Aimé Césaire in the Era of Black Lives Matter

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter reads Aimé Césaire's work as a continuation of the struggle for the dignity of black people around the world. As a Francophone philosopher and poet, Césaire is a member of an important global lineage of black intellectuals. Together with James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Claudia Rankine, Césaire's work offers the historical background needed to understand black lives in the second decade of the twentieth century, and particularly the Black Lives Matter movement. These thinkers first articulated enduring questions about the black condition in the world and established why there will not be peace as long as black lives continue to be crushed and their dignity ignored.