By Linden Lewis, a Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, USA.
On April 17, 2008 Martinique mourned the loss of its favourite son; the Caribbean lost one of its greatest poets, playwrights, essayists and politicians; and the world was left the poorer for the passing of Aimé Fernand Césaire. Césaire died at the Mesnard Hospital in the capital city of Fort-de-France, from heart complications and other ailments. At 94, he had enjoyed a long and distinguished life and career as a poet and politician. He was the Mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945-2001. Césaire had always merged the two identities – the poet/artist and the politician/activist – as part of his personal philosophy. He once observed, “politics wouldn’t be worth a scrap of energy if it were not justified by a cultural purpose.” He is best remembered for articulating a sense of pride and dignity among black people, whose humanity had been denied by European and colonial racism. His opposition to the racist characterizations of people of African descent was first seen in his co-founding of the literary journal, The Black Student, but it was the development of the philosophy of Negritude that propelled Césaire to international prominence, along with his colleagues Leon Damas of French Guyana and Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal.
Césaire is credited with first using the term Negritude, but the nucleus of the idea emerged out of the discourses and frustrations he shared with his comrades and colleagues Damas and Senghor, whose embrace of the received French identity was shattered by encounters with racism in Paris. Césaire described Negritude as “a resistance to the politics of assimilation.” It was part of a general struggle against alienation. Césaire had also associated Negritude with the rise of Haiti and the successful struggle of its people for independence. In his most famous epic poem, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, he used the word ‘negritude’ in print for the first time, and expressed deep admiration for Toussaint L’Ouverture. The Haitian Revolution in many ways represented for him a clear example of the capacity for leadership by the sons and daughters of Africa. His pride of race at a time of sustained and systematic global racism is brilliantly captured in his essay, ‘Negro I am, Negro I will remain.’ There are some who would interpret Negritude in purely cultural terms, but Césaire was clear about the political underpinnings of this philosophy. He had always maintained that Negritude emerged out of a leftist philosophy. He argued that it could not possibly have come from the right. It is, however, precisely this sensitivity to the race question that placed him in conflict with members of the Communist Party in France.
Aimé Césaire was a member of the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1942 until 1956. He left the party in protest against the invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union. In addition, he also broke with the communists because he maintained that the political question could not do away with the race question. In a moving letter of resignation to party leader Maurice Thorez, marking his departure from the Communist Party, Césaire reflected: “I think that the economic question is important, but it is not the only thing.” He taunted his erstwhile comrades who criticized him for his race consciousness by saying: “Marx is all right, but we need to complete Marx.” It is because of this way of thinking that Césaire viewed himself intellectually as a black rebel.
In a brilliant essay entitled ‘Discourse on Colonialism,’ Césaire took on a broader understanding of the colonial project. He alerted us to the dehumanizing and de-civilizing impact of colonialism not only on the colonial subject but also on the colonizer. According to Césaire, between the colonizer and the colonized there is room only for such practices as forced labour, intimidation, police brutality, theft, contempt, rape and mistrust. In other words, he was arguing that the social relations between colonizer and colonized were sharply drawn arrangements, which were the result of gross disparities of power.
In 1946, Martinique officially became an overseas department of France.
Césaire presided over this transition. He ardently supported autonomy but not independence for Martinique. In recent years a younger generation of Martinican writers and intellectuals has been fiercely critical of Césaire’s original stance on this matter. Aimé Césaire has himself reflected on his earlier position stating: “Departmentalization was intended, perhaps naively, but sincerely, to insure equality under the law.
But France was reticent to apply the law it had voted into being. I realized then that we had made a fool’s bargain and that departmentalization was only a new form of domination.” The foregoing comment is a rather remarkable admission. In the end though it also reopens a space of national dialogue on the issue of independence, even though admittedly, there is no discernible groundswell for such change in contemporary Martinique.
pAimé Césaire was given a state funeral on Sunday, April 21, 2008. His was an examined life, a life dedicated to the development of the mind; a life lived in the service of his people.
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Early early foreday marnin (for Aimé Césaire)
a poem by Marc Matthews, London, April 2008
Au bout du petit matin,
how me ah talk, dis talk in tounge
dat shub wanside me native tounge
wuh born from wuh amputation learn um
Early early foreday marnin
Au bout du petit matin,
An elders gift is mantra acknowledging appreciation
grateful for the midwifery that sutured umbilical chord
to maligned womb for re birth in parish of soul.
Early early foreday marnin
Au bout du petit matin,
Nah you elda dat shine lite an haul
from bottom bushel de songs dat
dis setupon voice know well fuh chant
Early early foreday marnin
Au bout du petit matin,
legba ushers us through memory’s dark underground
through Ayida wedo flamboyant corridors to
baptismal font and benediction by Mami Wata.
Early early foreday marnin
Au bout du petit matin.
(This is one of a series of fortnightly columns from Guy-anese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
