The Writing of Aime Cesaire

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

His stinging critique of European colonial racism and hypocrisy Discours sur le Colonialisme was first published in 1950. How does it resonate today? A founder of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) also wrote poetry and a biography of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. To discuss the influence of Césaire's writing, Rana Mitter is joined by Sudhir Hazareesingh, who has just published his own biography of Toussaint; New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza, from the University of Oxford; and Jason Allen-Paisant who lectures in Caribbean Poetry and Decolonial Thought at the University of Leeds.

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life Of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh is out now and will be read as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from 16 November. Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh, who teaches the University of Oxford, has also written How the French Think. You can hear him in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryk

Alexandra Reza teaches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford and is a New Generation Thinker - a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council that selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Writing by Jason Allen-Paisant has been published in Granta, PN Review, Callaloo, and Carcanet’s New Poetries Series VIII, among other places

This episode is linked to BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts

You can find other episodes devoted to influential books, plays, films, and art in a Free Thinking playlist called Landmarks of Culture, which includes the writing of Wole Soyinka, Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag, and Rachael Carson. You can find it on the Free Thinking programme website and all are available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

Producer: Emma Wallace

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Ron Amitter.
0:33.7	For Black History Month, free thinking is off to sunkist Martinique to find out more about one of the most influential poets and intellectuals of the last century.
0:42.2	But before we find out about Ame Césaire and how he changed our world, this word.
0:48.7	Why does music move us? How does it do it?
0:52.3	Well, if these are questions that have been firing you up, I've got the
0:56.0	very podcast for you. I'm Tom Service from BBC Radio 3 and from Schubert's symphonies to video game
1:02.3	music, from how to start a piece of music and when to end it. From background music to
1:07.6	bird song, from Beethoven to Beyonce, from Bach to the future. Thank you very much indeed.
1:13.7	The Listening Service podcast is your guide to how music works and all kinds of music to. The mastery and
1:20.9	mechanics behind the magic. Just search for the listening service on BBC Sounds and learn more
1:27.2	about the music we all love.
1:30.4	Europe is responsible before the human community for the highest heap of corpses in history.
1:36.8	Harsh words aimed at an entire continent to be sure.
1:39.9	But Europe was a target, just one, of the enormous, righteous rage of one of the most important
1:45.0	intellectuals of the 20th and 21st century.
1:48.2	The Francophone, Martinique and poet and politician, Eme Césaire.
1:52.4	And if you don't know Eme Césaire's name, well, stay with us, because he came up with a term
1:56.9	that has been one of the most important ideas to shape black identity and culture over the
2:02.0	past century, the idea of negritude. In Black History Month, this free-thinking landmark program,
	...

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