{"id":63,"date":"2024-09-17T11:19:39","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T10:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/unconsciousfg\/?page_id=63"},"modified":"2025-02-28T11:59:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T11:59:49","slug":"event-description","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/unconsciousfg\/event-description\/","title":{"rendered":"Event Description"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It is difficult for a French Caribbean individual to be the brother, the friend, or quite simply the associate or fellow countryman of Fanon. Because, of aIl French Caribbean intellectuals, he is the only one to have acted on his ideas, through his involvement in the Algerian struggle; this was so even if, after tragic and conclusive episodes of what one can rightly call his Algerian agony, the Martinican problem (…which he would no doubt have confronted if he had lived) retains its complete ambiguity.<\/p>\n\u00c9douard Glissant,<\/em> Le Discours Antillais (1981)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a key section of Le Discours Antillais,<\/em> \u00c9douard Glissant declares his admiration for Frantz Fanon, whilst also noting that perhaps Fanon\u2019s thought was limited in what it did not<\/em> say of the situation in Martinique, the Caribbean island where they were both born. Though these cryptic remarks have often been read as signalling a difference between Fanon and Glissant\u2019s respective notions of decolonial activity, in specifically relating Fanon\u2019s \u2018Algerian agony\u2019 to the \u2018ambiguity\u2019 of \u2018the Martinican problem,\u2019 Glissant crucially raises the question of what relation (if any) his own analyses of that problem, in its diverse psychological<\/em> ramifications, have to the revolutionary psychiatric thought that Fanon formulated during his involvement in the Algerian struggle for independence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is becoming increasingly well documented, it was indeed in the context of Algeria that Fanon sought to perform a fundamental \u2018transmutation of values\u2019 on the prevalent therapeutic and psychiatric models of his time. Radicalizing the psychoanalytically inflected tenets of Institutional Psychotherapy, during his residency at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital, Fanon not only developed a concrete therapeutic practice that directly addressed the conditions of coloniality, but, in the psychiatric writings now collected in Alienation and Freedom<\/em>, also provided a \u2018functional analysis\u2019 of \u2018the problem of North African mental pathology\u2019 that aimed to facilitate that disalienating therapeutic project. Interestingly, though these analyses make sparse reference to psychoanalysis, like Wretched of the Earth<\/em>, they do relate one of psychoanalysis\u2019s central concepts, the unconscious<\/em>, to the \u2018pathology of atmosphere\u2019 that structured Algerian society and that Fanon\u2019s work more generally sought to counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relatedly, it is the problematic and ambiguous status of the Martinican unconscious that Glissant would examine at length in Le Discours<\/em>, following his remarks on Fanon. Taking as his starting point the brutal \u2018rupture of the slave trade,\u2019 Glissant offers a trenchant and wide-ranging overview of the specific forms of \u2018mental disarray\u2019 that continue to plague the \u2018collective unconscious\u2019 of Martinican and Caribbean peoples. Holding particular forms of \u2018verbal delirium,\u2019 neurosis, and psychosis as expressive of slavery\u2019s destructive legacy, Glissant also insists that an analysis of such disorders is indispensable for apprehending and countering the ongoing structurations of coloniality. Strikingly, though these analyses of the Caribbean unconscious frequently refer to both Fanon and psychoanalysis, like the former, Glissant refuses to take the latter as his ultimate model: \u2018It is not a question of arguing that psychiatry (oriented by psychoanalysis) provides the keys to our political problems.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this one-day colloquium, organized by Newcastle\u2019s School X with support from the Leverhulme Trust, we invite scholars from across the humanities to reflect on the points of relation and divergence between Fanon and Glissant\u2019s thought on the unconscious. Firmly grounding our discussion in recent developments in critical Black studies, decolonial philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory, we aim to create a locus for considering the continuing relevance of Glissant and Fanon\u2019s ideas on social psychology for resisting and displacing the remainders of coloniality that continue to undergird the present world. Presentations will consider the following (and other) themes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n