Abstract
In Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method, Erica Burman critically engages with the writings of Frantz Fanon to offer her ‘child as method’ as an innovative analytical approach for exploration into childhood, subjectivity and society. She skilfully mobilizes feminist, Foucauldian and psychoanalytic knowledges to illustrate how racialization operates with other axes of difference to constitute relations of oppression in society and in the lives of children. Given that Fanon’s influence had thus far been absent from childhood studies, our field of interest, Burman creates a strong case for consolidating the relevance of his work to anyone interested in researching or understanding the social complexities of contemporary childhood and children’s lives. By interrogating the breadth of Fanon’s writing and discussing social representations of children emerging within specific examples, Burman introduces a cross-disciplinary perspective on childhood that prompts linkages between political, social, personal and affective dimensions.
Burman offers an exploration of the ways that children and childhood appear in Fanon’s work in successive chapters, challenging superficial understandings by naming and unpacking four main tropes in which the child is depicted in Fanon’s oeuvre: Idiotic, Traumatogenic, Therapeutic and Extemic child. These somewhat opaque and abrasive chapter titles are not self-evident with regard to their contents, and a close read highlights how Burman productively mobilizes each trope and reads the child repeatedly from different perspectives and directions through her child as method approach. In Chapter 2, ‘Idiotic child’, Burman explores how the apparent separation of children (and of other oppressed social groups) from the social world shapes adult self-conceptions as being complete, through a process of idioticizing the ‘other’. Through an analysis of ‘Traumatogenic child’ in Chapter 3, Fanon’s traumatic experience as a man racialized as black in the famous ‘Look, a negro!’ scenario illustrates multiple unexplored layers of children as subjects, producers and reproducers of traumatic situations. In Chapter 4, ‘Therapeutic child’, the author recalls a particular case from Fanon’s experience as a therapist to illustrate child as proxy for trauma and vulnerability, a figure upon which externalized projections of helplessness are made and can become an obstacle to agentic action. Finally, through a discussion of the ‘Extemic child’ in Chapter 5, Burman identifies child as subject of and within the social, highlighting how actual children are constituting, reproducing and resisting the social order.
Burman’s interrogation of these tropes is primarily methodological rather than substantive. By foregrounding the contrasting representations of childhood in Fanon’s work and moving beyond the structure–agency binary, she aims to bring to light the consequences of such constructions in relation not only to children, but also to wider socio-political dynamics. Overall, Burman argues that Fanon’s work can traverse current situations in which child–adult and (neo)colonial relations are present and offers her child as method theoretical tool to demonstrate the multiplicity underpinning a supposedly fixed, universal idea of the child.
In the following sections, we discuss three topics from Fanon, Education, Action which emerged as relevant to the group – childhood studies scholars and social science postgraduate students at University College London – who authored this review. First, we examine Burman’s representation of childhood as distinct and separated from society and unpack the construction of ‘innocent child’ through which she makes this case. In the second section we explore Fanon’s alternative view of education and his engagement with social change through a ‘pedagogy of failure’. Finally, we dedicate the third section of this review to the book’s intertwined conceptualizations of psychic/inter-relational/contextual dimensions.
Innocent child: How ‘unknowing’ perpetuates children’s exclusion
Throughout the book, Burman delves into the commonplace representation of childhood as distinct from the rest of society which, she argues, is sustained by the notion of an unknowing, innocent, ‘Idiotic child’. While this construct has been well discussed in childhood and feminist studies in a way that critiques binaries between unknowing/knowing or innocence/deviance, Burman moves beyond this characterization. She identifies the way in which children are denied participation in society based on a designated position of ignorance and shows how such exclusion relies upon and at the same time justifies the exclusion of ‘other’ oppressed groups.
Burman offers an innovative idea when she argues that maintaining children’s exclusionary positions not only secures adult social status, but also enables what she refers to as ‘harmful forms of unknowing’ (p. 41). This unknowing of children’s subjectivity supports a deliberate negation of conflicting aspects of reality, wherein adults deny children’s proven capability for knowledge and thus strive to sustain their own adulthood. In these situations, the anxiety instigated by difference is managed by a wilful ignorance, and children as occupants of the subaltern position are treated either as the source of danger or as being endangered. These reflections from the ‘Idiotic child’ illustrate how the use of generational differences as an exclusionary form is intertwined with other axes of exclusion and domination, and can be applicable to a wider understanding of how oppressive discourses, such as nationalism and Islamophobia, could exist contemporaneously.
Burman’s discussion surrounding the unknowing and wilful ignorance commonly associated with children contributes to current discourses which our own work engages with. Depicting children as less competent, ‘idiotic’ individuals contributes to the desire to silence them and seemingly justifies the allocation of decision-making to adults on behalf of their best interests in various public and private spheres. An example of this is found in the current inclusion of LGBTQ lessons in British educational contexts, which has been met with a significant backlash from adults who fear such lessons might ‘brainwash’ children and who desire to decide upon their children’s best interests for themselves. Rather than engaging with the overplayed debates around children’s agency, we believe Burman offers something unique to this scenario and to others like it: she illustrates how many adults, when confronted with the reality that children could be exposed to knowledge common in contemporary society (i.e. the existence of individuals identifying as LGBTQ), experience significant anxiety that their conception of children as ‘unknowing’ will be shattered, thus exposing their own weaknesses, lack of comprehension and fears. In attempts to avoid the challenging task of confronting their own lack, adults actively dismiss evidence that situates children as embedded creators and subjects of the social order, securing their own social status as knowledge-holders and sustaining ‘idiotic’ notions of childhood.
Rethinking education: Pedagogy of failure
Building upon a tradition of viewing education as a multidimensional process, rather than a site, Burman discusses that learning can occur both inside and outside the conventional classroom setting and is therefore liberated from orthodox linkages with specific settings and spaces. She proposes that pedagogy is intrinsically relational and present in small-scale everyday relationships, and highlights that in various interactions between individuals there is potential for a renegotiating of positions/structures that can generate new learning experiences and identities. This notion demands a deconstruction of traditional definitions of knowledge, of those deemed knowledge-holders and of the appropriate place for knowledge in society, and galvanizes a stimulating cycle of teaching and learning, wherein the places of both educator and student are flexible and constantly reflected upon.
Through one of her most exciting contributions, Burman explores Fanon’s concept of pedagogy of failure and its applicability in mobilizing reflexiveness through confrontation with the aforementioned ‘unknowing’ at personal and political levels. This pedagogy of failure, which is reminiscent of Gallacher and Gallagher’s (2008) methodological immaturity and of Judith Butler’s engagement with subjectivity, subjection and accountability, emphasizes the collaborative value (rather than authoritative exercise) of intimate, relational spheres. In concurrence with feminist theorizations of politics, everyday relations can be understood as intersectional actualizations of power imbalances and divisions in which pedagogy can emerge from an engagement with difference in a wide range of contexts, from psychotherapy to the independence of a colony. These relational encounters, Burman argues, provide a platform upon which Fanon’s pedagogy of failure can come into action and differences and previously unquestioned knowledge can be negotiated. Pedagogy of failure, or failure as method, counters claims of ‘complete’ knowledge which other methodological approaches maintain and highlights the fact that one’s knowledge will always and inevitably be ‘demanding [of] reflexivity…incomplete and subject to its own dynamic distortions’ (p. 51). Through Burman’s discussion of failure as method, we are led to understand that everyday interactions represent fertile ground for political and educational processes by introducing difference, bringing awareness of biases and limitations in knowledge, and enabling commitment to a stance which, albeit biased and flawed, is intentional and reflective.
Burman is aware of the critiques that may emerge from the application of Foucauldian, feminist and psychoanalytic frameworks to pedagogical practice, clearly stating that her proposals are neither morally relativist nor bound to a precise outcome. It is precisely here that adopting failure as method proves helpful. Failure as method starts by interrogating diverse forms of oppression, with the intention to subvert them, but does not commit to which particular outcomes might be produced from this mobilization. As an approach, therefore, it is focused mostly on how oppressed subjects can act to transform their conditions, and represents a future outlook, oriented to when social injustice can be overcome. This pedagogy, in combination with the multiplicity of Burman’s child as method, allows an engagement with material and relational contexts, such as activism and political participation, with a decolonizing and emancipatory role. While we appreciate Burman’s sentiments about emancipatory action, we also recognize the limitations of her discussion, which will be explored in greater depth in the following section.
On psychic, inter-relational and social: Towards a more comprehensive gaze of multi-scalar phenomena
Burman traces various tropes of the child, treating it as a multifaceted figure that simultaneously absorbs, reflects and shapes the social. Convergences of individual and society, psychic and social and personal and political are examined through different cases which uncover the complexities of such connections and avoid deterministic approaches. The culpability assigned to the entity child–mother in Fanon’s iconic scene – ‘Look, a negro!’ – is a good case in point. Burman applies her child as method to illustrate the limitations of using single theories to understand this scene, offering instead an in-depth, intersectional analysis. Starting from the position of the child in the situation, Burman poses ‘questions and research agendas’ (Burman, 2019) that show how power dynamics are set in play in society and aims to deal with the complex simultaneity and ambiguity of the social realm. Her child as method approach gives us a tool to perform an analysis upon multiple and interrelated forms of oppression, the results of which go beyond the limits of childhood and provide resources to understand gender, race, class, and other social categorizations. Burman’s reading on ‘Look, a negro!’, therefore, foregrounds how Fanon’s conceptions about colonial relationships are present in intra-psychic and socio-political dimensions, and highlights relations between social locations that are at play even as Fanon’s interpretation fails to provide an account of the child’s and mother’s positions.
