AIM CSAIRE AND POSTCOLONIAL HUMANISM Author(s): Jane Hiddleston Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol.

105, No. 1 (January 2010), pp. 87-102 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25655135 . Accessed: 22/09/2013 10:56
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AIME CESAIRE AND POSTCOLONIAL

J'ai toujours le sentiment

HUMANISM
d'une solitude sans fin.1

It is perhaps striking that, despite the popularity and acclaim of both Cesaire and his work in the aftermath of his death in April 2008, Patrick Chamoiseau the sense of solitude surrounding the father of should choose to emphasize Caribbean letters. Chamoiseau expanded upon the extract from Texaco re in a round-table discussion on 'Portraits produced above when participating inOxford inMay 2008 by commenting that one of his lasting d'Aime Cesaire' was that of the poet walking alone. Indeed, Cesaire of images although his death was greeted by an outpouring of adulation in the press and the academic community more broadly, much of his work testifies to a persistent sense of

s'entasse pas, ne se mele pas'; it is 'cette foule qui ne sait pas faire foule, cette foule, on s'en rend compte, si parfaitement seule sous ce soleil'.2 The ravaged Martinican society is tense and withdrawn, stagnant as a result of the dispos session and mutual alienation of itsmembers. Even the revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture is remembered the Jura: not in action, but imprisoned alone

alienation. Many of the images ofmisery and degradation inMartinique that au fill the early pages of the Cahier cVun retour pays natal stress isolation and the failure of community. The inert town evoked on the second page 'ne

in

c'est un homme seul emprisonne de blanc c'est un homme seul qui defie les cris blancs de lamort blanche. (C, p. 90) ifwe juxtapose these images with Cesaire's Furthermore, career, it is not see to on sense difficult chose to dwell the of solitude. The why Chamoiseau apparent incongruity between Cesaire's revolutionary literary fervour and his in work the of Martinique has political departmentalization implementing caused him to be seen as a mysterious and controversial figure. He is un a major influence for doubtedly subsequent generations, but the now popular writers of the Creolite movement condemn him for championing departmen as well as for talization rather than decolonization, drawing on French literary references at the expense of local Creole culture. His work is singular in its orientation, and his vision of local culture is one with which laterMartinican intellectuals
1 2 Patrick Aime

fail to identify.3
(Paris: Gallimard, 1992) p. 454. retour au pays natal (Newcastle to this edition are given references upon Tyne: in the text culture Bloodaxe identified Books, the

Cesaire,

Texaco Chamoiseau, Cahier dun

i995)> p. 74- Subsequent C. abbreviation 3 inattention Raphael Confiant famously rails against Cesaire's une traversee paradoxale du siecle (Paris: Stock, 1993). Modern Language Review, 105 (2010), 87-102 ? Modern Humanities Research Association 2010

by

to Creole

inAime Cesaire:

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88

Aime If solitude and

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

isolation plague both Cesaire the man and the Martinique one his of the of the work, however, conjured up by major preoccupations Cahier is to invent some form of solidarity or collectivity to fuel in turn his anti-colonial revolt. To this end, he oscillates between affirming theMartini can's belonging to the specific category of negritude on the one hand, and seeking to transcend that specificity in a celebration of universal humanity on

In against the poet's belief in the particularity of black experience. at I review is shall this this article apparent contradiction, but my purpose the same time to look beyond it and to interrogate how Cesaire evolves and adapts his humanism through his very evocations of black identity and expe rience. I shall explore how Cesaire comes to uphold the notion of'humanity' as a result of an ongoing desire to conceive a form of relationality important also to negritude. The affirmation of black identity turns out to hinge not so and much upon a shared ethnicity or culture, but on a desire for geographical

the other. The troubled relation between these two sides of Cesaire's thinking has been explored by critics such as Gary Wilder and Nick Nesbitt (see below), and certainly the broad humanism of the final lines of the Cahier can seem to work

rein the other that offers proximity as well as preserving distance. Cesaire's the openness he does not always succeed inmaintaining will be revealing to explore at the same time the slippage between seeks, and it that ex 'humanite' and 'homme', since the latter implies an androcentrism the aim of Cesaire's humanism, consistent cludes the feminine. Nevertheless, towards the with his expansive vision of negritude, is to herald a movement ethics. Postcolo other that will provide the basis for a powerful postcolonial nial humanism has been described by Neil Lazarus, in an article on Fanon, as a radically new mode of thinking predicated on a formal repudiation of the form, and borne embryonically in the national liberation degraded European a I want to argue in addition that Cesaire's movement'.5 thought sketches sees one that anticipates what Patrick Williams humanist ethics, postcolonial vention of humanism
4 Confiant

cultural expansion that feeds directly into the humanism championed by the assertion of a common humanity end of the Cahier. Concomitantly, Cesaire's or shared experience, but on an relies not on some notion of resemblance an ethical relation with the other as other.4 If of the need for understanding the poetic self is alienated and isolated, then, he recommends a relation with

and for the 'bouillie culturel' of the Caribbean for overlooking also criticizes Cesaire Combe that the l'universel' clarte de the Cesaire, 58). (Aime p. Dominique explains privileging 'semble a la fois trop et pas assez proche de l'universel pour les ecrivains antillais de la Cahier 'Cahier dun retour au pays natal' (Paris: Presses (see Aime Cesaire: generation post-cesairienne' is not transparent universal Universitaires de France, 1993), p. 111). I want to argue that Cesaire's as that of Confiant. but as multivalent 5 Neil of Repre and the Problematic Fanon, Nationalism, Lazarus, 'Disavowing Decolonization: in African Literatures, 24.4 (Winter Research sentation in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse', 1993), 69-98 (p. 93).

