Discourse on Colonialism Characters

The author was an activist, poet, scholar, and politician from the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony whose political and economic life revolved around plantation slavery for centuries. Writing in 1950 as the mayor… read analysis of Aimé Césaire

Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany and principal architect of the Holocaust, whose legacy Césaire addresses throughout the Discourse on Colonialism. Namely, while most Europeans and Americans consider Hitler and the Nazis’… read analysis of Adolf Hitler

Pierre Gourou was a prominent French anthropologist and geographer whose work Césaire sees as dishonestly justifying European colonialism in the rest of the world. Despite conclusive scientific and historical evidence to the contrary, Gourou insisted… read analysis of Pierre Gourou

Reverend Tempels was a Christian missionary who participated in Belgium’s notoriously brutal rule over the central African territory that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tempels wrote a book about “the Bantu philosophy”… read analysis of Reverend Tempels

Roger Caillois was a French intellectual who argued that non-European people are “incapable of logic” (even though they invented mathematics and philosophical rationalism) and therefore that ethnography must remain “white”—meaning that Europeans are worthy of… read analysis of Roger Caillois