Fanon and the child: pedagogies of subjectification and transformation

Frantz Fanon's analysis of colonial experience has widely influenced educational theory and practice. Yet, despite much focus on the gendered and sexed dynamics of racialization processes, and their applications to the dynamics in particular of teaching and learning, surprisingly little attention has been given to how these intersect both with generational relations and the models of children/childhood on which his account relies. In this paper, Fanon's representations of childhood across all his texts are analyzed and evaluated. It is argued that attending to the diversities and instabilities of these representations not only strengthens critical engagement with Fanon's ideas conceptually, methodologically and in terms of pedagogical process, but also prompts reassessment of their contemporary relevance for, and corresponding challenges to, current pedagogical and political practice.