This is a meticulously researched and well written biography of the psychiatrist and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, I first heard of him because more recently, authors would reference his work from 1952 "Black Skin, White Masks." This book reveals the shadow that racial oppression casts across black lives. His focus is on colonialism and racism -- he led a complicated duplicitous life - he ran a hospital in Algeria "treating the torturers" and also secretly treated the rebels "the tortured") (hence "the Rebel's Clinic) at night. He is a controversial figure for comments he made that were misogynistic and homophobic, and some interpreted his statements as calling for violence. He also wrote about medicine and health inequities which influenced the Black Panthers to set up free clinics. The author does a great job teasing out the nuances and complexities of his life and beliefs and In the end shows us he is complex and at times misunderstood, and his work is misappropriated. He died at the age of 36 so we will never know his true beliefs and inner life but the author does a great job trying to help us make sense of this enigmatic man.

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

The Rebel's Clinic is a must read for people who have read Fanon's work. Shatz does a fantastic job of taking you into a nuanced look into Frantz Fanon's life as a Black man, psychiatrist, and political philosopher.

It pleases my parsimonious heart to get free advance copies of books, like this one, from Netgalley for review. My heart especially sings when I find a no-cost book about something which (or, in this case, someone who) I’ve noticed, know nothing very little about, and wish to inform myself. Such was the case with this book.

I like reading 400+ fairly detailed pages about someone or something that I know nothing about (plus the inevitable detours to the internet to research references which I don’t understand) but I believe that this is not some people’s idea of a pleasurable reading experience. This book gets deep into the weeds on the details of Fanon’s life, from angry youth to still-angry premature death. Like revolution, don’t wade in unless you are prepared to be totally committed.

Fanon died when I was in diapers, and now I have gray hair and take blood-pressure medication. This Christmas season Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth has pride of place in the front row of the loss-leader display of books at the independent bookstore in downtown Austin, Texas, that I sometimes visit. The book's price is marked down just enough to entice you inside the store to engage in other wanton acts of commerce. (This is Texas, however, so the display, in addition to other books of left-wing outlook, also has books about the Alamo and high school football, as well as a book with Matthew McConaughey on the cover.) How Fanon acquired such a long and durable posthumous reknown, which shows no signs of flagging at this writing, is an interesting question. Look for an answer in this book's long epilogue (“Specters of Fanon”), which has a good survey of Fanon's travels through modern political and cultural life of the last sixty years, during which he often inspired deep political and social thinkers and, more surprisingly, supplied the text for a 2007 jazz oratorio and was quoted with approval on Instagram by Jamie Lynn Spears in 2020 as part of her feud with her famous sister.

Especially in the light of late 2023’s sad and bloody developments in Israel and Gaza, Fanon has experienced another uptick of relevance as supporters of revolutionary violence seek to find justification for the slaughter of unarmed civilians. (One widely-quoted social media post put it this way: “What did y'all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”)

Did Fanon, a psychiatrist by training, really endorse murder as a therapeutic act for the oppressed? This question is also dealt with pretty thoroughly in this book and the answer is: It's complicated.

A more nuanced analysis of this question appears in Chapter 16 of this book, starting around Kindle location 5580. Here's a short excerpt of the author's opinion: "... if [Fanon] advocates the logic and necessity of counterviolence by the colonized, he is also explicit in his criticisms of a politics based on revenge: the revolutionary movement's obligation is to direct the violent impulses of the colonized toward pragmatic objectives, not to foment bloodletting or to treat all members of the settler community as legitimate targets."

It is possible to find genuine quotes from Fanon which, when removed from their surrounding context, sound like someone saying: Go ahead, kill your oppressor, you’ll feel better, and you are perfectly justified. I hope you don't think that I'm trivializing the matter when I say that the misuse of Fanon in this manner reminds me of the recent misuse of the songs of Bruce Springsteen. The song “Born in the USA” is about the economic hardships of returning Vietnam veterans, but the people who are braying the title, over and over again, at the campaign rallies of Republican political candidates either don't know or don't care. The words “Born in the USA” are all they have to say about the matter. Similarly, you can quote Fanon accurately that, for example, “violence is a cleansing force”, but saying so doesn't mean you are acting in the spirit that he did, or understand his thought.

I'm happy that this well-researched book presented me with the opportunity to know more about this interesting and often misunderstood thinker.

To download short (eight page .pdf) and readable 2018 academic paper which contends that Fanon has been “misread for decades” as an apostle and justifier of revolutionary violence, go to this URL: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/tdr/vol5/iss1/1

The chapter entitled “On Violence” in the book <i>The Wretched of the Earth</i> is the bit of Fanon's writing most frequently cited by those wishing to justify murder in the cause of revolution. Read the entire chapter free online at this URL: https ://www.openanthropology.org/fanonviolence.htm

I received a free electronic advance review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

Thanks for NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for permission to read this work prior to its publication date. I read Franz Fanon's, "Black Skin, White Masks" and was blown away buy how this activist identified the perils of colonialism, colorism and oppression in a way that I could personally identify with. Adam Shatz compiles interviews as well as documented experiences to weave an image of a somewhat unlikely revolutionary who begins his adulthood with a strong French identity, then winds up fighting for the liberation of Algeria. This is an interesting read with great excerpts from other scholars.