The Boomerang Effect in our Modern Times

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The Boomerang Effect in our Modern Times

Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.

Aime Cesaire

I agree with the assertion that Aime Cesaire made on Discourse on Colonialism that the process of colonialism inflicts a “boomerang effect” on the colonizer. It is important to determine that colonialism is defined as “a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another...” by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Aime Cesaire prefers to define colonization as what is not:

…neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law.(32)

Cesaire’s words are aware of the European voices that excuse the horrors of colonialism behind the lie of bringing civilization to the savages. But colonizers didn’t know that they were planting the seeds of hate, the roots for fantastic tales about superior races and skin colors. Inevitable, the colonizers found themselves oppressed by the same savagery that they had tolerated during the colony.

Historically, the process of colonization was almost the same for any region since the discovery of the so-called New World in 1492. The king sends an ambassador to the new territory. The ambassador negotiates with local powers and other foreign power the borders of the new colony and establishes a central office as the new administrative power. This new office was in charge of the caudation of taxes, managing the army and giving justice. After some years the foreign power absorbs local powers thanks to its technological and military advances. The process to achieve domination is characteristic by ...

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...ith the “creativity” of the “ocuppys”, and the city said that in general there were not incidents to report, more than 200 people spend the night in jail just to think different. The brutality that U.S. accused the Taliban to promote now is promoted by this country. The boomerang is coming back.

Bibliography

A Poetics of Anticolonialism. Robin D.G, Kelley. Monthly Review Press. New York: 2000. Book.

Aimé Césaire." London Independent (19 Apr. 2008): 46. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 280. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 112. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. From Literature Resource Center.

Discourse on Colonialism. Aime Cesaire. Monthly Review Press. New York: 2000. Book.

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