“That Close and Contagious Death”: Symptomatology, Sociogeny, and Structural Oppression

Frantz Fanon’s writings on medicine and colonial violence seek to mark the functioning of structural oppression through the provision of health care. Fanon’s medical training and clinical practice in French, Algerian, and Tunisian hospitals, along with his work and support for the Algerian liberation movement, offer an invaluable context and set of resources regarding the functioning of colonial violence, structural racism, and trauma within the practice of clinical medicine. In this essay, I mark several prescient claims that Fanon raised in the 1950s regarding medical authority and structural oppression that distinguish his work as an important precursor to the radical health care efforts that would emerge decades later in 1970s France, particularly with Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons (GIP) and its sibling organization Le Group information santé (GIS).