"WHERE ARE CLÓVIS MOURA AND FRANTZ FANON?”

The silence of Critical Criminology on Radical Black Critique

Abstract

In 2025, the centenary of the births of Clóvis Moura and Frantz Fanon will be commemorated. This study aims to examine the contribution of a radical Black critique to the contestation of critical criminology. This qualitative research, with a comparative theoretical and historical-critical approach, is divided into three parts. The first discusses the construction of criminology, its phases and its colonial discourses; it also points to the reception of critical criminology in Brazil and the introduction of critical racial debate in the late 1990s. The second and third parts highlight the contributions of Moura and Fanon to critical criminology: the second debating the post-abolition construction of the Black individual as a “bad citizen”; the third examining the colonial thesis of the “criminal impulsiveness of the North African”. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of this diasporic radical Black critique in shaping a critical criminology that aims to be more connected and audible in its analyses of the historical formation of the punitive system and its current functions of control/exclusion.

Keywords: Colonialism; Epistemology; Critical Criminology; Radical Black Critique.