Fanon’s psycho-politics of decolonisation

Summary This article explores Frantz Fanon’s psycho-politics of decolonisation, arguing that his revolutionary project extends beyond material liberation to include the transformation of consciousness. Situating Fanon’s thought as part of Marxist theories of subject formation and anticolonial praxis, it traces how colonialism’s structures produce compliant and complicit subjects, and how liberation must therefore involve dismantling the psychic effects of these structures. Through Fanon’s critique of colonial psychiatry and his reworking of psychoanalysis as a tool for emancipation, the essay shows that decolonisation demands both external and internal struggle: the rejection of the coloniser’s recognition and the creation of new, anti-imperial modes of being. Engaging Fanon alongside thinkers from Césaire to Martín-Baró and contemporary liberation psychologies, the article argues that the ongoing work of decolonisation lies in the dialectical relationship between material conditions and consciousness in our neocolonial world.