Discourse on Colonialism

Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalist colonialism, showing how it is in the nature of colonial structures to “decivilize” the colonizers, turning them into hateful racists, murderers, and torturers. European fascism, he argues, is nothing but the continent’s colonial violence returning to corrupt the homelands – a “boomerang effect.” It is “necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society,” states Césaire, who was born in 1913 in Martinique, where he became a leader of the Communist Party.

Discourse on Colonialism is a “dancing flame in a bonfire,” writes Robin D. G. Kelley in his insightful introduction to the text. Also included in the volume is an interview with Césaire by the poet René Depestre.