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Hi all,

Our group slides should be submitted to Matthew within the next couple of days (1/24/18 at the latest) so he can compile them. He's very responsive through Canvas email should you choose to submit them there. You can also upload them to the discussion within the Book Club 2 forum if you like.

Thank you!

Lanita

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Peppered throughout, sometimes described in great detail, sometimes referenced in passing, are Cesaire’s surrealistic and dreamlike visions of a liberated world.  I interpret his visions as assimilation.  Following the awakening that one is in fact oppressed (colonized), beyond looking at the reasons driving the oppression and the mechanisms that perpetuate it, Cesaire paints a beautiful utopian society.  “Embellished with existentialism, it gives astonishing results: the most down-at-the-heel cliches are re-soled for you and made good as new; the most absurd prejudices are explained and justified; and, as if by magic, the moon is turned into green cheese” (59).

Just as Cesaire’s emotions drove awakening and awareness, so did it also drive assimilation, by means of a dream, or vision.  While the more negative emotions trigger Cesaire ‘s transformation, the vision drives it to fruition.  As with any successful mission, there’s a clear vision or goal.  I find Cesaire to be bouncing around and back and forth, emotionally fueled which makes it a challenge to always follow and in the throws of venemous language, overly dramatic to the degree it takes some credibility away.  On the other hand, even with the most well thought out and organized approach to transforming colonization to liberty, is meaningless without the emotional investment and commitment.  This point is well taken from Cesaire!

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Hi, everyone, regarding the slides you’ll be giving me: my current conception of my role is that I’m basically not doing much more than pasting things together. I’m assuming everyone will give three slides describing their personal experience with the text structured around the Awakening/Awareness/Assimilation process, and other than possibly playing around a little bit with some titles to make sure these all flow and cohere, I don’t see my task in creating the final report as being much more complicated than assembling these slides into a whole. (I’ll also create a very brief introduction to help the readers understand the book's context.) I'm assuming this is consistent with how others saw the final product, but please let me know if anyone has any thoughts or questions on this process.

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In order for us to earn full points for The Week 3 Book Club Collaboration assignment

"Each person in the group must contribute at least 3 times in a substantive manner within Padlet or your chosen collaboration tool (normal rubric for discussions will apply) and all posts must be completed by Saturday, 11:59 MT, and the link posted by Sunday.

We still have 2-ish days for everyone to get their posts in with enough time for the rest of the team to comment on each others thoughts.

Looking ahead to next week, it would be wonderful if we could complete our slides by 1/23/18 - - 1/24/18, which would give Matthew 3 days (well a little less than that since he's ahead of us) to compile the group analysis.

The more efficient we are on completing the discussion, the earlier we can each get started on the final project.

Thank you all!

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Nearly there everyone, we have until tomorrow night to finish up our posts and interact with each other.

I’m going to be submitting the Padlet link for the graded assignment due on 1/21/18.

Next step: Each of us will individually create 3 PowerPoint slides that pull together our own personal reflective analysis of the book (as mentioned on the “Format of First Report” note here in Padlet). From there, we send it to Matthew to create the deliverable report for our first grade. The completed PowerPoint needs to be done and ready for upload for the other groups by Friday, 1/26/18. If we could shoot for slide completion by 1/23/18 – 1/24/18, it would allow Matthew 2-ish days to compile the slides and reach out with any questions to the rest of us.

Thank you all!

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Cesaire's work was an extremely intriguing read for me and it has inspired me to take an even closer look into colonization. It especially has inspired me to look into how colonization itself relates to the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. This relationship is likely one that will be key throughout this course, but sadly I think it will be a relationship that I can still take a look at in many of my travels around the world today. Looking at these relationships and discussing them with people is key if there are ever to be positive changes made for those populations being oppressed.

Also understanding within this relationship especially within regards to colonization as Cesaire mentions education was greatly impacted. Quite often over the course of time single story narratives were taught to the oppressed populations and have impacted their current state greatly. This is very important to keep in mind when looking at international relations and cultures around the world. I plan to work overseas in various capacities throughout my life and being aware of such cultural history is extremely important when relating and working with individuals. Overall Cesaire has shown me taking a look outside what one has learned about a topic is always important because even though you may not know it you very well could only know a single story narrative when there is so much more to learn about a topic.

