The Wretched of the Earth
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Read between August 20, 2023 - June 23, 2024
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Colonialism used the same tactics in these regions to inculcate the notion that the precolonial history of the indigenous population had been steeped in barbarity.
Beth
Parenti's "swarthy hordes."
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The passion displayed by contemporary Arab authors in reminding their people of the great chapters of Arab history is in response to the lies of the occupier.
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The only common denominator between the blacks from Chicago and the Nigerians or Tanganyikans17 was that they all defined themselves in relation to the whites.
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The principle and purpose of the freedom rides whereby black and white Americans endeavor to combat racial discrimination have little in common with the heroic struggle of the Angolan people against the iniquity of Portuguese colonialism.
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forced to realize that their geographical position and their region's economic interdependence were more important than the revival of their past.
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History, of course, written by and for Westerners, may periodically enhance the image of certain episodes of the African past.
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Traditions in an underdeveloped country undergoing armed struggle are fundamentally unstable and crisscrossed by centrifugal forces.
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Here things are clear. It is a meticulous account that develops progressively. Understanding the poem is not only an intellectual act, but also a political one. To understand this poem is to understand the role we have to play, to identify our approach and prepare to fight. There is not one colonized subject who will not understand the message in this poem. Naman, hero of the battlefields of Europe, Naman who vouched for the power and the continuity of the metropolis, Naman mowed down by the police at the very moment he returns home; this is Sétif in 1945, Fort-de-France, Saigon, Dakar, and ...more
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The colonized intellectual is responsible not to his national culture, but to the nation as a whole, whose culture is, after all, but one aspect.
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Support for "Negro-African" culture and the cultural unity of Africa is first contingent on an unconditional support for the people's liberation struggle. One cannot expect African culture to advance unless one contributes realistically to the creation of the conditions necessary for this culture, i.e., the liberation of the continent.
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National culture under colonial domination is a culture under interrogation whose destruction is sought systematically.
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Poverty, national oppression, and cultural repression are one and the same.
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The crystallization of the national consciousness will not only radically change the literary genres and themes but also create a completely new audience. Whereas the colonized intellectual started out by producing work exclusively with the oppressor in mind — either in order to charm him or to denounce him by using ethnic or subjectivist categories — he gradually switches over to addressing himself to his people.
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Literary creation addresses and clarifies typically nationalist themes. This is combat literature in the true sense of the word, in the sense that it calls upon a whole people to join in the struggle for the existence of the nation. Combat literature, because it informs the national consciousness, gives it shape and contours, and opens up new, unlimited horizons. Combat literature, because it takes charge, because it is resolve situated in historical time.
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The new jazz styles are not only born out of economic competition. They are one of the definite consequences of the inevitable, though gradual, defeat of the Southern universe in the USA. And it is not unrealistic to think that in fifty years or so the type of jazz lament hiccuped by a poor, miserable "Negro" will be defended by only those whites believing in a frozen image of a certain type of relationship and a certain form of negritude.
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By imparting new meaning and dynamism to artisanship, dance, music, literature, and the oral epic, the colonized subject restructures his own perception. The world no longer seems doomed. Conditions are ripe for the inevitable confrontation.
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We believe the conscious, organized struggle undertaken by a colonized people in order to restore national sovereignty constitutes the greatest cultural manifestation that exists.
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struggle, which aims at a fundamental redistribution of relations between men, cannot leave intact either the form or substance of the people's culture. After the struggle is over, there is not only the demise of colonialism, but also the demise of the colonized.
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the war goes on. And for many years to come we shall be bandaging the countless and sometimes indelible wounds inflicted on our people by the colonialist onslaught.
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He was our best friend. He had left school because he wanted to become a mason like his father. One day we decided to kill him because the Europeans want to kill all the Arabs. We can't kill the 'grown-ups,' but we can kill someone like him because he's our own age.
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subjectivity is no longer taken as the starting point for modifying the individual's attitude. On the contrary, emphasis is on the body, which is broken in the hope that the national consciousness will disintegrate. The individual is "knocked" into shape.
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in Algerians some of whom
Beth
Reported punctuation error
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We now know perfectly well that there is no need to be wounded by a bullet to suffer from the effects of war in body and soul.
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Either the women go three to four months without their periods, or menstruation is so painful it affects the women's character and behavior.
Beth
This can be related to stress. Or pcos or a painful periods this seems potentially incorrect or even misunderstood as to painful periods that "affects the women's character and behavior" Seems out of place here.
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Fighting for the freedom of one's people is not the only necessity. As long as the fight goes on you must reenlighten not only the people but also, and above all, yourself on the full measure of man.
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colonialism has not simply depersonalized the colonized. The very structure of society has been depersonalized on a collective level. A colonized people is thus reduced to a collection of individuals who owe their very existence to the presence of the colonizer.
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The duty of the colonized subject, who has not yet arrived at a political consciousness or a decision to reject the oppressor, is to have the slightest effort literally dragged out of him. This is where non-cooperation or at least minimal cooperation clearly materializes.
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Under a colonial regime, gratitude, sincerity, and honor are hollow words.
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The colonizer's reluctance to entrust the native with any kind of responsibility does not stem from racism or paternalism but quite simply from a scientific assessment of the colonized's limited biological possibilities."
Beth
Ah, so French imperialism in North Africa is for the people's own good. They cannot be trusted with their own country.
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He puts forward the idea that the normal African is a lobotomized European.
Beth
!!!!
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Exposed to daily incitement to murder resulting from famine, eviction from his room for unpaid rent, a mother's withered breast, children who are nothing but skin and bone, the closure of a worksite and the jobless who hang around the foreman like crows, the colonized subject comes to see his fellow man as a relentless enemy.
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Any colony tends to become one vast farmyard, one vast concentration camp where the only law is that of the knife.
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Under a colonial regime, no crime is too petty for a loaf of bread or a wretched sheep. Under a colonial regime, man's relationship with the physical world and history is connected to food.
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The criminality of the Algerian, his impulsiveness, the savagery of his murders are not, therefore, the consequence of how his nervous system is organized or specific character traits, but the direct result of the colonial situation.
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Let us leave this Europe which never stops talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.
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Europe has denied itself not only humility and modesty but also solicitude and tenderness.
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We can do anything today provided we do not ape Europe, provided we are not obsessed with catching up with Europe.
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It has been so successful that the United States of America has become a monster where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions.
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Comrades, have we nothing else to do but create a third Europe?
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translating another type of text, one that defined as a theory the subject matter of alienation, colonization, and the color complex
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But I have lost something in the translation of the word nègre, for it has both a sting and an embrace, and that is irretrievable.
only a French Caribbean, finally, could want so desperately to escape powerlessness through action and solitude through fraternity.
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