Reiland Rabaka - Forms of Fanonism

Preface and Acknowledgments

On the (Re)Formation of Fanonism

I dont mind criticism. I can handle it, but most people cant.

Fela Kuti

Everything I did wrongly is an experience.... To be honest and truthful in all endeavors is an experience, not a regret.... To be spiritual is not about praying and going to church. Spiritualism is seeking an understanding of the universe, so that it can be a better place to live in.

Fela Kuti

[M]an is here against his will. Where do we come from? What was before us?... When you think about dying or meditate on death you die, but youre not dead! It is merely a transition.... I just want to do my part and leave....You are concerned with what others will remember you for. My position is not so much about what theyre going to remember me for, but about what I believe in and what I stand for as a man; I mean to say, as a human being.

Fela Kuti

Now theres the black cross, the green cross, the white cross, the double-cross, the criss-cross, and the lost cross. And the cross gets awful heavy at different times, but one is supposed to keep on going on and carrying the cross on his shoulder, because you aint supposed to let no cross cross you up. Youre supposed to let a cross help you get across. And if you let a cross help you get across, you wont get crossed up but youll be on the cross because you done got across on the cross. So if you can remember this, you wont get lost on the cross while youre trying to get across. So were just here to let you know about it. I know that you knew already, because yall the hippest people in the world, hip black and white folk. But, you still know that you got a cross you must deal with. So when it crosses you up, go on and deal with it, and leave it alone.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Now we would like to think of some very beautiful Bright Moments. You know what I mean? Bright Moments! Bright Moments is like eating your last pork chop in London, England, because you aint gonna get no more... cooked from home. Bright Moments is like being with your favorite love and youre sharing the same ice cream dish, and you get mad when she gets the last dropand then you have to take her in your arms and get it the other way! Oh, Bright Moments! You see, thats too heavy for most of you all because you all dont know nothing about that kind of love. The love you all have been taught about is the love in those magazines, and I am fortunate that I didnt have to look at magazines. Bright Moments! Bright Moments is like seeing something that you aint ever seen in your life and you dont have to see it but you know how it looks. Bright Moments is like hearing some music that aint nobody else heard, and if they heard it they wouldnt even recognize that they heard it because theyve been hearing it all their life but they nutted on it, so when you hear it and you start popping your feet and jumping up and down they get mad because youre enjoying yourself, but those are Bright Moments that they cant share with you because they dont even know how to go about listening to what youre listening to and when you try to tell them about it they dont know a damn thing about what youre talking about! Are there any other Bright Moments before we proceed?... Bright Moments is like having brothers and sisters, and sisterettes and brotherettes like you all here listening to us.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Roforofo Fight/No Agreement/Shuffering and Shmiling: Fanon, Du Bois, and the Arduous Development of the Africana Tradition of Critical Theory

Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanons Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization represents something of a departure for me and my lifework. Most of my publications up to this point have essentially revolved around critically engaging W. E. B. Du Bois and establishing the Africana tradition of critical theory. It, indeed, has been a rough and rocky road, but lately it seems as though a coterie of intellectual-activists interested in critical consciousness-raising have begun to seriously interrogate and, more importantly to me, put Africana critical theory into insurgent intellectual and radical political praxis. Since I introduced my conception of critical theorythat is, Africana critical theoryby way of an extended discursive dialogue with Du Bois, there has been a great deal of discussion concerning my intellectual affinity with his lifework and legacy. However, my most recent book, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition, from W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral (2009), was intended as a symbolic salvo audaciously announcing that my conception of critical theory cannot and should not be quarantined to Du Boiss insurgent intellectual and radical political legacy.

As I conceive it, Africana critical theory is a school of radical/revolutionary thought or a radical/revolutionary thought-tradition primarily preoccupied with radical/revolutionary praxis, which decidedly goes above and beyond the influence of a single intellectual-activist ancestor. The main point of my previous books on Du Bois, therefore, was to (re)introduce and (re)establish the Africana tradition of critical theory through a series of dialectical and discursive dialogues with an intellectual-activist ancestor who is almost undisputedly considered the doyen of black insurgent intellectualism and a peerless pioneer of revolutionary Pan-Africanism, both within and without Africana studies and the wider African world. In other words, critically engaging Du Bois offered me the opportunity to simultaneously (re)introduce and (re)establish Africana critical theory and put the disciplinary decadence of the purportedly (post)modern and (post)colonial academy on display. Forms of Fanonism , faithfully following this line of logic, demonstrates that Frantz Fanons sui generis insurgent intellectual and radical political legacy offers both something similar and also something distinctly different from that of Du Boiss oeuvre.