(John McCann/M&G)
As we witness the colonial death drive smashing through Gaza, and now Lebanon too, Frantz Fanon’s work takes on a painfully urgent intensity.
In an article written for Resistance Algérienne in 1957 he wrote: “There is not occupation of land, on the one hand, and independence of persons on the other.” He underscores a central truth of settler colonialism — that it seeks to dominate not only space but also human history and life “in hope of a final destruction”.
Painting a vivid picture of life under occupation in which the country, its history and its daily rhythms are perpetually contested and disfigured, Fanon shows that breathing, an elemental aspect of life, is suffocated.
But just as oppression is an embodied experience so too is resistance. The person who once looked down now meets the gaze of the oppressor. The person who was once cowed stands tall. Movement, once constrained, becomes free.
Breath is recovered and charged with defiance. Suffocation gives way to what he calls combat breathing.
Fanon’s earlier work in psychiatry also explored the connections between breath, movement and freedom. His medical research examined conditions like Friedreich’s ataxia, which affect the nervous system and restrict movement, linking physical and psychological liberation. In Fanon’s view, the body’s engagement with the world — expressed through gait, breath, and muscular tension — is both a reflection of and response to external constraints.
The embodied sense of freedom is powerfully evident in the style of his first book Black Skin, White Masks, as well as its argument. The striking sense of energy and motion that marks the book is rooted in the way that he dictated it to Josie Dublé, who later became his wife.
“He walked up and down,” Josie Fanon recalled, “like an orator who improvises, which explains the rhythm of his style, the breath that passes through everything he wrote.”
Later, in his second book written in the heat of the anti-colonial war in Algeria, the style of the text is more measured, but its focus is all about the transformation of consciousness in struggle. Colonial barriers are crossed physically as well as psychologically.
When women must veil or and unveil themselves to pass through colonial checkpoints with arms or messages they must learn to walk differently, to inhabit new modes of being. Breath, instinctively held as soldiers approach, must be released.
Fanon’s focus on the breath, on the embodied experience of oppression, went viral during the uprising that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Like Eric Garner before him, Floyd’s last words were, “I can’t breathe.” The connection was immediately made to Fanon who, in the conclusion to Black Skin, White Masks, wrote, “It became impossible for them to breathe.”
In his 30 June 1960 independence day speech Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, stated: “We have long suffered and today we want to breathe the air of freedom.” He was assassinated on 17 January the following year in a plot hatched between the CIA, Belgian authorities and Congolese collaborators.
In his last published article, in Afrique-Action, Fanon predicted that Africa was about to experience its first great crisis: “Our mistake,” he wrote, “is in having forgotten that the enemy never retreats sincerely. It never understands. It capitulates but it does not reform.”
For Fanon the oppressed will not be able to fill their lungs and breathe the air of freedom without using their “brains and muscles” in collective movement, movement against colonialism, neocolonialism and the “avaricious” element in the national bourgeoisie, an element given to predation on society, repression of dissent and encouraging xenophobia to deflect popular anger.
Fanon emphasised the importance of intellectual engagement within social movements. He viewed revolution not as a spontaneous eruption but as a process that requires continued critical reflection and strategic action. The radical intellectual should think within movement, within struggle.
This perspective underpins his critique of colonialism in The Wretched of the Earth, where he warns against the dangers of reactionary nationalism and urges the development of a new humanism rooted in collective struggle. Fanon’s insistence on the interplay between thought and action remains a vital resource for contemporary movements seeking to navigate the complexities of liberation.
In South Africa, Fanon’s ideas were central to the Black Consciousness movement led by Steve Biko. The movement’s insistence on psychological liberation as a precursor to political freedom resonated with Fanon’s argument that decolonisation must transform the minds of the oppressed as well as the structures of power.
More recently, Fanon’s thought has been invoked by grassroots movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo, the student movement that emerged in 2015, and it is also invoked among a new generation of young intellectuals.
Fanon is taught in universities, trade unions and the political schools run by Abahlali baseMjondolo. In a wonderful development, The Wretched of the Earth has recently been translated into isiZulu by Makhosazana Xaba.
For Fanon, the struggle is at the level of being as well as for material gains, such as land and an equal share in national wealth. His revolutionary philosophy is grounded in the recognition of the profound psychological scars inflicted by colonialism and racism. These scars persist long after formal liberation, shaping the identities and experiences of those who have endured dehumanisation.
Fanon’s work as a psychiatrist informed his understanding of these dynamics, particularly in his analysis of the impact of all the forms of colonial violence on mental health.
In The Wretched of the Earth, he explores the trauma of colonial war, describing how the brutality of occupation leaves lasting wounds on individuals and communities. He argues that liberation is not merely a political process but also a social and psychological process of humanisation.
His vision challenges movements to go beyond resistance and envision new possibilities for social organisation. This means developing humanising practices in struggles, but it also means that liberation ultimately requires the nation to become a space where people can develop new ways of being and relating to one another.
For Fanon the measure of the creation of a decolonised nation must be taken by how close it comes to including all as active participants. Liberation must involve the creation of new social relations, grounded in solidarity, equality and participation.
One of his most significant contributions to revolutionary thought is his critique of tradition as a basis for liberation. While he acknowledged the cultural revival sparked by anticolonial struggles, he cautioned against uncritical celebrations of tradition that perpetuate patriarchal and exclusionary norms. In The Wretched of the Earth, he warns that the preservation of traditional hierarchies within liberation movements can undermine their transformative potential.
This critique extends to the role of nationalism in anticolonial struggles. Fanon distinguished between the continued development of national consciousness, which he saw as a dynamic and inclusive process, and nationalism, which he criticised as narrow, exclusionary and xenophobic.
What he calls the “radical mutation of consciousness” that can emerge in the struggle is the basis on which the idea and reality of a new society can be built. This vision of solidarity is central to Fanon’s revolutionary humanism, which emphasises the interconnectedness of struggles against oppression.
Fanon’s revolutionary philosophy is ultimately a call to create a revolutionary humanism, rooted in the realities of struggle and the possibilities of liberation. This vision challenges the abstract and hypocritical humanism of colonial powers, which speak of universal rights while perpetuating violence and exploitation. It also challenges the national bourgeoisie’s conflation of their own interests with those of the nation.
Instead, Fanon’s humanism is grounded in the lived experiences of the oppressed and their efforts to reclaim their humanity. He emphasised the importance of political education and collective decision-making in fostering a consciousness of freedom.
His vision of a “limitless humanity” calls for revolutionary processes that are inclusive, participatory and transformative. His commitment to rehumanising the world reminds us that liberation is not merely an endpoint but a process of questioning, creating and reimagining the possibilities of human existence, an existence where we all breathe freely.
Nigel C Gibson’s new book Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing is published by Wits University Press and Polity Books.