ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the investigation of Frantz Fanon's influence in Sweden, using this country as an indicator as to how Fanon was received and how he marked thinking and creativity in Scandinavia. It investigates how Fanon's presence in Scandinavia makes different political, social, artistic and literary histories intersect with one another through various channels. Siri Derkert's mural is a beautiful illustration of how Fanon's ideas have been imprinted in artistic, philosophical and political activity in Sweden from the 1960s onwards. Generally, Fanon is introduced as the greatest theoretician of decolonisation, and his problematisation of race is almost exclusively considered in relation to political struggles, while the psychoanalytic and philosophical dimensions of his ideas often go unnoticed. Historian Erik Tängerstad contacted Ulla Swedberg, the first translator of Fanon into Swedish, in 2009 on the occasion of a talk he gave at the Nobel Museum about the second edition of the 1969 translation.
