Bringing the War Home: Frantz Fanon and the Disorders of Violence

This article examines Frantz Fanon’s reflections on family, from Black Skin, White Masks to The Wretched of the Earth, to recover a concept and critique of violence as the lived experience of everyday life in the colony. The family, which is a consistent focus of Fanon’s sociodiagnostic technique and his political thought, appears as the intimate arena of colonial war. While masculinism and misogynoir are an undeniable part of Fanon’s attitudes toward the family, his writings also offer an embryonic image of revolution that includes the liberation of women and children.