#35 - Academic Rush (Pt 2) - “It is not the head of a civilization that begins to rot first. It is the heart."

With all the debates going back and forth about African development, and "Africa" being a baby to be taken care of by the West, and "Africa" needing help from the West; and the current Nicholas Kristof's article on "How should we cover Africa," I think it's ripe time to do reread Aimé Césaire's "Discourse on Colonialism" also known as the "Third World Manifesto." Because, underneath most of these current discussions, lies a similar paternalistic tone, similar claims to helping "develop" the continent, and a similar ignorance (less justifiable today) as was 50 years ago, by Europeans witnessing and/or taking part in the colonization of Africa. That's why I think rereading Aimé Césaire could help contextualize most of our conscious & subconscious thoughts and prejudice about and towards Africa, by both non-Africans and Africans themselves. And once we face Africa/Africans with human eyes (not superior/ donors of civilization eyes), we can approach the issues and challenges of the continent in a less pitiful way, but a more compassionate way. 

What I love about Césaire's discourse is that 5 decades later, the discourse is still as compelling and current as it was when he wrote it. His call to a universal humanity, what the South Africans call "Ubuntu" - "I'm only human because of your humanity," - is a call all nations need to hear today, as we undermine and rationalize the sufferings of the unpriviledge and marginalized people around the world. We shut  consciousness to the injustices that are being done around us, and in the world : It may be our Palestinian brothers and sisters, the young girls in brothels in Bangladesh or Pakistan, the women in Ethiopia or Somali with obstetric fistulas, the young girls in North & SouthWest Cameroon with their genitals mutillated, the women in Congo, being gang raped by soldiers... We choose,individually, but mostly collectively, to "not see, not hear, not tell", like 3 blind, deaf, dumb monkeys! Dr Cornel West might just be right when he states, "We live in an Ice Age era : An era when it has become fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering." But this can be reversed. I hope the words of Aimé Césaire, written in 1950 would make you question the way we live our lives with sucha superiority-complex, with indifference to other people's suffering; and I hope some of his words will speak to your fundamental sense of humanity - I cannot undermine your humanity, without undermining myself.


I jotted down these quotes + excerpts 3 years ago, when I wrote an essay on "Cesaire's universal claim to humanity" in my "Race & Empire" Class. At first I wanted to copy-paste my essay here, but after rereading it 3 years later, I'm too tempted to modify too much of the text, plus I don't wanna share my analysis of it, I would rather leave Césaire's words to your interpretation. Go ahead and read the quotes below, with the hope that it will give you a taste of what the book holds - and  you will buy a copy (if u don't already have one). I would strongly recommend, all the French readers, to buy the French copy, 'cause the translation has decreased the power and sharpness of Cesaire's words. 

Read on... 

“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.”

“Europe is unable to justify itself whether before the bar of “reason” or before the bar of “conscience”…it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.” 31

The colonialist may kill in Indochina, torture in Madagascar, imprison in Black Africa, crackdown in the West Indies. Henceforth the colonized know that they have an advantage over them. They know that their temporary “masters” are lying. Therefore that their masters are weak. 32

The essential thing here is to see clearly , to think clearly… and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once and for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocery and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies. 32-33

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. 33

Between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance, that out of all 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 ministries, there could not come a single human value.

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.

Each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam [Irak /Palestine /India] and in France [USA / UK/ theWest /the Rest] they accept the fact,

Each time a little girl is raped and in France [the USA/ th UK/ theWest /the Rest] they accept the fact, 

Each time a Madagascan [African, Palestinian, Sudanese] is tortured and in France [the USA/ the UK/ theWest] 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 tortured, at the end of all racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe [America/Asia/Africa] and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery. 35-36

The great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism: that for too long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of those rights has been – and still is – narrow and fragmentary, incomplete and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist. 37

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; and 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 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.

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 the  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 act 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. 36

Through the mouths of those who considered –and consider – it lawful to apply to non-European people a kind of expropriation for public purposes for the benefit of nations that were stronger and better equipped, it was already Hitler speaking! 39

What I’m 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. 39

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 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. 41

Boomerang effect of colonization

There was a time when these same facts were a source of pride, and when, sure of the morrow, people did not mince words. 

Colonization = “thingification” 42

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

They throw facts at my head, statistics, maleages of roads, canals, and railroad tracks.

I am talking about thousands of en sacrified to the Congo Ocean. I am talking about those who, as I write this, are digging the harbor of Abidjan by hand. I am talking about millions of men torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life – from life, from the dance, from wisdom.

I am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel , despair, and behave like flunkeys.

They dazzle me with the tonnage of cotton or cocoa that has been exported, the acreage that has been planted with olive trees or grape vines.

I am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted – harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigeneous population – about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries; about the looting products, the looting of raw materials.

They pride themselves on abuses eliminated.

They talk to me about local tyrants brought to reason; but I note that in general the old tyrants get on very well with the new ones, and that there has been established between them, to the detriment of the people, a circuit of mutual services and complicity. 43

Cesaire is not advocating a return to pre-European past. What he has said instead is that: 

the great 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 European 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. 45

*I maintain that colonialist Europe is dishonest in trying to justify its colonizing activity aposteori 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 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 European occupation; since the Europeanization of the non- European continents could have been accomplished otherwise than under the heel of Europe. 46

“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." 74