Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami presents a daylong investigation into the life and works of renowned post-colonial theorist and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon. This symposium, hosted at ICA Miami, convenes a panel of theorists, historians, and cultural studies scholars to explore how the writings of Fanon have profoundly influenced generations of political thinkers and activists.

Invited speakers include an international group of prominent scholars who have deeply engaged Fanon’s thinking, including Simone Browne, Aimé Charles-Nicolas, R.A. Judy, Jean Khalfa, and David Marriott. A series of short films comprising Larry Achiampong and David Blandy’s project Finding Fanon will be viewed as part of the program.

Frantz Fanon (b. 1925, Fort-de-France, Martinique; d. Bethesda, Maryland) was a West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher known for his theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation of colonial peoples. Since the publication of his critical texts, Frantz Fanon has been considered a crucial reference for political thinkers. His books have circulated among the militants of the Global South and Black Power struggle, factions of the Andean Indigenous guerrillas of the 1980s, and today’s young activists.

Schedule

• 1:45 Intro
• 2:00-2:45 Jean Khalfa: ‘Alienation and Freedom: rereading Fanon, from psychiatry to politics, in the light of his newly published works’
• 2:45-3:00 Finding Fanon Episode 1 (dirs. Larry Achiampong and David Blandy)
• 3:00-3:45 Aimé Charles-Nicolas
• 3:45-4:00 Break
• 4:00-4:15 Finding Fanon Episode 2
• 4:15-5:00 Simone Browne
• 5:00-5:15 Finding Fanon Episode 3
• 5:15-6:00 R.A. Judy: “There’s a Riot Going on: From Haiti to Tunisia: A Fanonian Analysis”
• 6:15-6:30 Break
• 6:30-6:45 Black Death film
• 6:45-7:30 David Marriott: “The X of Sacrifice: Fanon, Hegel, Terror”

Jean Khalfa specializes in the history of philosophy, modern literature (in particular contemporary poetry and writing in French from North Africa and the Caribbean), aesthetics and anthropology. He is the Editor of What is Intelligence?; Afrique du sud: le cap de bonne espérance; The New French Poetry, a Bilingual Anthology; An Introduction to the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze; and various special journal issues on Frantz Fanon. Khalfa’s Poetics of the Antilles: Poetry, History and Philosophy in the Writings of Perse, Césaire, Fanon and Glissant was published in 2017. He compiled and edited, with Robert Young, the recently translated Franz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom. He teaches at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

R.A. Judy is Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches course related to the fields of American literature and culture, African literature, Arab literature, contemporary Islamic thought, as well as world literature, and literary theory and criticism. He is a member of the Editorial Collective of boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture. Judy is the author of (Dis)forming the American Canon: The Vernacular of African-Arabic American Slave Narrative (1992), and has completed the manuscript for a book, Sentient Flesh (Thinking in Disorder/Poiēsis in Black), anticipated to appear in Spring 2019; as well as working on a subsequent book project tentatively called Fanon, the Last Negro and the New Man.

Simone Browne is Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas Austin. She is also a Presidential Visiting Fellow for 2018-2019 at Yale University. Her first book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, examines surveillance with a focus on transatlantic slavery, biometric technologies, branding, airports and creative texts. She is also a member of Deep Lab, a feminist collaborative composed of artists, engineers, hackers, writers, and theorists.

Aimé Charles-Nicolas (b. 1943, Martinique) is a professor of medicine, medical psychology and psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of Antilles-Guyana.