The Wretched of the Earth

“After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words ‘Parthenon! Brotherhood!’ and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open ‘… thenon! … therhood!’ It was the golden age.”

Sartre dramatizes the process of alienation that takes place when a colonial power attempts to assimilate its colonized subjects through education. The problem of such an approach, which the mother country believes is the perfect state of being, or the “golden age,” is that the knowledge thus imparted remains on the surface. The values of the oppressor cannot be interiorized by the oppressed without becoming distorted or corrupted.

“The black Goncourts and the yellow Nobels are finished; the days of colonized laureates are over. An ex-native, French-speaking, bends that language to new requirements, makes use of it, and speaks to the colonized only: ‘Natives of all underdeveloped countries, unite!’ What a downfall! For the fathers, we alone were the speakers; the sons no longer even consider us as valid intermediaries: we are the objects of their speeches.” 

Sartre predicts that the colonial period, during which the colonized subjects strove to imitate their masters by inscribing their work within the European cultural framework, is over. Members of former colonies begin producing art for other oppressed nations, disregarding the West. Thus, Sartre divides colonialism into two periods, the first being cultural assimilation and the second being the celebration of local culture.

“Our soldiers overseas, rejecting the universalism of the mother country, apply the ‘numerus clausus’ to the human race: since none may enslave, rob, or kill his fellow man without committing a crime, they lay down the principle that the native is not one of our fellow men. Our striking power has been given the mission of changing this abstract certainty into reality: the order is given to reduce the inhabitants of the annexed country to the level of superior monkeys in order to justify the settler’s treatment of them as beasts of burden.” 

Sartre illustrates the mechanism of dehumanization that is necessary in a colonized country to excuse the mistreatment of locals. If a settler treats the native population as equals, there is no moral justification for taking away their land and exploiting their labor. As a result, it is necessary to invent reasons, such as race, as to why one group of people is more deserving than and superior to another. Once the conquered population has been categorized as inferior, it becomes permissible to treat it as less than human.