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JANE HIDDLESTON as the critical, oppositional, inclusive'6 humanism thinkers such as Fanon and Said.

89 of subsequent postcolonial

Negritude

and Expansion

provides an astute analysis of the inter study7 Gary Wilder of and mingling universality particularity in French republican, colonial, and racial discourses and practices. Wilder shows that the colonial humanism of the post-World War I period sought to create traditional Africans, to parti cularize African

In a detailed

stereotypes and to claim a form of black specificity in a gesture of of colonial humanism. In his read rejection of the sweeping generalizations of Wilder the of the Cahier, Cesaire, then, ing explores multidimensionality a shift between the middle a which affirms section, identifying primordial Africanity, and the final section of the poem, which slips into a cosmolo In his conclusion, however, Wilder laments the way in gical universalism.8 seems to want to sweep aside this tension at the end of the which Cesaire poem, and he argues that Cesaire's affirmation of a transcendental humanism undermines the double bind of which he seemed to be aware earlier in the identifies an inherent contradiction between poem. Similarly, Nick Nesbitt 'the desubjectifying forces of the irrational and Cesaire's positive affirmation of the subject of negritude'.9 For Nesbitt, this inconsistency is a source of richness reservations

identity, and at the same time to force natives to conform to republican values. The colonial state set out to assimilate Africans into French culture and politics, and yet at the same time they were preoccupied with the native's difference. The denunciation of the colonial system therefore required an engagement both with its universalism and with its drive to particularize the subjugated other. Thinkers such as Cesaire and Senghor were as a result compelled both to affirm the universality of native experience as an antidote to French

and complexity in the Cahier, and he seems not to share Wilder's towards the rousing humanist call of the poem's conclusion. He nevertheless conceives the two prongs of Cesaire's critique, his negritude and his humanism, as opposed. Wilder
6

and Nesbitt

to stress in response

the contiguity between

are astute readers of Cesaire, but I nevertheless want Cesaire's negritude and his hu

Patrick Williams, '"Faire peau neuve": Cesaire, Fanon, Memmi, in Fran Sartre, and Senghor', Studies: A Critical Introduction, ed. Forsdick and David cophone Postcolonial by Charles Murphy (London: Arnold, 2003), pp. 181-91 (p. 191). 7 The French between Two World Wars Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism Press, 2005). (Chicago: University of Chicago 8 In addition to the book quoted above, see Gary Wilder, 'Race, Reason, Impasse: Cesaire, Radical History Review, 90 (2004), 31-61. Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation', 9 in French Caribbean Literature and Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity (Charlottesville London: University of Virginia Press, 2003), p. 81.

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90 manism.

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

that specificity and describes specificity of black identity, Cesaire dissolves as an opening out and a gesture of contact with otherness. For negritude 'ma negritude n'est pas une pierre, sa surdite ruee contre la clameur Cesaire, du jour' (C, p. 114); black identity is not fossilized into stone, and it is not deaf

sive and open-ended celebration of the black man's mobility and contact with the other. Cesaire's negritude is already infused with the humanist values up held at the end of the poem, and anticipates the ethical concerns that dominate the celebration of universal humanity. Even when he appears to champion the

It is important that Cesaire's version of negritude never rested on a determinate notion of black identity, but rather always consisted in an expan

this active, vigorous contact with the universe. The anxious, alienated poet it is a way it provides an identity, but because upholds negritude not because to imagine his integration in the world. Cesaire's negritude also announces a reconfiguration of geographical space, which, far from simply returning the black man to Africa, brings him into contact with territories across the world. First, it is significant that the 'retour'

When described positively, negritude is conveyed using verbs rather than sky. nouns, suggesting dynamism rather than stasis, an action rather than a state. It is a plunging that moves outward from its point of origin and penetrates both the soil and the air surrounding it. Black subjectivity is created through

to the world it inhabits. Similarly, 'ma negritude n'est pas une taie d'eau morte sur Foeil mort de la terre' (C, p. 114); it is not opaque and unchanging, fixed at a specific point on the earth. Instead, elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol | elle plonge dans la chair ardente du cieF (C, p. 114): it is an active process, an as well as interminable movement high into the reaching deep into the earth

to explore the Martinican's diasporic originary community and the urge with the contacts with the world. On one level, the poet is so disillusioned seems turns he he discovers that it away from the community that Martinique he also so avidly seeks. On another level, however, while coming to a halting he also finishes by opening up the of the history of Martinique acceptance land to the other locations and cultures with which it comes into contact. an The se nier' (C, p. 90) is situated 'archipel arque comme le desir inquiet de . flancs two and 'ses between the Americas, [. .] secretent pour l'Europe la bonne liqueur d'un Gulf Stream' (C, p. 90). Cesaire may be referring to the use of slaves in the rum trade here, but his insistence on the position of

but also to theMartini of the title, referring to the poet's return toMartinique a movement. The images of return not unidirectional is African can's origins, a work to diseased Martinique that open the poem certainly against exoticist visions of a tropical land of the sort celebrated by poets such as Baudelaire, section of the poem but the poet is not content simply to go back. The middle to a the desire tension between the poetic self back into expresses integrate