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It’s been a challenge to segregate the work given the emotional charge that seems to nearly cycle through each phase routinely.  It’s now taking shape for me though.  The awakening, within Cesaire’s perspectives appears to be focused on noticing the injustice.  “No human contact but relations of domination and submission which turn the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production “ (42).  Freire made essentially the same points but approached them with sequential logic and objectivity.  Cesaire on this other hand seems more subjective witha  narrative closely aligned with his emotions.

Personally, Cesaire’s emotionally fueled instensity reminds me of how transformation was almost exclusively fueled by emotion.  As I’ve aged, I find Freire’s more objective approach to transformation more closely aligned with my own approach.  Make no mistake though, Freire’s work was emotionally charged.  After all, emotions are our responses to the world around us and spark the catalysts for transformation.

My takeaway then is the importance of recognizing the emotional sparks strong enough to trigger transformation, yet to temper it with objectivity to maintain clarity and efficiency as overdramatization is unnecessary.

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My interpretation of the Awareness process is that it is one in which the ideas acquired during awakening are synthesized, and in which one attempts to comprehend the viewpoint of someone who holds such ideas. I’m not sure if this interpretation is correct, as the process isn’t elaborated on very deeply, but I imagine there’s some flexibility in its application.

I’ve been trying to put myself into Cesaire’s head, and this isn’t easy for me at all. I am a privileged person in nearly every respect, while Cesaire’s core identity seems defined by his awareness of his oppressed status. I value western liberal traditions and fear autocracy; Cesaire considers that fascism was the inevitable termination of western philosophy and proposes communism as a system which should supplant western liberalism. But perhaps the key difference between us is, that for Cesaire, nearly all world affairs seem somehow centered on colonialism, while for myself, colonialism is a concept that barely resonates in any personal way. Though I recognize the long shadow it casts, it strikes me essentially as a foreign and historical phenomenon, one that hasn’t been really meaningful to my own life or cultural heritage. Though it originated as a colonial nation, America’s experience was obviously quite distinct from that of Africa’s, since the majority population of America wasn’t racially or culturally distinct from its colonizer, and though America flirted with colonialism itself for a brief period, the Philippines and a small number of islands made for a fairly paltry colonial empire, and really, exerting direct control of foreign cultures never truly become engrained in the American character. (This is in large part because we had a tendency to annihilate foreign cultures—specifically, those of the Native Americans--and directly absorb their land into the American polity, which is even more horrific, but distinct from the paternalistic ethos of colonialism.) I guess my point is that I have difficulty truly empathizing with the roots of Cesaire’s rage. I understand it intellectually, but not emotionally, and perhaps this accounts for my somewhat detached reaction to the work. This might seem callous, but I really think we all do this: for example, how emotional are you about, say, the slaughter of the population of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258? My guess is, not very, just because it seems very distant to you. I think part of the awareness process is attempting to cast off detachment and form empathy, and I will say that the intensity of Cesaire’s emotion does help me to take steps in this direction.

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Hi everyone! So I am finding padlet very understandable and simple to use plus I know what needs to be accomplished within this forum for our books. However, I still am in need of the meeting id for our zoom meeting so I'm able to join everyone by the time that is counting towards our grade as well. I'm not sure if someone posted it already in our wide variety of discussion outlets but I decided to ask on here as we have been using it the most lately. Thanks guys! Also great stuff on the posts so far from everyone regarding the text!

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UPDATED (AGAIN) QUESTION FOR THE TEAM:

If I may clarify, the practice meeting doesn’t really need to be long, we just need to see that all of us can connect at the same time, that our mics and screens work, and that we can hear each other. Zoom is really user friendly, and I was able to connect to Professor Meekins' meeting simply by clicking the link he provided. We would need, at most 2 minutes of everyone’s time to click on the link at the same time, wave to the camera, say hi, and log out. We wouldn’t be discussing anything at the practice as we’re doing that in Padlet and Canvas. Matthew has suggested Friday night America/Saturday morning Asia may be an alternative. Cynthia has said her Fridays are free. How does that look for everyone else? I’m fine whenever.

Previous Entry:

Cynthia cannot meet Sat/Sun to accommodate the China/Japan time-zones. Matthew and Anthony: do you have any availability that falls on American weeknights, preferably after 6 PM EST (when Michelle gets off work as well)?

Previous Entry:

Covering our bases and posting here and under the announcement post:

Given that we have a practice assignment to complete where we will presumably work out tech issues, is it alright with everyone to just hold the Saturday/Sunday Zoom to make sure everything is operating correctly? We would not "meet" tomorrow if this is acceptable.

