Scholarly Fanon studies remain celebratory rather than critically advancing his thought

Evidence

Within the world of black or Afro-American cultural studies, the story has been very different. Fanon’s star has risen steadily to its current point of ascendancy where there are whole journals, conferences, and academic careers devoted to the pursuit of “Fanon Studies.” His corpus is fought over by essentialists and post-structuralists, by those who claim him as the forefather of Afrocentrism, and those who see him as a practitioner of postcolonial studies avant le lettre (Macey, 2000) Yet by definition such scholarly debates are about situating or celebrating Fanon, not about going beyond the limits necessarily set by his life and times. But nor is any such critical engagement forthcoming from those arguably best placed to do so, namely his fellow psychiatrists. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1351

Categorization

• XREF: Plugs into the broader question of canonization in academic fields — how a thinker becomes a ‘Studies’ industry rather than a living interlocutor.