#aimé césaire

[obsessioncollector]

Banner displayed at the student protests for Palestine at the University of Toronto, posted by assistant professor Esmat Elhalaby on Twitter. The central figure on the bannet is an imitation of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus, famously discussed in Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History. The accompanying text— reading "The only thing in the world worth beginning... the end of the world, of course!"—is from Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land.

You can read the Benjamin essay and see the original Klee work here. PDF of the Césaire book here.

[duxuebing]

Photography by Xuebing Du

Instagram: xuebing.du

[lillyli-74]

I have made a pact with the night, I have felt it softly healing me.

~Aimé Césaire

[majestativa]

I’ve dreamed all the vices of my blood.

— Aimé Césaire, Anthology of Contemporary French Poetry, transl by Graham Dunstan Martin, (1971)

[gael-garcia]

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but 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 have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps and trickles from every crack”

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, translated by Joan Pinkham

[chamerionwrites]

Aimé Césaire saying that colonization works to decivilize the colonizer truly lives in my head rent-free

[yannsummerss]

[diaryofaphilosopher]

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes places, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and "interrogated," all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism.

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[petit-atelier-de-poesie]

Césaire sait-il que ce petit cahier d’écolier qu’il tient en main est en fait une torche qui sert à éclairer notre chemin ou à incendier une plantation coloniale ?

Dany Laferrière. Un certain art de vivre. 2023

[gravalicious]

Aimé Césaire

[elle-mood]

"My ear to the ground,

I heard Tomorrow pass."

~ Aimé Césaire

[duxuebing]

Photography by Xuebing Du

Instagram: xuebing.du

[mimosita]

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment.”

― Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

[majestativa]

Sensual earth.

— Aimé Césaire, Anthology of Contemporary French Poetry, transl by Graham Dunstan Martin, (1971)

[genevieveetguy]

And the Dogs Were Quiet (Et les chiens se taisaient), Sarah Maldoror (1978)

[anaalnathrakhs]

Dorsale Bossale, un poème d'Aimé Césaire, lu en français par moi-même à l'occasion de @spyld (Speak Your Language Day)

L'original | I haven't found a translation