Curated by Colette Césaire and Marc Césaire, the exhibition « Aimé Césaire, un homme de rupture » [Aimé Césaire: A man of ruptures] opened on September 29, and is on view until November 24, 2023, at La Nef, Habitation Clément, in Le François, Martinique.

Description: Apart from anecdotes (which, sometimes touching, say more about who tells them than about who they believe to reveal); in contrast to biographical approaches as lavish in vain details as in haphazard or gratuitous interpretations; far from polemics (whose futility increases with time); beyond more or less justifiable controversies; and freeing oneself from relevant, but sectoral, analyses; how can we appreciate in clear and indisputable terms the contribution of Aimé Césaire to literature, to cultural reflection and action, and to political thought?

In its polysemy, with its multiple variations, the word rupture is essential here. Because, if you look closely, the author of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal and the (re)creator of King Christophe—while also the pamphleteer who wrote Discours sur le colonialisme or the critical thinker who authored Lettre à Maurice Thorez—was, first and foremost, a man of ruptures –if we understand the word rupture less as refusal, brutal rejection, or uprooting without perspective, than as an essential prerequisite for higher achievements.

So, let us observe and distinguish, in their singularity as well as in their solidary coherence, three essential challenges—of an aesthetic, ideological, and political order—at the heart of Césaire’s work.

Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. Read the original post at https://www.fondation-clement.org/en/discover-the-exhibitions/aime-cesaire-un-homme-de-rupture

[Photo above by Chester Higgins.]