Cesaire and Wild Thorns

Cesaire's Discourse On Colonialism And Wild Thorns

The novel describes living conditions under foreign or colonial occupation. It also describes nationalist sentiment among colonized peoples. Using material from the novel, as well as Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism, discuss the proposition that nationalism is a solution to the colonial problem. Using specific examples from the texts, discuss how the authors present the relationship between colonialism, capitalism, and nationalism. How are the authors' positions on these issues similar or different? Do the authors provide hopeful representations of nationalism and capitalism? Why, or why not?

An easy, pure, and smug sense of African or Palestinian nationalism offers no solution to the overall problem of how to construct a national identity and a decolonialized mindset in one's people. Recent historical events have illustrated that an unquestioning assertion of national identity leads to horror and bloodshed -- but if one cannot accept the oppressor's vision of one's self and identity, what kind of identity construction is offered to the anti-colonist? This is particularly true in the situation of Wild Thorns, where a nationalism of anti-Semitism is an easy, but horrific solution to the proposition of having no identity at all, but also has its parallels in the African colonial experience.

The difficulty of nationalist assertions of identity is expressed in forceful and eloquent prose in the French-speaking African poet Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism. Cesaire does not deny the need to recover Africa's past values, identity and culture after these cultural elements have been defamed by the words and cultural concepts and constructions of the oppressing white mindset. Because Africa has been constructed as primitive in relation to Europe, Africa must reassess what it means to be Africa anew, and to construct an alternative relationship of the primitive/civilized and primitive/capitalist binary structures of cultural and economic relations that existed in the region when the poet wrote, and still exist today.

However, Cesaire acknowledges that by living in the presence of an oppressor, one's own sense of cultural identity has been permanently changed. One cannot demonize the oppressor and romanticize the African past. Rather, one must form a new identity for the future. For Cesaire, these new identity is rooted in a reassessment of the world economic paradigm of capitalism, as it existed during his book's authorship. Cesaire alleges that colonialism in Africa was rendered so effective through the means of capitalism, and only by returning to its economic roots, revivified with new enthusiasm, can a true Africa emerge. But the poet also acknowledges "the relationship between consciousness and reality are extremely complex.... It is equally necessary to de-colonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we de-colonize society." By refusing to accept the 'given' that capitalism is the only solution to economic privation, and attempting to have a more positive sense of what Africa can give the world beyond that of economic monetary might, which will only result in a failed comparison with the West, Africa must create a new sense of identity that reflects its past of oppression, but sees its survival as a triumph rather than a reflection of its inferiority in relation to the wealthier, capitalist West.

Cesaire's rage and hope takes the form of an essay, while Wild Thorns takes the form of a novel. "Why do these songs hurt so much? Is it because we are a romantic people? He'd never been romantic himself." (5) The confusion of who one is, if one has no sense of national identity or one has lost one's positive sense of national identity is evident even in the meandering, interior monologues of Wild Thorns, which stresses less the economics of oppression and more the psychological and daily physical difficulties of not having a homeland, as the Israeli occupation takes place in a far more narrow contested space than Cesaire's Africa.