We are us but not quite: Frantz Fanon’s transvaluation of group psychology

Abstract Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego prioritises the model of artificial groups with leaders. However, I contend that coloniality challenges this priority. Fanon’s ‘Series B’ cases in The Wretched of the Earth expose how coloniality induces an unconscious collective that entwines individuals to a total yet diffuse social situation; this is a different kind of group from that considered in Freud’s text. This conceptualisation permits a transvaluation of group psychology. This transvaluation entails the transference of the value and meaning of group psychology from one scene to another without losing the generic character of psychoanalytic theory.