The comrade on the crossroads of scholarship and struggle: Troubling the exile of Frantz Fanon from social and political psychology

Abstract

This article traces the presence and absence of Frantz Fanon in the field of social and political psychology. Our work is guided by an assemblage of methods— a critical analysis of mainstream scholarship, a collective interrogation with a transnational gathering of colleagues and friends, and a deep reading of Fanon's texts on struggle, internalized oppression, violence and a new humanism. Through this, our paper is a call for radical disciplinary reflection on why Fanon has been ruthlessly exiled from social/political psychology, the potential his writings hold for courses, scholarship, and struggle, and how we might more boldly theorize, as he did, from within the fire of struggles for justice and liberation.