This essay is an explication of Frantz Fanon as a humanist. Through a detailed reading of his four major works, it proposes that, despite his insistence on violence, Fanon was reaching forward to a new form of humanism, one that would be more inclusive and which would reject the European Enlightenment model. It argues that Fanon proposes an ethics of recognition of difference within the postcolonial paradigm as the first step on the route to the new humanism. Through mutual recognition, subjectitivities are forged, and from this point a humanist vision is possible. Once mutual recognition has been accorded, it can lead to a collective ethics, argues Fanon. Finally, Fanon calls for a shift in national consciousness—which ought not to stay confined to the `national'. Fanon proposes that `oppressed peoples join up with peoples who are already sovereign if a humanism that can be considered valid is to be built to the dimensions of the universe' in what is surely a universalism.

For too long now Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, activist, anti-colonial fighter, decorated war hero and arguably the first major postcolonial `theorist' of the twentieth century, has been seen exclusively as an apostle of violence. This is partly because of the initial reception of Fanon's now-cult texts, Black Skin White Masks (BSWM), Towards an African Revolution (TAR), The Wretched of the Earth (WE) and A Dying Colonialism (DC), by thinkers like Hannah Arendt—who accused Fanon of `glorifying violence for violence's sake' (1970, 65). Several thinkers since then (Bulhan, 1985; Taylor, 1992; Nandy, 1992; and Serequeberhan, 1994) have grappled with what looks like an advocacy of violence on the one hand and a deeply humanist thought on the other in Fanon's writings. In this essay I propose that despite his insistence on violence, Fanon engages with, and offers, a humanist vision.

First, a quick note on how one can read the violence in Fanon. Violence in Fanon is directed at two specific goals. The first goal is the overthrow of the colonizer. Fanon sees the violence of the native as a consequence of the violence inherent in the colonial system itself. The violence is embedded in the dialectic of master-slave, where the only means to attaining selfhood the dehumanized slave has is violence because it is the only language of colonial relations. This is the violence of the anti-colonial struggle during the course of which the context for the second goal of this violence is also generated. This second goal is of the colonized's self-realization and the retrieval of subjectivity—a goal that Fanon sees as possible only through violence. This retrieved subjectivity, dignity and identity, for Fanon, quite possibly leads to death and annihilation. But this annihilation would be one of choice and selfhood rather than abjection, with Fanon arguing that he would be willing to accept `dissolution' (BSWM, 170). It is in this second mode of violence as directed at self-realization that Fanon finds the possibilities of a new identity and humanism. The `savage struggle' through which the former slave claims recognition from the white is therefore the `source material', so to speak, of a new black man. Violence—of the anti-colonial struggle and decolonization—therefore, becomes the anterior moment of (i) a new subjectivity and cultural identity; (ii) a new humanism.

Commonwealth Literature Journal, Frantz Fanon, Postcolonial Humanism, European Enlightenment Model, African Revolution, Momentary Recognition, Cultural Domains, Anti-colonial Violence, Mutual Transformation, Traditional European Humanism, Social Building, Metaphysical Transcendence, Cultural Heritage, National Cultures, Poverty Alleviation.