I. Critical notes

Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism was originally published in 1955. It has since become a foundational essay on the nature of colonialism in postcolonialism. Significantly, until the Soviet Union repression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Césaire looked to the Soviet Union (and Stalinist socialism) as a future model for society.

While Discourse on Colonialism presents as a class politics, it represents a culturally essentialist, racialised identity politics. Césaire critiques the destruction of progressive anti-capitalist (black and brown) societies by regressive colonialist (white) society. Employing populist class rhetoric, bourgeois Europe is exposed as a sick and dying civilisation which is pretending to be otherwise. Europeans are considered to be suffering from a generalised disease in which ‘They’ have descended into savagery and barbarism.

Césaire frames European colonialism as the original fascism: all Europeans, he suggests, have an inner Hitler. Indeed, Césaire argues, what Europeans disliked about Nazi fascism was the fact that their fascism was turned on themselves. His concept of ‘the boomerang effect’ is the idea that colonial barbarism came home: that the Europeans invented colonial fascism which was employed beyond Europe, and eventually this fascism boomeranged back into Europe. Again, what the white European man could not tolerate about Nazism and Hitler, Césaire insists, was not the crime against humanity (something that the white European man actually tolerated in the colonies), but rather the crime against the white man.

Discourse on Colonialism very much reflects a colonial model of racism centred on white European colonialism and a colour line of ‘white versus black and brown’: the white man versus the Arabs or the ‘niggers’ or the ‘coolies’. There is no recognition that anti-Jewish racism marked ‘the Jew’ apart from European society and saw ‘the Jews’ as the enemy within: ‘the Other’ of European nation-states which threatened ‘racial’ integrity from the inside. Instead, ‘race’ and racism are assumed exclusive to an external colonial context, which boomeranged back into the interior thought-factory of colonial racism. The pre-history and history of ‘racial’ thought in Europe, and the concurrent development of the idea of ‘race’ and racism alongside the idea of ‘nation’ and nationalism, does not feature in Césaire’s thinking. Nonetheless, he draws on European ‘racial scientific’ thinkers, and thinkers from a period in which ‘racial science’ represented hegemonic thought, to illustrate and prove the wholesale self-destructing and diseased state of the European people.

Capitalism is fascism, colonialism is fascism, Europe is fascism, Césaire formulates. This is his inverted formulisation of colonialism’s formula of Europe as the leading progressive civilisation out to save the rest of the world. This Stalinist dual camp school of thought re-racialises and re-essentialises the world: from the progressive civilisation of the white colonial ‘race’ of Europe versus the savage and barbarian black and brown ‘races’ of the colonies, to the progressive black and brown ‘races’ of the colonies versus the savage, diseased, degenerated, sick, and barbarian white ‘race’ of colonial Europe. The white European people, Césaire spells out, in treating ‘the Other’ like animals have transformed themselves into animals. Indeed, the diseased and altered essence of Europe reflects a barbarism only surpassed by the United States. For Césaire, it is irrelevant to consider whether the servants of colonialism are subjectively good or bad people because objectively ‘They’ perform evil as the watchdogs of colonialism. In sum, Discourse on Colonialism employs an explicit racialised language in its anti-colonial, anti-racism.

Césaire makes plain that he does not advocate a return to the past, yet his description of past societies, prior to colonisation, are nostalgic and romantic: ‘communal’, ‘fraternal’, ‘cooperative’, and ‘anti-capitalist’. He acknowledges that contact, connection and exchange between different societies is a healthy thing, just not through a bourgeois Europe. Whereas Marx and Engels recognised the contradictory tensions and outcomes of globalising capitalist social relations, Césaire is not open to this nuance.

The future of old and new is explicitly spelt out in Discourse on Colonialism: the Soviet Union. With a stage-ist prognosis reminiscent of Stalinist thinking, Césaire sees capitalism and colonialism on an inevitable path of barbarism and self-destruction. Here he talks of a ‘law of progressive dehumanisation’ – which is, in fact, an inverted racism. Césaire does not challenge the reification of the idea of ‘race’ in the racist ideology of colonialism, instead, he re-reifies ‘race’ in his anti-colonialist and anti-racist vision. And while he speaks of the proletariat, actual class analysis and class struggle does not feature in his poetic against colonialism, except as a racialised dual camp struggle of a regressive and degenerating white Europe versus the progressive rest who will soon inevitably rise up.

II. Extracts

“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.

The fact is that the so-called European civilization – “Western” civilization – as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence 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.” (Césaire, 2000: 31)

“What is serious is that “Europe” is morally, spiritually indefensible.” (Césaire, 2000: 32)

“[…] what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law.” (Césaire, 2000: 32)

“That being settled, I admit that it is a good thing to place different civilizations in contact with each other; that it is an excellent thing to blend different worlds; that whatever its own particular genius may be, a civilization that withdraws into itself atrophies; that for civilizations, exchange is oxygen; that the great good fortune of Europe is to have been a crossroads, and that because it was the locus of all ideas, the receptacle of all philosophies, the meeting place of all sentiments, it was the best center for the redistribution of energy. 

