Philosophy Shots · What Are We Capable Of? · Anti-Imperialism · Frantz Fanon

​Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist from Martinique who joined the Algerian revolution and spent his life asking one question: what does oppression do to the human being, and what does resistance restore?

​Three ideas that will drive our conversation:

​💭 Colonial violence is the original violence. The violence of the oppressed is always a response never an origin. To judge the resistance without judging what produced it is not ethics. It is complicity.

​🧠 Colonialism is a psychiatric condition. It does not only take land and resources. It takes the mind. The colonized person is taught to see themselves as inferior, to aspire to the colonizer's standards, to become a stranger to themselves.

​🔥 Violence can be an act of self-restoration. For Fanon, the moment the colonized person fights back is the moment they reclaim their humanity. This is his most controversial and most important claim.

​Tonight we ask:

​❓ Have you ever been in a situation where the only way to be heard was to stop being polite?

​❓ If the law protects the people who oppress you, is breaking the law violence or justice?

​❓ When you see migrants at the European border, do you see people defending themselves, or a threat to defend yourself against?

​❓ If your dignity was systematically taken from you every single day, at what point would you stop asking for it back and start taking it?

​Sessions are open to all. Come and think with us. If it was worth your time, contribute what you can.