Madhu Krishnan – Frantz Fanon & Political Activism
Madhu Krishnan – Frantz Fanon & Political Activism
This workshop is based on the foundational writings of Martinician psychiatrist and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon. Drawing links between Fanon’s socio-psychological taxonomies of the pathologization of the black body in his early work and his anti-colonial political theorization in his later writing, the workshop examines how a radical politics might intersect with notions of resilience in the context of oppression under late capitalism in the twenty-first century. The workshop will take a mixed format, using extracts from Fanon’s writing as the basis of a series of guided discussions, and then moving into a strategy-based session which will use Fanon’s work as inspiration for developing a set of alternative models for institutions and structures which might promote a truly radical and free oppositional politics in the context of everyday life.
Bio: Madhu Krishnan is a Lecturer in 20th and 21st Century Postcolonial Writing in the Department of English at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on contemporary African and African diaspora literature and culture, with a specific interest in the socio-political interventions that the circulation of ‘African literature’, as a category, participates within.