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Discourse on Colonialism - Third Post 1/19/18

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Discourse on Colonialism - Third Post 1/19/18

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Transcribed from the Introduction Lecture

Assimilation: This is where we ask, is there a place for the story in the way I see the world today? How can I begin to strategize and synthesize this information to make me a better professional and indeed a better person? (Meekins 2018)

Not to be too informal, but the world is weird, for lack of a better word, today. There is a great deal of turmoil. Old ideas that should not be acceptable (Nazism, Fascism as an example) are coming back. Old issues that shouldn’t be a problem (ex. fighting for women’s right, minority rights, etc.) are still being addressed. Problems that have existed in the past still haven’t been rectified. Added to this is the fact that colonial rule still technically exists (I’ve attached an interesting article) in “16 ‘non-self-governing territories’ across the globe.” (Quintero, 2012) We should know better by now, yet here we are, fighting the same fights.

Based on this, Cesaire’s discourse could very well be applied to today’s issues. Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight, and can say how detrimental communism has been to several countries. However, the arguments about oppression in any form still hold up. The argument that a truly ‘civilized’ nation wouldn’t be willing to harm innocent people is applicable today. We are experiencing multiple refugee crises around the world due to invasions. Cesaire argues strongly against forced occupation.

At one point, the book’s introduction notes that “The official apparatus might be removed, but the political economic, and cultural links established by colonial domination still remain with some alterations.” (Cesaire 2001, 27) This was true in Cesaire’s time and I would argue it’s valid today. The whole evil Europe aspect is still a step too far, today and in the past, but the urgency to fix the oppression of the marginalized stands. For me as a professional and a person, I can see this text as a means to recognize the continued damage that comes from the actions of the past. Societal problems don’t just spring up in a vacuum. Choices of the past effect the future. As someone that hopes to work internationally, this text, along with others, will help me to allow for additional world-building. I know to not only use my perspective, but to enquire about other’s perspectives. I cannot understand another’s position if I don’t take the time to explore how they’ve arrived at their world view.

https://unu.edu/publications/articles/residual-colonialism-in-the-21st-century.html

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A parallel point struck me immediately while reading the introduction.  It was mentioned that Cesaire’s Discourse was so significant it should be fundamental text.  The same comments were made during the video of the 3 professors discussing Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  While both works professed to be essential, both are not widely known.  I believe this is intentional.  Suppression of knowledge is instrumental in both Freire’s oppression and Cesaire’s colonization, strategically implemented to minimize the potential of awakenings.

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I wanted to take time within this second post in reaction to the text to consider how it relates to today and the world at large. My living in Japan for several years now had me curious about its own colonial history especially being as it is not a European state. I'm sure many of you know historically that a good portion of Asia was colonized by the Japanese Imperial Empire prior to WWII. People debate whether or not certain massacres and wrongdoings occurred during this period to this day. As we mentioned in this discussion before a certain mindset revolves around colonization and it is dehumanizing. We also discussed how potentially many people have moved past the idea of considering colonization as not that bad overall. The truth however appears to be that we still have much more work to do in this area. I have found an opinion article I would like to share with you all. I am not sharing this to say that all people think this way because there are plenty of Japanese scholars who admit wrongdoings and say how brutal Japanese colonial rule was, but I wanted to display how it is still possible for individuals to process such events in different ways and attempt to compare certain colonial rules to others which I think our author would have to say is unacceptable as all colonial rule has certain intentions which are certainly not in the best interest of the oppressed population and dehumanizes people.

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Inuhiko Yomota writes from Antananarivo that the Madagascar capital is so dusty and so polluted with car exhaust that he's almost gotten sick.

"Madagascar is said to be the poorest country in Africa and its capital has just one bookstore, small and Catholic. Japan's former colonies, both Taiwan and Korea, have made remarkable economic and technological advances, but none of the former French colonies has accomplished anything of the sort."

Yomota, the international traveler-scholar par excellence, has taught at a dozen universities outside Japan, from Columbia University in New York to Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro. In South Korea, he has taught at Konkuk and Chung-Ang universities, both in Seoul, and in Taiwan, at the National Tsing Hua University, in Hsinchu.

