Sociogenic Foundations of Theory and Practice: Revolutionizing Psychoanalysis

This chapter reviews Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952/2008), widely regarded as the foundation of decolonial psychoanalysis. The chapter unpacks Fanon’s psychoanalytic theory of colonialism, capitalism, and race, and underscores some emergent critiques of Freud and Ferenczi that can be drawn from Fanon’s work. Fanon cited the psychoanalytic theory of race and class developed by Freud and the first psychoanalysts, using it to critique how marginalized people, despite being victims of oppression, can turn to racism as a “healing balm” to compensate for their pain and “ascend” within racial capitalism. Further, like Lacan, Fanon offers a critique of relational logic by emphasizing the role of a “third term,” the social context as it is expressed through speech. Fanon’s case studies in The Wretched of the Earth (1963) show how we all take a position within the social hierarchy from which a particular arrangement of pleasure and pain results that binds us to that social order—the pivotal question being whether we renounce the benefits that privilege affords us and become cognizant of its costs.