Frantz Fanon, Race, and Social Pathology

In a moment in which anti-migrant rhetoric, ethnonationalism, and authoritarian populisms are on the rise, it becomes increasingly important that political theorists do more than offer a moral indictment of racism and xenophobia. In this talk, I contend that Frantz Fanon’s sociogenic approach to the critique of ‘race’ and racialization makes a valuable contribution, even in postcolonial conjunctures that have moved beyond colonialism’s crude Manichean binaries. I read Fanon as a diagnostician of the social pathologies produced by colonialism and white supremacy, showing how he worked from the colonized subject’s experiences of inferiorization and the colonizer’s experiences of racial superiority and self-mystification to advance a negative critique of racial hierarchies.

Sarah Bufkin
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/bufkin-sarah
Assistant Professor in Political Theory
Department of Political Science and International Studies
University of Birmingham

About the Speaker:

My research sits at the intersection of antiracist political theory and Critical Theory, including that of the German Frankfurt School, French poststructuralism, and the British Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. I am currently working on a book project focused on Frantz Fanon's sociogenic method of antiracist critique. Drawing in part on my doctoral thesis, I argue that the failure to theorize 'race' has substantial consequences for continental political theory including but not limited to understanding the reproduction of racial injustice. I have also written on the politics of voice and visibility in the U.S. and Northern Ireland. More broadly, I am interested in feminist thought, social epistemology, and continental philosophies of self and Other.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here [to be posted].

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai