What is it about?
Although Nietzsche is notoriously elitist and anti-socialist, Frantz Fanon draws on his work to explain how unequal societies use racism to support the illusion that hierarchy is natural (that "classes" are "castes"), how these societies create deep-seated, destructive forms of identity in both privileged and oppressed, and why this means class politics and anti-racist politics cannot succeed without one another.
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Why is it important?
This paper clarifies the under-appreciated positive link between Fanon's thought and Nietzsche's descriptive political theory (usually dismissed because of its reactionary, normative side). It also offers a more nuanced critique of class-reductionist and race-reductionist politics that is still compatible with the traditional Marxist view that material and economic causes have priority over cultural ones.
Perspectives
This paper clarifies the under-appreciated positive link between Fanon's thought and Nietzsche's descriptive political theory (usually dismissed because of its reactionary, normative side). It also offers a more nuanced critique of class-reductionist and race-reductionist politics that is still compatible with the traditional Marxist view that material and economic causes have priority over cultural ones.
Donovan Miyasaki
Wright State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nietzsche and Fanon on the Political Breeding of Race and Class as Caste, Estudos de Nietzsche, March 2025, Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo,
DOI: 10.47456/en.v15i2.47878.
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