Unthinking philosophy: Aimé Césaire, poetry, and the politics of Western knowledge

Energised by his concern with the place of poetry in and as philosophy, Césaire’s work is engaged in thinking knowledge, a praxis which becomes fundamental to his critique of the ideology of imperialism. The concern with poetry as magical thinking and the question of what it contributes to philosophy, and more particularly, to epistemology, takes on pressing importance in the light of colonialism, whose domination is predicated on the hegemonic disruption and erasure of indigenous knowledges. Through his radical re-evaluation of Western epistemology, Césaire shows that what is at stake in African/diasporic, and indeed planetary, futures, is a radical reframing of the category of philosophy and the possibility of an alternative relation to objects. The issue of coloniality’s imbrication in a Western ontology of objects takes on amplified importance in the light of current capitalist crises, including ecological collapse.