Event | Fanon at 100, or the Pragmatics of Freedom: Aesthetics, Care, Psychoanalysis, and Revolution
Event | Fanon at 100, or the Pragmatics of Freedom: Aesthetics, Care, Psychoanalysis, and Revolution
Date: 24 June 2025
Time: 13:00-19:00
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis, Room 1.05 (Spuistraat134, 1012VB Amsterdam)
Contact & registration: a.benedicty@uva.nl*
Credits: 1 or 2 ECTS (details upon registration)
* Provide full name, university of enrollment, research school and PhD/rMA status upon registration.
Many are the events worldwide to commemorate the centennial of Fanon’s birth in 2025 (e.g. Caribbean Philosophical Association in Martinique as a large-scale conference this summer; University of London’s SFPS conference in November; smaller events already taking place throughout the Netherlands, with notably screenings of films and discussions in May 2025 with UvA Decolonial Futures Fellow Ahmed Memon, Tilburg Law School 2025 Witteveen Memorial Fellow Anamika Misra, and Black Archives Researcher Phaedra Haringsma. Jean-Claude Barny (2025) has just made a new film, complementing the already now canonical films by Isaac Julien (1995) or by Göran Olsson (2014).
For our part, our inquiry for this current small-scale event, is the following:
How to put the more psychoanalytical legacies of Fanonian thought into conversation with concrete activist work? How might we articulate the urgencies of Fanonian thought in scholarship, pedagogy, and activism? What are the stakes of teaching Fanon today?
Beyond the facile and albeit seductive romanticization of Fanon’s writing and life especially in the ‘cultural industry,’ why is it that Fanonian thought remains overwhelmingly central to the work of so many scholars from quite varying, even schismic, affective relationships to the de/post/colonial? How might we account for these quite divergent intellectual legacies? As such, these curated panels, are interested in creating plenary conversations between and among the legacies of his work, among scholars in the political, the literary, the philosophical, and the psychoanalytical.
Confirmed keynote speakers are: Norman Ajari, Layal Ftouni, David Theo Goldberg, and Rehnuma Sazzad, moderated in conversation by Wayne Modest.
Confirmed speakers and moderators are: Mehdi Ait Oukhzame, Jana Cattien, Marija Cetinić, Mano Delea, Julian Isenia, Grâce Ndjako, Kwame Nimako, Sanjukta Sunderason, and Michael Thomas.
If you are a student, you may apply for 1 or 2 ECTs. Please contact a.benedicty@uva.nl to register.
For any questions about the event: a.benedicty@uva.nl
TENTATIVE PROGRAM
Panel 1: Aesthetics, Pessimisms, and Fanonian Thought: 13 – 14.30
Panel 2: Fanon and Political Action: 14.45 – 16.45
Keynote Panel: 17.00 till 19.00
Special thanks to the enthusiasm and support from:
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis
Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area
Research Center for Material Culture at het Wereldmuseum
Literary and Cultural Analysis Bachelor Program, Research Master in Cultural Analysis, Master in Comparative and Cultural Analysis
Special thanks for curatorial support from: Layal Ftouni, Quinsy Gario, Yolande Jansen, Kwame Nimako, Wayne Modest, Kwame Nimako, and Sanjukta Sunderason.
Also, heartfelt thanks to: Olombi Bois, Eliana Cusato, Emily de Klerk, Pepita Hesselberth, Eloe Kingma, Jantine van Gogh, Jaap Kooijman, Esther Peeren, Kim Sommer, Darshan Vigneswaran, and Carine Zaayman.
Event organized by: Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken and Sanjukta Sunderason.