In fact, the settler is right when he speaks of knowing "them" well.
The settler and the native are old acquaintances. Their first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together-that is to say the exploitation of the native by the settler-was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons. Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantification which results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies.
Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say that it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding.
But the possibility of this change is equally experienced in the form of a terrifying future in the consciousness of another "species" of men and women: the colonizers.ĭecolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. Lives of the men and women who are colonized. The need for this change exists in its crude state, impetuous and compelling, in the consciousness and in the The extraordinary importance of this change is that it is willed, called for, demanded. To tell the truth, the proof of success lies in a whole social structure being changed from the bottom up.
Its unusual importance is that it constitutes, from the very first day, the minimum demands of the colonized. But we have precisely chosen to speak of that kind of tabula rasa which characterizes at the outset all decolonization. It is true that we could equally well stress the rise of a new nation, the setting up of a new state, its diplomatic relations, and its economic and political trends. Without any period of transition, there is a total, complete, and absolute substitution. At whatever level we study it-relationships between individuals, new names for sports clubs, the human admixture at cocktail parties, in the police, on the directing boards of national or private banks-decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain "species" of men by another "species" of men. National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.
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