Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire

Author:Aimé Césaire
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-12-29T23:00:00+00:00

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accurate perception of the emotional disturbances that the population of the high plateaux was going through.

Obviously, it is only a step from this to absolving the bloodthirsty colonialists. M. Mannoni's "psychology" is as "disinterested," as "free," as M. Gourou's geography or the Rev. Tempels' missionary theology!

And the striking thing they all have in common is the persistent bourgeois attempt to reduce the most human problems to comfortable, hollow notions: the idea of the dependency complex in Mannoni, the ontological idea in the Rev. Tempels, the idea of "tropicality" in Gourou. What has become of the Banque d'Indochine in all that? And the Banque de Madagascar? And the bullwhip? And the taxes? And the handful of rice to the Madagascan or the nhaque? 10 And the martyrs? And the innocent people murdered? And the blood-stained money piling up in your coffers, gentlemen? They have evaporated!

Disappeared, intermingled, become unrecognizable in the realm of pale ratiocinations.

But there is one unfortunate thing for these gentlemen. It is that their bourgeois masters are less and less responsive to a tricky argument and are condemned increasingly to turn away from them and applaud others who are less subtle and more brutal. That is precisely what gives M. Yves Florenne a chance. And indeed, here, neatly arranged on the tray of the newspaper Le Monde, are his little offers of service. No possible surprises. Completely guaranteed, with proven efficacy, fully tested with conclusive results, here we have a form of racism, a French racism still not very sturdy, it is true, but promising. Listen to the man himself:

"Our reader" (a teacher who has had the audacity to contradict the irascible M. Florenne), "… contemplating two young half-breed girls, her pupils, has a sense of pride at the feeling that there is a growing measure of integration with our French family… Would her response be the same if she saw, in reverse, France being integrated into the black family (or the yellow or red, it makes no difference), that is to say, becoming diluted, disappearing?"

It is clear that for M. Yves Florenne it is blood that makes France, and the foundations of the nation are biological: "Its people, its genius, are made of a thousand-year-old equilibrium that is at the same time vigorous and delicate, and . . . certain alarming disturbances of this equilibrium coincide with the massive and often dangerous infusion of foreign blood which it has had to undergo over the last thirty years."

In short, cross-breeding - that is the enemy. No more social crises! No more economic crises! All that is left are racial crises! Of course, humanism loses none of its prestige (we are in the Western world), but let us understand each other:

"It is not by losing itself in the human universe, with its blood and its spirit, that France will be universal, it is by remaining itself." That is what the French bourgeoisie has come to, five years after the defeat of Hitler! And it is precisely in that

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