Defining Colonization

1. Aimé Césaire (June 26, 1913 – April 17, 2008) was a poet, author, and politician from Martinique. He was one of the founders of the Négritude political and literary movement, which criticized colonialism and held up black pride and African heritage. As you read the following passage from a speech Aimé Césaire, published in 1955, think about these questions.According to Césaire, what is the “principal lie which is the source of all others”?

2. According to Césaire, who are the “decisive actors” in colonialism? Explain why this is important. 

3. What is Césaire’s overall message about civilization and colonization? What does colonization have to do with civilization? Where do you see this in the text?

 Discourse on Colonialism

Aimé Césaire 

A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.

A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.

A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization. The fact is that the so-called European civilization – "Western" civilization - as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois[1] rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat[2] and the colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of "reason" or before the bar of "conscience"; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.

Europe is indefensible[3].

Apparently that is what the American strategists are whispering to each other.

That in itself is not serious.

What is serious is that "Europe" is morally, spiritually indefensible.

And today the indictment[4] is brought against it not by the European masses alone, but on a world scale, by tens and tens of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.

The colonialists may kill in Indochina, torture in Madagascar, imprison in Black Africa, crackdown in the West Indies. Henceforth, the colonized know that they have an advantage over them. They know that their temporary, "masters" are lying.

Therefore, that their masters are weak.

And since I have been asked to speak about colonization and civilization, let us go straight to the principal lie which is the source of all the others.

Colonization and civilization?

In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe[5] in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.

In other words, the essential thing here is to see clearly, to think clearly - that is, dangerously - and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization[6], nor a philanthropic[7] enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law.

To admit once for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful[8] projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic[9] economies.

Pursuing my analysis, I find that hypocrisy is of recent date; that neither Cortez discovering Mexico from the top of the great teocalli, nor Pizzaro before Cuzco (much less

Marco Polo before Cambaluc), claims that he is the harbinger[10] of a superior order; that they kill; that they plunder; that they have helmets, lances, cupidities[11]; that the slavering[12] apologists[13] came later; that the chief culprit in this domain is Christian pedantry[14] which laid down the dishonest equations Christianity=civilization, paganism[15]=savagery, from which there could not but ensue abominable colonialist and racist consequences, whose victims were to be the Indians, the yellow peoples, and the Negroes.

That being settled, I admit that it is a good thing to place different civilizations in contact with each other, that it is an excellent thing to blend different worlds; that whatever its own particular genius may be, a civilization that withdraws into itself atrophies[16]; that for civilizations, exchange is oxygen; that the great good fortune of Europe is to have been a crossroads, and that because it was the locus of all ideas, the receptacle of all philosophies, the meeting place of all sentiments, it was the best center for the redistribution of energy.

But then I ask the following question: has colonization really placed civilizations in contact? Or, if you prefer, of all the ways of establishing contact, was it the best?

I answer no.

And I say that between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.

[1] bourgeois (n) – middle class or business class

[2] proletariat (n) – working class

[3] indefensible (adj) – not justifiable, inexcusable

[4] indictment (n) – charge, accusation, serious criticism

[5] dupe (n) – a person who is easily fooled or deceived

[6] evangelization (n) – preaching the Gospel to, converting to Christianity

[7] philanthropic (adj) – giving to charity, benevolent

[8] baleful (adj) – menacing, threatening, pernicious

[9] antagonistic (adj) – hostile, unfriendly

[10] herald (n) - a person who goes ahead and makes the approach of another known, a herald

[11] cupidities (n) – eager or excessive desire, especially to posses something; greed

[12] slavering (adj) – letting saliva run from their mouths, fawning, doting

[13] apologist (n) – someone who makes an excuse for something

[14] pedantry (n) – slavish attention to rules, details, or certain teachings

[15] paganism (n) – a religion that is not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, a polytheistic religion

[16] atrophies (v) – weakens, declines