8/4/2019 Albert Memmi
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Albert Memmi, Earthscan 12.9 5
First published in 1957, The Colonizer and the Colonizedwas born
out of Albert Memmi s direct experiences in North Africa. At the
time Algeria was in flames and the French Empire
was disintegrating. Circulated in French colonial prisons, Memmi
s work offers a psychological rather than an economic study of the
effects of colonialism. In his 1965 preface,
Memmi affirms that the economic aspect of colonisation is
fundamental , yet this is hardly touched on. Instead he provides a
portrait of the coloniser and the colonised, therelationships and
dynamics between these two groups, and the psychological impact
uponthe protagonists.
This is a world in which the coloniser enjoys privilege while
the colonised live in subhumanconditions and are viewed as a mass.
They do not exist as individuals but become objects.They are
nothing. As Cecil Rhodes once said, I prefer land to niggers. Not
surprisingly, racism became central to the system and not an
incidental detail.
Memmi poetically describes how the stranglehold of colonisation
leads to the loss of thecolonised s history, memory and language.
The colonised s native tongue becomes rusted and is neither written
nor read. All institutions of power use the language of the
coloniser,and so the colonised s institutions become dead or
petrified. All progress, including technological advances, becomes
associated with the coloniser. As a result the movementagainst
colonisation makes the colonised assert their differences to the
coloniser. This resultsin a return to religion, traditional
institutions and culture.
There is not much to disagree with here, and it is in the
chapters relating to the colonisedthat Memmi is strongest. It is in
the earlier sections of the book relating to the coloniser
thatMemmi s analysis is weak. This is already indicated via the new
introduction by Nadine Gordimer. It is highly unusual to have an
introduction that is so critical.
In these chapters Memmi is scathing of those Europeans who live
in the colonies but who donot agree with it. Ultimately he believes
that they will either return to Europe or become
colonisers themselves. There is no middle ground: All Europeans
in the colonies are de facto colonisers. While it is true that
Europeans in the colonies had privilege, this does not equate to
all of them supporting and upholding the system. In fact there was
a minority inmany colonial outposts which did not accept the rule
of the mother country and supportedthe colonised in their efforts
to liberate themselves. But Memmi goes further: Europeans of Europe
are potentially colonisers... By their whole weight, intentionally
or not, theycontribute to the perpetuation of colonial oppression.
Th is is that age-old argument that allof those living in the west,
from the industrialist to the worker, benefit from and support
theoppression of those in poorer nations. This is simply wrong.
Later Memmi contradicts his previous statements, and argues that
European nationals whodo not originate from the colonising country
are neither colonisers nor colonised . In fact he asserts that
there is a sliding scale of acceptability depending on a white
person s country of origin and the way in which they interact with
the colonised. For example,
Italians do not maintain a great distance between themselves and
the colonised. I doubt the Ethiopians would agree! As Gordimer
states, this didn t apply in any of the African countries I know.
In these, if you were white you were welcomed by the colonial
governmentand colonisers to shore up the white population.
This underlines a significant problem with Memmi s analysis.
Quite rightly he uses his own experiences in North Africa, but he
tries to extrapolate these to the colonial situation acrossthe
world. At times this works, but more often his generalisations are
crude. For example he