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JANE HIDDLESTON

91

in this broader global topography succeeds in drawing attention Martinique across the globe. From now on, to the expansive influence of Martinicans over on not will itself but is figured as mon lie be bent then, Martinique sa a claire audace debout l'arriere de cette polynesie' non-cloture, (C, p. 90). at the Equator, the tightrope that links it to Africa, and lies next 'ou la negritude se mit debout pour la premiere fois' (C, p. 90), as well as to Florida, ou d'un negre s'acheve la strangulation (C, p. 90). It also looks out on TAfrique gigantesquement chenillant jusqu'au pied hispanique It hovers to Haiti,

de l'Europe' (C, p. 90), and again, though Africa is at the mercy of the scythe of death, the reference to the transportation of slaves to Spain figures their lists in turn scattered presence across the world. In the next stanza Cesaire the cities where slaves worked on the buildings: et jeme dis Bordeaux etNantes et Liverpool etNew York San Francisco pas un bout de ce monde qui ne porte mon empreinte digitale
et mon calceneum sur le dos des

des gemmes!

gratte-ciel

et ma

crasse

dans

le scintillement

(C, p. 90)

leave their mark across the Exploited and violated, black slaves nevertheless redraw map and transcend the confines of any originary location. Cesaire's announces a across of not black the the and presence ing topography globe in to various the and which he nevertheless (Martinican African) spaces only 'returns'. As M. a M. Ngal observes, no one has travelled more than the black

pays natal n'est apparemment qu'une etape d'un voyage initiatique plus long encore vers une autre terre "mille fois plus natale" V1 The Africa of the Cahiery moreover, is once again not a determinate location or the signifier of an essen tial identity, but a space of transformation and creation. It is here that the poet gorges on Tait jiculi, pour qu'en toi je decouvre toujours a meme distance de fois plus natale et doree d'un soleil que n'entame nul prisme' mirage?mille (C, p. 86). 'Jiculi' is a neologism, but critics have suggested connections with Mexican and Aztec terms for a plant with hallucinogenic In any properties. is that Africa will be not so much case, the implication the birthplace of an originary black race, but a space of fantasy and self-invention. Similarly, references to African traditions are juxtaposed with other geographical terri
10 Aime Cesaire: un homme d la recherche d'une patrie (Dakar, Nouvelles p. 45. Editions

man, and black subjectivity is shaped by this diasporic experience.10 The return to Martinique is far from a rediscovery of an originary iden a on Caribbean but reflection tity, then, triggers relationality. In addition, it a as detour via Africa, Aliko Songolo notes: Te retour au evidently requires

Africaines, 11 Aime

1975), p. 66. Cesaire: une poetique

Abidjan: 1985),

de la decouverte

(Paris: L'Harmattan,

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92

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

tories, and evoke not a lost culture but an affirmation of the irrational against colonial reason: j'ai lasse la patience des missionnaires insulte les bienfaiteurs de Thumanite. Dene Tyr.Dene Sidon. Adore le Zambeze. L'etendue de ma perversite me confond! (C, p. 94) The poet adopts masks in a gesture of uncontrolled, than as an assertion of identity. In a later passage, own attempts to pose as an African hero:
non, nous n'avons jamais ete amazones du roi de Dahomey,

perverse defiance rather the poet also mocks his

huit cents chameaux, ni docteurs a Tomboucrou Askia leGrand etant roi, ni architectes de Djenne, ni Madhis, ni guerriers. (C, p. 104) The poet stresses his difference from this series of African heroes, and the toAfrican roots turns out to have been a gesture of recreation 'return' putative rather than a movement back to an origin. If negritude in this way already has something of the creative mondialite' then it also transcends conven later celebrated by Glissant and Chamoiseau, a as its result of tional topography relationship with the cosmos. In the essay to his writing, Cesaire affirms this larger dimension 'Poesie et connaissance' arguing:
toute a cesse sans poesie, grande strictement d'etre jamais humaine renoncer pour commencer a un tres a etre humaine, moment mysterieux a etre veritablement cosmique.12

ni princes

de Ghana

avec

in the Cahier, the black man not only journeys across the Concomitantly, listed above, but also enters into contact with the world to the locations In the section in which the affirmation of the of forces the elements. greater desire to partir' is repeated, the poet also asserts: je retrouverais le secret des grandes communications et des grandes combustions. Je dirais orage. Jedirais fleuve. Jedirais tornade. Jedirais feuille. Jedirais arbre. Je serais mouille de toutes les pluies, humecte de toutes les rosees. (C, p. 86) This invocation of the elements is importantly also a call for communion: enter into harmony with the poet would speak the language of nature and in is relation to the sun, and conceived universe. also earth The the natural terre oil tout est libre et tones Cesaire evokes Ta in distinctly Baudelairean terre' (C, p. 86). The
1973), p. 119.

