UCLA

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon suggests "Decolonization is truly the creation of new men" (2). In this project, I am interested in the representation of the emerging "new man" in the novels of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Paule Marshall, as well as Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Sadeq Chubak, and Simin Daneshvar. My study aims to use these mid-twentieth century novels as "contrapunctal" to Fanon's hope for the decolonizing world. In each main chapter, I show how these novels challenge and critique Fanon's concept of the "new man" while expanding upon and complicating the idea.