![]() ![]() Although presented as a work on an uncommon neurological disease and its potential effects on the psyche, Fanon seeks within this short and barely complaint medical dissertation to undermine another target: mechanical or biological reductionism in medicine. By choosing a topic located at the difficult and often contentious boundary between psychiatry and neurology, Fanon draws us into a series of problems actuated by the disorder -that is to say, he directs our attention to the ontological and philosophical presuppositions of his discipline. Fanon stayed true to an ethic of growth and change grounded in material reality his "final prayer" forever remained "O my body, make of me always a man who questions!" ( Black Skin, White Masks, 181)īut the title of his dissertation is, at least in part, a smokescreen for a deeper object. It should come as no surprise, then, that the systematic accounts of Fanon’s psychiatric writing have taken the form of political and intellectual biographies (See: Gibson and Beneduce, Bulhan, and Cherki). Fanon’s intervention into psychiatry is inextricable from these growing engagements with radical politics. ![]() His thinking and approach to medicine do not coalesce into a coherent system existing outside of his politics, but evolved in step with his involvement in struggles for decolonization. ![]() The study and practice of medicine, and specifically psychiatry, was a central part of Fanon’s life since his mid 20s, and, as his psychiatric writings reveal, he saw no opposition between his militant political activities and his commitment to a practice of healing. This reputation, whether recounted in a laudatory or slanderous fashion, suggests a version of Fanon that stands at considerable distance from his day-to-day practice as a doctor concerned with healing psychic wounds. ![]()
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