Aimé Césaire

Martinique (1913–2008)

Writes in French

The Martinican poet, writer, and political figure Aimé Césaire was the founder of the Négritude movement with Gontrand Damas (French Guiana) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal). Césaire was born in 1913 in Basse-Pointe on the island of Martinique, an overseas department of France. As a student in Paris, he met numerous black intellectuals and cofounded the magazine L’Etudiant noir, in which the concept of Négritude took shape as an affirmation of Blackness, a rejection of anti-Blackness and colonially, as well as a call for solidarity and political awareness among black people from all over the world. Cahier du retour au pays natal was his first literary work, published in 1939 when Césaire returned to Martinique as a teacher. Witnessing the rise of Nazi ideology during World War II, he affirmed a strong anti-racist and anti-colonial position. He was soon recognized as a central political figure in Martinique, as mayor of Fort-de-France (Martinique) and deputy for Martinique in the French National Assembly, with wider connections in Africa and the Caribbean. Césaire’s literary works combine political commitment and formal innovation. In addition to a rich poetic oeuvre, he wrote major plays such as La tragédie du roi Christophe (1963) and Une saison au Congo (1966). His essays Discours sur le colonialisme (1950) and Discours sur la négritude (1985) are fundamental texts of anti-colonialism and black liberation.