Unmasking the Self: Fanon’s Paradoxes of De-alienation in Black Skin, White Masks

Lecture

Date: Thursday 22 May 2025

Time: 10.00 – 12.00

Location: Online via Zoom*

To mark the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, this open lecture of Christophe Premat revisits his seminal work "Black Skin, White Masks", exploring the complexities of de-alienation and identity formation in the aftermath of colonial domination.

Frantz Fanon at a press conference during a writers' conference in Tunis, 1959. Foto: Wikimedia Commons

Frantz Fanon´s "Black Skin, White Masks", cover of the first edition.

Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks remains a landmark text in postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, and political thought. Published in 1952, it offers a powerful critique of the psychological effects of racism and colonialism on Black subjectivities. But it also poses enduring questions about identity, recognition, and liberation that resonate deeply with the ongoing struggles against racial injustice and systemic oppression.

As part of the course Postcolonialism and Power Relations in the Caribbean, this open lecture will deal with the paradoxes of de-alienation as articulated by Fanon. How can one reclaim a sense of self that has been fractured by colonial discourse? Can the colonial language, the “white mask”, be reappropriated without perpetuating the alienation it produces? What forms of rupture or transformation does Fanon envision, and what tensions remain unresolved in his vision of freedom?

Frantz Fanon

Through a close reading of key passages, this session will invite participants to engage with Fanon’s insights and contradictions, not only as historical artifacts but as urgent provocations for our present.

*The lecture will be held online.
To receive the link, please contact: franorfon@su.se

Christophe Premat

Theme

Research subjects

Francophone Cultural Studies French and Francophone Literature

Last updated: April 25, 2025

Source: Department of Romance Studies and Classics

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