Beautifully synthsised Galleh. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the
Commonwealth Development Corporation and Carnegie minerals for they have Yahya to
deal with. Sometimes you just can't help but love Yahya. His ignorance and his
uncouth tendencies do have matching odious value. What he needs is the
assistance and support of the entire Gambian citizenry. Not forced or coerced, but
earned.
Anyway thanx Galleh.
Haruna.
In a message dated 4/20/2008 6:16:14 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Aime Cesaire's passing is indeed a sad event for Africans, Africanists, and
peoples of African descent everywhere. But Cesaire did his part in advancing
he production of knowlegde not only about Africa, but also about the world of
theory and academia in general. Below is a review of his classic treatise on
colonialism. May his soul rest in perfect peace.
Baba
Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism
A Review
By Baba Galleh Jallow
Aime Cesaire begins his Discourse on Colonialism with a severe indictment of
Western civilization. “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the
problems it creates,” he writes, “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.” Western civilization, he suggests, is guilty of all
three ‘crimes’ and is therefore a victim of the attendant consequences of
such crimes.
Using an essentially Marxist theoretical framework of analysis, Cesaire
proceeds to suggest that Western civilization has been shaped by “two centuries
of bourgeois rule” and is incapable of solving two major problems to which it
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”
(p. 31). The power of the colonized peoples in the face of colonial
oppression and repression in the colonies, Cesaire suggests, lies in the fact that
they know that Europe is lying and therefore weak. Colonialism, for Cesaire,
is nothing more or less than “a collective hypocrisy that cleverly
misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them”
(p. 32).
Colonialism’s purported civilizing mission, Cesaire argues, is the biggest
lie of Western civilization. By no stretch of the imagination is colonialism
out to do any good. It is “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” (ibid). It is purely and simply designed to explore,
to dominate, to exploit, by trickery and force, the lands, goods and persons
of other peoples, pushed on by the shadow of a civilization that, “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” (ibid.) The
hypocrisy inherent in colonialism, Cesaire points out, is actually of recent
origin because the earliest European explorers never claimed that the people
they encountered in their voyages of discovery were without civilization.
Indeed, such early explorers as Cortez, Pizzaro, Cuzco and Marco Polo, among
many others, never claimed that they were harbingers of a superior order, nor
did they advocate the killing and plundering of the peoples they “discovered”
far away from the shores of Europe. The chief culprit in the hypocrisy of
colonialism, Cesaire argues, “is Christian pedantry, which laid down the
dishonest equations Christianity = civilization, paganism = savagery, from which
there could not but ensue abominable colonialist and racist consequences whose
victims were to be the Indians, the Yellow peoples, and the Negroes” (p. 33).
For civilizations, Cesaire submits, “exchange is oxygen.” But while Europe
was the great “locus of ideas, the receptacle of philosophies, the meeting
place of all sentiments” and therefore “the best center for the redistribution
of energy”, the Western claim that colonialism placed civilizations in
contact was of dubious veracity. Even if it did bring civilizations into contact,
Cesaire argues, it certainly was not the best form of contact. Because the
contact of civilizations colonialism brought about was based on exploitation
and a plethora of unjust relations of power, Cesaire suggests, it is devoid of
“a single human value” (ibid. 34).
Colonialism, Cesaire argues, decivilizes, dehumanizes, brutalizes and
degrades the colonizer. Anytime colonialism commits a crime against the humanity of
the colonized, there is a corresponding corrosion and degrading of the
colonizer’s humanity and civilization. He puts it eloquently: “ . . . 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 . . . 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 . . .” a poison “is distilled into the veins of Europe
and slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery” (pp. 35-36).
This dehumanizing effect of violence on the oppressor is also examined by
Albert Memmi in The Colonizer and the Colonized, and by Frantz Fanon in all his
works, particularly in The Wretched of the Earth and A Dying Colonialism.
At this point in his analysis, Cesaire makes a startling but very authentic
claim. When Nazi Germany unleashed its war machine on the Jews and other
nations of Europe, the colonial powers reacted with horror and indignation.
Until that time, Cesaire suggests, the peoples of Western Europe were accomplices
to horrendous crimes comparable to the crimes of the German Nazis and
Italian Fascists. But before then, they did not call it Nazism or Fascism. Indeed,
they assumed that the “things” on whom the brutal horrors of colonialism
were being inflicted in Madagascar and elsewhere were really not people, not
human beings. In a sense, Cesaire suggests, Nazism has its roots in the culture
of colonialism and before the people of Europe were the victims of the daily
barbarism of Nazism, “they were its accomplices; . . . they tolerated that
Nazism before it was inflicted on them, . . . they absolved it, shut their eyes
to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to
non-European peoples. . .” (p. 36). So for the Western Christian bourgeoisie to
rail against Hitler, Cesaire argues, smacks of inconsistency because every
Christian Bourgeois has a Hitler inside himself and was indignant at Hitler’s
cruelty not because it was directed at humanity, but because it was directed at
“White” humanity.
