Fanon’s Decolonial Transcendence of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Coloniality continues to invade the psychomaterial lives of the condemned. Invoking psychoanalysis and phenomenology to engage with modern psychopathologies and race, gender, and sexuality, Fanon developed seminal ideas on social suffering in the context of colonial violence on psychic life. In reading Fanon, we discern two challenges: the decolonial transcendence of psychoanalysis as a theoretical framework, and the decolonial transcendence of psychoanalysis as a practice. These challenges are integral to the transcendence of disciplines and healing practices, and the requirement to develop a “multidimensional investigation” of human beings in the face of alterity and sociality in human reality. Fanon’s decolonial turn in psychoanalysis offers the makings of a decolonial and Fanonian oath for healing, of which decolonial love is a central principle. Our instantiation of transcendence of practice orients toward the provisions for a decolonial and Fanonian oath for healing, animated through epistemic agency, politicoaffectivity, actional consciousness, and radical relationality.