Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Discourse on Colonialism, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonial Racism and the Moral Corruption of Europe
The Consequences of Colonial Plunder
Scholarship and Power
Class Struggle and Revolution
Summary
Analysis
Western Europe’s “barbarism”—which only the United States manages to surpass—has sunk in deeply, as people have forgotten that colonizers were “swindlers, perjurers, forgers, thieves, and procurers” and instead started treating them as heroes with “Christian virtues.” This is not just Hitler’s barbarism, Césaire emphasizes, but also the “cannibalistic hysteria” that passes for normal politics in places like France. He remembers the Malagasy Uprising, in which the French slaughtered tens of thousands of natives of Madagascar, and imagines the French drinking their blood. Césaire admits that he is no longer shocked by the racism of colonizers, but rather appreciates that at least they exhibit it “in broad daylight,” because it shows that they know they are “mortal” and can be defeated. He quotes a philosopher, scientist, soldier, journalist, and even a member of the Académie Française, all of whom steadfastly proclaim that white people are inherently superior to non-Europeans.
Césaire again emphasizes that the ideology of “civilization” was never intended to be true, but was rather carefully crafted in order to convince Europeans to support the “swindlers, perjurers, forgers, thieves, and procurers” who were flying their nations’ flags overseas. Just as the French celebrated colonialism in Césaire’s day, explorers who spent their lives enslaving and murdering people for profit (like Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Napoleon Bonaparte) are still celebrated as national heroes in places like Europe and the United States. While this is politics as usual today, Césaire calls it “cannibalistic hysteria” in order to point out the absurdity in a nation celebrating itself for killing innocent people. Indeed, Césaire’s argument about the United States is crucial. Colonialism is not over, he emphasizes, but merely taking a different form: it is what people now call economic globalization, in which companies from Europe, the United States, and other historically wealthy countries profit by exploiting material resources and cheap (often unfree) labor in the developing world. This is the same principle as when European elites funded explorers and created trade companies to amass resources overseas in the 15th through 19th centuries.
Themes
Césaire again insists that he will “defend our old Negro civilizations,” which were communal and “courteous” in comparison to Europe. These civilizations cannot be brought back, however: rather, humans must try to build “a new society” that values both equality and technological advancement. (The Soviet Union is a start, Césaire thinks.) And the French petty bourgeois who aid and abet colonization are not ignorant about the civilizations they have destroyed: on the contrary, they actually choose to forget Vietnam’s “exquisite and refined” culture; Madagascar’s “poets, artists, administrators;” the empires, art, and music of West Africa; and so on.
Césaire wants to “defend our old Negro civilizations” not necessarily because he considers them inherently superior to Europe, but rather because he thinks that contemporary people have largely forgotten about their existence, scientific and artistic advances, and democratic politics. Many readers might ask how Césaire plans to do away with Europe, and he anticipates and answers that question here: the solution is to combine radical equality (modeled after non-European civilizations) with technological advancement (modeled after Europe) in order to create abundance for everyone. In fact, this is a rather traditional picture of a communist society, which again shows that Césaire sees the struggle against colonialism as an inseparable part of the struggle against capitalism. While it may seem strange that Césaire praises the Soviet Union, it is essential to recall that he is writing in 1950, before conclusive evidence of Stalin’s crimes against humanity began to reach the West. A few years later, after learning this information, Césaire left the Communist Party and became a vocal critic of the Soviet Union.
Themes
