“My mouth shall be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth,
my
voice the freedom of those who break down
in the
prison holes of despair.”
-Aimè Cèsaire.
A Return to My Native Land?
Above,
is an excerpt from Aimè Cèsaire’s book entitled A Return to My Native Land? The reason why I have chosen to lead
with this excerpt is because I feel that Cèsaire is able to grapple with all
the themes and the ideas of a Discourse
on Colonialism here in a prosaic and
uncomplicated way; which to me not only signals the kinds of politics
that he is interested in within this pamphlet on colonialism, but also how freedoms
can become visible and available when we inscribe art into forms of resistance.
In trying to frame what I believe is Aimee Cèsaire’s
point of departure in a Discourse on
Colonialism, I will use the analysis presented by Michael Neocosmos on how
Cèsaire is effectively engaging in politics of emancipation through a form of
resistance to his location, which effectively is the French colony, and in so doing,
is then able to subvert that space. Neocosmos discusses this form of
emancipatory politics in a paper entitled Are
Those Who Do Not Count Capable of Reason? Thinking Political Subjectivity in
the (Neo) Colonial World and the Limits of History. It will be my assertion
that when Cèsaire “refuses and resists oppression, [he] places [himself] beyond
the place of oppression both subjectively and politically and often even
physically”(2012:531). This is why I imagine Cèsaire informs the reader, in the
very beginning of the text, that to think clearly about what the nature of colonization fundamentally is, is to engage in
dangerous work.
In engaging in this politics of emancipation through what he
calls a Discourse on Colonialism will
contend that Cèsaire is effectively unpacking what Cultural Theorist John
Stuart Hall, refers to as ‘the work of representation.’ Through an extensive
discussion on how meaning is made and how ideology operates in different
spatial contexts, I will speak to how Cèsaire is effectively speaking truth to power by debunking
some of the myths that operate in the colonial project. Thereafter I will
briefly engage in a discussion on the role of art or artistic thinking in the
sphere of the political. I will particularly be interested in how the
Surrealist Movement was able to free up Cèsaire’s thinking about colonisation
and in so doing able to foreground this text as an act of resistance to power.
Cèsaire
is in my opinion interested in the language and the vocabulary of the colonial
project. As indicated to us by the title of the book, Cèsaire is effectively
interested in discourse. I would argue that he is interested in what
Stuart-Hall refers to as, and what Michel Foucault effectively theorized as, “a
group of statements which provide a language for talking about-a way of
representing the knowledge about a particular topic at a particular historical
moment” (1997:44).
Having
said that, I would suggest that Cèsaire is interested in how words and phrases
like ‘the rule of law’ ‘civilisation’ and ‘Christianity’ change meaning when
they are used in the context of the colony and in the context of the colonial
city. These words are assertions of power. They are claims to knowledge
and within that framework of knowledge,
there a number of salient claims that assert control and domination that exist
within them. Christianity and civilisation represent themselves in the colony
through the logic of victimisation, “plunder, helmets, lances and cupidites” to
the “Indians, the yellow peoples, and the Negroes”(1955:2). By categorically
telling the reader what colonization is not
i.e. a form of evangelization, philanthropy or a project of enlightenment or
even the magnanimity of M. Caillois, Cèsaire
unravels the character of colonization which is at its base a sadistic and
brutish form of domination. This is effectively a disruption of the master
narrative that had been associated with the colonial project and all the ideas
therein linked. In revealing how the
notion of ‘development’ can facilitate the destruction of the South Sea islands, Nigeria, Nyasaland,
Cèsaire troubles the ideological constructions that lodge themselves into
European Colonialism. Cèsaire
illustrates this point best by saying that “between colonization and
civilisation there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial
expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that
have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all
the ministries, there could come not a single human value”(1955:2).
In doing
this, I would argue that Cèsaire is displacing this ‘language of contribution
and philanthropy’ by showing it up through its inherently destructive and
disingenuous character. Cèsaire maintains that “Europe is dishonest in trying
to justify its colonising activity a posteriori by the obvious material
progress that has been achieved in certain fields under the colonial regime”(1955:8).
Colonial entry into African and Asian societies was based on the premise that they
were inherently static and unable to develop themselves along a similar
trajectory to that of Europe. However Cèsaire refutes this claim by not only citing Japan’s development as a
society as free of the paternalism of Europe but, and perhaps more
importantly, how European occupation
further stagnated and distorted the progression of its respective colonies.
This
stagnation and distortion not only happened when Europe occupied their colonies,
but it also manifested itself in the logic of the IMF (International Monetary
Fund) and their imposition of Structural Adjustment Programs post-independence.
The ‘respectable bourgeois’ that Cèsaire speaks of, articulates itself in the supposedly reputable structures of the IMF. Having already eroded the economies
of African and Asian Societies, the IMF proposed ‘charitable relief’ through the system of
loans, rules and regulations with which they could continue to influence the development
and inadvertent destruction of their respective colonies. This is why Cèsaire
understands the proletarian problem to not only be the consequence of colonial
entry but also the “situation to which its existence has given rise [to]” (1955:1).