fraternel, ma
12 'Poesie (Paris: Presence

line contains
and

intonations
Cesaire:

of Baudelaire's
Vhomme

et connaissance', Africaine,

in L. Kesteloot

B. Kotchy,

Aime

et Vceuvre

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JANE HIDDLESTON Invitation

93

au voyage', but ironizes the exotic celebration of remote lands, and affirms the black man's integration into the universe as well as the forcefully secure to cosmic harmony. Similarly, in a later that of his power language un a de the remarks: force passage poet regarder les arbres je suis devenu un a au suis force de devenu bruissant arbre', and, penser Congo | je Congo

de forets et de fleuves' (C, p. 94). The poet has the ability to transform himself into his environment, to become one with the natural world. Examples of such transformations abound in the Cahiery and are relevant formy current

purposes

because they portray black subjectivity not as ethnically or culturally as invented through its expansive relation with the universe. but specific, at all in the Cahier, it is in the sense that it If negritude is championed man a moves as relational who territo between subject figures the black is ries and remains in touch with natural and elemental forces. Colonialism a a in that and constrains is force isolates that way precisely neatly encapsu lated by the image of Toussaint the Cahier constantly balances Louverture imprisoned alone in the Jura. Yet against one another images of expansion and explodes the constraints of colonialism precisely

containment, and negritude through its evocation of the black man's dynamic relation with the world and in remembering In addition, the cosmos. the death of his grandfather the cadaverise' (C, p. 128) as poet observes Ta vieille negritude progressivement if to put an end to outworn notions of black identity, conceived under the patronizing gaze of the slave-master who affirms 'c'etait un tres bon negre' (C, p. 128). Rather than adhering to the term negritude, which might retain that tone of condescension, the poet also proposes 'negraille', which 'retrouve dans son sang repandu le gout amer de la liberte' (C, p. 130). 'Negraille' is not a determined identity but a symbol of resistance. It is a term that is never or in the poem, but that emerges at the described clearly defined culminating moment where the slaves rise up and take over the slave ship: la negraille assise
inattendument debout

debout debout debout debout debout debout debout et

libre.

dans la cale dans les cabines sur le pont dans le vent sous le soleil dans le sang

(C, p. 130) If the danger with 'negritude' is that it might ing, essentialized images of the 'bon negre', fall into repeating the patroniz 'negraille' is nothing other than

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94

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

mation

a force of contestation. Indeed, this gesture of contestation without the affir of a content is what continues to define Cesaire's later definition of sur in la his ?Discours negritude negritude':
Elle

elle est sursaut, et sursaut de dignite. Elle est refus, je veux dire refus de l'oppression.
est combat, cest-a-dire combat contre l'inegalite. Elle est aussi revoke.13

and his confrontation with the elements: standing up to the white man, the black man faces the sun and the wind, as if these in turn the stale, racist channel his energy. The poet throws back at the colonizer the environment the wind to sweep away inferiority and commands images of the black man's old essentialisms that have no place in the construction of 'negraille'.

The notion of 'negraille' in the Cahier also offers a vision of black subjecti vity as a statement of revolt rather than a specific identity. Furthermore, that contestation brings with it the affirmation of the black man's integration into

An Ethical Humanism in the obituaries as a founding father of negritude', Cesaire presents in the Cahier a vision of black subjectivity constructed by travel and by contact with the world.14 Cesaire's version of negritude is emphatically not bound up and otherness. In this sense, as with a strict racial identity but with movement for Senghor, negritude is already a humanism and any reference to the particu lar is conceived only as a reinforcement of the particular man's participation Hailed himself argued that the particular should necessarily to the universal, and he supported neither a narrow in relation be understood nor an form of particularity empty, emaciated universality: in the universal. Cesaire

mon concept de l'universel est celle d'un universel riche de tout le particulier, riche de tous les particuliers, approfondissement et coexistence de tous les particuliers.15 Even more, Cesaire's vision of negritude, an example of the particular, was interactions rather itself all along a relational one, shaped by the black man's an a a it is also than by his roots. If it is 're-enracinement', 'depassement' and as Wilder enquete d'une nouvelle et plus large fraternite'.16 As critics such hu the danger with Cesaire's all-encompassing to undermine his awareness earlier in the poem

have pointed out, perhaps is that it appears manism

13 'Discours

sur le colonialisme', suivi de 'Discours sur la negritude' (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1955), P- 84. 14 See 21 April 2008. Cesaire is introduced as e.g. James Ferguson's obituary in the Guardian, intellectual and poet who was a founding father of the negritude movement': 'Martinican politician, 12 June 2009]. [accessed <http://www.guardian.co.Uk/world/2008/apr/21/3> 15 'Lettre a Maurice 24 October Thorez', L'Humanite, 1956 <http://www.humanite.fr/La-lettre 12 June 2009]. de-Aime-Cesaire-a-Maurice-Thorez> [accessed 16 suivi de 'Discours sur la negritude', p. 92. 'Discours sur le colonialisme',

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JANE HIDDLESTON of the tension between

