The Colonizer and the Colonized Quotes

“It is significant that racism is part of colonialism throughout the world; and it is no coincidence. Racism sums up and symbolizes the fundamental relation which unites colonialist and colonized.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Conquest occurred through violence, and over-expolitation and oppression necessitate continued violence, so the army is present. There would be no contradiction in that, if terror reigned everywhere in the world, but the colonizer enjoys, in the mother country, democratic rights that the colonialist system refuses to the colonized native. In fact, the colonialist system favors population growth to reduce the cost of labor, and it forbids assimilation of the natives, whose numerical superiority, if they had voting rights, would shatter the system. Colonialism denies human rights to human beings whom it has subdued by violence, and keeps them by force in a state of misery and ignorance that Marx would rightly call a subhuman condition. Racism is ingrained in actions, institutions, and in the nature of the colonialist methods of production and exchange. Political and social regulations reinforce one another. Since the native is subhuman, the Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to him; inversely, since he has no rights, he is abandoned without protection to inhuman forces - brought in with the colonialist praxis, engendered every moment by the colonialist apparatus, and sustained by relations of production that define two sorts of individuals - one for whom privilege and humanity are one, who becomes a human being through exercising his rights; and the other, for whom a denial of rights sanctions misery, chronic hunger, ignorance, or, in general, 'subhumanity.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“I was sort of a half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone because I belonged completely to no one.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“However, revolt is the only way out of the colonial situation, and the colonized realizes it sooner or later. His condition is absolute and cries for an absolute solution; a break and not a compromise. He has been torn away from his past and cut off from his future, his traditions are dying and he loses the hope of acquiring a new culture. He has neither language, nor flag, nor technical knowledge, nor national or international existence, nor rights, nor duties. He possesses nothing, is no longer anything and no longer hopes for anything. Moreover, the solution becomes more urgent every day. The mechanism for destroying the colonized cannot but worsen daily. The more oppression increases, the more the colonizer needs justification. The more he must debase the colonized, the more guilty he feels, the more he must justify himself, etc. How can he emerge from this increasingly explosive circle except by rupture, explosion? The colonial situation, by its own internal inevitability, brings on revolt. For the colonial condition cannot be adjusted to; like an iron collar, it can only be broken.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“To be sure, the church has greatly assisted the colonialist; backing his ventures, helping his conscience, contributing to the acceptance of colonization even by the colonized.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community. Colonization usurps any free role in either war or peace, every decision contributing to his destiny and that of the world, and all cultural and social responsibility.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Take terrorism, one example among the methods used in that struggle. We know that leftist tradition condemns terrorism and political assassination. When the colonized uses them, the leftist colonizer becomes unbearably embarrassed. He makes an effort to separate them from the colonized's voluntary action; to make an epiphenomenon out of his struggle. They are spontaneous outbursts of masses too long oppressed, or better yet, acts by unstable, untrustworthy elements which the leader of the movement has difficulty in controlling. Even in Europe, very few people admitted that the oppression of the colonized was so great, the disproportion of forces so overwhelming, that they had reached the point, whether morally correct or not, of using violent means voluntarily. The leftist colonizer tried in vain to explain actions which seemed incomprehensible, shocking and politically absurd. For example, the death of children and persons outside of the struggle, or even of colonized persons who, without being basically opposed, disapproved of some small aspect of the undertaking. At first he was so disconcerted that the best he could do was to deny such actions; for they would fit nowhere in his view of the problem. That it could be the cruelty of oppression which explained the blind fury of the reaction hardly seemed to be an argument to him; he can't approve acts of the colonized which he condemns in the colonizers because these are exactly why he condemns colonization.

