This is an edited version of the foreword to Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce’s book Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics (Wits University Press). I was encouraged by a group of black psychologists to engage with the emancipatory potential of Fanon’s approach to mental illness. Oppression and mental illnessFanon recognised mental illness as a real experience that people endure. These suggested that colonised peoples were primitive because they experienced mental illness through their bodily symptoms. This is an edited version of the foreword to Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce’s book Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics (Wits University Press).

Source: The North Africa Journal March 19, 2021 08:37 UTC