Details concerning the registration of this association can be found in the Journal Officiel.
In 2006, to celebrate the 93rd birthday of Aimé Césaire, friends and admirers of the Martinican writer created an organization called the Institut Aimé Césaire des Lettres et des Arts des Amériques et de l'Afrique. Ultimately, the idea was to create the Aimé Césaire Foundation (Fondation Aimé Césaire) so that older and younger generations could remember Aimé Césaire and learn about the decisive role that he played in 'raising Black awareness about their legitimate belonging in the world and the existence of the Martinican people'.
The president of the institute is Georges Desportes, a novelist, poet and essayist from Martinique. Acting on a local scale, the association works to enhance and perpetuate the work and memory of Aimé Césaire through clubs, think tanks (conference organisation) and through the defense of basic human rights and various civic activities.
The Fondation Aimé Césaire was founded in 2011 and supports or accompanies many projects:
- The acquisition and preservation of the literary works of Césaire (including speeches) etc.
- The transformation of his office into a museum
- The creation of a Musée de la Négritude (Museum of Negritude)
- The maintenance of a center of studies and international research
In 2006, the objectives of the Institut Aimé Césaire des Lettres et des Arts, des Amériques et de l'Afrique are as follows:
- To remind the older generations from the colonial era to teach the younder generations, or those in search of emancipation, identity and freedom, the decisive role that Aimé Césaire played in 'raising Black awareness about their legitimate belonging in the world and the existence of the Martinican people'.
- To work towards the study, the teaching and the diffusion of socio-cultural facts that can be observed across the ante- and post-Columbian, Native American and Black Americas, and that attest to the vitality of Black-African contributions to American contemporary cultures in their various configurations: islands, archipelagos and continents
- To design and manage a place that will focus on expanding the knowledge relating to the Black people’s collective experience of the historical process of European expansion, the slave trade, enslavement, the colonizing powers’ domination, their attempt to alienate the culture of the dominated people, all of which gave rise to the processes of struggles for liberation, anti-slavery, emancipation and decolonisation.
- Through seminars, meetings or any other kind of dialogue, to support and foster a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach by inviting researchers, teachers, writers and artists from all backgrounds and continents, to make contributions regardless of the epistemological field of investigation: humanities, sociology, languages, literature, poetry, fine arts, philosophy, music...
- To cooperate with similar institutions and foundations around the world, and especially within the Caribbean, African and the Black diaspora
- To contribute to a climate of understanding between all the people of the world through systematic intercultural dialogue
- To mobilize resources, energies, talents and skills beyond any kind of discrimination in order to promote the humanistic, ecumenical and progressive essence of Césaire’s work.