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Aimé Césaire: Discourse on colonialism (Hardcover, 2000, Monthly Review Press) 5 stars

"This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars …

to see clearly, to think clearly - that is dangerously

5 stars

Owning up to the fact that this was my first time reading it entirely, as a book, not in pieces, not on a pdf with my eyes scanning for the bits that I knew I was looking for. It's for a piece of writing I'm working on, and it was actually a really rewarding read. I learned things in Robin Kelley's preface, and I really liked the Lautréamont passages (mainly bc of a long standing love for 19th century French lit and for the specific lice poem in Le Chant de Maldoror) - for some reason not one of the bits that was captured and transmitted to me in my peripheral/plundering/utilitarian relationship to the text until now. I also really liked the fun gothic imagery, and the surrealist engagement with the abject throughout (looking like a communion wafer dipped in shit/condemned to chewing on Hitler's vomit/the idea, an annoying fly)