Colonialism and the Ethics of Difference: From Sartre to Said

by Azzedine Haddour

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Jean Paul Sartre's writings on race and postcoloniality in the 1950s informed the debates around decolonisation at a time when France was involved in a bitter struggle in Algeria. Sartre was one of the first thinkers to deal with the ethics of difference, and the first to critique colonial narratives -- in effect, establishing a critical terrain for postcolonial theorising which was to have a lasting influence on the work of Fanon, Cesaire, Memmi and Said. Colonialism and the Ethics of Difference shows how Sartre influenced many of the key post-colonial thinkers and writers. Sartre's writings on the construction of 'otherness' and his work in Antisemite and Jew , for example, had a direct impact on both Fanon and Cesaire in their work on the culture of colonialism.
Sartre's preface to Fanon's Wretched of the Earth marked the fissuring of one of the grand narratives of Western Humanism, while his introduction to Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonised characterised colonialism as a profoundly racist imposition which could only be fully understood as part of an ongoing imperialist project whereby colonised peoples were systematically reduced to the status of object, fit only to serve the higher interests of the colonial powers.
  • ISBN10 0745312012
  • ISBN13 9780745312019
  • Publish Date 20 August 2015
  • Publish Status Cancelled
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Pluto Press
  • Format Hardcover (Library Binding)
  • Pages 192
  • Language English