Return to search

"Man Is a Yes": Fanon, Liberation, and the Playful Politics of Philosophical Archaeology

What is the meaning of Fanonian liberation? That is the question that animates this work, which is (negatively) inspired by the reality of misanthropy, practical and theoretical, and neocolonialism, external and internal. To answer this question, I first situate Frantz Fanon within the larger discourse of liberation, emphasizing the relationship between his liberatory work and the work of Gustavo GutiƩrrez, Paulo Freire, and Enrique Dussel. From there, I argue that there is today an unfortunate privileging of ethics, and that this privileging is used to discredit the political as an intersubjective domain. To establish (what I call) the primacy of politics, I carefully analyze Fanon's first book, Black Skin, White Masks, and his sociogenetic conclusions. I then turn to The Wretched of the Earth and to the phenomenon of petrification, which is, I contend, one of the most important features of colonialism and neocolonialism. To fully explain this phenomenon, I consider both its mythopoetic significance and its relationship to Jean-Paul Sartre's conception of seriousness. Finally, I argue that the solution to the problem of petrification can be found in Fanon's second book, A Dying Colonialism, in which there are rich descriptions of political playfulness and (what I call) philosophical archaeology, which can be defined as the descriptive and evaluative analysis of meanings as contingent human artifacts. / Philosophy

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/1210
Date January 2013
CreatorsFicek, Douglas
ContributorsGordon, Lewis R. (Lewis Ricardo), 1962-, Gordon, Jane Anna, 1976-, Ware, Owen, Alcoff, Linda
PublisherTemple University. Libraries
Source SetsTemple University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation, Text
Format205 pages
RightsIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Relationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1192, Theses and Dissertations

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds