In his work titled Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, Aimé Césaire uses language as a means of reclaiming the memories of Martinique and its people by shedding a light on its painful history and afterwards presenting a new way to move forward in light of this reality.

Towards the beginning of the text, Césaire uses a type of language that harkens back to the violent history of Martinique. He speaks of “an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules, / the awful futility of our raison d’être” (Césaire 2). The language here harkens back to the bursting of Mt. Pelée, a disaster like nothing the island had ever seen, during which the massive volcanic eruption killed most of its inhabitants. Memory works in a particularly interesting way in this passage, for readers are both reminded of the eruption whilst also becoming aware of a grander historical awakening that Césaire is ushering forth. This “aged silence” is both the silence of “the martyrs who do not bear witness” as well as the historical silencing that the colonial enterprise has forced upon the colonized by erasing the histories of the previous inhabitants of the island (1-2). The futility is the awful uselessness of the reason for their existence that he is feeling, which is put in contact with their raison d’être, meaning the most important reason or purpose for someone’s existence. Césaire is in a liminal space at this moment, witnessing both the dejected state that this colonized land is in, as well as recognizing the need for a resurgence of these histories that must occur. He writes of “the insane awakening,” which denotes an immediate and passionate force, this aged silence that is now bursting through the silenced histories and finally gaining ground (2).

Later on in the text, Césaire states more firmly his own role in the awakening of the forgotten histories of Martinique and its people. He prophesies “I would go to this land of mine and I would say to it: ‘Embrace me without fear ... And if all I can do is speak, it is for you I shall speak.’ / And again I would say: ‘My mouth shall be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those who break down in the prison holes of despair’” (13). Thirty-four years after the eruption of Mt. Pelée in 1902, Césaire would return to Martinique and write Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. The notion of returning is a key component of post-colonial literature as it signifies a time period of recovery that will occur as a result. Césaire asks his native land to welcome him, not as a colonizer wanting to take advantage of its resources, but as a mouthpiece through which he will recite its histories and pains to the world. He continues on by stating to himself, “And above all, my body as well as my soul, beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear ...”(13-14). Here Césaire is put in the liminal space between his Martinican heritage and his French education; he is constantly aware of the colonizer’s mentality towards the colonized and tries not to step over that line dividing the two. He utilizes the colonizer’s language as a direct means of negating it by showing the dangers of this way of thinking towards a group of people.

One comes across various moments in the text that immerse them within these forgotten histories. Césaire writes “And I say to myself Bordeaux and Nantes and Liverpool and New York and San Francisco / not an inch of this world devoid of my fingerprint / and my calcaneus on the spines of skyscrapers and my filth in the glitter of gems!” a few lines after which he concludes with “Land red, sanguineous, consanguineous land” (15- 16). Here he is reminding the Western world of the role that the colonized African people played in the creation of their modern civilizations. These same people who were taken from their homes and forced into slavery are the same people with whom the fates of these big cities of the world were intertwined. Throughout this section he is harkening back to this bloody history, expertly utilizing language as a means towards uncovering the fingerprints of the colonized that are all over these histories. Through the use of vivid and chilling language, Césaire foregrounds the experiences of the slaves in these very same famous areas of the world.

Following this segment, Césaire explores the idea of their land having no memory as he muses “At the end of daybreak this land without a stele, the paths without memory, these winds without a tablet. / So what? / We would tell. Would sing. Would howl. / Full voice, ample voice, you would be our wealth, our spear pointed” (17). At first it would seem as though the text is directly contradicting itself by stating that the land actually does not have memory. However, the physical erasure of its people in the past—whether via the erasure of its indigenous population or the volcanic eruption—does not necessarily equal to the complete erasure of its people and their histories. Instead, it is the European notion of maintaining cultural memory that the text is commenting on, thus shown by the counter-argument he provides by talking about their oral storytelling traditions, a tradition that maintains their cultural wealth. This notion of their own oral history, oral storytelling is a form of speaking back to this so-called no memory; their wealth and weapon against European forms of maintaining identity. Towards the latter part of the text, he showcases the tremendous amount of memory that had previously been silenced: “So much blood in my memory! In my memory are lagoons. / They are covered with death's-heads. They are not covered with water lilies. In my memory are lagoons. No women's loin-cloths spread out on their shores. / My memory is encircled with blood. My memory has a belt of corpses” (25)! There is no mistaking here that there is a very violent and bloody cultural history that he has uncovered. Once again one can notice the negations here, the idea that these memories are not akin to those of the romanticized West, but are filled with the bloody remains that colonization leaves behind. The collective memory of their past encompasses the collective trauma in this moment of recognition of this past.

Césaire does not end the text with just this recognition, although that already is a big step that needed to be taken. Instead, he provides a new path onto which these colonized lives can hope to find their own voices. The ending begins with the words “But what strange pride suddenly illuminates me,” after which he interjects “My negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against / the clamour of the day / my negritude is not a leukoma of dead liquid over the earth’s dead eye / my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral / it takes root in the red flesh of the soil / it takes root in the ardent flesh of the sky / it breaks through opaque prostration with its upright patience” (33-35). Suddenly there is a shift away from the saddened and violent language, the defeated tone and towards a more hopeful intervention. Pride fills, it is negritude, a pride in African heritage, in being African, a pride which is powerful. His negritude breaks through with its patience, it takes root and cannot be destroyed easily. The language is not direct as it displays what negritude is not. Similarly used when he spoke of not becoming a spectator to his people’s pain, this technique is a way for Césaire to dispel all misconceptions of what negritude is by finding that liminal space where a broader understanding can occur through the breaking of these misconceptions. The better way of describing it is instead by stating how it operates. Césaire presents negritude as not simply a material object but rather a mode of being, a notion that can inspire an entire people towards reclaiming their identities and thriving from it.