Violence, Slavery and Freedom Between Hegel and Fanon
A deep dive into the influences of Hegelian thought on the work of revolutionary and postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon
Hegel is most often mentioned – and not without good reason – as one of the paradigmatic exponents of Eurocentrism and racism in Western philosophy. But his thought also played a crucial and formative role in the work of one of the iconic thinkers of the 'decolonial turn', Frantz Fanon. This would be inexplicable if it were not for the much-quoted 'lord-bondsman' dialectic – frequently referred to as the 'master-slave dialectic' – described in Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Fanon takes up this dialectic negatively in contexts of violence-riven (post-)slavery and colonialism; yet in works such as Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth he upholds a Hegelian-inspired vision of freedom.
The essays in this collection offer close readings of Hegel's text, and of responses to it in the work of twentieth-century philosophers, that highlight the entangled history of the translations, transpositions and transformations of Hegel in the work of Fanon, and more generally in colonial, postcolonial and decolonial contexts.
Ulrike Kistner (Author, Editor)
Ulrike Kistner is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria.
Philippe Van Haute (Author, Editor)
Philippe Van Haute is Professor of Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria.
Robert Bernasconi (Author)
Robert Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.
Ato Sekyi-Otu (Author)
Ato Sekyi-Otu is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Social Science and the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto. He is Associate Fellow of Thinking Africa, Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University.
Josias Tembo (Author)
Josias Tembo is PhD researcher at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and a research associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria.
Beata Stawarska (Author)
Beata Stawarska is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.
Reingard Nethersole (Author)
Reingard Nethersole is Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg where she inaugurated Comparative Literature.