Deciphering the Cold War Legacy: Aimé Césaire's Historical Perspectives and the Emergence of the "Identity Problem" in the Post–Cold War Era

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) initiated his political career post-World War II as a member of the French Communist Party and retired from the leadership of the Martinican Progressive Party in 2005, just before his demise. Consequently, a substantial facet of the contextual framework of his political life is grounded in the Cold War structure. Indeed, Césaire's decolonialist ideas are inseparable from the Cold War. For instance, in his Discourse on Colonialism (1955), he endeavored to contemplate the Soviet Union as a paradigm for a "new society." However, the repercussions of the cessation of the Cold War structure on Césaire's political ideology remain relatively obscure.

By analyzing materials in the Digital Library of the Caribbean and interviews, the presenter aims to uncover historical perspectives of Césaire. The presentation will focus on Césaire's consideration of the "syndrome" of a new identity problem brought about by the collapse of the Cold War structure in the late 1980s and 1990s, including perestroika, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Yugoslav Wars.

As seen in a 1981 interview in Antilla, before the end of the Cold War, Césaire somewhat idealized the "multinational" character of the Soviet Union in order to relativize the "one and indivisible" French Republic and criticize its ideology. Therefore, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the loss of one of his models, which did not bring Césaire the "tellability" of history.

Instead, it meant for him the "untellability" of history due to the "syndrome" or "prodrome" of new problems of "identity" as exemplified by the Yugoslav Wars. Although Césaire did not use the term "untellability," a scrupulous analysis of the evolution of Césaire's decolonization argument posits that the term "untellability" assumes a pivotal role in deciphering Césaire's political and historical vision since the 1980s.