The Historical Development of Postcolonial Theory: Criticism on the Colonialist Practice

2. Aimé Césaire and the "Thingification of the Colonized Subjects"

   Aimé Césaire was also an influential figure in shaping the ideas of postcolonial theory. In Discourse on Colonialism (1955), he argues that colonization dicivilizes and degrades the colonizers. Cesaire quotes a number of colonial officers recounting some of their actions against colonized peoples. Colonel de Montagnac, one of the conquerors of Algeria writes: "In order to banish the thoughts that sometimes besiege me, I have some heads cut off, not the heads of artichokes but the heads of men" (p. 40). Yet another colonialist, Saint-Arnaud, gallantly declares: "We lay waste, we burn, we plunder, we destroy the houses and the trees" (ibid).

   Influenced highly by the ideas of Karl Marx, Césaire supposes that the western civilization created two problems:

“the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of reason or before the bar of conscience; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive” (Discourse on Colonialism, 1955, p. 31).

Césaire argues that the westerner’s big excuse for colonization as a civilizing mission is a lie. It is:

 “neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law” (ibid)

   The western colonization is designed for exploration, expansionism, exploitation, domination of the lands and its people. Thus, colonialism under the shadow of civilizing mission is hypocrite in nature and aims at delusion and deception to the natives and to the European people. It also aimed as Césaire notes to “Thingification” of the colonized subjects, that they are not human beings worthy of human rights or human respect, but things merely to be used, driven around, beaten and, when the need arises, killed in the name of a law and order rooted in injustice and barbarism.

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