In his essay, “Discourse on Colonialism,” Césaire seeks to answer the question, “What, fundamentally, is colonialism?’ through the refutation of the racist claim that the intent of colonization is to bring “civilization” to the …show more content…
While digestion is an unconscious and natural process, the activation of a machine is conscious and constructed. The forgetting machine, which Césaire depicts as going “Shhhhh! Keep your lips buttoned!” is somehow both sinister and condescending, like the machine is telling a child to keep quiet. And “silence falls” after the machine’s shushing, the silence being described as being “as deep as a safe” as if the knowledge of the great pre-colonial civilizations is being kept locked away, never to see the light of day again. “Fortunately, there are still the Negroes” the forgetting machine goes, eager to remind the bourgeois of the savage “Negroes” who have supposedly never created civilization and never will, “Let’s talk about the