Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire is a Francophone poet and author from Martinique, associated with the Negritude movement of the early to mid-twentieth century. He is the author of Discourse on Colonialism, which was originally published in 1955 for the prominent literary magazine of the Negritude movement, Présence Africaine.

According to Robin Kelley’s introduction to the edition of Discourse on Colonialism used in this guide, Césaire was born on June 26, 1913 in the town of Basse-Pointe, Martinique. He attended a French school in Fort-de-France, and eventually moved to Paris. There, in Paris, he met Léopold Sédar Senghor from Senegal. Together, they would eventually become some of the most famous activists, theorists, and writers associated with the Negritude movement. Some of the ideas of Negritude, most notably the importance of revisiting and understanding the history of African civilizations, is on display in Discourse on Colonialism...