#74: Frantz Fanon: Why Colonialism Still Lives in Our Minds | Lewis Gordon

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who treated both the tortured and the torturers of colonial Algeria — and concluded that colonialism doesn't just occupy land, it occupies the mind. In this episode, philosopher Lewis Gordon, one of the world's foremost interpreters of Fanon and a leading voice in Africana philosophy, joins The Prometheans to unpack how colonial power gets internalized — psychologically, culturally, and politically — and why Fanon's diagnosis still explains the world seventy years later. We go inside Fanon's key ideas: the "zone of nonbeing," the "epidermalization" of inferiority, the Manichean logic of colonizer and colonized, and the controversial role of violence in his thought — separating what Fanon actually argued from the caricature. We also discuss Gordon's own recent work, including his role in the acclaimed documentary Rediscovering Fanon, and what Fanon's philosophy has to say about racial violence and postcolonial politics today. A conversation about psychiatry, philosophy, empire, and the unfinished work of decolonizing the human mind.

Guest: Professor Lewis R. Gordon, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs, University of Connecticut. Author of What Fanon Said, Fear of Black Consciousness, and Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge.

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