95

it is significant that black identity is diasporic, and its relational Nevertheless, structure resembles that of the open-ended at the humanity also championed end of the Cahier. The isolated poet discovers the multidimensionality of any black community and uses this directly to conceive a broader, human rela

the universalizing and the particularizing drives of is not to French colonialism. it conceive the Cahiers important Certainly, conclusion as an effacement of the specificity of black lived experience, for ex ample under slavery. The affirmation of the black man's relational subjectivity does not undermine the distinctiveness of his history as a colonized slave.17

and diasporic which notions Humanism

tionality that would preserve each subject's singular difference, regardless of race. Moreover, the expansiveness of both Cesaire's version of negritude and of his humanism is compelling since these announce an ethics that recurs in postcolonial thinking many years later. The persistence of the term 'human' in the work of Cesaire and long aftermight be explained by the open-ended structure of a postcolonial in 'humanity', and by the manner of the human fuel what we might call postcolonial ethics. has undoubtedly been criticized and denounced time and again

term 'humanite' as the starting-point for an ethical collectivity or solidarity. criticized Sartre's identification First, it is significant thatHeidegger famously of existentialism as a form of humanism in his own 'Letter on Humanism', because is either grounded in a or is itselfmade 'every humanism metaphysics to be the ground of one'.18 Humanism is not vilified per se, but because exist ing incarnations of humanist thought are inevitably shaped by the mould of In the dignity ofman, Sartre and the humanist tra metaphysics. championing dition more generally finish by calls 'ek-sistence', overlooking what Heidegger the truth that we are given over to we For do not create Being. Heidegger are both inside and outside and manipulate but beings, Being. Humanism, as acting according to Heidegger, has tended to privilege man as manipulator,
an

themselves, continue to in yet many thinkers, including Sartre and Derrida sist that the notion of humanity retains enormous critical force. I want now and Levinas on the question briefly to trace the debate between Heidegger of humanism, and to use this dispute to conceive Cesaire's retention of the

in the history of philosophy, but both the term and the concept of some kind of shared humanity persist with astonishing tenacity. The Eurocentric as well as the Declaration humanism behind the colonial mission des droits de Vhomme is vilified by left-wing intellectuals from Sartre to Derrida, and

17 In the 'Discours sur la describes the black community not in terms of negritude' Cesaire as 'une communaute d'exclusion subie, une communaute identity, but d'oppression imposee, une communaute de discrimination profonde. Bien entendu, et c'est a son honneur, en commu naute aussi de resistance continue, de lutte opiniatre pour la liberte et d'indomptable elegance' (pp. 81-82). 18 Martin Heidegger, 'Letter on Humanism', inMartin Basic Writings, ed. by David Heidegger: Farrell Krell (London: 1993), pp. 213-65 Routledge, (p. 225).

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96 on objects,

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

rather than as delivered to describe

humanity Time Heidegger explains that relations with others are part of what constitutes with. Mitsein means we come not into the world and then encounter others, but are do Being:

the collective

over to Being. Instead of using a notion of nature of ek-sistence, then, in Being and that Dasein, being there, is always Mitsein, being

not distinguish oneself?those among whom one is too'.20 Others are but he there for spends little time considering the encounter Heidegger, simply with that Other. For Levinas, on the other hand, the ethical relation with the does Other takes precedence over the freedom of Being. Moreover, what ontology obscures, and what ethics requires, is attention not to an other that can simply into the self, but to the absolute, intractable Other. Against be incorporated the 'totality of the ontological an 'infinity', it names an excess

'by already constructed by our collective sharing of the world. For Heidegger, reason of this with-like [mithaften] Being-in-the-world, the world is always is a with-world [Mitwelt]. the one that I share with Others. The world of Dasein s does not elevate man to Mitsein is Others/19 Being-in Heidegger Being-with a metaphysical status but posits Being as necessarily relational. to task for in turn takes Heidegger In Totalite et infini, however, Levinas over of relation with the Other. the ethical the freedom Being privileging on asserts that Being Indeed, although in the passages Being-with Heidegger is constituted by relationality, he only briefly reflects on the presence of the Other and identifies that Other as 'those from whom, for the most part, one

self, then, Levinas argues that this Other is that iswholly resistant to knowledge or assi milation and that needs to be respected for its impenetrability. Furthermore, humanism, Levinas explicitly returns to though also critical of metaphysical in de Vautre homme. In argu VHumanisme his the concept of the human to the Other, Levinas asserts: 'personne ne peut ing for increased attention rester en soi. L'humanite de Fhomme, la subjectivite, est une responsabilite les autres, une vulnerabilite extreme.'21 And although Levinas does not argue explicitly for the ethical implications of the notion of humanity, he the ethical nature of redeploys the term precisely with the aim of reinforcing our relationality. We are human, then, to the extent that we depend upon and the other's humanity are responsible for others. Even more, in recognizing we recognize him or her as a vulnerable Other to whom we have an ethical pour term 'humanite' is invoked pre thought it is striking that the the necessity for an ethical moments he where emphasizes cisely at those as If Heidegger's Mitsein other. to the other of the relation understanding
and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Being and Time, trans, by John Macquarrie p. 155. 20 Being and Time, p. 154. 21 de I'autre homme (Paris: Fata Morgana, VHumanisme 1972), p. 97 19 Blackwell, 1962),

