What is it about?
This paper compares the careers and ideas of two anti-colonial activists/theorists, Lamine Senghor and Frantz Fanon. Both men died young, before the revolutions they theorised had been achieved but Fanon is deemed a success while Senghor's activism is seen to have ended in failure. Why is this the case?
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Why is it important?
This paper invites the reader to think again about how and why we right off certain figures/movements as failures. It argues that when we approach the past, we often judge events in light of what we know to have been the outcome rather than thinking ourselves back into the mindset of historical actors who did not set out to do things knowing they would fail.
Perspectives
This paper is important because it offers new ways of thinking about a well-known figure (Frantz Fanon) and introduces the reader to the ideas of a little-known but historically important figure (Lamine Senghor).
Professor David Murphy
University of Strathclyde
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Success and Failure: Frantz Fanon and Lamine Senghor as (False) Prophets of Decolonization?, Nottingham French Studies, March 2015, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/nfs.2015.0108.
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