Aimé Césaire Character Analysis in Black Skin, White Masks

Aimé Césaire is a Martinician poet, critic, and politician. He is also the founder of Négritude, an artistic-political movement influenced by surrealism that celebrates the black diaspora. Césaire’s most well-known works are Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (first published in 1939) and Discourse on Colonialism (1950), both of which Fanon quotes extensively in Black Skin, White Masks. Like Fanon, Césaire is a harsh critic of the colonial violence that he argues cannot be separated from European culture, but at the same time, both he and Fanon emphasize the right of colonized people to “claim” the culture of the colonizers as their own.

Aimé Césaire Character Timeline in Black Skin, White Masks

The timeline below shows where the character Aimé Césaire appears in Black Skin, White Masks. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Fanon begins with a quote from Discourse on Colonialism by the Martinician writer Aimé Césaire, which describes the negative psychological impact of empire on colonized peoples. Fanon warns that he... (full context)

...which they’d otherwise be excluded, but also to prove themselves to white people. When Aimé Césaire was running for office in 1945, his speech was so powerful it made some audience... (full context)

...but that it is simply a fact that being white is better. They suggest that Césaire speaks proudly about blackness as a way of making up for this natural inferiority. Fanon... (full context)

This chapter begins with a quote from Aimé Césaire about how every person is implicated in the torture and humiliation of others. Fanon explains... (full context)

...his “brother,” the Jewish man. He includes a quotation from Discourse on Colonialism in which Césaire argues that Nazism was the application of colonial violence—which had previously only been directed at... (full context)

In contrast to Césaire, Mannoni claims that “European civilization and its best representatives are not responsible for colonial racism.”... (full context)

Fanon includes quotations from Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, the central text of Négritude. He acknowledges... (full context)

...were advanced black civilizations that long preceded the colonial period. Fanon quotes another passage by Césaire, in which he argues that precolonial black populations were both technically advanced and morally superior... (full context)

Before Césaire and Négritude, most Antilleans did not even think of themselves as black. When black people... (full context)

...reminded by white people that they are not truly white. Fanon includes more quotations from Césaire’s Notebook, in which Césaire claims that he recognized the “white man” he had internalized within... (full context)