It
would be my assertion that the capitalistic neoliberal paradigm that we find
ourselves lodged into, has also created the proletariat. Human rights discourse reflects itself in this
paradigm and we are thus unable in this
system to reconcile basic human rights with the poor or those that have been
refuged by the state. One’s complicity in this paradigm is an inadvertent
complicity in the systems of evil and repression. Cèsaire echoes this through saying that “at
the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler.”
(1955:3) He further articulates this by quoting Hitler who asserts that “it is not a question of
eliminating the inequalities among men but of widening them and making them into
law.” (1955:3)
Perhaps
what is most important about Cèsaire’s text is how the idea of mythmaking and
what can be referred to as the ‘politics of fear’, is effectively a
debilitating process which not only signals a regression in society but also
opens the door up to intra racial violence and hatred. Cèsaire explores this idea through his
discussion of Hitler and Nazism. He says that “ before they were its victims,
they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was
inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized
it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non- European
peoples; that they had cultivated that
Nazism, that they are responsible for it.” (1955:3) Cèsaire points to how the
repression of other groups and one’s complicity therein, can effectively lead
to one’s own oppression. This is why Cèsaire
refers to these societies as being inherently diseased and maligned, because if
it “chooses to closes its eyes to its most crucial problems [then] it is a stricken civilisation.” (1955:1)
Moreover,
in describing the European colonial project as a ‘pseudo-humanism’, Cèsaire
points to the fact that human interactions have been abstracted and reified
into “relations of domination and submission” (1955:6). The melancholic Nina
Simone lyrics, ‘have we lost the human touch?’, seem to underpin, for Cèsaire,
how both the colonised and coloniser can be transformed into objects when they
displace their abilities to relate to one another through a lens of humanism.
In this text, Cèsaire shows how a logic of power and control erode both the
cognitive and emotional capabilities of the human spirit. “ A significant
thing: it is not the head of a
civilisation that begins to rot first. It is the heart.” (1955:9)
As I
have alluded to earlier, I think that Cèsaire’s text is not only a contestation
of space but also a subversion of it. It
is what Neocosmos calls ‘a politics of emancipation’ and what may be an extension of humanism. This emancipatory praxis is rooted in Cèsaire’s
ability to imagine a new
society. It manifests itself through Cèsaire’s
rejection of a ‘return’ to old ‘Negro
civilisations’ and the equal rejection
of his present colonial society. The claim to politics, which I think Cèsaire
is making, is rooted in Cèsaire’s ability to think anew. Michael Neocosmos argues that “the
philosopher Jacques Rancière makes the same point when he notes that ‘politics
begins exactly when those who “cannot” do something show that in fact they can’.
Politics as the expression of human agency – politics proper – begins then when
those who are allocated to a place wherein they are not supposed to think
(‘beyond their station in life’ as the English expression goes) in fact do so.
Thus politics begins at the point of displacement” (2012:531). In placing
himself in the interregnum between the old and the present, Cèsaire is able to
find a place where he can articulate “a new society that we must create, with
the help of our brother (sic) slaves, a society rich with all the productive power
of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.” (1955:11)
Although
I imagine Neocosmos would argue that the politics of contestation should be
understood as the conditions of critical thought (2012:531), I would argue that
Cèsaire is able to think freely and think freedom through the sometimes
chaotic and non-linear projections of surrealism. In fact, I personally think
that artistic work, whether it be art, literature or song is able to conceive
of spaces of freedom in the same way that politics or political philosophy
is. South African feminist scholar, Pumla
Gqola has recently ‘granted me the permission to say this out loud’ in a paper that
she has recently published entitled Crafting
the Epicentres of Agency where she argues that “creative spaces offer an
ability to theorise, and imagine spaces of freedom in ways unavailable to
genres more preoccupied with linearity and exactness.(2008:50) Gqola goes on to
say that this line of ‘creative theorisation’(2008:50) seems not necessarily particular to, but popular in
strands of African American Feminist writing.
In the
interview between Rene Depestre and
Cèsaire, Cèsaire articulates how the movement of surrealism was a
liberating factor for him in writing Return
to My Native Land? (1955:26) That being said however, I also think that it
contributed to how he imagined and made manifest the working of Discourse on Colonialism. In an attempt
to reconcile the unconscious world, or the dream world with that which was
real, surrealists created a movement of dual representations. I think that
Cesaire was able to employ this surrealist strategy to summon up the
“unconscious forces; a call to Africa”(1955:26). I believe that it was though
unorthodox method of engaging with the political that Cèsaire was effectively
able to ‘free up’ the political.
Works
Cited:
Cèsaire.
A.1955. Discourse on Colonialism. Monthly
Review Press: New York and London
Cèsaire. A. 1969.Return to my native
land. Harmondsworth: Penguin books,
Hall. S. 1997. Representation: Cultural
Representations and Signifying Practices. London: SAGE Publications
Neocosmos. M. 2012. Are Those Who Do Not Count Capable of
Reason? Thinking Political Subjectivity in the (Neo) Colonial World and the
Limits of History: Journal of African and Asian Studies. Volume 47. 530-547. SAGE Publications
Gqola. P. 2008.
Crafting Epicentres of Agency. Journal of African Feminism. Volume 45. 45-76
