Negrophilia
Factors/ideas influencing the emergence of negrophilia
What began as artistic interest grew to a society-wide, mass fetish in France in the aftermath of World War I, during which an entire generation of youth was lost [citation needed]. The violence and loss witnessed in Europe, in particular in France, by those who survived, challenged the belief in the superiority of Western civilization fostered during the age of Enlightenment, which also fueled questions on the exploitative effects of colonialism.[4] French society was looking for alternative ideologies, and the exotic, "primitive" cultures of French colonies, erstwhile and current, were seen as alternatives to cold capitalism and modernity. The post-war ideological vacuum thus fed off of earlier artistic movements centered around primitivism.[5] Simultaneously, the arrival of numerous African and African-American soldiers during the war years, their subsequent decision to return to or remain in post-war France, as well as numerous incoming artists, students, writers and professionals of color seeking accepting ground for themselves & their work, were significant contributors to the pervasiveness of Negrophilia in French society.
Negrophilia was never really about the Negro but about France, its needs, its wants and desires.
— T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting[6]
Significant personalities emerging from Les années folles
This fetishization of foreign cultures had already been established within France due to the regular expositions the country held to showcase the objects and people of the French colonies.
Avant-garde artists recognised for their negrophilia interests include poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Jean Cocteau, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Paul Colin, surrealists Georges Bataille[10] and Michel Leiris,[11] and political activist Nancy Cunard.[12] The During 1920–1930s Paris, negrophilia was a craze to collect African art, to listen to jazz, and to dance the Charleston, the Lindy Hop or the Black Bottom, were signs of being modern and fashionable. Perhaps the most popular revue and entertainer during this time was La Revue Nègre (1925) starring Josephine Baker.
Josephine Baker
Regarding Baker and her style of dancing, a literary critic at the time, Gerard Bauër, called this the dawning of the romanticism of "couleur" (meaning "dark skin"), as opposed to "exoticism," because romanticism was felt by the heart, and was not just a scientific inquiry.[13] Bauër, the biological (but illegitimate) grandson of the author Alexandre Dumas père (his father Henry was born of an extramarital relationship), was a prolific author and chronicler in Paris, and would later become a member of the Académie Goncourt and the Société des gens des lettres (Society of Persons of Letters), which defended the rights of authors. As he described it, the animal-like intensity of Josephine Baker's dancing, for example, transported the viewer to a new state of feeling and not just curiosity. In addition to her color and near complete nudity, what elicited these feelings were Ms. Baker's movements—near perpetual trembling, her body extended like a serpent with elements of a contortionist, and ending on all fours with her head on the stage and her derrière in the air. Similarly, the African bamboula dance was described as a "frenzy" of noise and movement where one loses oneself, and where the dance becomes nearly an act of sexual intercourse.[14]
Significant pieces
- La Revue Nègre
- La Folie du Jour
The Bal Nègre
Due to World War I, France saw an influx of African colonials migrate into Paris. This sudden rise in diversity led white Parisians to become fascinated by the introduction and immersion of black cultures in the city. During the late 1920s, several Parisian nightclubs began hosting bals, or authentic African-inspired dances, which were very popular among both the black and white French crowds. These bals became one of the leading interracial social spaces in France.
While African immigrants went to a bal colonial, or bal nègre, for recreation and fun, French surrealists often came for the scientific observation of black culture. The jazz music and dancing found in black nightclubs were studied by surrealists as major components of black civilization. This appreciation of the night lifestyle of
To the average Frenchman, the bal nègre was considered an opportunity for "exotic" experiences and sexual freedom.[17] Black party-goers were no longer thought to be in these bals for their own enjoyment, but for the interests of white guests. As the appeal of exoticism rose, the opportunity for white people to interact and dance with black people became very attractive. This promise of "exotic experimentation" made these nightclubs very popular with the French bourgeois and turned them into tourist attractions. Interracial dancing gave the French a sense of liberation from the conventions of modern society, especially since the French deemed Africa and Africans primitive and passionate. These "progressive" interracial relations did not surpass the walls of the Parisian nightclubs. The racial and social structures remained the same for Blacks and whites in France during the early 20th century.[17]
Concurrent movements and opposing ideas
- Negrophilia was a metropolitan movement that also elicited opposition from parts of French society. The combination of African primitive music and American popular culture through presentations such as La Revue Nègre, was a threat to refined French tastes. Not all Parisians welcomed incoming foreigners in the inter-war years – they were seen as competition for employment opportunities in a recovering economy,[18] nor was Paris free from racism.[19]
- Dissenting voices were strengthening in the French colonies. An example is the formation of the Association Panafricaine in 1921 post the Pan-African Congress. Soldiers from French colonies who fought on behalf of France during the Great War were voicing demands for citizenship and equality, challenging French colonial power.[5]
Negrophilia today – cultural appropriation
Negrophilia and the fetishization of Black faces, bodies, arts, music and dance that were its manifestations, have been criticized for objectifying, sexualizing and ultimately trivializing peoples of so-called "primitive" or "exotic" cultures, in a process of racial "othering".
Further reading
Articles
- "A double-edged infatuation". The Guardian. 23 September 2000.
Books
- Archer-Straw, Petrine (2000). Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s. Thames & Hudson. OCLC 49222006.
See also
- Afrophobia
- Négritude
- Negrophobia
- Allosemitism
- Orientalism
- Othering
- Primitivism
- Racial fetishism
References
- OCLC 906987006.
- ^ According to (in French) CNRTL, the word was coined around 1803.
- ISSN 0950-2386.
- OCLC 473873937.
- ^ ISSN 1473-3536.
- S2CID 162373650.
- ISSN 0270-5346.
- ^ Blake, Jodie, Le Tumulte Noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900–1930, 1999.
- ISBN 978-1-78138-309-4.
- ^ Bataille, Georges (ed.), Document No. 4, Paris, 1929.
- ^ L'Afrique fantôme, Gallimard, Paris, 1988.
- ^ Cunard, Nancy, and Hugh G. Ford (eds), Negro: An Anthology, 1970.
- ^ Bauër, Gérard (1930). Le Romanticism de Couleur (in French). Monaco: Principauté de Monaco Société de Conférences. pp. 8–9.
- ^ Fanoudh-Siefer, Léon (1968). Le Mythe du Nègre et de L'Afrique Noire dans la Littérature Française (de 1800 à la 2éme Guerre Mondiale) (in French). Paris: Librarie C. Klincksieck. p. 167.
- ISBN 9780803225459.
- ISBN 9780803225459.
- ^ a b Berliner, Brett A. (2002). Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black Other in Jazz-Age France. University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 206–222.
- OCLC 903380413.
- OCLC 854889863.
- ^ S2CID 191430463.
- S2CID 237367332.
- Petrine Archer-Straw, Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (2000)
- Michel Fabre, From Harlem to Paris (1991)
- Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (1996)