He wrote from Madagascar this time because he is writing "Yomota Around the World" for the publisher Chikuma. He adds: "France didn't even bother with infrastructure in Madagascar" - France annexed the large island country in 1896 and gave it independence only in 1960 - "while Holland thought only of trade in Jakarta and Britain nothing but exploitation in India.

"In contrast, Japan first thought of sanitation, education, and infrastructure" in its colonies.

Yomota's letter came when I was thinking of George Akita and Brandon Palmer's "The Japanese Colonial Legacy in Korea: 1910-1945: A New Perspective" (MerwinAsia, 2015). For decades now, what John Kenneth Galbraith would call "conventional wisdom" on Japan's rule of Korea has been markedly negative, and this historiography attempts to correct it, at times in great analytic detail, at times as fascinating anecdote.

Martin Fackler expressed this conventional wisdom most typically in his dispatch from Seoul for The New York Times (March 22, 2014, "U.S. as Central Stage in Asian Rivalry").

"The conflict is rooted in grievances going back to Japan's brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and its attempts to extinguish the Korean culture," he wrote.

Here Fackler was reporting on the Korean success in taking the "campaign" on "comfort women" to the U.S. and beyond, although for Korea this internationalization of the matter is "an irony," Park Yuha, professor at Sejong University, in Seoul, argues in "The Empire's Comfort Women" (2014), a deep, thoughtful study of the comfort women controversy from a global perspective of imperialism.

That's because, she points out, Koreans have "lived for nearly 70 years since the liberation (in 1945) by erasing their memory of collaborating with the suzerain" - Japan - "and subordinating themselves to it." For one thing, many of the managers of comfort women were Korean.

For anybody who needs evidence for what Park says, I might point to the diary that one such Korean manager of "comfort stations" in Burma and Singapore kept during the war. An Byeong-jik, emeritus professor at Seoul National University, uncovered it in 2013, and Kazuo Hori, a professor at Kyoto University, has translated it into Japanese.

The Koreans also "ignore their other face," Park points out. It is the fact that they have procured comfort women for American soldiers stationed in Korea, just as the Japanese had done following their defeat in 1945.

By ignoring these things, they have "enjoyed a moral arrogance through a moral superiority" over Japan. This "moral arrogance" is not just utterly unwarranted; but it also makes the Koreans blind to "the shame and regrets of those who have committed crimes."

Was Japan's colonization of Korea "brutal"? The New York Times editorialists, ever ready to condemn others, gladly adopted the "brutal colonization" branding in reporting on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's stance ("Another Attempt to Deny Japan's History," Jan. 2, 2013). Shin Yong-ha, professor at Hanyang University, in Seoul, went further and said: "Koreans lived under the most ruthless colonial rule ever known in history."

Naturally, one basic question arises, and Akita and Palmer ask it: In comparison with what?

Japan committed one extensive brutal act after it annexed Korea in 1910. On March 1, 1919, Koreans calling for independence started to gather to protest in large numbers. Assemblies were illegal. The governor-general of Korea reacted and set out to suppress the demand. The GGK's persecution ended more or less only at the end of the year.

The number of Koreans the Japanese authorities killed in the process ranges from 553 (Japan's official figure) to 7,509 (the figure that the Korean independence-fighter Park Eun-sik, 1859-1925, cited in his history, "The Bloody History of the Korean Independence Movement" (1920)). Either figure you take, it's a large number of people to kill.

But, if you compare the Japanese killings with some others, the scale may pale. For example, take the number of people the Americans killed in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902. As a result of the harsh U.S. actions and measures, "600,000 Filipinos died of disease and in concentration camps or on the battlefields of Luzon alone," Gen. Franklin Bell (1865-1919) testified before a Senate committee.

Still, the GGK was distressed enough by the uprising and the consequences of its suppression to reverse its policy, from a "military ( budan) governance" to a "cultural ( bunka) governance." Thereafter, the Japanese policy concentrated on "a modern infrastructure, education system, and economy," Akita and Palmer point out.

More notably, throughout its colonization period, Japan never practiced any of the "forced labor, economic exploitation, and destruction of recalcitrant villages, with occasional forced relocation and racial segregation," Akita and Palmer say.

Many are likely to object to this statement, so let's modify it by saying everything is relative. And let's see what some of the major imperial powers did.

Among them, Belgium's forced labor in the Congo Free State (1885-1908), which Joseph Conrad memorably depicted in "Heart of Darkness" (1899), reduced the Congo's population from 20 to 30 million to 8.5 million by 1911.

