Knipp, Kersten. "A Sober Look at Freedom." Quantara.de (2008).

Portrait du Colonisé (the English translation, The Colonizer and the Colonized, being published in 1965) is the title of the 1957 essay by Tunisian author and sociologist Albert Memmi. The title suggests that the author did not hesitate to draw the portrait in broad generalised terms. "The colonised" for Memmi was a type of human being without characteristics, whom "the colonist" did not view as an individual, rather, as part of a collective, one out of a mass placed at his service. This ideology was so overpowering that the colonised had nothing to counter it with: "He did not feel responsible, or guilty, or sceptical – he was out of the game. In no respect was he the subject of history." This short essay became one of the seminal reference texts of the independence movements in the second half of the twentieth century. And if the writer captured the spirit of the time so aptly, it was because he himself was caught between the tensions of not just two, but three cultures. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-811/i.html.