Then, after having suspected the information to be false, he says, as a last resort, that such deeds are errors, that is, they should not belong to the essence of the movement. He bravely asserts that the leaders certainly disapprove of them. A newspaper-man who always supported the cause of the colonized, weary of waiting for censure which was not forthcoming, finally called on certain leaders to take a public stand against the outrages, Of course, received no reply; he did not have the additional naïveté to insist.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“The colonialist's existence is so closely aligned with that of the colonized that he will never be able to overcome the argument which states that misfortune is good for something. With all his power he must disown the colonized while their existence is indispensable to his own. Having chosen to maintain the colonial system, he must contribute more vigor to its defense than would have been needed to dissolve it completely. Having become aware of the unjust relationship which ties him to the colonized, he must continually attempt to absolve himself. He never forgets to make a public show of his own virtues, and will argue with vehemence to appear heroic and great. At the same time his privileges arise just as much from his glory as from degrading the colonized.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“It is a curious fate to write for a people other than one’s own, and it is even stranger to write to the conquerors of one’s people. Wonder was expressed at the acrimony of the first colonized writers. Do they forget that they are addressing the same public whose tongue they have borrowed? However, the writer is neither unconscious, nor ungrateful, nor insolent. As soon as they dare speak, what will they tell just those people, other than of their malaise and revolt? Could words of peace or thoughts of gratitude be expected from those who have been suffering from a loan that compounds so much interest? For a loan which, besides, will never be anything but a loan. We are here, it is true, putting aside fact for conjecture. But it is so easy to read, so obvious. The emergence of a literature of a colonized people, the development of consciousness by North African writers for example, is not an isolated occurrence. It is part of the development of the self-consciousness of an entire human group. The fruit is not an accident or miracle of a plant but a sign of its maturity. At most, the surging of the colonized artist is slightly ahead of the development of collective consciousness in which he participates and which he hastens by participating in it. And the most urgent claim of a group about to revive is certainly the liberation and restoration of its language.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Every colonial nation carries carries the seeds of a fascist temptation in its bossom. What is fascism if not a regime of oppression for the benefit of a few”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Madness for destroying the colonized having originated with the needs of the colonizer, it is not surprising that it conforms so well to them, that it seems to confirm and justify the colonizer’s conduct. More surprising, more harmful perhaps, is the echo that it excites in the colonized himself. Constantly confronted with this image of himself, set forth and imposed on all institutions and in every human contact, how could the colonized help reacting to his portrait? It cannot leave him indifferent and remain a veneer which, like an insult, blows with the wind. He ends up recognizing it as one would a detested nickname which has become a familiar description. The accusation disturbs him and worries him even more because he admires and fears his powerful accuser. “Is he not partially right?” he mutters. “Are we not all a little guilty after all? Lazy, because we have so many idlers? Timid, because we let ourselves be oppressed.” Willfully created and spread by the colonizer, this mythical and degrading portrait ends up by being accepted and lived with to a certain extent by the colonized. It thus acquires a certain amount of reality and contributes to the true portrait of the colonized.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Racism... is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Nothing could better justify the colonizer's privileged position than industry, and nothing could better justify tge colonised 's destitution than his laziness. The mythical potrait of the colonized therefore includes an unbelievable laziness, and that of the colonizer suggests that employing the colonized is not very profitable, thereby authorizing his reasonable wages.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“The ' colonized do not know how to breath', the 'people here do not know how walk; they make little steps which do not get them ahead.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“For it is not without cause that one needs the police and the army to earn one's living or force and injustice to continue to exist.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Colonized painting, for instance, is balanced between poles. From excessive submission to Europe resulting in depersonalization, it passes to such a violent return to self that it is obnoxious and esthetically illusory. The right balance not being found, the self-accusation continues. Before and during the revolt, the colonized always considers the colonizer as a model or as an antithesis. He continues to struggle against him. He was torn between what he was and what he wanted to be, and now he is making of himself. Nonetheless, the painful discord with himself continues.

In order to witness the colonized's complete cure, his alienation must completely cease. We must await the complete disappearance of colonization--including the period of revolt.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“A blonde woman, be she dull or anything else, appears superior to any brunette.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“The colonialst as the custodian of the values of civilization and history, he accomplishes a mission; he has the immense merit of bringing light to the colonized's ignominious darkness.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“All efforts of the colonialist are directed toward maintaining thsi social immobility, and racism is the surest weapon this aim. Racism appears then, not as an accidental detail but a subconsubstantial part of colonialism.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

“Even if every colonialist is not mediocre, every colonizer must, in a certain measure, accept the mediocrity of colonial life and the men who thrive on it. It is also clear that every colonizer must adapt himself to his true situation and the human relationships resulting from it. By having chosen to ratify the colonial system, the colonialist has not really overcome the actual difficulties. The colonial situation thrusts economic, political, and affective facts upon every colonizer against which he may rebel, but which he can never abandon. These facts form the very essence of the colonial system, and soon the colonialist realizes his own ambiguity.”
― Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized