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Submitted by usmank on October 13, 2007
Category: History Other
Words: 1707 | Pages: 7
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Consider Césaire’s conviction that nothing about colonialism can be considered progressive. Do you agree? Why does this question bear heavily on the post-colonial nation building experiment?
“No one colonizes innocently, (that) no one colonizes with impunity either; (that) a civilization which justifies colonization – and therefore force – is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased.” (Césaire, 17)
Césaire’s evaluation of colonialism was not merely a critique of colonialism as a system of exploitation and domination; rather, it extended to the civilization that produced, perpetrated, supported, accepted and justified this phenomenon. The criticism of colonialism on the basis of European civilization is in fact been articulated by many theorists, predominantly those dealing with cultural and psychological aspects of colonialism. Fanon, Cabral, Memmi along with Césaire are some of the notable scholars who have dealt with this issue. They criticize colonialism for charging the native culture of the colonies to be barbaric and uncivilized at best, and to be non existent at worst. As a result, the national liberation movements of the colonies are also often couched as an attack on the Western civilization. This leads to the post-colonial dilemma for the state. In its essence this dilemma is the dilemma of choosing between the model of progress as idealized by the civilization that produced colonialism or to shun it.
This paper will study how and why the post-colonial nation state comes to deal with this dilemma and how it can response to it. It also grapples with the nature of true emancipation being that of cultural freedom along with political independence. It concludes that the dichotomy of progress being a quality of the West and tradition being a characteristic of the colonized world is a product of colonization. This dichotomy is misleading as modernity is a prerogative of both the colonizer and...
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