Cruel Fantasies

Reading Fanon with Lauren Berlant

Bibliographic Data

ID6350397
AuthorsHagar Kotef (0000-0002-5481-1306, SOAS University of London, London, UK, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume53
Issue3
Pages354-379
Publication date2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00905917251341906
OpenAlexW4411918989
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited26

This paper examines Wretched of the Earth with Lauren Berlant, specifically through the prism of Cruel Optimism . I propose that we might read the concept of decolonization that opens “On Violence” (decolonization as a replacement for which violence is essential) as a form of cruel optimism: a promise for the future that is shaped by the limits and violence of present conditions and is thus eventually an obstacle to achieving the ends it promises. I further propose that such a reading reflects Fanon’s own analysis in Wretched . As part of this reading, I examine not just the question of violence but also the attachment to present conditions that shapes the promise of decolonization, thereby rendering it cruel in the Berlantian meaning: an attachment to the future that is discovered to be either completely impossible or “too possible, and toxic.” Specifically, I ask in this context about the logic of binarism in Fanon and beyond. I end by offering a different way of imagining decolonization: through the workings of solidarity across the colonial divide and a vision of a shared future. Since this latter vision may itself be a form of cruel optimism, the question becomes one of the doing of different political fantasies of freedoms—both in terms of the futures they hold open or foreclose and in terms of the strategies and tactics they summon

Linguistics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Sociology · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Philosophy · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis

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