Memmi, Albert, The Colonizer and the Colonized,
Expanded Edition, Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.
What is the structure of the colonial system?
What is its success fundamentally contingent upon?
How is that achieved?
As Memmi asks: “How can an elite of usurpers, aware of their mediocrity, establish their privileges?”
As Sartre says, “colonialism has cost mother countries more than it has earned.” So what, does he say, does colonialism actually create?
What is the lure of the colony to the colonizer?
What is the colonialist lifestyle dependent upon?
What is the typical response to colonialism of those Memmi describes as “colonials?”
How do those selected from among the colonized to represent the colonizers (as policeman, agents, etc.) fit into this relational dynamic?
What happens to the colonizers once they have “discovered the import of colonization and are conscious of their own position?”
What is a colonialist
What happens initially to the colonizer who refuses to become a colonialist?
What happens to that same colonizer if they continue to refuse to become a colonialist?
What does Memmi suggest for the colonizer who refuses to become a colonialist?
Will that status Memmi suggests be relatively easy to achieve?
Why or Why not?
What is a leftist colonizer?
What is their fate in the colonies?
Memmi’s final pronouncement on the ability of the colonizer to refuse becoming a colonialist is what?
What does the colonizer who agrees to become a colonialist do?
What are the characteristics of this type of individual?
Why do the “best colonialists” go away leaving only the mediocre?
How does the colonialist justify his or her role as usurper?
How is the colonialist treated back in the mother country?
What is their reaction to this treatment?
How is the colonialist politically and economically different from a resident of his or her homeland?
What concept best symbolizes the fundamental relation between colonialist and colonized?