ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses what is undoubtedly the most famous depiction of childhood associated with Fanon's writings: the child who names him as 'Black' in Black Skin, White Masks–that is traumatogenic child. It explores the depiction of child with which Fanon is primarily associated, reviews its various interpretations, including the perhaps surprising lack of analysis of his model of childhood. For all traumatogenic interpretive problems, Fanon's account offers an unconventional set of resources to interpret the figure of child and its role in models of both development and decolonisation. Fanon's child in this scene is not the ideal-typical subject of narrative identification but rather the index or representative of pre-constituted racist/colonising culture that instigates psychic 'amputation', that is, the agent of colonising violence. The chapter shows how intergenerational relations implicate others constellated around racialisation, class, and gender.
