Discovering Democracy in the Work of Frantz Fanon

This book offers a creative re-reading of Frantz Fanon as an affirmative proponent of radical democracy. It is the discovery of a Fanon who is occupied with creation, not destruction, and who urges people to retain their power and use it to manage their lives together. This aspect of Fanon is usually overlooked, lost in a sea of anti-colonial and anti-racist readings. This book begins the project of recovering the desire for democracy in Fanon as a crucial contribution to social thought and action in the face of democratic erosion today. It proposes democracy as a new, creative way forward. But it insists that we understand democracy radically, as a way of life in which we do not destroy what we are against. Instead, we create, together, new democratic lives in common. As such, this book will be an important resource not only for researchers, students, and instructors in cultural and postcolonial studies but also for social and political theory, contemporary sociology, geography, politics, and race and ethnicity studies.

Mark Purcell is Professor in the Department of Urban Design & Planning at the University of Washington, USA, where he researches urban politics, political theory, social movements, and democracy. He is the author of The Deep-Down Delight of Democracy (2013), Recapturing Democracy (2008) and numerous articles in journals including International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Geography, Environment and Planning, Antipode, Urban Studies, Political Geography, Review of International Political Economy, and Planning Theory.