But then I ask the following question: has colonization really placed civilizations in contact? Or, if you prefer, of all the ways of establishing contact, was it the best?

I answer no.” (Césaire, 2000: 33)

“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 place, 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.

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

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.

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not the crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the “coolies” of India, and the “niggers” of Africa.” (Césaire, 2000: 35-36)

“Whether one likes it or not, at the end of the blind alley that is Europe, I mean the Europe of Adenauer, Schuman, Bidault, and a few others, there is Hitler. At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophic renunciation, there is Hitler.” (Césaire, 2000: 37)

“And yet, through the mouths of the Sarrauts and the Bardes, the Mullers and the Renans, through the mouths of all those who considered – and consider – it lawful to apply to non-European peoples “a kind of expropriation for public purposes” for the benefit of nations that were stronger and better equipped, it was already Hitler speaking!

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.” (Césaire, 2000: 39)

“For my part, if I have recalled a few details of these hideous butcheries, it is by no means because I take a morbid delight in them, but because I think that these heads of men, these collections of ears, these burned houses, these Gothic invasions, this steaming blood, these cities that evaporate at the edge of the sword, are not to be so easily disposed of. They prove that colonization, I repeat, dehumanizes even the most civilized man; that colonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, which is based on contempt for the native and justified by that contempt, inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it; that the colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point out.” (Césaire, 2000: 41)

“My turn to state an equation: colonization = “thingification.”

I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about “achievements,” diseases cured, improved standards of living.

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.” (Césaire, 2000: 42-43)

“They talk to me about civilization, I talk about proletarianization and mystification.

For my part, I make a systematic defense of the non-European civilizations.

Every day that passes, every denial of justice, every beating by the police, every demand of the workers that is drowned in blood, every scandal that is hushed up, every punitive expedition, every police van, every gendarme and every militiaman, brings home to us the value of our old societies.

They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few. 

They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist.

They were democratic societies, always.

They were cooperative societies, fraternal societies.

I make a systematic defense of the societies destroyed by imperialism.

They were the fact, they did not pretend to be the idea; despite their faults, they were neither to be hated nor condemned. They were content to be. In them, neither the word failure nor the word avatar had any meaning. They kept hope intact.

Whereas those are the only words that can, in all honesty, be applied to the European enterprises outside Europe. My only consolation is that periods of colonization pass, that nations sleep only for a time, and that peoples remain.

This being said, it seems that in certain circles they pretend to have discovered in me an “enemy of Europe” and a prophet of the return to the pre-European past. For my part, I search in vain for the place where I could have expressed such views; where I ever underestimated the importance of Europe in the history of human thought; where I ever preached a return of any kind; where I ever claimed that there could be a return. 

The truth is that I have said something very different: to wit, that the great historical tragedy of Africa has been not so much that it was too late in making contact with the rest of the world, as the manner in which that contact was brought about; that Europe began to “propagate” at a time when it had fallen into the hands of the most unscrupulous financiers and captains of industry; that it was our misfortune to encounter that particular Europe on our path, and that Europe is responsible before the human community for the highest heap of corpses in history.

In another connection, in judging colonization, I have added that Europe has gotten on very well indeed with all the local feudal lords who agreed to serve, woven a villainous complicity with them, rendered their tyranny more effective and more efficient, and that it has actually tended to prolong artificially the survival of local pasts in their most pernicious aspects.

I have said – and this is something very different – that colonialist Europe has grafted modern abuse onto ancient injustice, hateful racism onto old inequality.

That if I am attacked on the grounds of intent, I maintain that colonialist Europe is dishonest in trying to justify its colonizing activity a posteriori by the obvious material progress that has been achieved in certain fields under the colonial regime – since sudden change is always possible, in history as elsewhere; since no one knows at what stage of material development these same countries would have been if Europe had not intervened; since the introduction of technology into Africa and Asia, their administrative reorganization, in a word, their “Europeanization,” was (as is proved by the example of Japan) in no way tied to the European occupation; since the Europeanization of the non-European continents could have been accomplished otherwise than under the heel of Europe; since this movement of Europeanization was in progress; since it was even slowed down; since in any case it was distorted by the European takeover.

The proof is that at present it is the indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia who are demanding schools, and colonialist Europe which refuses them; that it is the African who is asking for ports and roads, and colonialist Europe which is niggardly on this score; that it is the colonized man who wants to move forward, and the colonizer who holds things back.” (Césaire, 2000: 44-46)

“To go further, I make no secret of my opinion that at the present time the barbarism of Western Europe has reached an incredibly high level, being only surpassed – far surpassed, it is true – by the barbarism of the United States.

And I am not talking about Hitler, or the prison guard, or the adventurer, but about the “decent fellow” across the way; not about the member of the SS, or the gangster, but about the respectable bourgeois. In a time gone by, Léon Bloy innocently became indignant over the fact that swindlers, perjurers, forgers, thieves, and procurers were given the responsibility of “bringing to the Indies the example of Christian virtues.”

We’ve made progress: today it is the possessor of the “Christian virtues” who intrigues – with no small success – for the honor of administering overseas territories according to the methods of forgers and torturers.

