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Paths to Decolonization in the French Caribbean:
Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon
Naregh Galoustian
Naregh Galoustian is a 4
th
year student majoring in History and Political Science. He
previously studied French and Russian literature in Italy. His current focus is on the
intersections between the intellectual and political history of the Caribbean and Latin
America, especially in terms of nation, race and citizenship. He strives to explore the
shared experiences found in history in order to connect diverse and apparently
divergent areas. He is currently working as a project manager at an international
media development organization focusing on human rights.
Abstract: In the Caribbean, national independence traditionally meant formal de-
colonization. However, the French Caribbean opted for integration rather than
separation from France. Did Martinique and Guadaloupe accept the persistence of
colonialism by refusing to gain sovereignty? Although it might seem so, the decision
to be integrated within the French departmental system in 1946 stemmed from a
longer political history of competing ideas regarding citizenship. In order to better
understand this choice and its limits, historical and cultural developments will be
explored by referring in broad terms to the thought of two Martinicans: Aimé Césaire
and Frantz Fanon.
The French Caribbean has experienced polarized paths to
decolonization: Haiti with its abolishment of slavery and self-
proclaimed „Black‟ Republic in 1804, and Martinique and
Guadeloupe voting for full integration into the French administrative
system of departments in 1946. Whereas the first example points to a
forceful and drastic decolonization precognizant of the „natural‟ path
to independence featuring most of the Caribbean countries in the
20th century, the second appears instead as consent to prolonged
colonialism. However, the latter choice is more complicated than it
might indeed appear. In fact, it is the result of a long struggle
between races corresponding to social classes upholding or not the
concept of civic nationhood promoted by the French Revolution,
which emerged as the founding principles of French Republicanism.
The push for integration called for egalitarianism and rejected the
hierarchical and racist colonial legacy of plantocracy. Nevertheless,
this particular political evolution in the French Caribbean was not
harmless. On the contrary, it originated from a series of
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controversies and dilemmas (while producing its own controversies),
embracing not only the same proponents of departmentalization, but
also those who had never considered such an option as a viable
decolonization path. Concepts of race and nation in relation to
colonization and decolonization are still current, and were notably
present in the intellectual works of great figures such as Aimé
Césaire and Frantz Fanon: two Martinican „rebels‟ fighting against
colonization who embraced different conceptions of decolonization.
In order to understand the political evolution experienced
by Martinique, an exploration of its pre-1946 society is necessary.1
Besides having the same features of Caribbean colonial societies such
as an extractive economic schema founded on slavery, labour
exploitation, as well as persisting racial social differentiation, the
role of the metropolitan state as a mediator of social conflicts was
peculiar to the French Caribbean. Social dissent regularly erupted on
the onset of the sugar plantation working seasons, and always
resulted in violent repression on the part of the authorities.
However, the French State, especially after the abolishment of
slavery in 1848, while still preserving the economic and political
interests of the békés (white elite), increasingly played a mediating
role in ensuring a „social‟ peace between conflicting parties. Playing
such a role was made possible by the widening gap between the
political outlook embodied in the old plantocracy (based on strict
racial differentiation) and the Republican political discourse (based
on the egalitarian principles of the French Revolution).
The very struggle between reactionary conservatism and
republican democracy that marked French political history since the
Great Revolution until Vichy – a struggle which could be argued still
exists today in the form of civic versus ethnic nationhood – was the
dialogical opposition between the Creole elite and the centre‟s
government, as well as between the elite and the local discriminated
population. Whereas the conservative Creole elite leaned on political
autonomy from the métropole to assert its own socio-political
influence over the Caribbean territories, the supporters of a more
equal society upheld the civic nationhood principles that the French
Republic embodied. This peripheral opposition of visions indeed
translated in their attitude toward the centre: one stressed autonomy
from it, the other, for inclusion. Therefore, the departmentalization
1 For the historical review of pre-1946 Martinique, see Alain-Philippe Blérald, La
question nationale en Guadeloupe et Martinique, (Paris : L‟Harmattan, 1988).
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choice that the Martinicans overwhelmingly voted for does not
appear that paradoxical based on the above rationale. All the more
that this choice was made apparent in the immediate aftermath of
World War II, that is, after the Vichy regime had tangibly expressed
its social „revolutionary‟ approach in the Caribbean. This was done
through an overt racial politics of coercive imposition of French
white supremacy in all aspects of life, including in institutional,
economic and cultural realms. Even the black middle class‟ status,
which had managed to carve out its own social and economic space
in the Caribbean, was undermined during this period, hence the
need for a more „inclusive‟ stance toward the centre so as to prevent
such threats from emerging again. The factor of mimicking French
values determined social exclusion or inclusion and animated the
choice of departmentalization, as a way to attain egalitarianism
according to a civic meaning of citizenship and to fully reject the
colonial social relationship based on purely racial supremacy. This
willingness to be included into the colonizer‟s administrative state
system and its civic egalitarian foundation did not arise, however,
without first attempting to culturally assert the importance and the
value of being „black‟. Aimé Césaire‟s négritude movement can, in
part, be interpreted this way.
