, Greg Thomas, David Gonzalez Nieto, A. C. Warner, Karen M. Gagne, Rajini Srikanth, Jarrod Shanahan, Adam Spanos, Eric Mielants, Paola Zaccaria, Tryon Woods, Patrick Sylvain, Hira Singh, Nazneen Kane, Lynnell Thomas, Steve Martinot, Jemadari Kamara, Tony Menelik Van Der Meer, Marc Black, Gary Hicks, Sean Conroy, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.

"Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose hugely influential books--including Black skin, white masks--have informed a wide range of studies, and inspired revolutionary movements from Palestine to Sri Lanka and South Africa. Frantz Fanon: philosopher of the barricades is a critical biography of his extraordinary life and work. Peter Hudis draws on his entire story--from his upbringing in Martinique to his mature efforts to fuse psychoanalysis with philosophy--to show that Fanon's writing speaks directly to today's struggles against racism and alienation."--Back cover.

Given the continuing relevance of Fanon's insights into the enduring legacy of colonialism on the psyches of the colonised, this compelling and personal account of his life will be required reading for anyone interested in the consequences of empire.

The problem of change recurs across Frantz Fanon’s writings. As a philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary, Fanon was deeply committed to theorizing and instigating change in all of its facets. Change is the thread that ties together his critical dialogue with Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche and his intellectual exchange with Césaire, Kojève, and Sartre. It informs his analysis of racism and colonialism, négritude and the veil, language and culture, disalienation and decolonization, and it underpins his reflections on Martinique, Algeria, the Caribbean, Africa, the Third World, and the world at large. Gavin Arnall traces an internal division throughout Fanon’s work between two distinct modes of thinking about change. He contends that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive underground theory of transformation. Arnall offers close readings of Fanon’s entire oeuvre, from canonical works like Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth to his psychiatric papers and recently published materials, including his play, Parallel Hands. Speaking both to scholars and to the continued vitality of Fanon’s ideas among today’s social movements, this book offers a rigorous and profoundly original engagement with Fanon that affirms his importance in the effort to bring about radical change.

Black Skin, White Masks is a classic, devastating account of the dehumanising effects of colonisation experienced by black subjects living in a white world. First published in English in 1967, this book provides an unsurpassed study of the psychology of racism using scientific analysis and poetic grace.Franz Fanon identifies a devastating pathology at the heart of Western culture, a denial of difference, that persists to this day. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, his writings speak to all who continue the struggle for political and cultural liberation.With an introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack.

In Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory: A View from the Wretched, Dustin J. Byrd and Seyed Javad Miri bring together a collection of essays by a variety of scholars who explore the lasting influence of Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, revolutionary, and social theorist. Fanon’s work not only gave voice to the “wretched” in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), but also shaped the radical resistance to colonialism, empire, and racism throughout much of the world. His seminal works, such as Black Skin, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth, were read by The Black Panther Party in the United States, anti-imperialists in Africa and Asia, and anti-monarchist revolutionaries in the Middle East. Today, many revolutionaries and scholars have returned to Fanon’s work, as it continues to shed light on the nature of colonial domination, racism, and class oppression. Contributors include: Syed Farid Alatas, Rose Brewer, Dustin J. Byrd, Sean Chabot, Richard Curtis, Nigel C. Gibson, Ali Harfouch, Timothy Kerswell, Seyed Javad Miri, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pramod K. Nayar, Elena Flores Ruíz, Majid Sharifi, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib and Esmaeil Zeiny.

Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon's work has been deeply significant for generations of intellectuals and activists from the 60s to the present day. Alienation and Freedom collects together unpublished works comprising around half of his entire output – which were previously inaccessible or thought to be lost. This book introduces audiences to a new Fanon, a more personal Fanon and one whose literary and psychiatric works, in particular, take centre stage. These writings provide new depth and complexity to our understanding of Fanon's entire oeuvre revealing more of his powerful thinking about identity, race and activism which remain remarkably prescient. Shedding new light on the work of a major 20th-century philosopher, this disruptive and moving work will shape how we look at the world.