A sign that cruelty, mendacity, baseness, and corruption have sunk deep into the soul of the European bourgeoisie.” (Césaire, 2000: 47-48)

“Once again, I systematically defend our old Negro civilizations: they were courteous civilizations.

So the real problem, you say, is to return to them. No, I repeat. We are not men for whom it is a question of “either-or.” For us, the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but to go beyond. It is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

For some examples showing that this is possible, we can look to the Soviet Union.” (Césaire, 2000: 51-52)

“Therefore, comrade, you will hold as enemies – Ioftily, lucidly, consistently – not only sadistic governors and greedy bankers, not only prefects who torture and colonists who flog, not only corrupt, check-licking politicians and subservient judges, but likewise and for the same reason, venomous journalists, goitrous academics, wreathed in dollars and stupidity, ethnographers who go in for metaphysics, presumptuous Belgian theologians, chattering intellectuals born stinking out of the thigh of Nietzsche, the paternalists, the embracers, the corrupters, the back-slappers, the lovers of exoticism, the dividers, the agrarian sociologists, the hoodwinkers, the hoaxers, the hot-air artists, the humbugs, and in general, all those who, performing their functions in the sordid division of labor for the defense of Western bourgeois society, try in diverse ways and by infamous diversions to split up the forces of Progress – even if it means denying the very possibility of Progress – all of them tools of capitalism, all of them, openly or secretly, supporters of plundering colonialism, all of them responsible, all hateful, all slave-traders, all henceforth answerable for the violence of revolutionary action.

And sweep out all the obscurers, all the inventors of subterfuges, the charlatans and tricksters, the dealers in gobbledygook. And do not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions. Whether personally – that is, in the private conscience of Peter or Paul – they are or are not colonialists, because the essential thing is that their highly problematical subjective good faith is entirely irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism.” (Césaire, 2000: 54-55)

“Because, after all, we must resign ourselves to the inevitable and say to ourselves, once and for all, that the bourgeoisie is condemned to become every day more snarling, more openly ferocious, more shameless, more summarily barbarous; that it is an implacable law that every decadent class finds itself turned into a receptacle into which there flow all the dirty waters of history; that it is a universal law that before it disappears, every class must first disgrace itself completely, on all fronts, and that it is with their heads buried in the dunghill that dying societies utter their swan songs.” (Césaire, 2000: 64)

“The dossier is indeed overwhelming.

A beast that by the elementary exercise of its vitality spills blood and sows death – you remember that historically it was in the form of this fierce archetype that capitalist society first revealed itself to the best minds and consciences.

Since then the animal has become anemic, it is losing its hair, its hide is no longer glossy, but the ferocity has remained, barely mixed with sadism.” (Césaire, 2000: 65)

“Whether one likes it or not, the bourgeoisie, as a class, is condemned to take responsibility for all the barbarism of history, the tortures of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition, warmongering and the appeal to the raison d’Etat, racism and slavery, in short everything against which it protested in unforgettable terms at the time when, as the attacking class, it was the incarnation of human progress.” (Césaire, 2000: 67)

“There is a law of progressive dehumanization in accordance with which henceforth on the agenda of the bourgeoisie there is – there can be – nothing but violence, corruption, and barbarism.

I almost forgot hatred, lying, conceit.” (Césaire, 2000: 68)

“Gobineau said: “The only history is white.”” (Césaire, 2000: 71)

“[…] at the very time when it most often mouths the word, the West has never been further from being able to live a true humanism – a humanism made to the measure of the world.” (Césaire, 2000: 73)

“One of the values invented by the bourgeoisie in former times and launched throughout the world was man – and we have seen what has become of that. The other was the nation.

It is a fact: the nation is a bourgeois phenomenon.

Exactly; but if I turn my attention from man to nations, I note that here too there is great danger; that colonial enterprise is to the modern world what Roman imperialism was to the ancient world: the prelude to Disaster and the forerunner of Catastrophe. Come, now! The Indians massacred, the Moslem world drained of itself, the Chinese world defiled and perverted for a good century; the Negro world disqualified; mighty voices stilled forever; homes scattered to the wind; all this wreckage, all this waste, humanity reduced to a monologue, and you think all that does not have its price? The truth is that this policy cannot but bring about the ruin of Europe itself, and that Europe, if it is not careful, will perish from the void it has created around itself.

They thought they were only slaughtering Indians, or Hindus, or South Sea Islanders, or Africans. They have in fact overthrown, one after another, the ramparts behind which European civilization could have developed freely.” (Césaire, 2000: 74-75)

“And now I ask what else has bourgeois Europe done? It has undermined civilizations, destroyed countries, ruined nationalities, extirpated “the root of diversity.” No more dikes, no more bulwarks. The hour of the barbarian is at hand. The modern barbarian. The American hour. Violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, conformism, stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.” (Césaire, 2000: 76)

“Which comes down to saying 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 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.” (Césaire, 2000: 78)

Reference:

Césaire, Aimé (2000) Discourse on Colonialism. Monthly Review Press: New York.

Further reading:

Bassi, Camila (2023) Outcast: How Jews Were Banished from the Anti-Racist Imagination. No Pasaran Media: London.