obligation. In Cesaire's

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jane

hiddleston

97

it is chosification', is condemned because colonization it denies the other his humanity precisely because of his difference. The colonizer fixes and denigrates the other, making him into an object or thing, and this denies the dynamism and plurality of humanity. 'Chosification' is a negation of the a as Other to the dynamic, intractable Other and reduces human mobility confines of a static category.22 Equally, in the Cahier the poet laments: for example, ce pays cria pendant des siecles que nous sommes des betes brutes; que les pulsations de Thumanite s'arretent aux portes de la negrerie. (C, p. 104) Slaves were subjugated because, with their black skin, they were not con ceived as fully human. Furthermore, on the following page Cesaire describes et the negre on the tramway, perceived by the giggling women as 'comique

an ethical lacks that ethical dimension, the return to 'humanite' announces sameness not of As of but difference. with negritude, the as recognition common a no an is in sertion of affirmation of way humanity for Cesaire resemblance, but the requirement that the isolated self conceive himself in relation to others that may be different. In the ?Discours sur le colonialisme',

laid5, in terms that suggest they too dehumanize him. Not a man but a 'negre', his body is torn apart by poverty, and that poverty has made him a distorted, jumbled collection of features and limbs devoid of humanity: elle avait creuse Torbite, l'avait fardee d'un fard de poussiere et de chassie melees. Elle avait tendu Tespace vide entre l'accrochement solide des machoires et les pommettes d'une vieille joue decatie. Elle avait plante dessus les petits pieux luisants d'une barbe de plusieurs jours. Elle avait affole le coeur,voute le dos. (C, p. 108) eyes are replaced by dust and the heart is unhinged, as ifhe were no living being. It is the unfamiliar form of his body that is denigrated and ridiculed; it is his difference that it is comical and as well as the ugly, marks of his poverty and oppression. In a further irony,moreover, Cesaire's use of the terms comique et laid' refers back to Baudelaire's 'L'Albatros', the but beautiful bird for reaffirms freedom, and this comparison clumsy longing the black man's search for freedom. The poet's admission of his complicity with the giggling women, together with his use of the French intertext, never The man's longer a well

theless stresses the weight and prevalence of colonial and racist ideology, as as the that the educated is limited. force knowledge poet's contestatory His revolt lies in the affirmation of the black man's rather than in humanity, the (false) claim for a shared black history. Cesaire's assertion of the humanity of the oppressed is, then, at the same time a recognition of human at It is the diversity. turning-point, when the shifts from of the of to an affir poem away description misery Martinique mation of resistance, that the term 'homme' first enters the lexicon of the
22 'Discours sur le colonialisme, suivi de 'Discours sur la negritude', p. 23.

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98

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism of a

poem, and signifies both the alterity of diverse others and the persistence minimal ethical obligation. The poet affirms:
serais un homme-juif un homme-cafre un

comme il y a des hommes-hyenes et des hommes-pantheres, je

un homme-hindou-de-Calcutta homme-de-Harlem-qui-ne-vote-pas.

(C, p. 84) is alluding here Gregson Davis argues that Cesaire of donning animal masks for ritual performances, to the African tradition

and certainly the poet is suggesting that Jews, Blacks, and Hindus have been treated as animals.23 the repetition of the term 'homme' also implies that, despite Nevertheless, the diversity of these oppressed others, their shared humanity necessitates a relation that has been denied. The labels 'juif, cafre', 'hindou-de-Calcutta', and 'Harlem-qui-ne-vote-pas' reduce the individual to categories, even sub categories, of humanity, and yet the persistent repetition of 'homme' serves to reinforce the humanity that the label is used to denigrate. The poet goes on to protest: Thomme-famine, l'homme-torture on pouvait a l'homme-insulte, ? rouer moment saisir le de le coups, le tuer parfaitement le n'importe quel tuer' (C, p. 84). He stresses the way in which the sorts of label quoted above are used to justify dehumanizing treatment even though the repeated term the ethical violation 'homme' signals implied by such treatment. Furthermore, even in the next few lines the term 'homrne' finishes by disappearing:
un un un homme-juif homme-pogrom

un chiot

mendigot.

(C, p. 86)

the humanity of 'homme' It is as if the labels 'juif' and pogrom' undermine until all that is left is the animal: the beggar is not even considered to be a man. affirmation of humanity upholds diversity, then, but not reductive Cesaire's the violence The insistence on the term 'homme' emphasizes categorization. overuse and abuse of identity categories. of the stereotyping brought by the The closing pages of the Cahier also serve to elucidate the relationality of a disap both black identity and humanity. It is here thatWilder perceives tension between of the the from withdrawal particularity exploration pointing and universality undertaken elsewhere in the poem, since black identity is in humanism. But if it is true that Cesaire cosmological tegrated into Cesaire's as contradictory here, once again does not posit negritude and humanism
23 Aime Cesaire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, i997)> P- 29

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JANE HIDDLESTON this is because

99

of the black both concepts for him imply an understanding to in be the world. Black relation experience may historically specific, subject but black subjectivity is created out of its contacts with the world and with humanity as a whole, and even more, it is the celebration of these contacts that serves as a force of resistance against the constraints of colonialism. The poet now beseeches: lie-moi de tes vastes bras a l'argile lumineuse liema noire vibration au nombril meme du monde
lie, lie-moi, fraternite apre.

