Therefore, comrade, you will hold as enemies—loftily, lucidly, consistently—not only sadistic governors and greedy bankers, not only prefects who torture and colonists who flog, not only corrupt, check-licking politicians and subservient judges, but likewise and for the same reason, venomous journalists, goitrous academics, wreathed in dollars and stupidity, ethnographers who go in for metaphysics, presumptuous Belgian theologians, chattering intellectuals born stinking out of the thigh of Nietzsche, the paternalists, the embracers, the corrupters, the back-slappers, the lovers of exoticism, the dividers, the agrarian sociologists, the hood winkers, the hoaxers, the hot-air artists, the humbugs, and in general, all those who, performing their functions in the sordid division of labor for the defense of Western bourgeois society, try in diverse ways and by infamous diversions to split up the forces of Progress—even if it means denying the very possibility of Progress—all of them tools of capitalism, all of them, openly or secretly, supporters of plundering colonialism, all of them responsible, all hateful, all slave-traders, all henceforth answerable for the violence of revolutionary action.

And sweep out all the obscurers, all the inventors of subterfuges, the charlatans and tricksters, the dealers in gobbledyremoved. And do not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions. Whether personally—that is, in the private conscience of Peter or Paul—they are or are not colonialists, because the essential thing is that their highly problematic subjective good faith is entirely irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism.

This point on looking at problems more based on the character and consequence of action than sussing out intent alone seems backed up by the later point:

Having established the superiority of the West in all fields, and having thus re-established a wholesome and extremely valuable hierarchy, Mr. Caillois gives immediate proof of this superiority by concluding that no one should be exterminated. With him the [colonized peoples] owe this tolerance not to their respective merits, but to the magnanimity of Mr. Caillois; not to the dictates of science, which can offer only ephemeral truths, but to a decree of Mr. Caillois’s conscience, which can only be absolute; that this tolerance has no conditions, no guarantees, unless it be Mr. Caillois’s sense of his duty to himself.

So in other words, the “generous oppressor” who, through a display of moral character, chooses not to do barbaric stuff to the oppressed… while still being the oppressor in substance. Which is itself an affirmation of a sense of superiority (in this case, a moral one). Much like modern day liberals who act as if their personal sympathies and virtues will overcome the harm done by a fundamentally exploitative system of power, while simultaneously standing in the way of those who want to address the problem at its core.

The connection between the two points, as I’m seeing it, being that there is such a practice of hiding behind moral intent, that for the decolonial struggle, (or in today’s world, the anti-imperialist struggle), you could waste a lot of time and effort trying to judge based on that and be fooled into thinking that a seeming “good intent” de facto translates into substantive contribution to liberation. When in some cases, it may actually be an affirmation of the colonial view of superiority.

Curious if that read of it makes sense to others.

Good one, and not too long - not even an afternoon tbh. What I mainly remember it for is Césaire systematically dismantling all possible pro-colonial talking point, from the ‘civilization mission’ to the ‘we have so much to learn from them’.

Also remember to try the sepia mode (gear icon in the sidebar) and press 0 on desktop to enter clutter-free reading mode!

Oh good, had my own club at one point read this.

I am melanin deficient. I live in the current colonial center (USA). I recognize the harm of race as a social construct. How do I avoid participating in the racial blood industry? It seems as though whenever I try to stand with people of different melanin contents and in different colonies I either look like a cracker or a white savior liberal. I dont know what I am doing wrong and I would love imput from people who specialize in a Marxist interpretation of race and colonialism.

I’ve uploaded the EPUB version

https://archive.org/download/discourse-on-colonialism/Discourse on Colonialism.epub

Good stuff.