Historically famous critics

Aime Cesaire

1913-2008 · Martinican · 20th century

Martinican poet who co-founded Negritude and indicted European colonialism

Aime Cesaire was a Martinican poet, playwright, and politician who, with Leopold Senghor, coined the concept of Negritude to reclaim Black cultural pride from colonial contempt. His searing essay Discourse on Colonialism argued that European empire brutalized the colonizer as much as the colonized, and linked colonial violence to the barbarism of fascism. Through poetry, drama, and decades in public office he gave anti-colonial criticism a literary force that shaped writers and liberation movements across the French-speaking world.