French 511: REVOLUTIONS FANONIENNES [34300D]
Graduate Seminar, Department of French and Italian
Fall 2008, Thursday 3-6, THH Seminar Room
Edwin Hill (edwinhil@usc.edu – THH 155E)
Office Hours: 12-2 Thurs and by appointment
Course Description
This course follows the intellectual itinerary of Frantz Fanon’s work and the black Atlantic triangle he traces between
the French Caribbean, Algeria, and France in order to consider concepts on revolution and resistance in black Marxism,
anticolonial critique, and subaltern studies. At the same time, we will flesh out the ways crucial texts represent
revolution in the French Antilles, Algeria, and contemporary France. We will analyze representations of multiple
revolutionary histories in the Caribbean, unpack the mythologies they create and/or counter, and explore their
engagement with Enlightenment thought. In the Algerian context we will focus on decolonization and revolution as well
as considering the problematics of revolutionary history writing. Lastly, in the French context we will focus on the
recent riots of 2005 (and 2007). How have postcolonial scholars and social scientists discussed the riots? How can we
reconceptualize what revolution and resistance can look like in the context of a declining nation-state and the rise of
globalization and transnationalism?
A crucial component of this multi-sited exploration will be an engagement with feminist discourse. How have feminist
critiques made interventions into Fanon’s work specifically? More generally, how have women thinkers and writers
represented the dynamics of gender in times of revolution? How have they critiqued the historiography and mythology
of revolution? In addition, we will discuss the ways in which writers depict revolution and nation as a woman, and they
ways in which representations mobilize the meaning of sexuality in resistance, revolutionary activity, and nation
building.
Critical Texts
Frantz Fanon. Les Damnes de la terre. La Découverte/Poche, 2002.
---. L'an V de la révolution algérienne. La Découverte, 2001.
---. Peau noire masques blancs. Seuil, 1952. [selections, optional purchase]
C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins; Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.
Vintage, 2nd edition, 1989. [selections, optional purchase]
Karl Marx. La Lutte des classes et le 18 Brumaire. Table Ronde, 2001.
François Bégaudeau et al. Une année en France: Référendum/banlieues/CPE. Gallimard, 2007.
Césaire, Aimé. Discours sur le colonialisme. Présence africaine/Broché, 2000.
Frantz Fanon. Pour la révolution africaine. [selections, optional purchase]
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.
[selections, optional purchase]
Fiction
Aimé Césaire. Et les chiens se taisaient. Présence africaine, 1956.
Suzanne Dracius. Lumina Sophie dite Surprise. Desnel, 2005.
Maryse Condé. An Tan Revolisyon (not for purchase, available online
http://www.uga.edu/slavery/francophonie/french.htm).
Assia Djebar. Le Blanc d’Algérie. LGF/Poche, 2002.
Yamina Mechakra. La Grotte éclatée [not easily available for purchase, will copy]
Kateb Yacine. Nedjma. Seuil/Points, 1956/1996.
Qui fait la France? Chroniques d’une société annoncée, Stock, 2007
Film
Kourtrajmé & Ladj Ly, Kourtrajmé - 365 jours à Clichy Montfermeil. DVD (Alabaz.com, 2007).
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Secondary Critical Texts
Hannah Arendt, On Violence and On Revolution. Penguin, 2006.
 “War and Revolution”
 “The Meaning of Revolution”
Homi Bhabha. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
 “Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative”
Elisabeth Mudimbe Boyi. “Unfathomable Toussaint: The (Un)Making of a Hero.” In Postcolonial Theory and
Francophone Literary Studies. Ed H. Adlai Murdoch and Anne Donadey. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005.
Anna Everett. (2002). “The revolution will be digitized: Afrocentricity and the digital public sphere.” Social Text,
20:2, 71, 125-146.
The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation. ed Alan Read. Bay Press (WA), 1996.
 Kobena Mercer, “Decolonization and Disappointment: Reading Fanon’s Sexual Politics”
Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Anthony Alessandrini. Routledge, 1999.
 Rey Chow, “The Politics of Admittance: Female Sexual Agency, Miscegenation, and the Formation of
Community in Frantz Fanon”
 Terry Goldie, “Saint Fanon and ‘Homosexual Territory’”
La Fracture coloniale: La Société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial. La Découverte/Poche, 2006
 Achille Mbembe. “La République et l’impensé de la race.”
 Benjamin Stora. “Quand une mémoire (de guerre) peut en cacher une autre (coloniale)”
Lewis Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences.
Routledge, 1997
 “Tragic Revolutionary Violence and Philosophical Anthropology”
 “Fanon’s Continued Relevance”
James, J. (1999). “Black revolutionary icons and ‘neoslave’ narratives.” Social Identities, 5(2), 135-159.
Ranjana Khanna. Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation, 1830 to the Present. Stanford University Press, 2007.
 “The Battle of Algiers and The Nouba of the Women: From Third to Fourth Cinema”
---. Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2003.
 “Colonial Melancholy”
Henri Lefebvre. La révolution urbaine. [selections]
Nick Nesbitt. Voicing Memory History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature
 “Voicing Memory: Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat”
Cedric Robinson. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. U of North Carolina Press, 1983.