Holland's compulsory labor and taking as much as half of the harvest of crops in Indonesia led to frequent famines, "including one in 1850 that killed upwards of 300,000 people." Portugal's forced labor in Angola killed over 300,000 Africans.

And, yes, France practiced forced labor to harvest coffee in Madagascar until after World War II.

Of course, killings and exploitation in some form or another continue to this day. But relative to the era of colonialism, Japan's rule of Korea was "moderate," even "almost fair," Akita and Palmer judge. I must agree with them.
Hiroaki Sato is an essayist and translator based in New York.

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Japan's colonial rule of Korea was 'moderate' | The Japan Times

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Inuhiko Yomota writes from Antananarivo that the Madagascar capital is so dusty and so polluted with car exhaust that he's almost gotten sick. "Madagascar is said to be the poorest country in Africa and its capital has just one bookstore, small and Catholic.

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Attached a document to schedule our time. Please Update with your info! :)

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If it is agreeable to everyone else, I'm comfortable with being part of the leadership team for the first book report. Matthew kindly offered to take care of compiling a PowerPoint for the end project. I suppose coordination and task  setting for this report falls to me.

The meeting with Professor Meekins basically described a discussion of the text, both how we relate it to ourselves, and the differences in our interpretations of the text from each other. Similar to what we did with the Freire writing last week, we should be discussing what, if any, impact the text had on us.

If we could all take steps to relate the text back to Awakening, Awareness and Assimilation over the next few days, we will have enough material to provide a diverse assessment of our first book. From there, we can create slides that exemplify the discourse. As we will not be speaking live this time, we'll have to find a way to show our interaction with each other somehow.

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I confess I’m haven’t developed total comfort yet with the Awakening-Awareness-Assimilation process because I feel to some extent that it functionally pressures me to have a kind of epiphany, when perhaps that wasn’t my legitimate experience with the text. Does the structure allow for a neutral response, I wonder? As I’ve mentioned previously, many of the points that Cesaire makes are those I essentially take for granted, and so in many ways, I did feel fairly neutral towards much of this text, my reaction towards its bombastic style and tone aside.

There was, however, one notion that was asserted in the text that I think would qualify as a form of awakening, and this is Cesaire’s claim that all colonized civilizations would have inevitably developed in positive ways without the stimulation provided by the oppressors (he notes Japan as an example of such a process), and thus that colonialism provided quite literally zero benefits in addition, of course, to promulgating vast injustices. This is a perspective that had really never occurred to me. Generally speaking, I’d say I’ve always thought of colonialism as a sort of devil’s bargain where a certain small amount of good was achieved in an immoral way and at a profound cost. While I don’t like European colonialism, I do like Europe, and consider that its development of liberal values and its industrial revolution were a net gain for all of humanity, and worthy of sharing with other cultures. Though I deeply deplore how these things were shared, the bare fact that they were shared always struck me as a tiny sliver of positivity within the otherwise deeply tragic story of colonialism. Cesaire, however, would demolish even this small consolation, arguing, if I understand his position correctly, that economic and political development would have come just as fast naturally through an organic process of internal development or culture spread. Thus, in his view, colonialism is an entirely unmitigated disaster, and there is no possible angle by which to defend it. As I mentioned before, I find myself somewhat skeptical of Cesaire—that he would prefer Soviet communism over French republicanism makes me wonder if, in his bitterness, he is perhaps overeager to reject any positive influences of French culture—but his argument here is one I hadn’t really considered, and one I am now processing.

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Discourse on Colonialism - Second Post 1/18/18 

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Discourse on Colonialism - Second Post 1/18/18 

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Transcribed from the Introduction Lecture

“Awareness – when we understand that the words we read create worlds in which these people exist in our minds. This is where we begin to see that the words we use create worlds in which the other must inhabit. It is the place where we truly think about how we think, and also the place where we are, at times, confronted with our own ignorance and bias. But also, the profundity of seeing our multiple perspectives brought to light.” (Meekins, 2018)

For this entry, I am attempting to look at the Cesaire text with the goal to filter it through the awareness process. To me, Cesaire created a world where not only the Bourgeoisie, but really all European people, are meant to be seen as these hulking monsters out to terrorize people of color. In his eyes, the various ethnic groups were existing and some were even flourishing before the dark times of colonialism set in. He had to create a view for the reader where the “enemy” is clear and identified within the world he described. Just the same as you wouldn’t colonize someone you like, you wouldn’t propose a revolution against an ally.

