Is Europe Redeemable?
"Europe" is morally, spiritually indefensible." Aime Cesaire.
Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon are both noted for boldly claiming that there is something inherently wrong with the very basis on which European 'civilization' is constructed. The very ideals of the enlightenment; the ideals of reason and rationality, the very bedrock of 'modern' society.
After experiencing the dark and middle ages, Europe decided to separate the Church and the State and leave religion behind to adopt the rule of reason. The European nations thrived and expanded, colonized lands, enslaved inferior races; all looked great for the Europeans themselves. However, something utterly unthinkable happened. Europe turned on itself, on its own population. It killed two-thirds of its Jewish population. And that's when, Cesaire points out, that it plunged into an existential crises. Europe actually questioned whether the ideals on which it was built was correct. As Fanon said in Wretched of the Earth, the dominant class has the privilege of not questioning its own worldview. But the Holocaust changed that and got European philosophers re-evaluating their civilization. However, there was never any doubt for philosophers of colour. Cesaire argues that the Holocaust was not a completely unprecedented event. Europe just did to itself what it had been doing to the colonized people for centuries. And it was precisely their ideals of reason that allowed it. That allowed it to "dehumanize" the people of colour.
One example I would like to give is of the Bengal famines. Over the course of the British Raj, Bengal went through some of the worst famines in human history including one which killed 10 million people, 4 million more than those who died in the Holocaust. There is absolutely no denying the inconceivable horrors of the Holocaust and the lasting psychological trauma that it left as inheritance; however, is it not surprising that this famine killed 4 million people more than the holocaust yet it is nowhere near as condemned as the latter. Forget condemning, its not even part of the common memory, sadly, even for the colonized peoples. The second instance to point out was in 1943 when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal. Upto 4 million people died. Churchill commented at the time: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits".
One may ask how is this related to the subject. These famines were engineered by the British meaning they were accentuated due to British policies of heavy taxation/tribute, making farmers grow crops such as opium instead if eatable, and refusal to help them. Their motive was to extract profit, as rationality demanded. There were economist in the West after all who argued that white people's lived were more valuable since economically more has been spent on them than on Indians. Cesaire gives the brilliant boomerang theory in reply. That whatever Europe was doing in the colonies finally came back to hit it on its face; in the form of the genocide it carried out against its won people, based on the same racialist ideology.
As for the question that whether Europe is redeemable or not, I don't know; it is not for me to decide. I am a post-colonial subject. The colonial subjects who faced the brunt of the violence and perished as a result, it is their opinions who matter. So have the colonial masters who killed them perished too. How will Europe ever compensate for all those people who perished in the famine? It is as Cesaire says: "Truly, there are sins for which no one has the power to make amends and which can never be fully expiated. " What about them. Only their Lord can decide. Their matter will surely receive a Reckoning.
As for the present world we inhabit, far from redeeming itself, Europe still continues its colonization. As Sukarno pointed out that colonialism is not dead but has a modern dress in the form of economic and physical control. In the guise of giving aid, Europe maintains its hold over its former colonies and a show of benevolence. Here, I say what Thomas Sankara did, Europe needs to pay repatriation. The "aid" it gives to African countries is not charity to help them develop, it is only a little minor compensation for the crimes it has done to those very countries. Europe need to first at least accept the crimes it has done and remember them the way it remembers the holocaust. For as Cesaire argues, it was European civilization that gave birth to Hitler; and many more like him. Secondly, Europe needs to eliminate the racism that still pervades it, the dangerous ideology that dehumanized the colonized, and as Cesaire says, eventually the colonizer himself: " colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point out."
To accept its crimes, to accept that their heroes like Winston Churchill had "Hitlers inside" them, to exhibit some remorse, to finally accept that there was, and is, something inherently wrong with the ideals upon which their civilization is constructed (Cesaire lists racist quotes advocating violence by celebrated Western philosophers), would be the very beginning of their possible redemption, if there can be one. And then, to give back to the societies what they stole from them.
Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon are both noted for boldly claiming that there is something inherently wrong with the very basis on which European 'civilization' is constructed. The very ideals of the enlightenment; the ideals of reason and rationality, the very bedrock of 'modern' society.
After experiencing the dark and middle ages, Europe decided to separate the Church and the State and leave religion behind to adopt the rule of reason. The European nations thrived and expanded, colonized lands, enslaved inferior races; all looked great for the Europeans themselves. However, something utterly unthinkable happened. Europe turned on itself, on its own population. It killed two-thirds of its Jewish population. And that's when, Cesaire points out, that it plunged into an existential crises. Europe actually questioned whether the ideals on which it was built was correct. As Fanon said in Wretched of the Earth, the dominant class has the privilege of not questioning its own worldview. But the Holocaust changed that and got European philosophers re-evaluating their civilization. However, there was never any doubt for philosophers of colour. Cesaire argues that the Holocaust was not a completely unprecedented event. Europe just did to itself what it had been doing to the colonized people for centuries. And it was precisely their ideals of reason that allowed it. That allowed it to "dehumanize" the people of colour.
One example I would like to give is of the Bengal famines. Over the course of the British Raj, Bengal went through some of the worst famines in human history including one which killed 10 million people, 4 million more than those who died in the Holocaust. There is absolutely no denying the inconceivable horrors of the Holocaust and the lasting psychological trauma that it left as inheritance; however, is it not surprising that this famine killed 4 million people more than the holocaust yet it is nowhere near as condemned as the latter. Forget condemning, its not even part of the common memory, sadly, even for the colonized peoples. The second instance to point out was in 1943 when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal. Upto 4 million people died. Churchill commented at the time: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits".
One may ask how is this related to the subject. These famines were engineered by the British meaning they were accentuated due to British policies of heavy taxation/tribute, making farmers grow crops such as opium instead if eatable, and refusal to help them. Their motive was to extract profit, as rationality demanded. There were economist in the West after all who argued that white people's lived were more valuable since economically more has been spent on them than on Indians. Cesaire gives the brilliant boomerang theory in reply. That whatever Europe was doing in the colonies finally came back to hit it on its face; in the form of the genocide it carried out against its won people, based on the same racialist ideology.
As for the question that whether Europe is redeemable or not, I don't know; it is not for me to decide. I am a post-colonial subject. The colonial subjects who faced the brunt of the violence and perished as a result, it is their opinions who matter. So have the colonial masters who killed them perished too. How will Europe ever compensate for all those people who perished in the famine? It is as Cesaire says: "Truly, there are sins for which no one has the power to make amends and which can never be fully expiated. " What about them. Only their Lord can decide. Their matter will surely receive a Reckoning.
As for the present world we inhabit, far from redeeming itself, Europe still continues its colonization. As Sukarno pointed out that colonialism is not dead but has a modern dress in the form of economic and physical control. In the guise of giving aid, Europe maintains its hold over its former colonies and a show of benevolence. Here, I say what Thomas Sankara did, Europe needs to pay repatriation. The "aid" it gives to African countries is not charity to help them develop, it is only a little minor compensation for the crimes it has done to those very countries. Europe need to first at least accept the crimes it has done and remember them the way it remembers the holocaust. For as Cesaire argues, it was European civilization that gave birth to Hitler; and many more like him. Secondly, Europe needs to eliminate the racism that still pervades it, the dangerous ideology that dehumanized the colonized, and as Cesaire says, eventually the colonizer himself: " colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point out."
To accept its crimes, to accept that their heroes like Winston Churchill had "Hitlers inside" them, to exhibit some remorse, to finally accept that there was, and is, something inherently wrong with the ideals upon which their civilization is constructed (Cesaire lists racist quotes advocating violence by celebrated Western philosophers), would be the very beginning of their possible redemption, if there can be one. And then, to give back to the societies what they stole from them.
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