Postcolonial liberation means building a new society, not reviving or prolonging old ones.

Evidence

So the real problem, you say, is to return to them. No, I repeat. We are not men for whom it is a question of “either-or.” For us, the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but to go beyond. It is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days. — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 113

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core definition of Césaire’s project of going ‘beyond’ both nostalgia and colonial present — a scaffolding concept that will be carried forward and echoed in how theorists define decolonization against both primitivism and assimilation. — connects to: Post-colonial nations blend popular and official nationalism as ongoing projects — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 446; Recovering a glorious precolonial past cannot change present colonial suffering; Reclaiming an ancient Negro civilization does not change present colonial suffering. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 870
• DEFINE: Defines the negritude/postcolonial alternative to the false binary of returning to a dead past versus prolonging the colonial present.

Related

• Post-colonial nations blend popular and official nationalism as ongoing projects (similarity 0.81)
• Postcolonial theory can generate counterpresents, not just counterhistories (similarity 0.79)
• Postcolonial status denotes structural state shifts, not mere birth after decolonization (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Recovering a glorious precolonial past cannot change present colonial suffering #corroborates (0.82)
• Reclaiming an ancient Negro civilization does not change present colonial suffering. #corroborates (0.82) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 870
• Post-colonial nations blend popular and official nationalism as ongoing projects #expands (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 446