* Just want to add I don’t agree that any one group of people should be considered a monolith that only destroys and harms. *

The introduction prior to the discourse mentions Cesaire’s upbringing would be considered petite bourgeois yet he was also exposed to rural poverty. (Cesaire 2001, 11) I take from this that the world he describes in his work is created partially through his proximity to the plight of the oppressed. Adding to this his coming from a very turbulent time where a great deal of black diasporic material was being created (11-12) I get where he got this view and how it developed into his discourse.

Being an African American, inhabiting this world of the past isn’t unreasonably different from the view today. The denouncements of racism in 1932 hold today. The text mentions the Scottsboro case where in 1932, 9 black men were accused of raping 2 white women and were initially sentenced to death even though there was evidence to the contrary. (Salter, 2017) I am old enough to have witnessed the story of the Central Park Five, where 4 black and 1 Hispanic juveniles were convicted of raping a white woman even though there was evidence to exclude them. (Chan, 2017) I have a living relative that was a victim of the Tuskegee syphilis “study.” It is still very hard for certain segments of today’s society to flourish. While I myself have been fortunate, I don’t have to look far to find people who could see and agree with the world-making of Cesaire.

All of this is to say, could I personally inhabit a world framed in Cesaire’s beliefs? I tend to disagree with absolutes, meaning I don’t think all of any group act exactly alike. I won’t say that I’m completely free of bias, as that’s impossible, but I wouldn’t say that current cultural conditions are enough to turn me against an entire group of people.

References

Cesaire, Aime. 2001. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Chan, Sewell. 2017. "Central Park Rape Victim and Oprah, At Odds." The New York Times, Nov. 15.

Meekins, Darryl. 2018. Introduction Lecture. Jan.

Salter, Daren. 2017. "Scottsboro Trials." Encyclopedia of Alabama. Dec. 6. Accessed Jan. 18, 2018. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1456.

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Hi guys! So we have some good discussion going in here. How will it best suit you to compile the information presented into a usable format? We have multiple options in Padlet to include video clips, microphone clips, pictures and document attachments. I hope to make this as simple as possible! What do you think?

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Okay, here I am in padlet. So, I'd like to point out here that what I think has happened to cause confusion in our group is that Cynthia was under the impression that padlet was actually required, not one of many possible tools, and so she immediately created it assuming we would all be participating, though in fact, our group hadn't agreed on that yet. I'm guessing she's been waiting for discussion here for several days, but in fact most of the discussion was happening in forum 2 the whole time and we only recently agreed to use padlet. This may be why we got divided. I'm just pointing this out because I want to clarify what's going on, since some people seemed to be under the impression that others weren't participating or didn't care. Does this make sense? 

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Okay, here I am in padlet. So, I'd like to point out here that what I think has happened to cause confusion in our group is that Cynthia was under the impression that padlet was actually required, not one of many possible tools, and so she immediately created it assuming we would all be participating, though in fact, our group hadn't agreed on that yet. I'm guessing she's been waiting for discussion here for several days, but in fact most of the discussion was happening in forum 2 the whole time and we only recently agreed to use padlet. This may be why we got divided. I'm just pointing this out because I want to clarify what's going on, since some people seemed to be under the impression that others weren't participating or didn't care. Does this make sense? 

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Raising my hand to synthesize feedback into PowerPoint slides

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Raising my hand to synthesize feedback into PowerPoint slides

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This is the general consensus I’ve gleaned from reading various posts.  Please ❤️ this post or add comments if you support.  I do need a partner to drive tasks and deadlines, and keep us on track.  Just don’t have the bandwidth for that.

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Between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. No human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production.

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They prove that colonization, I repeat, dehumanizes even the most civilized man; that colonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, which is based on contempt for the native and justified by that contempt, inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it; that the colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point out.

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Though the first two parts of the Awakening, Awareness, Assimilation process seem somewhat vague to me, the last part strikes me as straightforward: how can I usefully apply this experience within my own life?