(C, p. 134) The poetic self is integrated into the very stuffof the earth, and his black iden tity is connected with the core of the world as ifby an umbilical cord. Black as well as to the subjectivity is also global, linked to the history of humanity natural world. At the same time, moreover, this affirmation does not serve as a final apotheosis or endpoint. The final assertion, cjeveux pecher maintenant la en son immobile verrition!' (C, p. 134), evokes at langue malefique de la nuit once stasis and movement, movement in stasis, but not completion.24 The in is not a culmination but sets both of and humanism terpenetration negritude as a result of their contact with in both evolve motion; concepts continually

for example, we read 'tenez, je ne suis plus qu'un homme, aucune degradation, aucun crachat ne le conturbe' (C, p. 118), and this suggests that the poet's status as a man is the one thing that resists the humiliation he suffers. Reduced by oppression and exploitation, he is nevertheless aman, and, as forHolocaust writers such as Robert Antelme, basic humanity is what the oppressor tries

the other and with the world. For Brent Hayes Edwards, the Cahier repeatedly uses structures of anaphora, but these are also always unfinished, and the poem's ending can also be seen as signalling process rather than product.25 Apparently moving towards a Hegelian dialectic, Cesaire never completes the lies in his refusal to synthesis. Indeed, the very ethics of Cesaire's humanism fix and pigeonhole difference in themanner of the colonizer and slave-owner. An endpoint would serve only to establish a newly static form. If Cesaire clings to a notion of humanity as part of an ethical resistance to colonial oppression, then, it is because the term implies diversity together an with ethical relationality. It recommends both proximity and separation. The term 'homme', however, is in itself pared down inmeaning; it names a essence or but without substance. Towards the end of the poem, collectivity

24 on the link between Cesaire's comments 'immobile verrition' and Breton's James Arnold fixe'. Reminiscent also of Rimbaud, the image conveys the idea of holding onto a 'explosante moment of pure energy and dynamism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of (see Modernism Aime Cesaire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 167). 25 See 'Aime Cesaire and the Syntax of Influence', Research inAfrican Literatures, 36.2 (Summer 2005), 1-18.

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100 to eradicate

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

but cannot. This humanity, however, has nothing more than a a relationality without content. Man minimal signification, in that it implies is not defined by positive characteristics; he is, forMartin Crowley, Thomme sans', the 'sans' indicating 'tout ce qu'il faut soustraire a Thomme pour qu'il soit ce qu'il est\26 Crowley also argues that what is common to humanity is finitude?all too, then, vulnerability. In Cesaire resistant force of Thomme' affirmations of humanity and of the propose no the recognition of shared identity other than the relationality that demands that we share is our human

in 'Le Pur-sang, from the others difference and vulnerability. Furthermore, Les armes miraculeuses> humanity is asserted bymeans of the affirmation 'mais moi homme! The 'rien que' here again implies that the rien qu'homme!'.27 term 'homme' brings a minimal definition: it is not a substance but a demand for the sort of ethical treatment denied to black people and slaves. The human retains resonance

precisely because of the term's very sparsity. This attempt to hold on to the notion of humanity as a pared-down, open an ethical relation is, of course, one that risks failure, as all too of signifier often the 'human' is confused with the more exclusive term 'man'. Jacques Derrida's Politiques de Vamitie is a systematic exegesis of the androcentrism and of the blurring of underlying the history of the concept of democracy, in not is Derrida's mentioned study, and community with fraternity. Cesaire a to 'homme' yet he is certainly guilty of troubling slippage from 'humanite'

yet the coupling of some of these images with evocations of virility clearly excludes the feminine. The assertion in the Cahier that 'je ne suis plus qu'un homme' is immediately preceded by 'ma priere virile', and indeed, as we have 'au nombril meme du seen, the closing image of the black man connected results in a call for fraternity. Cesaire also uses images of masculine monde' et l'entete desir', to convey the physical muscular strength, of 'la male soif from a shared brotherhood distress caused by the male poet's alienation (C, p. 88). The critic Hedy Kalikoff has usefully set such images in context, its apparent ethic of masculine and argued that the poem also undermines heroism.28 The claim for representativity expressed in the dictum 'ma bouche sera la bouche des malheurs qui n'ont point de bouche' (C, p. 88), for example,
sans (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Lignes, L'Homme 27 'Le in Aime in Les Armes miraculeuses, Pur-sang', Annette Smith (Berkeley and and Eshleman by Clayton 1983), P- 96. 28 in Aime Cesaire's 'Gender, Genre, and Geography 18 (1995), 492-505 26 2009), p. 15. Cesaire: The Collected Los Angeles: Cahier d'un University

If 'humanite' designates nothing but that finishes by privileging masculinity. a common vulnerability that must be respected, the term 'homme' loses that In addition, the poet's in its implicit insistence on the masculine. openness content, and affirmations of his status as man may explicitly stress a minimal

Poetry, ed and trans, of California Press, natal\ Callaloo,

retour au pays

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JANE HIDDLESTON iswithdrawn in the exclamation mon

