Haddour, A; (2015) Fanon, the French Liberal Left and the Colonial Consensus. Nottingham French Studies , 54 (1) pp. 72-91. 10.3366/nfs.2015.0107.

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Abstract

This article focuses on a murky period in French history when nationalism cemented a consensus between left and right. It demonstrates how nationalism came to underlie racial antagonism, engaging with Jean-François Lyotard's analysis in La Guerre des Algériens and situating Fanon's unorthodox Marxist views in relation to the PCF's ‘assimilationist’ politics which shaped such consensus and ultimately offered fertile ground for the emergence of colonial fascism in the 1950s. Fanon's journalistic writings show that he upheld the Republican – and more specifically Dreyfusard – tradition which was jettisoned by the left at the height of the Algerian crisis. His reworking of Marxist theory helps us understand how the colonial issue was overshadowed by the PCF's (inter)nationalist rhetoric. The article demonstrates that Les Damnés de la terre as a revolutionary anthem draws its significance from the Internationale at the same time as it rethinks the Marxist-Leninist doctrine that acted in complicity with colonialism.

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