Discourse on Colonialism

Césaire describes the current state of European colonialism as a “beast” that used to be full of vitality and that now “has become anemic” (65). He compares this condition to the drama within Chants de Maldoror, an epic written by French poet, Comte de Lautréamont. In the epic, the monster and hero resemble one another. This is a critique of capitalist society by depicting how the initial heroism of European colonization is now revealing its more monstrous appearance. Césaire attributes this once again to the bourgeoisie who propagate a “law of progressive dehumanization” (68) that has come to represent current colonial violence.

Césaire uses French scholar Roger Caillois’s work as an example of a bourgeois intellectual who represents the anxiety over Western loss of identity through colonization. Caillois argues that the West is the center and origin of all intellectual thought. He dismisses any evidence of non-Western progress and advancement as minimal and exceptional to the rule. Caillois also advocates for ethnographic projects such as museums as representations of contact with non-European cultures, but which Césaire bitterly remarks that “its only purpose is to feed the delights of vanity” (71). Césaire also critiques Caillois’s notion of the West as having “additional tasks and an increased responsibility” (73) towards the colonized people.