Reviews

Jordens fördömda by Frantz Fanon

skarayol's review against another edition

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challenging inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

good_matty's review against another edition

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4.0

Worth reading, but just chock full of stuff that makes you feel weird (as a Marxist).

tlrrp0405's review against another edition

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5.0

Excellent. Masterclass. Complete takedown of the colonial Europeans in Algeria and elsewhere in the 1950s, but more memorably a forward-looking vision of post-colonial philosophy and rebuilding.

Fanon hits you right away by exploring the deep inherent violence of colonialism - not just the overt physical violence but the psychological one as well. As a physician he is uniquely positioned to reflect on the physical and mental impact of colonialism.

I appreciated how Fanon also focused on the strategic questions surrounding anticolonial Revolution - how revolutions can find success, but also how a nation rebuilds. He explores the traps that the new formerly colonized bourgeoisie falls into and the folly of abandoning the rural masses.

I also loved the section in which he reflects critically on intellectual leaders like him - and how they need to avoid the common pitfall of trying to call back to the pre colonial past and not acknowledging the real cultural and societal changes happening in front of them.

Just when you think you’ve come out toward a future vision, Fanon smartly brings you back down to earth by discussing his own patients as a physician whose mental health has been destroyed by torture and constant oppression - and reminds you of the dark, cynical race science that dominated European intelligentsia and manufactured consent for such brutality.

Incredible book. Fanon is five stars.

andy_acid's review against another edition

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3.75

  I finally finished Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and it was a ride. One of the things that sucked me the most was his warning on the persistence of neocolonial structures (esp economic and cultural), which has made me interested in picking up Kwame Nkrumah’s Neocolonialism esp since it was influenced by Fanon.The first essay "On Violence" is one of the most famous parts of the book, but it wasn’t something I personally dwelled on much, even after reading Hannah Arendt’s critique of Fanon’s rhetoric and Homi K Bhabha’s counter critique. Now things that i have complaints on -Fanon’s emphasis on rural peasants and the lumpenproletariat as the primary revolutionary agents in the struggle for decolonization rather than the urban proletariat like other Marxists but he does not sufficiently address how their leadership would be structured to prevent disorganization and aimlessness in the revolutionary process. I would have appreciated a more developed discussion on economic planning for newly independent nations, Fanon calls for centralization, local governance, and economic restructuring but this simple analysis lacks a concrete framework for preventing the postcolonial bourgeoisie from perpetuating extractive economic practices that maintain systemic inequality which he warned multiple times about. I found Fanon’s lack of engagement with gender in the colonial experience to be a major black hole and I don’t entirely buy Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s explanation for its exclusion. That said I’m really glad to have finally read the book 

elizann98's review against another edition

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hopeful informative medium-paced

5.0

eddietheestallion's review against another edition

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5.0

jfc this book is timeless which makes it poignant while also showing how depressing the state of the world is. so many of Franz’s examples re: algeria v france; ghana v uk, etc be translated into modern struggles re: palestine v israel, [insert us volony] v the united states. sacred text.

this book was DENSE which i’m chalking up to the french translation but wondering if that may also limit those who are interested(?) regardless required reading and made ever important by the recent administration change

varqa's review against another edition

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2.0

Maybe this book is important because of its place in history- but to be honest I just don’t get it! Many paragraphs making obvious statements, followed by one interesting insight, followed by twenty paragraphs saying nothing at all.

nidzi_c's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

fonzie's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5