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heroisme, quelle farce!' (C, p. 108). The poet knows, after the episode on the tram, that he cannot speak in the name of all suffering black people. Despite this internal self-questioning, however, there remains an imbalance between Cesaire's open humanist ethics and his an insistence on manhood. is ethical term, but perhaps 'man' slips Humanity into the exclusionism that humanism 'humanite' The relation between vigilance,

Levinas, and yet Fanon's closing question precisely stresses how the notion of humanity brings an awareness of the simultaneous proximity and unfa miliarity of the other: 'pourquoi tout simplement ne pas essayer de toucher l'autre, de sentir l'autre, de me reveler l'autre?'.30 Fanon urges a form of collective solidarity predicated on a minimal, dynamic notion of 'humanite': he calls for a visceral contact and with the other as other. Similarly, Sen as a an identification of humanism involves ghor's negritude understanding of connections between subjects, and with the world: he also promoted a ' et "communion" du de "confrontation", "participation", sujet l'objet'.31 Much later, Edward Said closely identifies postcolonial critique with humanism, and once again connotes an ethical encounter and humanism engagement with difference: 'humanism is the exertion of one's faculties in language in order to

thinking.29 Yet Fanon's theorization of the sur precisely includes a reflection on prejudices the man's black and his of the black man's conception virility, rounding of such stereotypes. Moreover, it self-affirmation requires the transcendence is important formy current purposes that here too the concept of the human brings the obligation to respect and take responsibility for the other's vulnera a ethics. Fanon and, indeed, bility in way curiously reminiscent of Levinasian Cesaire privilege freedom in a way that distances their thinking from that of alienation of the colonized

then, and certainly starts to evaporate. initial concept of Thomme' virility implicit in Cesaire's in the closing pages of both Peau Fanon's powerful humanist contestation blancs and Les Damnes de la terre is one that at times shares noire, masques the masculinist bias of Cesaire's

seeks precisely to disallow. and 'homme' might be treated with greater in later versions of postcolonial humanism the

understand, reinterpret, and grapple with the products of language in history, other languages and other histories'.32 A grand and yet curiously empty term, it then, 'humanity' continues to hold sway in postcolonial thought because at once of collectivity and of irreducible otherness. requires an understanding A concept that risks or backfiring by falling into excessive generalization, by
29 It is for example, that Fanon vilifies the black woman's love for frequently recognized, the white man in Mayotte but expresses more Je suis martiniquaise, Capecia's sympathy for the alienation of Jean Veneuse in Rene Maran's Un homme pareil aux autres (see Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Seuil, 1995)). 30 Peau noire, masques blancs, p. 188. 31 Sedar Senghor, 'Negritude et humanisme', Liberte I (Paris: Seuil, 1954), p. 9. Leopold 32 Humanism and Democratic Criticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), p. 28.

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102

Aime

Cesaire

and Postcolonial

Humanism

as Cesaire's a hidden it intermittent androcentrism), masking agenda (such nevertheless persists because it gives Mitsein an ethics. Humanism remains a defining concept in postcolonial thought, despite the term. The of notion of humanity as far this the of ageing bagginess dynamism back as Cesaire's Cahier perhaps offers insight into its endurance. For Cesaire, humanity iswhat the colonizer and slave-owner sought to eradicate, and yet it is precisely in affirming his humanity that the black man revolts against colonial oppression. This championing of humanity is not a turn against the a continuation of the diaspora and ethical connec of but premisses negritude, at heart of the black tivity subjectivity despite the tyranny of the slave trade. It draws attention to our universal vulnerability was denied though this respect iswhat under colonialism as least 'humain', and colonizer defied. Cesaire's respect. to black people in specific ways and slavery, the assertion of the slave as 'homme', or at reinforces the universal ethical obligation that the master but also calls formutual

And

humanism risked toppling into androcentrism, and his explicitly virile images of man suggest that he struggled to maintain he sought. An anxious, solitary figure, Ce the openness and expansiveness saire at times hastily affirms an unthinking solidarity that excludes feminine it difference, despite his impassioned desire to reach the other. Nevertheless, as in a is perhaps significant that feminist thinker such Judith Butler should For close to some aspects of that of Cesaire. the end reaffirm a humanism Butler, human life is grievable life', one whose vulnerability and value have been recognized. Most importantly, for Butler the condition of humanity is one in which we are, from the start, given over to the other'.33 What defines on each other. Our our humanity is our vulnerability and our dependence to violence, but also inherent relation with the other 'makes us vulnerable to another range of touch, a range that includes the eradication of our being at the one end, and the physical support for our lives, at the other'.34 The in postcolonial of humanism thought, then, perhaps results from its ability to figure the collective while requiring that the other be conceived into the trap of confusing ethically. Cesaire may have intermittently fallen remains the desire endeavour his but the focus of humanity with masculinity, as ethical This to celebrate humanity the sharing of differences. relationality endurance is the uneasy but urgent antidote to the solitude and isolation lamented by the man. Cesaire's the poetic persona and used by critics to define Cesaire a on to the construction the is road humanist solidarity halting step diasporic of a postcolonial
33

ethical criticism. Oxford

(London and New

Exeter

College,
Gender

Jane Hiddleston
York: Routledge, 2004), p. 23.

Undoing 34 Ibid.

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