Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary, understood that individuals cannot be understood in isolation. He believed that personal pathologies were political symptoms and that the maladies he treated in colonial Algeria were inextricable from the epidemic of French imperialism. However, Adam Shatz argues in “The Rebel’s Clinic” that Fanon was not as one-dimensionally bellicose as he is often portrayed. He was a subtle thinker who rejected reductions made by his contemporaries. Fanon’s books, “Black Skin, White Masks” and “The Wretched of the Earth,” analyze the psychic distortions caused by imperialism. Shatz demonstrates that Fanon was a victim of empire himself, experiencing alienation as a Martinican in France and as a non-Arabic or Berber speaker in Algeria. Despite his commitment to decolonization and healing, Fanon had blind spots and romanticized certain aspects of the liberation movement, such as women’s empowerment. Nonetheless, he treated both colonized and colonialist patients in his psychiatric practice, seeing them all as victims of the mental disorders of colonial warfare.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/01/19/rebels-clinic-frantz-fanon-biography-adam-shatz-review/