A Wholly Other Time? Fanon, the Revolutionary, and the Question of Organization
Summary
The fiftieth year after the publication of TheWretched of the Earth and its author’s death was marked by seemingly autonomous and spontaneous rebellions across the world that immediately made concrete some Fanonian concerns. From the Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and spread to create a new form of social organization in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, to the revolts by the Spanish indignados and the Greek aganaktismenoi
spurred by eurozone structural adjustment, to the Chilean student movements and “Occupy,” these rebellions raised the problem of spontaneity and organization. At stake was not the old leftist idea of raising the consciousness of the so-called backward masses but how these new forms of organization and their theorizations can maintain an ongoing liberation. Without providing any answers, The Wretched
leaves us with a series of warnings. This essay, through a conversation with Fanon, gestures to a meditation on the dialectic of organization as a contribution to the present problematic