Summary Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon & Albert Memmi Notes
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Course
Political Theory From Hobbes (PO201)
Institution
The University Of Warwick (UoW)
Unlock the intellectual treasures of political theory with our meticulously crafted notes from Warwick's PAIS Department's module, "Political Theory from Hobbes (PO201)." Dive deep into the ideas of influential Western European thinkers since the 17th century, benefiting from extensive coverage, in...
Week Eighteen - Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi
Aime Cesaire: Colonialism
This relates to Week Fourteen on Colonialism (Mill’s defence of British imperialism, for
example). Also think about how this confronts Marx and his lack of race-based (and gender-
based) analysis.
Aime Cesaire [1913-2008] cofounded the anti-colonialist movement with other scholars in
Paris. He was a poet, playwright, author, key critic of colonialism, and a politician (Mayor of
Ford-de-France, Martinique; Deputy for Martinique; a member of the French Communist
Party and creator of the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais.
Colonialism:
Cesaire’s essay addressed the question: ‘What, fundamentally, is colonisation?’. Colonialism
is often expressed it terms of civilisation and philanthropy. Whilst Cesaire championed
civilisation, he commented:
‘between colonisation and civilisation there is an infinite distance;… 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’. [1972 [1955]: 34].
Those who believe in colonisation often present it as a form of civilisation and humanism.
Cesaire however, penned it ‘pseudo-humanism’; it pretends to be humanistic, but in reality
it couldn’t be further from it:
‘it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of these rights has been – and
still is – narrow and fragmentary, incomplete and biased and, all things considered,
sordidly racist’. [ibid: 37].
Those who profess humanistic values condemn cruelty, totalitarianism etc., except when
practiced by the European powers on their colonies. This shows that for the ‘Christian
bourgeois’, according to Cesaire, what is evil in Nazism is ‘not the humiliation of man as
such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man’. [ibid: 36]. If
they believed that the humiliation and taking away of dignity is evil, they would have
condemned colonialism. But they didn’t. Therefore, at the heart of European politics,
religion and values, are racist attitudes.
Defenders of colonialization often talk about its benefits: bringing civilisation, new and more
advanced technology, medicine, education to colonies which did not have them. The other
side of this is the following:
‘I see clearly what colonisation has destroyed; the wonderful Indian civilisations –
and neither Deterding nor Royal Dutch nor Standard Oil will ever console me for the
Aztecs and the Incas. I see clearly the civilisations, condemned to perish at a future
, Week Eighteen - Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi
date, into which it has introduced a principle of ruin; the South Sea Island, Nigeria,
Nyasaland’ [ibid: 42].
‘I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot,
institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic
creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out’. [ibid: 43].
‘a political and social regime that suppresses the self-determination of a people
thereby kills the creative power of that people . Or, in what amounts to the same
point, wherever there has been colonisation, entire peoples have been emptied of
their culture, emptied of all culture’ . [2010 [1956]: 131].
‘the elements that structure the cultural life of a colonised people disappear or are
debased as a result of the colonial regime’. [ibid: 131].
‘all colonisation comes to mean the death of the civilisation of the colonised
society’. [ibid: 131].
‘The colonial system is the negation of the act, the negation of creatiom. Under a
colonial society there is not merely a hierarchy of master and servant. There is also,
implicit, a hierarchy of creator and consumer. The creator of cultural values, under
good colonisation, is the coloniser. The the consumer is the colonised’. [1959: 127].
According to Cesaire, under colonisation the colonised are treated as ‘things’, as
‘instruments of production’. This is the antithesis of a society in which people treat others as
their equals. This view is summarised in the following:
‘Between coloniser and colonised there is room only for forced labour,
intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops,
contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites,
degraded masses. No human contact, but relations of domination and submission
which turn the colonising man into a classroom monitor; an army sergeant, a prison
guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production . My
turn to state an equation: colonisation = ‘thingification’’. [1972 [1955]: 42].
This instils a feeling of inferiority and a lack of self-worth among the colonised populations.
They have been ‘taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and
behave like flunkeys’. [1972 [1955]: 43’.
Colonialism also sees many injustices happen. These are summarised by Cesaire in the
following:
‘I am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted – harmonious and viable
economies adapted to the indigenous population – about food crops destroyed,
malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward
the benefit of the metropolitan countries; about the looting of products, the looting of raw
materials’. [ibid: 43].
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