Which one first depends on what you want
Black Skin, White Masks (1952) is the psychological book, written when he was 27. It's about what colonialism does inside a person: the split it produces, the impossible position of being taught to admire a culture that defines you as its opposite. It's part clinical observation, part memoir, part literary criticism, and formally strange.
The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is the political book, dictated in the last months of his life while he was dying of leukaemia. It's about decolonisation as a process, and it's the more influential of the two by a wide margin.
Start with Black Skin, White Masks if you're interested in psychology or identity. Start with The Wretched of the Earth if you're interested in politics or history.
| Book | Year | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Black Skin, White Masks | 1952 | The psychology of colonisation, from the inside. Written at 27. |
| The Wretched of the Earth | 1961 | Decolonisation, violence, and what happens after independence. His last book. |
| A Dying Colonialism | 1959 | On the Algerian revolution as social transformation. The most concrete. |
| Toward the African Revolution | 1964 | Posthumous collection of political writing and journalism. |
The life, compressed
Born 1925 in Martinique, then a French colony. Fought for Free France in the Second World War and was decorated, then discovered that the France he'd fought for did not regard him as French. Trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon.
Posted in 1953 to the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in Algeria, where he treated both Algerians tortured by French forces and the French officers who did the torturing. That is the biographical fact underneath everything he wrote afterwards. He resigned in 1956, joined the Algerian independence movement, and died in 1961, weeks before the war ended.
The violence chapter
The Wretched of the Earth opens with a chapter on violence, and it's the reason the book is either revered or refused.
His claim is descriptive first: colonialism is itself a violent order, maintained by force, and it doesn't dissolve when asked politely. He then goes further, arguing that violent resistance has a psychological function for the colonised, restoring a sense of agency the colonial order specifically destroyed.
Sartre's preface made this considerably worse. He read Fanon as endorsing violence with more relish than Fanon did, and for years people argued with Sartre's preface believing they were arguing with Fanon. Later editions often print Homi Bhabha's foreword instead, which is a fairer guide.
The chapter people should read more is the last one, on the mental disorders produced by the war, where he returns to clinical case notes. It's the least quoted and the most devastating.
Where he sits
He's the founding figure of postcolonial thought, and his influence runs through liberation movements, critical race theory and a great deal of contemporary political writing. Read alongside Sartre, whose existentialism he used and criticised, and African philosophy.
365 Days of Philosophy includes him in the twentieth-century sequence.
Common questions
Which Fanon book should I read first?
Black Skin, White Masks if you want the psychology of colonisation, The Wretched of the Earth if you want the politics. The second is more influential; the first is more personal.
Did Fanon advocate violence?
He argued that colonial rule is itself violent and won't end by request, and that resistance restores agency to the colonised. Sartre's preface to The Wretched of the Earth overstated this considerably, and many readers have argued with the preface thinking it was Fanon.
Was Fanon a psychiatrist?
Yes, trained in Lyon and head of a ward at Blida-Joinville in Algeria, where he treated both tortured Algerians and the French officers who tortured them. That experience underlies everything he wrote.
Why did Fanon die so young?
Leukaemia, in 1961, aged 36. He dictated The Wretched of the Earth in his final months and died weeks before Algerian independence.
Is Fanon still relevant?
He's the founding figure of postcolonial thought and is read more now than at most points since his death, across political theory, psychiatry and critical race studies.