African Revolutionary Writers, Part 7b
Aimé
Césaire
In any research of African
writers, the name of Aimé Césaire crops up constantly. He was one of the early
ones, giving an example to others. Like Frantz Fanon, he was born on the island
of Martinique in the Caribbean, and he taught Fanon when Fanon was a boy.
Like many other writers who
are part of the African Revolutionary heritage, Aimé Césaire’s original writing
is hard to find on the Internet. Thus the fact that his Discourse on
Colonialism is available on the
Internet is a great good fortune.
Whatever else, it is a
wonderful piece of writing, and thoroughly class-conscious. For example,
Césaire writes:
“It is a fact: the nation is a bourgeois phenomenon.”
This is a simple statement of
a fact that dozens of other writers, who should have seen it, have failed to
note.
Have a treat. Read Aimé
Césaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism” now, for pleasure as much as for political
profit. This is the Francophonie at its best.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism,
1955, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
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