You know, it’s odd, we’ve been discussing colonialism for days and it never occurred to me until just this morning that I literally teach a World History class that covers colonialism and thus that my interpretation of it has direct applications to my professional situation. I think this emphasizes what I said in my last post that I feel such detachment from the topic. There are many subjects in my world history class that deeply interest me—say, the fall of the Roman Republic, or WWI—but colonialism tended to fall by the wayside, and I feel like I may have treated it in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Because my class is functionally a western civilization class I tend to view colonialism mainly through a western perspective. I would say my treatment of colonialism in Africa is didactic and tonally neutral. Thinking back upon how I deliver this particular lecture, which is a small part of a larger lecture and so lasts only a few minutes, I essentially emphasize two points. First, I describe why Africa was colonized by the west at a later date than the Americas, emphasizing the importance of technology and anti-malarial medications in allowing westerners to gain access to regions beyond the coast. Second, I describe the Berlin Conference, at which Africa was divided territorially by the western powers. This is basically it. (I also discuss decolonization a few weeks later, again, fairly briefly.) I suppose if I had to guess what my students’ responses are to this lecture, it would be something along the lines of a slightly world-weary, “Oh, those imperialistic westerners just never stop, do they?”, but maybe those are just my own feelings. It’s all fairly low-key.

Writing all this out, I now find myself second-guessing my entire curriculum. Maybe I should dedicate whole sessions to describing the depredations of westerners in Africa? I have no inherent issues with doing this, and I’m not trying to de-emphasize anything. It’s just that I only have 34 lectures to cover 6,000 years, and there are some things I know better than others, and some things that I care about more than others. Commentary by non-teachers on what history teachers ought to be doing is a popular pastime, but it’s really not as easy as one might think. I’m just a person, after all, and I can only bring my own unique perspectives and yes, inevitable cultural biases, into my class, particularly in my situation when I have no governmental authority over my curriculum and I have to create it entirely from scratch without any advisement. I’m a dedicated, progressive teacher, and I absolutely want to teach a culturally sensitive, well-rounded story. But history is so vast and overwhelming, and choices have to be made. At the very least, this work has given me greater perspective to question whether my choices are correct or not—which, of course, is what any halfway decent teacher is doing all the time regardless.

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that the slavering apologists came later; that the chief culprit in this domain is Christian pedantry, which laid down the dishonest equations Christianity = civilization, paganism = savagery,

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what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law.

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Mutilation during Colonialism of Congo 1/17/18

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Mutilation during Colonialism of Congo 1/17/18

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I apologize for the gruesomeness of the pictures. While reading the  Cesaire text, I remembered learning about King Leopold II of Belgium a while back. I think this exemplifies the "civilized" becoming dehumanized through their terrible acts.

- Lanita

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Discourse on Colonialism - Initial Thoughts 1/17/18 

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Discourse on Colonialism - Initial Thoughts 1/17/18 

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Since Professor Meekins expects us to take a three-step approach (Awakening > Awareness > Assimilation) to the coursework, I’m going to try and focus my initial thoughts on Awakening.

One of the first notes that comes to mind is the purposiveness of reading Freire before reading Cesaire. I say this because Freire observed that both the oppressed and the oppressors are marked by dehumanization. (Freire 2014, 44) This concept becomes more concrete for me, personally, when it is said by Cesaire that “colonialism works to ‘decivilize’ the colonizer: torture, violence, race hatred, and immorality constitute a dead weight on the so-called civilized.” (Cesaire 2001, 8-9) Growing up and hearing how my parents were referred to as animals and knowing that not so far back my ancestors were “property” and not people, I suppose I always thought (however incorrectly) that those in charge would be considered more human than those they oppressed. Now I see that the entire cycle of oppression strips away the humanity of all involved.

I’ve never had a positive view of colonization, but exploring working  through Cesaire’s descriptions, I see how the various acts (beheadings, destroyed property, invasions) served to exemplify the dehumanization of the colonizers. (41) From my perspective, a truly “civilized” society would surely bristle at such actions. A society that honestly valued person hood would not deprive others of their agency and freedom. To dress up the subjugation of people different from you as colonization is dishonest and a way to justify barbaric behavior. Calling groups savages makes their destruction more palatable. The savior angle of colonialism only served to soothe the conscience of the oppressors so that they would be able to separate out their atrocities from other group’s actions.

- Lanita

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What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment. Colonization: bridgehead in a campaign to civilize barbarism, from which there may emerge at any moment the negation of civilization, pure and simple.

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Pictures like these are illustrative of the desire to hold power over another group.

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A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.

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Hi Team, hopefully everyone can see this! 