Burman’s child as method approach gives us a tool to perform an analysis upon multiple and interrelated forms of oppression, the results of which go beyond the limits of childhood and provide resources to understand gender, race, class, and other social categorizations. For example, through child as method we are able to overcome dominant views related to children’s intrinsic vulnerability, as well as the barbaric status assigned to the adults who ‘fail’ to care for them, shedding light on the social structures within which these two figures arise. Such dominant views resurfaced in our own research when working with cases of children’s lack of English proficiency in the school setting. Discourses depicting children as inherently vulnerable, to a large extent present in public policies, more often than not blame the adults caring for them, forcing them to take part in social programmes. These interventions, however, are constantly crossed by classed, gendered and racialized oppressions, which show that the use of a single theory produces only limited understandings of these situations. This intersectional and multi-scalar approach thus represents an innovative contribution for our activity as researchers and makes an appeal for multidimensional readings and comprehensive analyses of the data involving children and their political contexts.
The call to action that the title explicitly engages with is, however, restricted. It is clear that the interrogation of theories and social relationships prompted by this book is a central theme in each chapter’s development. In this regard, Burman decides to follow a theoretical tradition that critiques pedagogy as a transfer of knowledge and understands knowledge and practice as intertwined entities (e.g. Freire, 2008), underlining the transformative potential of theoretical enquiry. It is important to remember that what is contained in this book is the potential for transformative action, although the path that would lead to that change is ambiguous. For example, Burman presents Fanon’s reading of young murderers’ cases in Algeria in light of the atmosphere of war, illustrating how psychic conflicts are produced by the political brutalizing repression. The author’s elaboration, moving from different scales of analysis and using multiple theoretical planes, definitely offers help for a politically informed comprehension of how subjective, situational and social levels are mutually constituted, yet offers no direct guidance for helpful action. This is true throughout the book: Burman’s writing prompts an interrogation of knowledges, which often stimulates the uncomfortable sensation of one’s own knowledge failure. This discomfort is meant to lead into transformative action, yet the concrete elaboration of how to go about making such a desire for action a reality is an endeavour that each reader will have to undertake for themselves.
Conclusion
Fanon, Education, Action introduces a unique methodological perspective which breathes new life into the social sciences and, from our situated perspective, into the field of childhood studies in particular. For us it is important to acknowledge that taking up a review of such a complex piece of literature certainly was a challenging endeavour, but our uneasiness slowly transformed into more clear thoughts and interrogations, as well as dealing with the unknowing. One of the book’s main assets is the integration of traditionally oppositional concepts (such as psychic and social, adult and child, among others); Burman instead proposes a mutual determination between them in which both poles are equally important. Here a mental image of a moebius strip might prove useful to illustrate Burman’s approach: it is as if, while following the traces of one phenomenon explained in the book, one’s analysis is unequivocally led into the exploration of another phenomenon in a seemingly never-ending integration of concepts. In this regard, Burman joins together theoretical discussions and the transformational character of Fanon’s work with masterful skill. Burman not only topicalizes Fanon’s ‘pedagogical activist’ intentions, she also constantly conveys these intentions by merging theory and practice and contextualizing the book both within current socio-political events and within the anti-colonial movement in Algeria (the setting of the majority of Fanon’s writings). In the same vein, the intrapersonal, interpersonal and socio-political phenomena are addressed as interconnected rather than as contrasting or separate fields, providing an insightful approach for scholars and students seeking to engage with their heterogeneity and interconnections.
A potentially problematic aspect of the book relates to the target audience, including social science students. Throughout the chapters, the author questions the position of the child, signposting possible interpretations, highlighting inter-textual connections, in order, ultimately, to pose a number of questions and analytic insights based on a deeply informed analysis. As such, Fanon, Education, Action certainly requires – at least – a basic knowledge of feminism, Foucauldian theory, psychoanalysis and childhood studies in order to cope with the complexity and ambiguity that unfolds throughout its pages. In some places, such knowledge is assumed, potentially overburdening and overestimating the breadth of readers’ comprehension. That being said, this method stimulates interrogation and ambiguity which challenges common expectations to obtain clear answers from readings, and might be understood as a generative ‘pedagogy of failure’ itself.
Why is this book important to us now? How could it contribute to contemporary scholarship in various disciplinary fields? To sum up our previous discussion, we see three main contexts where this book could enrich pre-existing debates. First, we point to the current political context in which academia is nested and plays a significant role. The renewed forces of far-right populist groups (which re-instantiate and deepen racial, gender, sexual orientation, class, migrant status and/or generational hierarchies) demand that we position ourselves as members of the academy. Burman’s ‘child as method’ provides a deep understanding about the social-psychic structures which ground racialization, nationalism and related modes of thinking, providing us with tools to analyse and to ground further exploration on how relations based on domination are resisted, reproduced and reinvented in our societies. A second context in which this book will certainly elicit fruitful dialogue is that of childhood studies. As this field finds itself, after more than 30 years of development, in a moment of rethinking its future, the approach introduced by Fanon, Education, Action could reignite curiosity among childhood studies scholars and shed light on unexplored pathways. Third, adopting Burman’s embrace of multiplicity and simultaneity as a constitutive condition of social phenomena presents a way for researchers and scholars of women’s studies to create promising dialogues with other disciplines, contributing to sharing the knowledge created within women’s and gender studies, and also prompting learning from studies in other fields.