This literary and broadly cultural movement that Césaire
initiated as a student in Paris during the 1930s with other French
„colonized‟ nationals, such as Damas and Senghor, is generally seen
as the attempt to construct a universalistic black consciousness,
regardless of local peculiarities defining a given nation.2 It went far
beyond the „negrophilia‟ which featured prominently in France at
that time, with culturally simplistic denotations defining blackness
(i.e. “inherent rhythm” etc.).3 The African ancestry of the former
slaves as a shared legacy, and the historical subjection to the
Eurocentric socio-political and economic order produced by
colonization, were both pointed to as defining features of black
identity. In order to counteract and confront the white „construction‟,
négritude‟s proponents claimed that a „nègre‟ construction had to be
carried out. The aim of such a construction was threefold: not only to
refute the claimed inferiority of the black vis-à-vis the white, reject
2 Pierre Bouvier, Aimé Césaire et Frantz Fanon : Portraits de décolonisés, (Paris :
Les Belles Lettres, 2010), pp 59-75. Césaire‟s poetical „manifesto‟ is Cahier d’un
retour au pays natal (1939)
3 David Macey, “Frantz Fanon, or the Difficulty of Being Martinican” in History
Workshop Journal Issue 58, 2004, pp 212, 214
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the colonial social relationship, but also to eventually neutralize such
an opposition in view of a universalistic notion of citizenry. The
latter aspect was obviously considered to be more utopian than
actually feasible. However, building the foundations for a black
legitimacy and equality in terms of political rights and peculiarity in
terms of cultural identity, detached from the inherent racial euro-
centrism, was certainly a pressing and useful enterprise. This
attempt of defining „negritude‟ however triggered many criticisms
among black intellectuals, particularly by Frantz Fanon.
Not only was négritude seen as a white-derived exercise to
define what white was not, but it was also deemed useless in that it
did not effectively attempt to define what a Caribbean identity
meant. Fanon pointed to blacks who had been „assimilated‟ by
whites, embracing their set of values, therefore implying their own
inferiority. In some ways, he was attacking the very social milieu
from which he derived. For Fanon, cultural attempts to define
blackness followed the white set of values and were also too naïve in
their promotion of a primordial black pureness before colonization
had tarnished it. This critique was made stronger as it specifically
referred to the general inability to achieve true independence from
the colonizer by having opted for integration. Fanon‟s Black Skins
White Masks was published in 1952 after the departmentalization of
Martinique, and the experience of a growing cultural and
institutional assimilation, otherwise seen as a persisting colonization
by its critics.
Fanon certainly was not seeking to define a specifically
Martinican national identity but rather he believed that
decolonization could only be possible through a social revolution,
lest a replication of colonial patterns and practices continue. Fanon
of course famously held that resorting to violence could be used as a
vehicle to achieve this.4 In this view, the natural agent for change was
the proletarian class, both rural and urban, because as discriminated
and oppressed subjects, they were untouched by the white
assimilationist trend of conformism. However, Fanon was not the
only one criticizing the effects of assimilation, as the leading
proponent of departmentalization, Césaire, rejected the move
favoring more autonomy. Dealing directly and locally with
Martinican politics, by acting both as mayor of Fort-de-France
4 Claudia Wright, “National Liberation, Consciousness, Freedom and Frantz
Fanon” in History of European Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 1-3 (August 1992), p432
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(1945-2001) and deputy at the National Assembly (1946-1993),
Césaire in contrast to Fanon had a greater stake in the political
evolution of departmentalization. He chose first to leave the
Communist Party in 1956. He did so following the Soviet repression
in Hungary, but his political act was directed especially against the
lack of attention that the Communist Party was dedicating to the
increasing problem of national identity. The French centralizing
State asserted even further its institutional trends of harmonization
of all its departments by denying cultural peculiarities. If this trend
was felt already as a threat to particular metropolitan regions such as
Corse or even Bretagne, the „nègre’ Césaire considered it even more
dangerous to the Caribbean peculiarity of Martinique.
Martinique as a product of colonialism and a multi-ethnic
polity (clearly not predominantly white), geographically distinct and
distant, was still treated without any cultural exception. French
assimilation tended to override all distinctions by offering a strict
Eurocentric model of education and consumption. Moreover, the
paternalist attitude of the French government was expressed by the
exclusively economically oriented perspective on Martinique, a
strategy which did not take into consideration cultural autonomy.
Giscard d‟Estaing‟s discourse well exemplifies such attitudes, which
reflected the Republican and Gaullist right that upheld the principle
of the French State‟s centralizing uniformity, flattening all forms of
peculiarity.5
Economic subsidization that did not actually promote
economic self-sustainability further deepened a dependency,
reminiscent of colonial patterns of centre-periphery relationships.
