Crossing the Sahara: Fanon's notes on African Unity

Crossing the Sahara: Fanon's notes on African Unity

Long recognized as one of the most prominent thinkers of the African diaspora, Martinican-born psychiatrist Frantz Fanon has nevertheless been read in limited orbits: his work on race, gender and sexual relations in Martinique remains distinctly separate from his writings on colonial trauma in Algeria. Yet if anyone embodies the central role that mobility plays in shaping understandings of Afro-diasporic identities it is Fanon. What does the notion of dispersal mean for Fanon? How might his entire geography, including but not limited to the triumvirate of France-Martinique-Algeria allow us to better understand Fanon's thinking on mobility as decolonization?

This exhibit maps Fanon's travel notes from his tenure as Algerian ambassador to Ghana in 1960. Known as the first sub-Saharan African country to attain independence from colonial rule, Ghana, for Fanon, becomes a key site for challenging the Saharan divide and envisioning new possibilities for African unity.

A. Joseph-Gabriel

*Please stay tuned, exhibit forthcoming shortly.

Fanon's travel notes cited from Fanon, Frantz. OEuvres. Paris: Découverte, 2011. Print

Photo credits: Image made available on Wikimedia Commons by Pacha J. Willka

English and French

Neatline exhibit