““A Program of Complete Disorder”: The Black Iconoclasm within Fanonian Thought” by Charles Athanasopoulos (2021, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association)

"In “‘A Program of Complete Disorder’: The Black Iconoclasm Within Fanonian Thought,” (Lateral, 10.1) Charles Athanasopoulos takes up Wilderson’s and Sexton’s afropessimisms to challenge Taussig’s critique of iconoclasms and to expand and explode Fanonian humanisms. Athanasopoulos argues that Fanon’s “un programme de désordre absolu” is a “Black iconoclasm” that uniquely remains anti-icon. As a means of bringing “ending the world into the realm of everyday practice” through the “ritual orientation of chaos” of Fanon’s theory, Athanasopoulos strives to hold the reader in the dialectical liminal of and against the promise of any particular agenda for redemption in the anti-Black world.”

-Robert F. Carley, Stefanie A. Jones, Eero Laine and Chris Alen Sula (Editor’s Intro)

background photo: Portrait of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). Image courtesy of Pacha J. Willka (CC BY-SA 3.0) with shattered glass effect added by author.