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ISBN:
1-58367-025-4
$14.00 paper
ISBN:
1-58367-024-6
$30.00 cloth
104 pp.
October 2000
author photo:
©Phillipe Bourgade
also of interest:
RACE: A Study
in Social Dynamics
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New Edition
DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM
by
Aimé Césaire
Translated by Joan Pinkham
Introduction A Poetics of Anticolonialism
by Robin D.G. Kelley
"The force of
[Frantz] Fanon and a stylistic elegance unique to himself...."
— CHOICE
"Césaire's
essay stands as an important document in the development of third world
consciousness—a process in which [he] played a prominent
role." —
LIBRARY
JOURNAL
"Half a century
later Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism has lost
nothing of its dynamism and incantory power. Robin Kelley's introduction is a
valuable tool for helping the reader explore its thousand and one
facets." —
MARYSE CONDÉ
Columbia University
This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced
the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation
struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years
later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on
Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights and Black
Power and anti-war movements.
Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of
capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the
contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of
"progress" and "civilization" upon encountering the
"savage," "uncultured," or "primitive."
Here, Césaire reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and
their relevance, reminding us that "the relationship between consciousness
and reality are extremely complex... It is equally necessary to decolonize our
minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society."
An interview with Césaire by the poet René Depestre is also
included.
About the Author
AIMÉ CÉSAIRE was
born in Martinique in 1913 and educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
in Paris. The celebrated poet, novelist, and philosopher, conceptualized
négritude in his first book, Return to My Native Land (1939). This prose
poem, which André Breton called "nothing less than the greatest
lyrical monument of all time," recounts Césaire's conscious
adoption of an African identity. Césaire is the author of several
volumes of poetry and numerous plays, including A Season in the Congo
(1967) and an African version of Shakespeare's The Tempest (1969). He
was elected mayor of Fort-de-France, Martinique, and for many years, served as
representative of the island in the French National Assembly. Césaire is
the subject of a three-part documentary Aimé Césaire: un voix
pour l'histoire (1994) by the internationally acclaimed director Euzhan
Palcy, distributed by California
Newsreel.
ROBIN D.G. KELLEY is professor
of history and Africana studies at New York University. He is the author of
Race Rebels (Free Press, 1996), Yo Mama's Dysfunktional! (Beacon,
1998), and Hammer and Hoe (Univ of North Carolina, 1990).
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