Fanon at Home, Fanon Abroad:
The Paradox of Reception in Martinique

This talk explores the reception of Frantz Fanon’s work in Martinique through a paradox: how can a Martinican intellectual become a central figure in global anti-colonial theory and African decolonisation debates while remaining marginal in his home island’s political and cultural landscape? Drawing on my published work on Fanon’s trajectories and legacies, I propose a sociohistorical interpretation of this “asymmetric circulation” between global recognition and local delay.

First, I argue that Martinique’s post-1946 departmental framework shaped the conditions of intelligibility of Fanon’s call for rupture. The hegemonic grammar of assimilation and the symbolic weight of Césairean politics contributed to pushing Fanon’s most radical proposals—especially those on violence and the national question—to the margins of legitimate debate.

Second, I show that Fanon’s own biographical and institutional ruptures (professional exclusions, wartime commitments, diplomatic itineraries) reinforced a pattern of deterritorialisation, producing a figure “of Martinique” but not “for Martinique” in the immediate postwar decades.

Third, I analyse the more recent re-emergence of Fanon in Martinique, notably through university institutionalisation, commemorations, and activist appropriations (structural violence, environmental injustice, mental health inequalities). I suggest that this return is often predominantly memorial and moral rather than programmatic: Fanon functions as an authority to denounce the status quo, without necessarily consolidating a coherent alternative political project.