Discourse on Colonialism

Owning up to the fact that this was my first time reading it entirely, as a book, not in pieces, not on a pdf with my eyes scanning for the bits that I knew I was looking for. It's for a piece of writing I'm working on, and it was actually a really rewarding read. I learned things in Robin Kelley's preface, and I really liked the Lautréamont passages (mainly bc of a long standing love for 19th century French lit and for the specific lice poem in Le Chant de Maldoror) - for some reason not one of the bits that was captured and transmitted to me in my peripheral/plundering/utilitarian relationship to the text until now. I also really liked the fun gothic imagery, and the surrealist engagement with the abject throughout (looking like a communion wafer dipped in shit/condemned to chewing on Hitler's vomit/the idea, an annoying fly)

I really appreciated this book. Césaire's essay on the horrors of colonialism and both the European rational for them and the effect of them on Europeans was moving. His connection of Nazism with European-style liberalism/humanism was powerful. And his outrage was refreshing. For me it feels that in both every day life and in the academy there is a disconnect between what is presented or conceptualized in the media or in academic texts (not that the two are equivalent) and the life or death matters happening a world away or around the corner. The need to scream out indignation and to call a fascist politician "a communion wafer dipped in shit" has its place. Kelley's intro is also excellent in contextualizing Césaire and his essay.