Exploring the Impact of Colonialism: A Critical Analysis of Aimé Césaire's Discourse

Joel Ontiveros: This is a great text to begin a decolonial education.

United States on Apr 30, 2022

Millius Palayiwa: As above. A very thorough analysis of how colonialism works and how to ovetcome it.
Really a MUST for every thinking black petson.

United Kingdom on Feb 19, 2022

Elyas Mottaghian: A short, must read if you are interested in anti-colonial movements. While not all encompassing, this book is a good jumping off point.

Canada on Aug 11, 2021

S: Amazing perspective.

United Kingdom on Jun 02, 2021

mms14: First I want to say, if you can find the pdf version of this essay online, go ahead and use that instead, unless you're someone who needs physical books like me. This edition has the essay which is about 40ish pages, but is beefed up with an introduction by Robin DG Kelley (who is amazing and writes great introductions!) and an interview between Cesaire and Rene Depestre. So you don't necessarily need to buy this book

But this essay is so powerful. If you've read Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks, Cesaire is all over that book. His arguments are so provocative but also quite mind-blowing. Fanon uses these arguments in BSWM and further explicates it when he talks about the "white civilization" and "reason/rationality." But Cesaire is the blueprint of these arguments. Kelley calls it the "poetics of colonialism" (Kelley's intro gives a lot of guidance to reading the essay). Its one of those essays that really sticks with you.

United States on Mar 15, 2020

kelly Nation: It is very important to realize how complex and all the delusions invented by psychotic people to explain some kind of race superiority.
Anecdote: history keep repeating itself. Aimé said that he wanted to called his journal: la revue nègre, but people found the word too aggressive ,......fast forward to 2015, Youssoupha, rapeur africain/francais wanted to call his album "negritude", the label did not want it to be called that way so he had to change the title and called it "Ngrtd"...it s my way of saying that there is still lot of work to do....by the way, i kind of feel that in question of race, the world is going backward.

United States on Jul 05, 2018

L: Discourse on Colonialism, a prose-poetry style manifesto written by Aimé Césaire, was published amidst a rise in postwar anticolonial literature in the 1950s (8). Césaire pulls on an archive that includes his own lived experience of racism, his study of Marxism, his involvement in surrealism, and his collaboration with contemporaries like Frantz Fanon (14). In this book, Césaire attempts to capture the “whole” experience of colonialism while also pointing to the systemic nature of racism, advocating for the epistemological power of poetry and experience, and laying the foundation for the concept of Négritude (18). Césaire argues that Eurocentric white supremacy—and consequentially, colonialism itself—depends entirely on othering blackness in order to produce the naturalized illusion of whiteness as privileged. Césaire also disputes claims that colonialization has a “civilizing” effect; he suggests instead that colonization deliberately depersonalizes, or thingifies, the minds and bodies of the colonized (42). He reasons that rewriting and destroying the cultural resources of colonized people is a tactic for making white superiority seem natural while also...

United States on Apr 28, 2018

Garmon: Incisive, volcanic critique of colonialism and its resulting ills. This is one of those short, "dangerous" tracts which should not only be on every thinking person's bookshelf, but read and re-read until its message becomes ingrained. We still live in a world where too many are unwilling to face up to the realities of the colonial past, enabling leaders speak of re-establishing empires. Reading this should puncture that dangerous delusion.

United Kingdom on Jul 18, 2017

shipra: Unlike the conventional literature on colonialism that focuses on mere narrow explanation of colonialism as a system of domination of one country to another, and then the explanation of impact on education, culture, economy etc. This work, brings a taste of power and domination in the political economy of colonialism. Not only it brings in the idea of race, culture, violence, humiliation, power, domination and reduction but also enhances out understanding of capitalism and its relation to colonialism. Moreover, this book is not just about explaining what is colonialism, rather, it is full of normative vision of a future order that will be devoid of colonialism and its continuation in the economy of multiple selves across world. Author's critical and vivid account sets him equal to the visionaries of past like Karl Marx or Gandhi or others. It is a book not for those who were colonised, rather a book for mankind at large.

India on Apr 16, 2017

nadav haber: This book was written before Fanon's "Black Skins, White Masks". Much of what Fanon did in his great debut is elaborate on Cesaire's work, add psychiatric aspects to it, and further explore the ideas of Cesaire.
Cesaire's denounciation of the West (both Europe and the US) is based on two pillars - one is the Western deeply racist and violent attitude towards the then colonized world, and the second is Cesaire's Marxist leanings.He mentions the Soviet Union in one short sentence as an example of a positive society - how were people misled by Stalinist Russia was a mystery. But in the forward by Robin Kelly we learn that Cesaire quit the communist party and denounced Stalinism as early as 1956.
Cesaire's strongest point is that French attitudes towards Africa (half a century ago !) bear a close resemblence to German Nazi attitudes towards Jews and other "inferior" people.
The forward by Robin Kelly and the interview with Cesaire at the end add a lot of subtance to this powerful but short essay.
This book is highly recommended to people who appreciate Fanon, and all those who wish to learn the roots of anti colonial philosophy.

United States on May 02, 2002