Alienation and Freedom by Frantz Fanon Jean Khalfa Robert J. C. Young

Author:Frantz Fanon,Jean Khalfa,Robert J. C. Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

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1[IMEC Fonds Fanon, typescript FNN 1.4. This is a previously unseen, undated text, probably written at the end of 1954 or in 1955 since it seems to have been written after Jacques Azoulay’s dissertation. The typescript is available at IMEC and was initially titled ‘Introduction aux troubles de la sexualité chez les Nord-Africains’ (the plural of this latter term is crossed out). This text has djouns instead of djnoun as the plural forms of djinn (genie).]

2Taleb: one who writes. The taleb is a sort of healer whose essential attribute is knowing how to read and write old Koranic, which is especially effective as the majority of the population is illiterate.

3See Desparmet, Le Mal magique, Jules Carbonel, Algiers, 1932. [Joseph Desparmet, Le Mal magique. Ethnographie traditionnelle de la Mettidja, Publications de la Faculté des lettres d’Alger, Ancien bulletin de correspondance africaine, 1st series, vol. 63.]

4Book of Clemency on Medicine and Wisdom by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti edited at Tanta (Cairo), by Mustapha Tadj El-Koutoubi. We have taken the care to translate these passages. [The British Library record for this edition of Suyuti’s book is: Suyūṭī 1445–1505, al-Rahṃah fī al-tịbb wa-al-hịkmah.[al-Qāhirah]: ʻĪsā al-Bābī al-Hạlabī [n.d.].]

5The djinns or demons play an important role in North African mental pathology. This influence of the djinns has been studied in-depth in Suzanne Taieb’s dissertation, which was inspired by Professor Porot. One of us intends to consider in his dissertation the relations between belief in genies and the different levels of destructuration of consciousness. [In his dissertation, Jacques Azoulay refers to Suzanne Taïeb’s dissertation in the same terms: ‘Here we hit upon an extremely interesting aspect of North African psychiatry. Mental illness is external to the individual. It is sent and can be taken back by God. For some, it is ascribable to djinns or spirits, which you can try to capture in sessions of exorcism lead by a marabout (see Suzanne Taieb, Les Idées d’influence dans la pathologie mentale nord-africaine. Le rôle des superstitions, Med. thesis: Algiers, 1939).’ Doctoral dissertation in medicine, presented and defended publicly on June 24, 1939 by Ms Suzanne Taïeb, intern at the psychiatric hospital of Blida, born on August 17, 1907, University of Algiers. The dissertation supervisor and president of the jury was Antoine Porot. In her conclusion to her dissertation Suzanne Taïeb wrote: ‘Ideas of influence occur very frequently in the mental pathology of North African natives. They are the expression of very widespread and deeply rooted beliefs and superstitions in their culture. Indeed, what characterizes these natives from the psychological point of view is a rather special “primitivism” into which enters a large store of mysticism and of religious credulity, in the sense that Lévy-Bruhl and Blondel have established in their studies on the “primitive mentality”. Rational and scientific explanations do not exist for them; there are only ever affective values, supernatural and mystical acts that are not up for debate, cannot be controlled, to which one is subject and against which means of protection must be found, when they are baleful.

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