Although such trends towards assimilation were increasingly felt as a
continuation of colonialism, Césaire never outright supported
independence, as he did not consider Martinican national
consciousness sufficiently mature. What he opted for instead was a
political language leaning towards more autonomy in the sense of
regionalization and decentralization. His support for the Socialists
through his Parti Progressiste Martiniquaise (PPM) is evidence of
such an autonomist discourse in contrast with conservative
assimilation or radical independence. However, after Mitterrand‟s
5 A-P. Blérald, La question nationale en Guadeloupe et Martinique, p120.
« Naturellement, la poursuite du développement économique et social, c‟est la
tâche prioritaire à laquelle la France, avec ses citoyens des Antilles et de la
Guyane, s‟est désormais consacrée. »
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election in 1981, he chose to „freeze‟ the autonomous discourse by
supporting the socialist government in its quest for economic
development for Martinique in his famous “Discourse on
Moratorium”.6 The separation between the poet of négritude and the
pragmatic politician was obvious, albeit coherent in that Césaire
supported greater equality by demanding greater peculiarity within
the same institutional framework.
Such a perspective was not one echoed by Fanon, who had,
as already mentioned, a more radical understanding of the
relationship between the colonized and colonizer. Not only did
Fanon refuse to support a „nègre‟ definition of national
consciousness (as it hinted to an inverted racism instead of
embracing a „Creole‟ identity), but he also rejected the normative
hope for civic universalism through revolution. This perspective
derives from his own work as a psychiatrist, where he had the
opportunity to test the psychological maladies of colonized patients,
undermined in their very essence by the colonial legacy of social
organization. They had been „alienated‟, not only by the arrival of the
colonizers, but also by their persistent disguised colonization
through cultural assimilation, for example. The very act of speaking
an imposed language was a submissive act confirming an unbalanced
relationship, obliterating all forms of indigenous expression.7 For
Fanon, the only way to remedy this alienated state was to reject the
colonizing element, and that could only have been possible through
liberation, not simply nationalistic but also mental.
Whereas Fanon supported revolution, even a violent one if
necessary, Césaire rejected it as merely a heroic moment which had
to be followed by realistic calculations regarding political and
economic survival.8 Was Césaire himself so assimilated that he
upheld the French „white‟ discourse of black Martinicans‟ inherent
inability to survive? Although one could claim that he was pragmatic
6 William F.S Miles, “Metaphysical considerations can come later, but the people
have children to feed” in French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter
2009), p2
7 C. Wright, “National Liberation, Consciousness, Freedom and Frantz Fanon” in
History of European Ideas, p429
8 Justin Daniel, « Aimé Césaire et les Antilles françaises : une histoire
inachevée ? » in French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter 2009),
p33
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in his approach regarding the feasibility of independence, this
question nonetheless remains open to interpretation.
It has been argued that French departmentalization as a
path to decolonization appears more complex and rational than a
mere unwillingness to gain political independence. The peculiar
relation between the French State and its colony, and the relation
between white elites and the larger population, made the possibility
for integration more likely than in other Caribbean contexts. The
revolutionary tradition of France and the struggle between two
opposing concepts of nation also facilitated the equation of
egalitarianism with decolonization. The discourse of négritude,
chanted by Césaire, derived from this need to express this equality
between whites and blacks by stressing differences. Once able to
express such differences, it was easier to uphold egalitarianism
within the institutional framework of the French State.
The very need to express this egalitarianism within the same
context hints at the hegemony of white minority oppression over a
black majority under colonialism. Departmentalization however,
resulted in a renewed, disguised cultural assimilation/colonization
by an increasingly centralizing state. Local peculiarities were
discarded in the name of a uniform state, where euro-centrism
remained the founding cultural assumption to the detriment of
uniquely Caribbean identity formations. Tensions between a depart-
mentalization which called for more autonomy and the
preconditions of economic development necessary to sustain such
autonomy are significant in understanding Césaire‟s political actions.
Fanon challenged such solutions to decolonization by stressing the
inherent alien and alienating impact of the colonizer. Regarding
race, the construct of négritude was set along the white construction
of the other, and eventually pointed at a reversed racial stance,
without considering the unique, multi-ethnic and social experience
of Caribbean peoples. The assimilation‟s results threatened the birth
of an independent self-consciousness as it was an institutionalized
continuation of colonialism. For Fanon, in order to gain meaningful
independence, the only solution was national and mental liberation
from the colonizer. What emerges from these two different
intellectual discourses on race and nation is the complex and multi-
layered nature of colonial contexts, where more than one solution
are provided as possible paths toward decolonization.
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Works Cited
Blérald, Alain-Philippe. La question nationale en Guadeloupe et en
Martinique. Paris : L‟Harmattan, 1988.
Bouvier, Pierre. Aimé Césaire et Frantz Fanon : Portraits de décolonisés.
Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2010.
Césaire, Aimé. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Éd. Dominique Combe.
Paris : PUF, 1993.
Daniel, Justin. « Aimé Césaire et les Antilles françaises : une histoire
inachevée ? » in French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter
2009), pp 24-33.
Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris : Le Seuil, 1965.
Macey, David. “Frantz Fanon, or the Difficulty of Being Martinican” in
History Workshop Journal, Issue 58, 2004, pp 211-223.
Miles, William F.S. “Metaphysical considerations can come later, but the
people have children to feed” in French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol.
27, No. 3 (Winter 2009), pp 63-75.
Wright, Claudia. “National Liberation, Consciousness, Freedom and
Frantz Fanon” in History of European Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 1-3 (August
1992), pp 427-434.