 “The Historical Archaeology of the Black Radical Tradition”
 “The Nature of the Black Radical Tradition”
 “CLR James and the Black Radical Tradition”
Ella Shohat. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Duke UP, 2006.
 “Post Fanon and the Colonial: A Situational Diagnosis”
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting. Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
 “Fanon, Conflicts, Feminisms”
 “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Liberating Algeria”
Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. ed. Doris L. Garraway.
University of Virginia Press, 2008.
 Doris Garraway, “‘Légitime Défense’: Universalism and Nationalism in the Discourse of the Haitian
Revolution”
 A. James Arnold, “Recuperating the Haitian Revolution in Literature: From Victor Hugo to Derek
Walcott”
Winifred Woodhull. Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization, and Literatures in French.
University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
 “Introduction”
 “Recasting the Colonial Gaze”
Françoise Vergès. Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Métissage. Duke, 1999.
[selections]
Richard C. Keller, Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa. 1st ed. University Of Chicago Press,
2007.
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
“Violence, Resistance, and the Poetics of Suffering: Colonial Madness between Frantz Fanon and Kateb
Yacine”
Requirements
Participation
1 Short Paper (6- 8 pages)
2 Article Discussion Leads (10 min)
1 Long Presentation on Final Paper (30 - 45 min)
Final Paper (20 - 30 pages)
20%
20%
10%
10%
35%
Tentative Schedule
Week One: August 28
 Introduction
Week Two: September 4
 Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre: Intro, Préface, “De la violence”
 Césaire, Et les chiens se taisaient
 Arendt, “On Violence”
 Robinson, Black Marxism: Chpt 1.
Week Three: September 11
 Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre: Chpts 2-4.
 Robinson, Black Marxism: Chpt 2.
 Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme
 Gordon, “Tragic Revolutionary Violence and Philosophical Anthropology”
 Bhabha, “Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative”
Week Four: September 18
 Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre: chpt 5 – end
 Fanon, Peau noire masques blancs
o Chpt 2 “La femme de couleur et le Blanc”
o Chpt 3 “L’homme de couleur et la Blanche”
 Condé, An tan revolisyon
 Nesbitt, “Voicing Memory”
 Sharpley-Whiting, Conflicts and Feminisms: “Fanon, Conflicts, Feminisms”
Week Five: September 25
 Dracius, Lumina Sophie dite Surprise
 C. L. R. James, Black Jacobins
 Garraway, “‘Légitime Défense’: Universalism and Nationalism in the Discourse of the Haitian Revolution”
Week Six: October 2
 Marx, Le 18 Brumaire
 C. L. R. James, Black Jacobins (CONT)
 A. James Arnold, “Recuperating the Haitian Revolution in Literature: From Victor Hugo to Derek Walcott”
 Mudimbe Boyi, “Unfathomable Toussaint: The (Un)Making of a Hero.”
Week Seven: October 9
 Yacine, Nedjma
 Woodhull, Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization, and
Literatures in French. University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
o “Introduction”
o “Recasting the Colonial Gaze”
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
Chow, “The Politics of Admittance”
Week Eight: October 16 ** SHORT PAPER DUE**
 Yacine, Nedjma (CONT)
 Fanon, L’An V de la révolution algérienne.
 J. James, “Black revolutionary icons and ‘neoslave’ narratives.”
 Sharpley-Whiting, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Liberating Algeria”
Week Nine: October 23
 Djebar, Le Blanc d’Algérie
 Fanon, Révolution africaine [selections]
 Arendt, On Revolution
o ““War and Revolution”
o “The Meaning of Revolution”
Week Ten: October 30
 Djebar, Le Blanc d’Algérie (CONT)
 Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes Revisited”
 Khana, “The Battle of Algiers and The Nouba of the Women: From Third to Fourth Cinema”
Week Eleven: November 6
 Mechakra, La Grotte éclatée
 Lefebvre, Révolution urbaine [selections]
 Goldie, “Saint Fanon and ‘Homosexual Territory’”
Week Twelve: November 13
 Mechakra, La Grotte éclatée (CONT)
 Stora, “Quand une mémoire (de guerre) peut en cacher une autre (coloniale)”
 Hardt and Negri, Multitudes [selections]
 Kobena Mercer, “Decolonization and Disappointment: Reading Fanon’s Sexual Politics”
Week Thirteen: November 20
 Kourtrajmé - 365 jours à Clichy Montfermeil
 Qui fait la France? Chroniques d’une société annoncée
 Mbembe, “La République et l’impensé de la race.”
 E. Fassin, “Questions sexuelles, questions raciales. Parallèles, tensions, et articulations”
Week Fourteen: November 27 – THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
Week Fifteen: December 4


Wacquant, Urban Outcasts: A Comparaive Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Polity, 2008.
o “Ghetto, Banlieue, Favela, et caetera: Tools for Rethinking Urban Marginality”
o “Prologue: An Old Problem in a New World”
o “Postscript: Theory, History and Politics in Urban Analysis”
Dikeç, Bandlands of the Republic.
o “State’s Statements: Urban Policy as Place-Making”
o “The Right to the City? Revolts and the Initiation of Urban Policy”
o “Voices into Noises: Revolts as Unarticulated Justice Movements”
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