Frantz Fanon is often seen as both a proponent and radical critic of the politics of recognition. This article seeks to reconcile Fanon’s project of freedom as both being foundationally concerned with establishing the conditions for recognitive reciprocity and providing an alternative to the recognition paradigm. While it is argued that misrecognition poses a threat to freedom insofar as it consists in the objectification of an otherwise free and self-conscious subject, Fanon nonetheless identifies three freedom-disabling forms of recognition: i) recognition-seeking as a form of bad faith, ii) essentialist recognition of group identity, and iii) recognition as falsely equated with freedom itself. Ultimately, Fanon avoids these obstacles by articulating freedom as self-constitution, for which recognition is a necessary but insufficient condition.