Discourse on Colonialism

Introduction

The Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire published the essay in 1950 and a revised version with Présence Africaine in 1955. It is a polemic in short, pointed sections. Césaire argues that colonisation does not civilise the colonised but brutalises the coloniser; what Europe cannot forgive Hitler, he writes, is that he applied to Europeans colonial methods previously reserved for Arabs, Indians and Africans. His formula is “colonisation = thingification”. He attacks European humanists, ethnologists and writers, among them Roger Caillois, Octave Mannoni and Placide Tempels, whose praise of Bantu philosophy he sees as a diversion from colonial exploitation. The text became a founding document of anti-colonial thought.

Connections

Criticizes

• Bantu Philosophy1945 · Placide Tempels