Martinique

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1913–2008 ○ Natural causes

Co-founder of Négritude, pioneering critic of colonialism

"My turn to state an equation: colonization = 'thingification.'" — Discourse on Colonialism (1950), distilling European colonialism into a single devastating formula.

Martinican poet, playwright, and politician. In 1935 Paris, with Senghor and Damas, he coined 'Négritude' and led the movement for Black cultural identity. His surrealist poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939) and essay Discourse on Colonialism (1950), which analyzed colonialism as the prototype of European fascism and formulated 'colonization = thingification', are foundational texts of postcolonial thought. Frantz Fanon's teacher and mentor, he served 47 years in the French National Assembly and 56 as mayor of Fort-de-France. He broke with the French Communist Party over the 1956 Soviet suppression of Hungary and founded the Martinican Progressive Party in 1958.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1925–1961 ○ Illness

The psychiatrist who diagnosed colonialism itself as the disease

“For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must set afoot a new man.” — The Wretched of the Earth, 1961

Psychiatrist and anti-colonial revolutionary from Martinique. His Black Skin, White Masks (1952) dissected the psychological violence of colonialism; The Wretched of the Earth (1961) theorized the liberation struggle. Joined the Algerian FLN and died of leukemia at thirty-six.