“Chi può rivendicare quel sogno adesso?” Cent’anni dopo Fanon: dislocamenti, resistenze e geografie della solidarietà

Marking the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth (1925–1961), this article interrogates the enduring relevance of his thought for understanding the political and social conditions of the contemporary world. Moving beyond a purely commemorative or exegetical approach, it argues that Fanon’s work provides indispensable critical tools for analysing the persistent logics of colonial violence, racialisation, and dehumanisation, now reconfigured within the globalised, neoliberal present. The analysis traces a direct lineage from the “compartmentalised world” of the colony, described by Fanon, to today’s fragmented urban landscapes and proliferating borders. It demonstrates how new technologies of surveillance, detention, and border control materialise Fanonian manicheanism, creating modern zones of exception such as migrant detention centres (CPR). Drawing parallels between Fanon’s critique of the colonised subject and the condition of migrants today—notably through the concept of “double absence”—the article examines how state mechanisms produce alienating performances of identity, fixing individuals into categories of “migrant,” “victim,” or “criminal.” The article then posits Palestine as the open wound of the postcolonial world, where colonial strategies of segregation, discursive dehumanisation, and the denial of political subjectivity are brutally evident. Reading the current situation through Fanon’s analysis of violence and liberation, it critiques Western liberal discourses that delegitimise Palestinian resistance, revealing a continuity of colonial reasoning that demands the colonised conform to the political grammar of the oppressor.