Fanon, Frantz

Fanon, Frantz (Omar)

(born 1925, Martinique—died Dec. 6, 1961, Washington, D.C., U.S.) West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher. He served in the French army in World War II, earned a medical degree, and became head of the psychiatric department of an Algerian hospital, where he edited the newspaper of the National Liberation Front (from 1956). In 1960 he was appointed ambassador to Ghana by the rebel provisional government. His widely read book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) urged colonized peoples to purge themselves of their degradation in a “collective catharsis” to be achieved through violence against European oppressors. He died of leukemia at age 36.