For far too long, Cesaire argues, Europe’s pseudo-humanism had diminished
the rights of man. Europe is only concerned with the rights of man in relation
to the White man, not Coolies and Niggers. So when Europe talks about
universal human rights, its concept of rights is “narrow and fragmentary, incomplete
and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist” (p. 37). The fact,
according to Cesaire, is that capitalist society “is incapable of establishing
a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved incapable of
establishing a system of individual ethics.” Behind the blind alley that is
Europe, he argues, “there is Hitler.” And behind capitalism, formal humanism and
philosophic renunciation, “there is Hitler.” One of Hitler’s statements,
Cesaire points out, sounds very much like “civilized” Europe’s statements
about its colonies. Nazi Germany, Hitler had declared, aspires “not to equality
but to domination. The country of foreign races must become once again a
country of serfs, of agricultural laborers, or industrial workers. It is not a
question of eliminating inequalities among men but of widening them and making
them into law” (ibid.) Similar statements have been made by people like the
French philosopher Renan, Indochina governor-general Albert Sarraut, and many
other French religious and political leaders of the day.
Cesaire repeats that in exposing the Hitler element in the practice of
colonialism, he is simply saying that colonialism is a willful act of barbarism
that is perpetrated not with impunity, but with a very heavy conscience. The
colonialist knows that he is engaged in acts of violence against fellow human
beings, but he refuses to acknowledge the fact because his is a sick
civilization. It is "a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly,
progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for
its Hitler . . . its punishment" (p.39). Claiming to civilize barbarism,
colonization negates civilization.
To further highlight the barbarism of colonization, Cesaire quotes a number
of colonial officers recounting some of their actions against colonized
peoples. Colonel de Montagnac, one of the conquerors of Algeria writes: "In order
to banish the thoughts that sometimes besiege me, I have some heads cut off,
not the heads of artichokes but the heads of men" (p. 40). Another
colonialist, Count d'Herisson, declares: "It is true that we are bringing back a whole
barrelful of ears collected, pair by pair, from prisoners, friendly or enemy"
(ibid.). Yet another colonialist, Saint-Arnaud, gallantly declares: "We lay
waste, we burn, we plunder, we destroy the houses and the trees" (ibid). Such
sadistic delights as evident in the above quotations and many others,
Cesaire argues, can only come from the minds of men belonging to a twisted and
decadent civilization. Ultimately, what these statements prove is that
colonization dehumanizes the colonizer. In seeing and treating other people as animals,
the colonizer transforms himself into an animal. And here, Cesaire sends a
plaintiff cry to heaven: "Truly, there are sins for which no one has the power
to make amends and which can never be fully expiated" (p. 42).
Colonization, Cesaire posits, equals "thingification". The relations
inherent in colonization are relations of power and domination. They are relations
in which "there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the
police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, mistrust, arrogance,
self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses . . . of domination
and submission which turn the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army,
a sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an
instrument of production" (p. 42). The colonized are not human beings worthy
of human rights or human respect, but things merely to be used, driven around,
beaten and, when the need arises, killed in the name of a law and order
rooted in injustice and barbarism.
For Cesaire, colonialism is a totally destructive enterprise. It is "about
societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions
undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic
creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out . . . men sacrificed .
. . torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life . . . taught
to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair and behave like
flunkeys . . . about natural economies destroyed . . . agricultural development
oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries; . . . about
the looting of products . . . of raw materials" (p. 43). No, he argues,
colonialism is not about the destruction of local tyrants. It is about old
tyrants cooperating with new ones to further oppress the people; about
proleterarianization and mystification. The societies plundered by the forces of
colonialism were democratic, cooperative and fraternal societies, not the backward,
uncivilized, culturally void societies that colonialism claimed they were. His
only consolation, he writes, "is that periods of colonization pass, that
nations sleep only for a time, and that peoples remain" (p. 45). Africa's
tragedy, he argues, was not that it was too late in making contact with the world,
but the manner in which that contact was made at a time when Europe was under
the control of "most unscrupulous financiers and captains of industry"
(ibid.). He rejects Europe's a posteriori claim that it brought material progress
and Europeanization to Africa. In reality, colonization had actually
distorted material progress and slowed the process of Europeanization, because Europe
was denying to the colonized peoples the roads, schools, ports and other
facilities that it had provided and continued to provide in the home countries.
