Review of Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing by Nigel Gibson (Polity Press, 2024)

Breathing paints a careful portrait of a now-canonical political theorist.Gibson's biography joins a growing literature on Fanon, provoking the question: Why has Fanon captured the imagination of a new generation of scholars?Why, at this moment, are we returning to Fanon?Gibson suggests the contemporary relevance of Fanon with a preface on Palestinian liberation and an introduction that briefly surveys the Movement for Black Lives.Yet I credit our captivation with Fanon to how his name has become synonymous with "violence" in political theory.Quoting Alice Cherki, Gibson calls Fanon "'a thinker about violence, not its apologist'" (7).The ongoing contestation over Fanon as a figure is symptomatic of a political disagreement over the meaning of violence, and its place in revolutionary struggle.Marking the passage of time with Fanon's travels between Martinique, France, and Algeria, Combat Breathing moves chronologically through his life.Each chapter details the intellectual and political influences on Fanon's thought.The first describes Fanon's childhood in Martinique, his collaboration with Aim Csaire, and his participation in the fight for French liberation.Fanon's correspondence reveals a deep commitment to universalfreedom, yet a creeping disillusionment with his dedication to the French as Martinique remained a colony.In the second chapter, Fanon meets his wife, Josie, writes three plays, and attends medical school, where he becomes immersed in psychiatry.Here, Gibson sets the stage for Fanon's development of a psychoanalytic, socio-diagnostic approach that, per Franois Tosquelles, struggles for "liberation inside the mental asylum" (76).