Martinique-born Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) grew up on a French colonial island, fought for France, studied psychiatry, and while working at a hospital in Algeria found himself inside the war of independence against French colonial rule. This experience, both physician and revolutionary, is the core of his thought: colonialism is a psychological wounding.

Fanon showed that colonialism is not merely economic exploitation or military occupation. The colonial system makes the colonised person internalise their own worthlessness, backwardness, lack of "civilisation." The colonised learns to look at himself through the master's eyes; he comes to despise his own language, skin, and culture. This is a violence that works not on the body but on the self. His first book, "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952), analyses this internalised inferiority.

In 1961, writing while he knew he was dying of leukaemia, "The Wretched of the Earth" argues that liberation from empire (decolonisation) is not merely changing flags; one must also dismantle the master lodged in the colonised mind. The book's most contested section examines the role of revolutionary violence, against colonial violence, in rebuilding the self of the oppressed — this had a powerful effect and drew sharp criticism alike. The fiery preface Jean-Paul Sartre wrote turned the book into a world event.

Fanon is the founding figure of post-colonial thought, running from Edward Said's "Orientalism" to contemporary theories of race and identity, and to independence movements from Latin America to Africa. By placing the viewpoint of the exploited at the centre of philosophy, he posed to the Eurocentric tradition of thought a question from outside rather than within: liberation is not only political but also a psychological rebirth.