Cesaire claims that the racism of Europe does not bother him. He only
examines it. And he is appalled at the hypocrisy and ignorance with which the cream
of French society pretended that the French people were a superior race,
destined to rule the world and to keep the black and yellow peoples in their own
places. He rejects his critics' accusation that he is calling for a return
to some past civilization. What he is doing, he says, is helping create a news
society, "a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm
with all the fraternity of olden days" (p. 52), a marriage of the new
possibilities offered by the forces of modern technology, with the beauties of an
ancient culture based on courtesy and fraternity. As an example that such a
marriage between past and present was possible, Cesaire, suggests, "we can look
to the Soviet Union" (p. 52). But, as history has shown, the Soviet model,
for whatever reasons, was doomed to failure and has since been relegated to
the dustbin of history. Nevertheless, Cesaire was right in insisting that
colonized peoples had great civilizations, reminiscent of Mazrui's Romantic
Gloriana - empires, kingdoms; large, elaborate, well organized bureaucracies. And
to buttress his point, Cesaire quotes Frobenius: "Civilized to the marrow of
their bones! The idea of a barbaric Negro is a European invention" (p. 53).
The entire gamut of European elites, Cesaire argues - from journalists, to
sociologists, theologians and academics - share responsibility for the crime
of colonialism. All who supported the plundering activities of colonialism
deserved condemnation as "inventors of subterfuges, . . . charlatans and
tricksters, . . . dealers in gobbledygook" (p. 55). He cites for special mention
writers like Gourou, who claims that civilization is only found in the
temperate zones, that the tropical zones never had civilizations; of men like the
Belgian missionary Reverend Temple, whose book Bantu Philosophy purported to
counteract the forces of "communistic materialism" and save the Negroes from
being turned by that devilish ideology into "moral vagabonds." He cites as
extremely ridiculous Rev. Temple's claim that the Negro was not interested in
material progress, that all he needed was to be respected as a human being, and
that when he came into contact with the European, the Negro "integrated us
into their hierarchy of life forces at a very high level" (p. 59). Even more
absurd, Cesaire argues, are claims by M. Mannoni that colonialism was a
divinely ordained mission of the West, and that all the Madagascan craved was to be
able to depend on somebody else: “He desires neither personal autonomy nor
free responsibility" (p. 61). Point to the fact that the Madagascans had a
history of revolt against French occupation, and Mannoni would tell you that was
simply the expression of neurotic behavior. Raise any objection to
colonialism, Cesaire says, and M. Mannoni, "who has an answer for everything", would
come up with a fitting response and justification in favor of the superior
civilization. It is evident, Cesaire argues, that all such pronouncements are the
marks of little and chauvinistic minds that are unable to appreciate the
universal reality that all men are endowed with reason.
Colonialism - French colonialism in particular - Cesaire argues, could only
contemplate the idea of other cultures being integrated into the French
family. The idea of France being integrated into other families was too monstrous
to imagine, because a superior civilization cannot possibly be integrated
into an inferior civilization. That would be contrary to all logic. We could
have a Negro Frenchman, but never a White Negro. The very idea was an oxymoron.
But colonialism's civilizing mission, with all its Hitlerian undertones, was
simply, Cesaire suggests, the parting whimpers of a dying civilization, a
dying class, for "it is an implacable law that every decadent class finds itself
turned into a receptacle into which flows 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" (p. 64).
Evil is nothing new to man, Cesaire admits. But bourgeois history is the
history of evil and plunder. 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, war-mongering and the appeal to the raison d'Etat,
racism and slavery, in short, everything against which it protested in
unforgettable terms at a time when, as the attacking class, it was the incarnation
of human progress" (p. 67). The bourgeoisie, Cesaire suggests, had become
victims of “the law of progressive dehumanization in accordance with which
henceforth, on the agenda of the bourgeoisie . . . there can be nothing but
violence, corruption and barbarism" (p. 68).
The West, Cesaire argues, did not invent science or ethics or morality, as
M. Callois would have us believe. History and culture and ethnography,
contrary to the claims of colonial apologists like Callois, belong to a universal
cosmology. The statements of people like M. Callois, Cesaire indicates, are
significant not only because they reflect the mind of the Western petty
bourgeoisie, but also because while it touted the virtues of humanism, Europe was at
that material point in time the furthest in reality from practicing the
humanity it so loudly mouthed. In inflicting horrors on the colonized peoples,
Europe was engaged in a process of self-destruction. It had "overthrown, one
after another, the ramparts behind which European civilization could have
developed freely" (p. 75).
But while the colonized peoples are rejecting Europe and breaking the chains
of colonialism, Cesaire warns, they must beware of the emergent “liberator”
- the United States. American domination, he warns, is "the only domination
from which one never recovers . . . unscarred" (p. 77). For its part, Europe
must generate itself anew or sink into "mortal darkness". And with that
warning against impending American imperialism, Cesaire ends his discourse on
colonialism in a flourish of Communist optimism. The salvation of Europe, he
concludes, "is not a matter of a revolution in methods. It is a matter of the
Revolution - the one which, until such a 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" (p. 78). Robin Kelly notes in his introduction to the
2000 edition of Discourse, however, that for Cesaire, the colonial struggle was
not a fight between capitalism and socialism in the orthodox Marxist sense,
but a struggle for the total overthrow of a racist colonialist system which
would open the way to a bright new world of freedom and equality. It is to
Cesaire's credit that he understood that it was much easier to formally dismantle
colonialism, than to get rid of the colonial state itself.
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