Frantz Fanon, by Adam Shatz
Adam Shatz
On June 27 2024, the Crash team welcomed Adam Shatz for a lecture on Frantz Fanon.
Frantz Fanon is one of the most influential intellectual figures of the second half of the 20th century. Many personalities and political currents today claim to be the work of a man who lived for only 36 years, but who had a decisive influence on the theoretical construction of the struggle for decolonisation. More recently, at the time of the Hamas offensive in the heart of Israeli territory on 7 October, some activists thought they could justify the massacres by drawing on elements of Fanon's discourse, which legitimises anti-colonial forms of violence.
The publication of a biography of Frantz Fanon by the American journalist and essayist Adam Shatz (Une vie en révolutions, La Découverte, March 2024 / The Rebel's Clinic: The revolutionary life of Frantz Fanon, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is an opportunity to discover - or rediscover - the extraordinarily complex intellectual and activist career of the Martinican doctor. A psychiatrist with radically innovative methods, an admirer of Aimé Césaire but a fierce critic of negritude, a rigorous intellectual but an outspoken propagandist for the FLN cause, an apostle of violence overtaken by his own rhetoric, Frantz Fanon gives us the opportunity to reflect on many of the themes that have permeated Médecins Sans Frontières in recent years: the patient-provider relationship, humanitarian psychiatry, mass violence and identity.
We'd like to invite you to a conference with Adam Shatz to discuss the many aspects of Frantz Fanon's thought and commitment, to separate their finesse from the sometimes unsubtle that can be made of them, and in this way to stimulate several of our internal debates.
To cite this content :
Adam Shatz, “Frantz Fanon, by Adam Shatz”, 27 juin 2024, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/conferences-debates/frantz-fanon-adam-shatz
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ContributePast events
Motivations for mass violence: different interpretations
10/03/2019 - 06:00 PM 08:00 PMConference – debate, Thursday, 3 October 2019, 6-8pm, 1st floor meeting room at MSF, 8 rue Saint Sabin. Streaming and simultaneous translation into English available.
What turns ordinary men into killers? The CRASH team invited you to a conference – debate with the sociologist and historian, Nicolas Mariot, author of an article entitled « Faut-il être motivé pour tuer? Sur quelques explications aux violences de guerre » (Genèses, n°53, 2003, p. 154-177) and books such as “Face à la persécution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre" (with Claire Zalc, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2010), “Tous unis dans la tranchée ? 1914-1918, les intellectuels rencontrent le peuple" (Paris, Seuil, 2013). Nicolas Mariot presented two different interpretations of motivations for mass violence in the 20th century, drawn from a series of studies and surveys on the subject.
Third-Worldism and Sans-Frontiérisme 1954-1988
04/11/2019 - 06:30 PM 08:30 PMEleanor Davey, historian of ideas and humanitarianism, senior lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute, University of Manchester, discusses her book, Idealism Beyond Borders. The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954-1988, devoted to the intellectual history of sans-frontiérisme and Third-Worldism, in France, from the Algerian war to the early years of Médecins Sans Frontières.
Healing foreigners in France: The State and the civil society organisations from the 80s to the 90s
12/17/2018 - 06:00 PM 08:00 PMThe CRASH team invited you to the debate-conference “Healing foreigners in France: The State and the civil society organisations from the 80s to the 90s” on Monday 17th of December 2018 from 6 to 8pm, in the 1rst floor room at the 8 rue Saint-Sabin. We hosted Caroline Izambert, who recently defended, at the EHESS, her PhD thesis focusing on the foreigners’ access to healthcare in France. Her title: “Heal foreigners?” The State and the civil society organisations for the health coverage of the poor and foreigners in France from the 1980s to the present day.
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11/26/2018 - 06:00 PM 08:00 PMConference/debate with Benjamin Boudou, political scientist and researcher at the Max Planck institute.
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12/05/2017 - 06:00 PM 08:00 PMWho profits from vaccination? Individuals? Society? Companies? Is vaccination efficient? Is it dangerous? Profitable? What are the factors influencing public opinion in this domain? Lise Barnéoud, science journalist and author of Immunisés ? Un nouveau regard sur les vaccins, has engaged in an investigation revealing multiple - and sometimes contradictory - realities observed in the French vaccination sector. She has carried out her investigation from three distinct viewpoints: the one of a mother who needs to decide whether to vaccinate her children or not; of a journalist leading an enquiry; and of a scientist analyzing how facts are built.
Lise Barnéoud was a Crash guest speaker at a conference on vaccination held on December 5, 2017. A discussion with Epicentre, Crash and the MSF Medical Department allowed us to exchange views on vaccinal policy, which remains a cornerstone of MSF operations and a recurring subject of discussion and controversy.
Humanitarian anthropology : conference with Sharon Abramowitz
10/23/2017 - 06:00 PM 08:00 PMSharon Abramowitz is an anthropologist and a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, co-editor of recently published Medical humanitarianism. Ethnographies of practice. She has devoted much of her work to responding to epidemics - most recently in Ebola, and in West Africa, Liberia in particular.
During the conference organized by MSF-Crash on 23 October 2017, she discussed the contribution of medical anthropology to humanitarian action as well as her latest book and most recent projects.