Summarise “Discourse on Colonialism” by Aimé Césaire
Prepared by
Vaidehi Hariyani
Roll no. 18
Paper 11 – The Post-Colonial
Literature
Submitted to – Smt.S.B.Gardi, Department
of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University
Introduction:-
Discours sur
le colonialisme (French; Discourse on Colonialism) is an essay by Aimé Césaire,
a poet and politician from Martinique who helped found the négritude movement
in the Francophone literature. Césaire first published the essay in 1950 in
Paris with Editions Réclame, a small publisher associated with the French
Communist Party (PCF).The 1955 edition is the one with the widest circulation
today, and it serves as a foundational text of postcolonial literature that
discusses what Césaire described as the appalling affair of the European
civilizing mission. Rather than elevating the non-Western world, the colonizers
de-civilize the colonized.
Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism argues that
colonialism was not—and had never been—a benevolent movement whose goal was to
improve the lives of the colonized; instead, colonists' motives were entirely
self-centered—i.e., economic exploitation. By establishing these colonies and
then exploiting them.
Césaire
begins his discourse by a severe acquisition on the Western Civilization.
“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.”
According to
him, the western civilization has done all the above crimes and it is the
victim of such crimes. As we say, the circle of life. What we give to others we
get.
With the
help of Marxist theory Césaire proceeds further that Western civilization has
been shaped by “two centuries of
bourgeois rule” and is incapable of solving two major problems to which it
has given rise:
“the problem of the proletariat 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.”
The
colonized very well know that their “masters” are lying therefore they are
weak. Therefore Europe is indefensible.
Colonialism is “a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the
better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them” as caesar writes.
Colonialism’s supposed to be on a civilizing mission,and that is the biggest
lie of Western civilization. Colonialism
was never out to do any good.It was purely designed to discover, to control, to exploit,
by deceit and force, the lands, goods and persons of other people. The chief
culprit in the hypocrisy of colonialism, Cesaire argues, “is Christian
pedantry, which laid down the dishonest equations Christianity = civilization,
paganism = 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”
Colonialism
uncivilized, dehumanizes, maltreats and destroys the colonizer. Anytime
colonialism commits a crime against the humanity of the colonized, there is
consistent erosion and degrading of the colonizer’s humanity and civilization.
He puts it expressively:
“ . . . each time a head is cut off
or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a
little girl is raped . . . each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France
they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal
regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to
spread . . .” a poison “is distilled into the veins of Europe and slowly but
surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery”
Here he gives
example of Hitler. Why this dictator was there in Europe only?
The
generation has to pay prize of their forefathers who exploited the people like
Niggers, Indians etc. Their sweat and blood oozes in form of Hitler.
Césaire
makes the bold statement that Nazism is so infamous in Europe because it
committed the same atrocities that the Europeans did to other, non-white
nations. Slavery, mass extermination, economic exploitation, racial/social
engineering, and so forth.
He cites the Soviet Union as a possible source
of post-colonial liberation. That state is just imperialism with a new coat of
paint. He also does make a few wrong statements which modern anthropology has
corrected, but he'd likely be fine with that. In fact, he'd be proud to see the
advances in some of these fields.
Colonization,
Césaire places with "thingification". The relations inborn in
colonization are relations of force and control. They are relations in which
"there
is room just for constrained work, terrorizing, weight, the police, tax
collection, robbery, assault, obligatory harvests, question, pomposity,
self-smugness, swinishness, brainless elites, debased masses . . . of control
and accommodation which transform the colonizing man into a classroom screen,
an armed force, a sergeant, a jail protect, a slave driver, and the indigenous
man into an instrument of creation".
The
colonized are not individuals deserving of human rights or human regard,
however things simply to be utilized, driven around, beaten and, when the need
emerges, slaughtered for the sake of a peace established in bad form and
savageness.
For Césaire,
imperialism is an absolutely damaging undertaking.
It is "about social orders depleted of their
quintessence, societies stomped all over, foundations undermined, lands seized,
religions crushed, heavenly aesthetic manifestations obliterated, phenomenal
conceivable outcomes wiped out . . . men yielded . . . torn from their divine
beings, their property, their propensities, their life . . . educated to have a
feeling of inadequacy, to tremble, bow, lose hope and carry on like flunkeys .
. . about common economies obliterated . . . horticultural advancement situated
exclusively toward the advantage of the metropolitan nations; . . . about the
plundering of items . . . of crude materials"
He rejects Europe’s guarantee that it conveyed
material advance and Europeanization to Africa. In all actuality, colonization
had really harmed material advances.
Cesaire
claims that the racism of Europe does not bother him. He only examines it. And
he is appalled at the hypocrisy and ignorance with which the cream of French
society pretended that the French people were a superior race, destined to rule
the world and to keep the black and yellow peoples in their own places.
While rejecting
the Europe, Césaire warns the colonized to be aware of United States of America
Césaire ends his discourse on colonialism by
writing that the salvation of Europe,
"is not a matter of a revolution in
methods. It is a matter of the Revolution - the one which, until such a time as
there is a classless society, will substitute for the narrow tyranny of a
dehumanized bourgeoisie the preponderance of the only class that still has a
universal mission, because it suffers in its flesh from all the wrongs of
history, from all the universal wrongs: the proletariat".
Conclusion:-
Thus, in a
simple style Aimé Césaire has described and analyses a question that long has
been on top. It's that "Europe is Indefinable". Colonizers says that
they are coming to improve the life of Barbary, but in fact they come just to
accomplish their profit, and this is what they are doing in the past and for the moment.
Reference:-
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