Black skin, white language : Nabile Fares, Frantz Fanon and the reality of words

Based on major novels by Nabile Fares (1940-2016) and recently rediscovered works by Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), the article reflects on a philosophy of language that captures the colonized psyche. Nabile Fares' writings explore, sometimes in the form of a delirium, what Fanon once called "the North African syndrome". Fares' poetical and anthropological thought answers Fanon's reflections as a psychiatrist in Algiers when he worked at the Blida-Joinville hospital in 1953. Fares' writings make visible the encounter between Berber, Arabic and French. He shows their mutual mestizaje whose existence can only happen in poetry. It echoes the absence of real encounters between communities in the colonial city as described by Fanon.