Submitted by Rachel Atkinson on Wednesday, 10/12/2011, at 10:43 AM

According to Cesaire, in order to sculpt a Caribbean culture all their own, the colonized people, once free, must erase all remnants of the French colonizers from their lives. He feels that any remaining aspect of the oppressors will act as a foundation upon which a supposedly ‘new’ culture will form. Although the annihilation of all life from an erupted volcano can be extreme, the lush regeneration is undeniably worth the damage. Had Cesaire and John Locke ever crossed paths, they would undoubtedly find a commonality in their adoration for the idea of tabula rasa.

A. Cesaire: Calling the Magician: A Few Words for a Carribbean Civilization:

“We must wait for the powdery frost of outdated or emaciated myths to blow apart. We are awaiting the debacle.”

A. Cesaire: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land:

“At the end of the wee hours, the volcanoes will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe sun stains and nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds – the beach of dreams and the insane awakenings.”

“…and I alone, sudden stage of these wee hours when then apocalypse of monsters cavorts then, capsized, hushes.”

“But who misleads my voice? Who grates my voice? Stuffing my throat with a thousand bamboo fangs. A thousand sea urchin stakes. It is you dirty end of the world. Dirty end of the wee hours.”

“And we are standing now, my country and I, hair in the wind, my hand puny in its enormous fist and now the strength is not in us but above us, in a voice that drills the night and the hearing like the penetrance of an apocalyptic wasp.”

“The old negritude progressively cadavers itself.”

Tags:  volcano  apocalypse