Révéler l’esclavage Le Cahier ­d’un retour au pays natal

This article is a reading of the Cahier d’un retour au pays natal by Aimé Césaire. It emphasises the epic function associated with the poet’s decision to take charge of the memory of the slavery via the traumatised throbbing of recurring images and narrative episodes. The poet assumes the two-fold function of, on the one hand, revealing the violence suffered and its present persistence and, on the other, transforming indignity into a mastering of becoming through the recuperation of voice and identity.