#aimé césaire

[duxuebing]

Photography by Xuebing Du

Instagram: xuebing.du

[lillyli-74]

I have made a pact with the night, I have felt it softly healing me.

~Aimé Césaire

[gael-garcia]

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps and trickles from every crack”

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, translated by Joan Pinkham

[chamerionwrites]

Aimé Césaire saying that colonization works to decivilize the colonizer truly lives in my head rent-free

[yannsummerss]

[garadinervi]

Aimé Césaire, (1950, 1955), Discourse on Colonialism, Translated by Joan Pinkham, Introduction by Robin D. G. Kelley, Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, 2000, pp. 43-46

[diaryofaphilosopher]

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that 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 and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes places, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and "interrogated," all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism.

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[elle-mood]

"My ear to the ground,

I heard Tomorrow pass."

~ Aimé Césaire

[petit-atelier-de-poesie]

NOTE DE LECTURE : Cahier d'une retour au pays natal. Aimé Césaire. 1937/1949. Edition 2000

Ce petit bouquin est d'une telle puissance. Il m'a été offert par ma nièce, me tirant des larmes en déchirant le papier cadeau, d'abord des larmes de gratitude et puis pendant la lecture des larmes de nostalgie et de compassion.  Ce poème en prose est tellement d'actualité. Aimé Césaire, poète de la "négritude", est tellement moderne, c'est un manifeste prenant la voix de ses origines noires, ainsi que celle de tous les opprimés, et il y en a tant encore.  Publié en 1939, il est tout de suite reconnu par André Breton qui en assure la préface pour l'édition de 1947. L'écriture est délicate et forte, en vers libres, car il faut bien prendre la liberté là où elle se trouve encore. Et c'est un chant, une incantation et une prière, que nous offre le poète. On y entend la douleur et la colère, l'encouragement et l'espoir. Avec lui, j'entends les chants des peuples africains sur les plantations et les plages, et les chants des esclaves sur les navires négriers, et je me laisse emporter par l'éternel retour au pays natal et la présence toujours vive de notre dignité commune.

[salvatriceaverse]

Aimé Césaire, in “i, laminaria…” (tr. A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)

[mimosita]

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment.”

― Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

[duxuebing]

Photography by Xuebing Du

Instagram: xuebing.du

[gravalicious]

Aimé Césaire

[majestativa]

Poetry of vertigo and love, of blood and courage.

Aristide Maugée, Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora, on Aimé Césaire

[chamerionwrites]

Anyway I think maybe I've wandered off into the weeds here thanks to my own immense frustration/morbid fascination with a certain sort of narrative. And I think maybe it's all too easy to wander into the weeds when what you're talking about is this very solipsistic style of superficially-critical storytelling, which is uneasy about imperialism only insofar as it threatens to harm imperialists or imperialistic societies. Which - if not already intended that way to begin with! - is certainly incredibly easy to co-opt into the service and defense of empire (Doing An Imperialism Made Our Soldiers Sad -> therefore you must uncritically valorize them, because condemnation of imperialism adds to their suffering you monster). It's hard to talk about without feeling like you're falling into a similar trap of being endlessly curious about the inner lives of imperialists - even if that curiosity takes the form of "wanting to put their fucked up psychology under a microscope" - at the expense of focusing on their victims.

But at the same time I do think that a complete critique of imperialism mentions (as Césaire does) the way it tends to rot the people and societies that practice it from within. And I do find it fascinating that amidst all the contorted cognitive dissonance of Conrad et al, they still express something along those lines. And this is only one of the many reasons that Discourse On Colonialism lives in my head rent-free

[schizografia]