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Feb 19: Radical Foundations: Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (Recording available)

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February 19, Saturday
1pm New York  |  2pm Fort-de-France  |  7pm Algiers

RADICAL FOUNDATIONS

We are celebrating the 70th anniversary of Frantz Fanon's  Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks) with an immersive seminar convened by renowned philosopher Dr. Lewis R. Gordon. This hugely influential book was originally published in 1952 when Fanon was only 27 years old. A psychiatrist, philosopher, political theorist and radical thinker, Fanon is known for his writings on Black consciousness, revolution and the liberation of colonized peoples. Fanon was born on the island of Martinique, studied in France, spent many years of his life in Algeria and traveled across the African continent throughout his short, extraordinary and luminous life of 36 years. 

This seminar has been organized in partnership with the Paul Robeson House and Museum in Philadelphia. 

The class will be held in English. You are welcome to read any version or translation of the book. Copies are widely available in bookstores, websites as well as free downloads online. 

Watch the recording of this masterclass here:

About the book
Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks) is major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements internationally, it is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

About our expert facilitator
Lewis R. Gordon is a philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician (drums, other percussive instruments, and piano) who achieved his Ph.D. in philosophy with distinction from Yale University and his undergraduate degrees in philosophy and political science with honors, which included phi beta kappa and pi sigma alpha, through the Lehman Scholars Program at Lehman College of the City University of New York. As a public intellectual, Gordon has written for a variety of political forums, newspapers, and magazines, and has lectured and organized workshops and political meetings across the globe.  He is Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at UCONN-Storrs, where he also has affiliations in Judaic Studies, Caribbean and Latinx Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Global Studies. He is Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and a former president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, for which he now serves as its chairperson of awards and global collaborations.

Gordon's works include Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities, 1995), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (Routledge, 1995) Her Majesty’s Other Children (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), which won the Gustavus Meyer Award for Outstanding work on Human Rights, Existentia Africana (Routledge, 2000), Disciplinary Decadence (Routledge, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008), What Fanon Said (Fordham UP, Hurst Publishers, and Wits UP, 2015), and, with Jane Anna Gordon, A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006), which was NetLibrary’s e-book of the month in 2007, Not Only the Master’s Tools (Routledge, 2006), Of Divine Warning (Routledge, 2009), and, with Fernanda Bragato Frizzo, Geopolitics and Decolonization (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017). His most recent books are Freedom, Justice and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021), Fear of Black Consciousness (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, forthcoming January 2022). He co-edits, with Jane Anna Gordon and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the Rowman & Littlefield International book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and, with Rozena Maart, Epifania Amoo-Adare, and Sayan Dey, the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World (Routledge-India). He also edits, with Jane Anna Gordon, the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs

Gordon's visiting appointments include Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, and Honorary Professor in (UHURU) the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes in South Africa, and adjunct Professor at Fort Hare in East London, South Africa. His previous appointments include the 2018–2019 Boaventura de Sousa Santos Chair in the Faculty for Economics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal; the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Visiting Chair in Political and International Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa (2014–2015), the European Union Chair in Euro-Philosophy at the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France (2014–2019); Writer-in-Residence at the Birkbeck School of Law at the University of London (2016), the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University (2004–2013), where he also founded and directed the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought, Professor of Africana Studies, Contemporary Religious Thought, and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University (1996–2004). 

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We're building a Frantz Fanon Immersion list at the Radical Books Collective Bookshop. Check it out!