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Hi Team, hopefully everyone can see this! 

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As of right now (1/16/18), we appear to have the group collaboration space (here, thank you Cynthia!) created and Michelle mentioned she created a Zoom group (thank you!) for the presentation portion. At this point, we should be good to go on beginning to discus the first book today/tomorrow if that's agreeable with everyone. I've emailed Professor Meekins to ask about what the Zoom report should look like so that we can get right to the final project once the discussion portion is done.

- Lanita

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One of the first things that comes to mind when reflecting upon this text is the importance of identifying exactly what it is before fully reflecting upon its content. “It is poetry and therefore revolt,” (A Poetics of Anticolonialism). I like how the work is compared to revolutionary graffiti spread boldly on the great texts of Western civilization. Going into reading the text understanding this is important because it is always crucial to understand where an author is coming from when reading such emotion provoking texts.

I must agree with one of my fellow classmates who stated that reading Freire prior to this text is very important as it allows one to better understand the relationship between oppressor and oppressed which so sadly is often the relationship taking place through colonization. Cesaire asks us whether or not colonization has really placed civilizations in contact and if it was the best way. I agree with Cesaire in the simple answer to such a question being no. With such a relationship being the case one often wonders how any individual could be capable of hurting populations in such a manner. Cesaire awakened me and reminded me of the fact that people can become decivilized much more easily than we may like to think. Cesaire discusses how actions as brutal as severing heads or taking out an eye of an individual simply because they are different than one’s self can lead to savagery very quickly (Cesaire 2001, 35). It truly is something how individuals carrying out such horrific actions were told and under the impression that others were the savages when truly they themselves were the population acting in a savage manner through their conquest.

One of the key ideas that I took away from the early portions of Cesaire’s text is that no population colonizes another innocently (Cesaire 2001, 39). Colonization as mentioned by Cesaire dehumanizes men across the board. It truly is the action and desire of a morally diseased society to colonize as Cesaire states. We can see these types of actions throughout history relating to colonization and oppression of various populations for that matter not only the situations which Cesaire specifically discusses. Reading about colonization through this lens is important as the history revolving around colonization has impacted and still does nearly all corners of the world and many populations within it.

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Thank you Lanita for getting this going. I have some notes coming.

- Cynthia

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Thanks for setting this up! Looking forward to collaborating. 

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Thanks for setting this up! Looking forward to collaborating. 

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Hi Cynthia, thanks for setting this up!

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Hi Class

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So, I'm not sure that my immediate reaction to this work is the same as others. I'll try to go a little deeper in later posts when I have more time, but I have to say immediately that I find the fire-and-brimstone tone of the writing so jarring that I instinctively find myself resisting. Part of what's going on is that Cesaire is passionately trying to convince me of something that I consider by now to be an almost banal point--of course colonialism was destructive, and of course it was perpetuated for largely self-interested reasons--and so I have to struggle not to find it all somewhat overwrought. I have no doubt that in the 1950s the points he is making were far more controversial, so I definitely recognize the historical context in which he is writing, but I’m being asked to respond to this as a modern reader, and as a modern reader I’m trained to distrust passionate diatribes.

I’m worried that by saying this it seems as if I’m minimizing the cruelties of colonialism or asserting that there’s no justification to his rage, and this absolutely isn’t my intent. Yet it is all so very much over the top to the point that my reaction to the work all throughout, in all honesty, was less horror than amusement at his performance—how else can I respond to a text that asserts that all Europeans are equivalent to Hitler and unironically uses phrases like “bourgeois swinishness” and “chattering intellectuals born stinking out of the thigh of Nietzsche”? Cesaire is endlessly inventive and clever—the whole book is really a cracking read--but I’m not totally sure that I trust him. In particular, his language clearly suggests the fervor of his communist beliefs and at one point he explicitly offers the Soviet Union as an example for Africa to model itself on. I’m really not a reflexive anti-communist (I mean, I’ve lived in China for a decade) but 1954 seems awfully late for any but the most fanatical to still be advancing the USSR as a laudable example, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t undercut my faith in his rational judgment. Maybe I’m just a contrarian, but I guess the question I’d ask is, to what extent can we really trust Cesaire, given that he is not writing a factual, academic work, but is rather penning a manifesto with the explicit intention of playing on our emotions? Or to put it another way, does this work make us more or less able to judge colonialism fairly and dispassionately?