The (post)colonial condition, between Marxism and psychoanalysis: The contribution of Octave Mannoni
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In this second part of our study of the encounter between the Marxist critique of colonialism and the Freudian analysis of the colonial condition, we focus here on Octave Mannoni’s pioneering work Psychologie de la colonisation (1950, translated as Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization), written during the great Malagasy revolt of 1947. In Mannoni’s book the colonial condition is for the very first time apprehended as an enduring, long-term phenomenon, one that, for Master and Slave alike, extends beyond the colonial era. Looking beyond the strong opposition to Mannoni’s hypothesis voiced by Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), the aim of the article is to highlight the complexity of the transferential relationship between Fanon and Mannoni. It was Mannoni’s book that, to some extent, authorized Fanon’s production of his own analysis of the colonial condition. And in turn, it was Fanon’s outspoken intervention that made it possible for Mannoni to achieve a kind of catharsis, leaving behind the colonial world where he had spent almost thirty years of his life, and choosing psychoanalysis as his new mission.
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