Decolonization and Liberation: Fanon at 100
Share via
9:30am-5:30pm Friday 14 November
Arts West, Room 353
University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus
2025 marks the centenary of the birth of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), revolutionary, psychiatrist, and theorist of decolonization. The radical demand of Fanon's life and work continue to be felt across philosophy, political theory, literature, cultural studies, critical theory, psychiatry, Black studies, and anti-, de-, and postcolonial thought and activism. Fanon's writings, ranging from Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961) to the essays and reports gathered in posthumous works continue to animate struggles against racism, racialisation, colonialism, and the ongoing violent afterlives of empire.
This symposium brings together scholars, activists, and artists to reflect on Fanon’s life, work, and enduring significance. Participants will explore how Fanon’s analyses of racialisation, colonial violence, and alienation illuminate the crises of the present.
Speakers include: Tony Birch, André Dao, Ben Gook, Mike Griffiths, Beau Kent, Lynda Ng, Motega Ramnac, Ricardo Rojas Campos, Lucy Van.
All welcome - no registration necessary
Program |
|---|
9:30 Open 9:45 Welcome 10:00 Session 1: Futures Lynda Ng, Considering Violence in the Asian Century to Come. Ben Gook, Fanon’s Disalienation: Radical Psychiatry, Institutional Therapy and Temporal Ruptures. Michael R. Griffiths, “With the Intention of Opening Up the Future”: Frantz Fanon and the Function of the Author. 11:30 Break 12:00 Session 2: Places Motega Ramnac, Creole Skin, African Mask - Restoring the Cultural Context of Frantz Fanon. Lucy Van, The Caribbean Essay and Fanon. 13:00 Lunch 14:30 Session 3: Fanon Beyond Fanon André Dao, TBD Ricardo Rojas Campos, Notes on a Fanonian approach to the question of race in Latin America. Beau Kent, The pitfalls of 'critical distance': Frantz Fanon and Tran Duc Thao's anticolonial philosophies of praxis. 16:00 Break 16:30 Tony Birch, in conversation 17:30 Fin |
Contact: Joe Hughes and Marilyn Stendara