Reflections on Biography: Tom Harrisson and Frantz Fanon 'go-native'

Gareth Stanton (Goldsmiths College, London, UK)

This paper will examine the nature of 'going-native' within the contexts of two different colonial empires. The lives of Tom Harrisson, the founder of the British Mass-Observation movement, and Frantz Fanon, the Martinican psychiatrist and militant of the Algerian War of Independence will be explored in order to attempt an understanding of the roots of their protest against colonial authority. They will be treated as figures marking, in their different ways, the beginning of the moment called the 'postcolonial'.

Last modified: 7 May 2001