Frantz Fanon, Conflicts And Feminisms By Tracy Denea Sharpley-Whiting

In her book Frantz Fanon, Conflicts and Feminisms, Vanderbilt Professor Tracy Denea Sharpley-Whiting provides an illuminating critique of postmodern academic feminism.

Through an appropriation of Fanon’s social-democratic vision of liberation, she develops her own approach of a political-conscious, activist feminism squarely grounded in the works of Fanon and other black feminist writers. The first part of the book is dedicated to a discussion of the conflicts that have shaped feminists scholarships over the last decades and serves as an illustration of the conflicts that have shaped modern feminist scholarship. Here, Sharpley-Whiting convincingly illustrates the crux of the matter, namely the divergent ideas of what constitutes feminism, hence her title choice of feminisms. She bases her observations on the divergent interpretations of Fanon’s work that have evolved from three different groups of scholars: Liberal Euro-American Lit-Crit Feminists, Algerian National Feminists, and Radical U.S. Black Feminists (24). Central to her analysis is Fanon’s radical humanism, which, in her view, entails a clear commitment to the liberation of women (6). She makes clear that Fanon was not a feminist and never presented himself as such; however, she wants

black feminist scholars focuses more on Fanon’s later works and his active involvement in the struggle for decolonization. She discusses the work of La Rue and Beale, to scholars that were personally invested in the African American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s and 70s and who were critical of the selective application of Fanon some of their male allies displayed (83; 85; 87). In order to provide a more contemporary comparison, Sharpley-Whiting ends her discussion with bell hooks interpretation of Fanon. However, in doing so, she largely dismisses her explanation of Fanon’s contemptuous presentation of Capécia, which hooks links to his difficult relationship to his mother