Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education : Foreword by Ato Sekyi-Out

As this volume goes to press a new school year has begun in Toronto, as indeed in many parts of the world. In Toronto this is also the occasion for a novel experiment in public education: the opening of the first Africentric elementary school in the province -one in which the canonical curriculum will be delivered with a particular attention to the histories, cultures and living experiences of African peoples. For its advocates and architects, the necessity and mission of this experiment are ones that, as attested by the essays assembled here, are at the heart of the work of the African-Caribbean psychiatrist and social philosopher Frantz Fanon. For central to Fanon's critical theory is the insight that racist culture vitiates the promise of education, understood not only as the acquisition of knowledge but also as the initiation of persons of equal moral worth into a civic community, even a world, of shareable affections and allegiances. How can it be otherwise in a social world in which the full humanity and individuality of persons are, according to Fanon, fundamentally called into question? In such a world the institutions, conventions and practices charged with the formation of the future citizen pose an enormous challenge to the selfesteem, expectations and capabilities of those set apart by race. A great many are condemned to fail, expected to fail, and do indeed fail. Under the ordinance of race, excellence and blackness are and are seen to be mutually exclusive, save for the anomalous exceptional black who, precisely, confirms the rule. Just as the social convention of blackness -"the lived experience of the black" -becomes "the fact of blackness", so the judgment that black students fail becomes the reality of forty per cent of black schoolchildren failing in Toronto schools.What is to be done in the face of this toxic marriage of judgment and fact? If he were alive today, would Fanon endorse the establishment of Africentric schools as a solution to this problem, while we wait with baited breath for the dawn of the "postracial" day? We cannot answer with any degree of certainty. It is enough that with Fanon as pathfinder the contributors to Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education revisit the drama of racial degradation and other scenes of social exclusion and political subordination -from gender and cultural representations to internal colonialisms and the plight of the Palestinians. Together they explore paradigmatic forms of social, cultural, psychic and political structures that thwart the mission of education in the enlarged sense of the cultivation of human autonomy and community. More than that, they offer useful sketches of insurgent practices designed to reshape in life and mind what Fanon called "this narrow world" of subjugated beings. Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education takes up the challenge of an anti-colonial reading of Fanon to broach questions of identity, difference and belonging, and the implications for schooling and education. The authors deliberately offer a careful and selective capturing of Fanon's works, pointing to the relevance for oppressed communities as they resist re-organized colonial relations in schooling and education. While colonialism and neo-colonialism have functioned and continue to function differently in diverse environments and social contexts, contributions in the book enthuse that we must raise new questions in a bold attempt to re-theorize colonial relations, social difference and the representational politics of education. Educators must ask new questions in order to contribute to knowledge of how to resist the entrapments of colonialism, racism, exploitation and alienation. Frantz Fanon's oeuvre is informative to the pursuit of critical education, especially, when we examine the colonial encounter and the colonized experience. The book offers concrete lessons in the struggle to revise education to meet the needs of diverse communities. Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 Foreword 7 1. Fanon, Anti-Colonialism and Education: An Introduction 9 2. Fanon and Anti-Colonial Theorizing 19 3. Decolonizing the Euro-American Public Education System: A Transgressive Revisiting of Fanon 37 4. Decolonizing Imaginations 57 5. The Cinematic Legacy of Frantz Fanon: On Claire Denis’ Beau Travail and I can’t Sleep 71 6. Meeting Fanon in the Kasbash: Reading the Wretched of the Earth Through the Cinematic Lens of the Battle of the Algiers – Personal and Pedagogical Reflections 83 7. Reading Fanon Differently: Black Canadian Perspectives 91 8. Understanding Race Induced Trauma and the Black Women’s Experience Through Fanon 115 9. Fanon’s Pedagogical Implications to Women’s Studies in the Philippines 141 10. Fanon’s Psychology of the Mind, the “Yellow” Colonizer and the Racialized Minoritized in Japan 165 11. “The Last shall be First”: Nationalism, Decolonization and “New Humanism” Somalia – a nation in waiting, a state in the making 185 12. The Hundred Year Headache: Israel, Palestine, and Frantz Fanon 205 Notes on Contributors 235 Preliminary Material /George J. Sefa Dei -- Fanon, Anti-Colonialism and Education /George J. Sefa Dei -- Fanon and Anti-Colonialtheorizing /George J. Sefa Dei -- Decolonizing The Euro-American Public Education System /Paul Alhassan Issahaku -- Decolonizing Imaginations /Natacha Nsabimana -- The Cinematic Legacy of Frantz Fanon /Hannah Dyer -- Meeting Fanon in the Kasbah /Meredith Lordan -- Reading Fanon Differently /Njoki Wane -- Understanding Race Induced Trauma and the Black Women's Experience Through Fanon /Nadesha Gayle -- Fanon's Pedagogical Implications for Women's Studies in the Philippines /Rose Ann Torres -- Fanon's Psychology of the Mind /Yumiko Kawano -- “The Last Shall be First”: /Fouzia Warsame -- The Hundred Year Headache /Neil Orlowsky -- Notes on Contributors /George J. Sefa Dei