Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" Turns 70. A Radical Foundations seminar by Dr. Lewis Gordon

On February 19, 2022 we celebrated the 70th anniversary of Frantz Fanon's Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks) with an immersive seminar convened by renowned philosopher Dr. Lewis R. Gordon. In this seminar we learnt about this hugely influential book which was originally published in 1952 when Fanon was only 27 years old. A psychiatrist, philosopher, political theorist and radical thinker, Fanon is known for his writings on Black consciousness, revolution and the liberation of colonized peoples. Fanon was born on the island of Martinique, studied in France, spent many years of his life in Algeria and traveled across the African continent throughout his short, extraordinary and luminous life of 36 years. This seminar was organized in partnership with the Paul Robeson House and Museum in Philadelphia. About the book: Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks) is major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements internationally, it is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. About our expert facilitator: Lewis R. Gordon is a philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician (drums, other percussive instruments, and piano) who achieved his Ph.D. in philosophy with distinction from Yale University and his undergraduate degrees in philosophy and political science with honors, which included phi beta kappa and pi sigma alpha, through the Lehman Scholars Program at Lehman College of the City University of New York. As a public intellectual, Gordon has written for a variety of political forums, newspapers, and magazines, and has lectured and organized workshops and political meetings across the globe. Gordon's works include Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities, 1995), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (Routledge, 1995) Her Majesty’s Other Children (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), which won the Gustavus Meyer Award for Outstanding work on Human Rights, Existentia Africana (Routledge, 2000), Disciplinary Decadence (Routledge, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008), What Fanon Said (Fordham UP, Hurst Publishers, and Wits UP, 2015), and, with Jane Anna Gordon, A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006), which was NetLibrary’s e-book of the month in 2007, Not Only the Master’s Tools (Routledge, 2006), Of Divine Warning (Routledge, 2009), and, with Fernanda Bragato Frizzo, Geopolitics and Decolonization (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017). His most recent books are Freedom, Justice and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021), Fear of Black Consciousness (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).