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FOREWORD TO THE 2008 EDITION ix

where colonialism becomes a “historical necessity.” Bennabi, who
like Fanon spent most of his life struggling against French racism,
distinguished between “a country simply conquered and occupied
and a colonised country.” The latter had lost its own cultural
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bearings and internalized the idea of the inherent superiority of the
colonizing culture. Fanon and Bennabi never met; but it is diffi cult
to imagine their work did not fertilize each other’s thought.
The French response to the 1954 Algerian revolt was brutal,
involving torture, killing, physical abuse and barbaric repression.
For two years Fanon secretly supported the revolutionaries. Then,
in 1956, he resigned his post and openly joined the National
Liberation Front (FLN). He moved to Tunis, where he worked
for Manouba Clinic and Neuropsychiatric Center and founded
the radical magazine Moudjahid (from Jihad, meaning freedom
fi ghter). Soon he acquired a reputation as a leading ideologue of
the Algerian revolution. He received many death threats from the
French and their sympathizers—which only served to strengthen
his resolve. By now, Fanon identifi ed himself as an Algerian.
He traveled throughout Africa speaking on behalf of the FLN;
and even served as an ambassador to Ghana on behalf of the
provisional government of Algeria.
Fanon did not live to see Algeria acquire full independence.
While still in Ghana he was diagnosed with leukemia. He went
fi rst to the Soviet Union for treatment; and later to the United
States. He died in Washington on 6 December 1961.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Fanon was hailed as a
revolutionary writer, a hero of the Third World and anti-colonial
movement. He wrote his most infl uential book, The Wretched of
the Earth, just before his death. Published in 1961, with a preface
by Sartre, it became a key text for radical students and served as
an inspiration for the Black Power movement in the United States.
While its endorsement of violence is problematic, The Wretched
of the Earth offers one of the most penetrating analyses of the
social psychology of colonialism. But Fanon’s celebrity collapsed
almost as quickly as the Berlin Wall and he was even forgotten in
Algeria which he claimed as his own. Conservative writers have
reacted against his views on violence and leftist intellectuals have

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