Frantz Fanon · Politics

The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

Fanon’s prophetic warning, written as empires were falling, that formal independence is not liberation - that a self-serving national middle class can simply step into the departed colonizer’s shoes, betray the revolution, and leave the people as unfree as before. A founding critique of neocolonialism.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Fanon warned the newly independent nation could be captured by a ‘national bourgeoisie’ that produces nothing and merely acts as an intermediary for foreign capital, so that independence becomes an ‘empty shell’ and colonialism continues in a new form (neocolonialism). Explain…

Leads to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.