Research Article
A Permanent State of Carnival – Frantz Fanon on Language, Subjectivity and Violence
Author:
Mirey Gorgis
University of Södertörn / Uppsala, SE
Abstract
Frantz Fanon’s thinking—as elaborated everywhere from his early plays to his later dissertations—cuts through wide and complex fields of knowledge, ranging from specialized medicine to basic sociology and philosophy. Yet however great the variety of Fanon’s questions and problems might be in this regard, there is one certain problematic that arguably continues to engage him throughout his entire oeuvre: the question of subjectivation. In Peau noire, masques blancs (1952) this problem could be said to be elaborated through a certain understanding of the notion of the carnival. The concept of carnival, I argue, could even be posited as a sort of nodal point in Fanon’s thinking, relating notions such as language and violence to subjectivation as a continuous or permanent process of individuation and alienation, while at the same time displacing and differentiating our understanding of these concepts within Fanon’s work in general.
How to Cite:
Gorgis, M., 2015. A Permanent State of Carnival – Frantz Fanon on Language, Subjectivity and Violence. Karib – Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies, 2(1), p.5. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16993/karib.30
Published on
02 Nov 2015.
Peer Reviewed
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