Colonized writers internalize the colonizer’s aesthetic to erase their own identity

Evidence

This is what is known as bovarisme. In Martinique also we were in the midst of bovarisme. I still remember a poor little Martinican pharmacist who passed the time writing poems and sonnets which he sent to literary contests, such as the Floral Games of Toulouse. He felt very proud when one of his poems won a prize. One day he told me that the judges hadn’t even realized that his poems were written by a man of color. To put it in other words, his poetry was so impersonal that it made him proud. He was filled with pride by something I would have considered a crushing condemnation. — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 330

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘bovarisme’ as the concept for colonized self-estrangement — a key definitional building block for colonial psychology.
• XREF: Lines up with Fanon and also with the reader’s earlier notes on colonial subjects punished for assimilating well — the pharmacist’s pride is exactly that double bind. — connects to: Orientalist categories are reproduced by the colonized themselves; Formerly colonized peoples risk adopting the dominating discourse against themselves; Colonized subjects recognize the colonizer’s landscape as already-familiar and idealized (+13 more)

Related

• Colonized subjects recognize the colonizer’s landscape as already-familiar and idealized (similarity 0.93)
• Orientalist categories are reproduced by the colonized themselves (similarity 0.90)
• Formerly colonized peoples risk adopting the dominating discourse against themselves (similarity 0.90)
• Colonization is internalized into the most intimate private space (similarity 0.80)
• Cultural imposition forces colonized subjects to identify against their own ancestry (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial domination is undone first in the colonized subject’s inner life (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial histories are internal to the identity of the colonizer nation (similarity 0.79)
• The colonized Antillean internalizes the culture that enslaves him (similarity 0.79)
• Colonized peoples acquire inferiority complexes through suppression of local culture (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Colonial domination is undone first in the colonized subject’s inner life #expands (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 178
• Cultural imposition forces colonized subjects to identify against their own ancestry #corroborates (0.85)
• Colonized people gain status precisely by renouncing their own culture for the colonizer’s #corroborates (0.85)
• Colonial oppression transforms the colonized psyche wholesale rather than adding to it #expands (0.80) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 347
• Colonial rule systematically instills an inferiority complex in the colonized #expands (0.80) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 59
• Colonized peoples acquire inferiority complexes through suppression of local culture #corroborates (0.80) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 77