The Colonizer and the Colonized- Albert Memmi

Question 1

What is at the heart of the colonial relationship?

Answer 1

The idea of privilege

Question 2

The deprivations of the colonized are the almost direct result of ….

Answer 2

the advantages secured to the colonizer

Question 3

What does Memmi say: In the final analysis, isn’t the motivating force of colonization economic?

Answer 3

Maybe, but not certainly.

Question 4

What do all colonized people do before they pass on to the stage of revolt?

Answer 4

Adopt every idiosyncrasy of the colonizer

Question 5

Why is oppression the greatest calamity of humanity?

Answer 5

Because it diverts and pollutes the best energies of man - For if colonization destroys the colonized, it also rots the colonizer

Question 6

The colonizers’ status suffers a double illegitimacy:

Answer 6

1. He is not only priviliged
2. but he is illegitimately so, a usurper

Question 7

Which three developments of the colonizer’s conscience are there?

Answer 7

1. profit
2. privilege
3. usurpation

Question 8

A colonial is a European living in a colony, but having no privileges. Why does he not exist?

Answer 8

Because all Europeans in the colonies are privileged

Question 9

If the small colonizer defends the colonial system so vigorously, it is because..

Answer 9

he benefits from it to some extent

Question 10

The gullibility of the small colonizer lies in the fact that …

Answer 10

to protect his very limited interests, he protects other infinitely more important ones.

Question 11

What is the position of the jews in relation to the colonizer?

Answer 11

They live in painful and constant ambiguity: rejected by the colonizer, although they try to resemble him,

Question 12

What is the position of the jews in relation to the colonized?

Answer 12

though they share in part the physical conditions and interests of the colonized, they reject the values of the colonized as belonging to a decayed world from which they eventually hope to escape.

Question 13

The colonizer who refuses, must either ..

Answer 13

withdraw physically from the conditions that privilige him or remain to fight and change them

Question 14

What fact confuses the leftist colonizer when it comes to supporting the liberation of the colonized?

Answer 14

The discovery that there is no connection between the liberation of the colonized and the application of a left-wing program.

Question 15

A dagerously deceptive trait of the leftist colonizer is his _ _

Answer 15

political ineffectiveness.

Question 16

A dagerously deceptive trait of the leftist colonizer is his political ineffictiveness. How are his demands not solid?

Answer 16

Because the left wing colonizer rejects his own group, but at the same time it is impossible for him to identify his future with that of the colonized.

Question 17

For the colonizer to possess victory completely he needs to ____

Answer 17

absolve himself of it and the conditions under which it was attained

Question 18

Name two attempts to pass usurption for legitimacy:

Answer 18

1. By demonstrating the usurper’s eminent merits as so eminent that they deserve such compensation
2. By emphasizing the usurped’s demerits, so deep that they cannot help leading to misfortune

Question 19

In what way does the homeland become an essential component of the collective superego of colonizers?

Answer 19

Colonizers project all good qualities on to their homeland and all negative ones on to the colony. Then by identifying with the homeland the colonizer hopes the homeland to redeem him from his usurpation.

Question 20

The rejection of the colonized and the colony produces a serious effect upon the colonizer’s conduct:

Answer 20

The colonizer having recjected all that is associated with the colonized and the colony (culture, laws, etc), cannot acknowledge belonging to it himself.

Question 21

Describe the nationality of the colonialist:

Answer 21

He navigates between a faraway society which he wants to make his own (which is to a certain degree mythical), and a present society which he rejects and thus keeps in the abstract.

Question 22

Colonial racism is built from three major ideological components:

Answer 22

1. The gulf between the culture of the colonialist and the colonized
2. the exploitation of these differences for the benefit of the colonialist
3. The use of these supposed differences as standards of absolute fact

Question 23

Why does the colonialist always stress those things that keep him seperate, rather than emphasizing that which might contribute to the foundation of a join community?

Answer 23

In those differences, the colonized is aways degraded and the colonialist finds justification for rejecting his subjects.

Question 24

Which two facts reveal the failure of colonial policy to fulfill its promised goals?

Answer 24

1. The colonial missions failed, because conversion of the colonized to the colonizer’s religion would have been a step toward assimilation
2. Just as the colonized would not be saved from his condition by religious assimilation, he would not be permitted to rise above his social status to join the colonizer group.

Question 25

All the efforts of the colonialst are directed toward maintaining social immobility, and _ is the surest weapon for this aim.

Answer 25

racism

Question 26

Why is racism the highest expression of the colonial system?

Answer 26

1. It establishes a fundamental discrimination between colonizer and colonized, which is a sine qua non of colonial life
2. it also lays the foundation for the immutability of this life.

Question 27

What does this mean:

“to the delights of rewarded virtue the colonizer adds the necessity of natural laws.”

Question 28

A paternalist is one who …

Answer 28

wants to stretch racism and inequality farther - a charitable racism that doesn’t recognize duties (of the colonizer) or rights (of the colonized).

Question 29

Why does the favored image (for example of the colonized) become a myth?

Answer 29

Because it suits the colonizer too well.

Question 30

The colonizer does not want to know the colonized, but he want to ..

Answer 30

make the colonized undergo a change

Question 31

The colonizer does not want to know the colonized, but he want to make the colonized undergo a change. What does this change consist of?

Answer 31

1. A series of negations: the colonizer is not this,is not that. He is never considered in a positive light.
2. The colonized is given “the mark of the plural”

Question 32

Should the colonized be considered in a positive light, the quality which is conceded is the result of …

Answer 32

a psychological or ethical failing.

Question 33

The colonized is given “the mark of the plural”:

Answer 33

The colonized is never characterized in an individual manner; he is entitled only to drown in an anonumous collectovity (“They are this.”“They are all the same”)

Question 34

The supreme ambition of the colonizer in dehumanizing the colonized is that he should exist only as …

Answer 34

a function of the needs of the colonizer, i.e. be transformed into a pure colonized

Question 35

Why does constantly being confronted with this image of himself disturb and worry the colonizer?

Answer 35

Because he admires and fears his powerful accuser.

Question 36

Why do the colonized not revolt, but tolerate oppression for so long?

Answer 36

Because, in part, the ideology of the ruling class, and with it their conception of the adversary, is adopted by the colonized.

Question 37

In what way is the bond between colonizer and colonized both destructive and creative?

Answer 37

It destroys and re-creates the two partners of colonization into colonizer and colonized. One is disfigured into an oppressor, the other into an oppressed creature whose development is broken. Just as the colonizer is tempted to accept his part, the colonized is forced to accept being colonized.

Question 38

The most serious blo suffered by the colonized is …

Answer 38

being removed from history and from the community.

Question 39

What was the significance of resistance films for the colonized?

Answer 39

They showed that poorly armed or even unarmed oppressed people did dare attack their oppressors.

Question 40

The colonized were not chauvinistic, but what was involved was an …

Answer 40

ambition and a form of mob psychology which appeals to passionate motives.

Question 41

Colonized society is a diseased society because …

Answer 41

internal dynamics no longer succeed in creating new structures

Question 42

Survival of the colonized’s family, the colonial superstructure, as a real value as a refuge, but ..

Answer 42

it is a pyrric victory, because the familiy simultaneously absorbs, cluthes and emasculates him.

Question 43

Because the present and the future is shut, religion offers a refuge value, both for the individual and for the group. Which aspect of religion?

Answer 43

Formalism, is the cyst in which colonial society shuts itself and hardens.

Question 44

The calcified colonized society is the consequence of two processes having opposite symptoms:

Answer 44

1. encystment originating internally
2. a corset imposed from outside

Question 45

As long as he tolerates colonization, the only possible alternatives for the colonized are _ or _.

Answer 45

• assimilation (refused to him)
• or petrification

Question 46

Memory is not purely a mental phenomenon. What happens to the memory of the colonized?

Answer 46

The memory of a people rests upon its institutions, but the colonized’s institutions are dead or petrified.

Question 47

How does the colonized look upon academicians that persist in developing the language of their people?

Answer 47

They consider them sleepwalkers who are living in an old dream.

Question 48

In what way is colonial bilingualism a linguistic drama?

Answer 48

The indigenous tongue does not coexist with the colonziers tongue, both belonging to the same world of feeling. The indigenous tongue is powerless, underdeveloped, in fact dead, for it opens no doors, turns no keys.

Question 49

How to respond to: “Didn’t the colonized nonetheless profit by colonization?”

Answer 49

If colonization had not taken place, perhaps there would have been more schools and hospitals.For so little gain, colonizaion was truly not indispensable.

Question 50

How to respond to: “That poverty was there before! We found it there when we arrived!”

Answer 50

How could a social system which perpetuates such distress - even supposing that it does not create it - endure for long?

Question 51

Once the colonized no longer accepts his situation, there are two possible solutions:

Answer 51

1. He attempts to become like the colonized
2. He reconquers all the dimensions which colonization tore away from him

Question 52

What makes the imitation of the colonizer by the colonized suspect?

Answer 52

This fit of passion for the colonizer’s values involves a negative side: In the name of what he hopes to become, he sets his mind on impoverishing himself, tearing himself away from his true self.

Question 53

In order to be assimilated, it is not enough to leave one’s group, but one must …

Answer 53

enter another (i.e. the colonizer’s group, but he is met with rejection)

Question 54

The colonial condition cannot be changed except by …

Answer 54

doing away with the colonial relationship

Question 55

Religion is not simply an attempt to communicate with the invisible, but also

Answer 55

an extraordinary place for communication for the whole group

Question 56

THe negative element becomes an essential part of the revival and struggle of the colonized in two ways:

Answer 56

1. Everything that (is seen to) belong(s) to the colonizer is not appropriate for the colonized (this is taken so far sometimes that the colonized reject science, as tough science can belong to one group)
2. Not only does the colonized accept his wrinkles and his wounds, but he will consider them praiseworthy (thereby unable to propose criticism of himself)

Question 57

The negative myth thrust on him by the colonizer is succeeded by …

Answer 57

a positive myth about himself suggested by the colonized, a countermythology.