Négritude
Négritude (from French "Nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, mainly developed by
Négritude inspired the birth of many movements across the Afro-Diasporic world, including Afro-Surrealism, Créolité in the Caribbean, and black is beautiful in the United States. Frantz Fanon often made reference to Négritude in his writing.[4]
Etymology
Influences
In 1885,
The Harlem Renaissance, a literary style developed in Harlem in Manhattan during the 1920s and 1930s, influenced the Négritude philosophy. The Harlem Renaissance's writers, including Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Claude McKay, Alain Locke and W.E.B. Du Bois addressed the themes of "noireism", race relations and "double-consciousness".
During the 1920s and 1930s, young black students and scholars primarily from France's colonies and territories assembled in Paris, where they were introduced to writers of the
The Nardal sisters were responsible for the introduction of the Harlem Renaissance and its ideas to Césaire, Senghor, and Damas. In a letter from February 1960, Senghor admits the importance of the Nardal sisters, "We were in contact with these black Americans during the years 1929–34 through Mademoiselle Paulette Nardall...kept a literary salon where African Negroestrans, West Indians, and American Negroes used to get together." Jane Nardal's 1929 article "Internationalisme noir" predates Senghor's first critical theory piece "What the Black Man Contributes", itself published in 1939.[9] This essay, "Internationalisme noir", focuses on race consciousness in the African diaspora and cultural metissage, double-apparentance; seen as the philosophical foundation for the Négritude movement.[9] The Nardal sisters, for all their ideas and the importance of their Clamart Salon, have been minimized in the development of Négritude by the masculinist domination of the movement. Paulette even wrote as much in 1960 when she "bitterly complained" about the lack of acknowledgment to her and her sister Jane regarding their importance to a movement historically and presently credited to Césaire, Senghor, and Damas. The name Nardal belongs in that list.
Development during the 20th century
Each of the initiators had his own ideas about the purpose and styles of Négritude, the philosophy was characterized generally by opposition to colonialism, denunciation of Europe's alleged inhumanity, and rejection of Western domination and ideas. The movement also appears to have had some
Motivation for the Négritude movement was a result of
Aimé Césaire
Césaire was a poet, playwright, and politician from Martinique. He studied in Paris, where he discovered the black community and "rediscovered Africa". He saw Négritude as the fact of being black, acceptance of this fact, and appreciation of the history and culture, and of black people. It is important to note that for Césaire, this emphasis on the acceptance of the fact of "blackness" was the means by which the "decolonization of the mind" could be achieved. According to him, western imperialism was responsible for the inferiority complex of black people. He sought to recognize the collective colonial experience of black individuals —the slave trade and plantation system. Césaire's ideology was especially important during the early years of Négritude.
Neither Césaire—who after returning to Martinique after his studies was elected mayor of
Leopold Senghor
Négritude would, according to Senghor, enable black people in French lands to have a "seat at the give and take of the [French] table as equals". However, the French eventually granted Senegal and its other African colonies independence. Poet and later the first president of Sénégal, Senghor used Négritude to work toward a universal valuation of African people. He advocated a modern incorporation of the expression and celebration of traditional African customs and ideas. This interpretation of Négritude tended to be the most common, particularly during later years.
Leon Damas
Damas was a French Guianese poet and National Assembly member. He had a militant style of defending "black qualities" and rejected any kind of reconciliation with Caucasians. Two particular anthologies were pivotal to the movement; one was published by Damas in 1946, Poètes d'expression française 1900–1945. Senghor would then go on to publish Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française in 1948. Damas's introduction to the work and the poetic anthology was meant to be a sort of manifesto for the movement, but Senghor's own anthology eventually took that role. Though it would be the "Preface" written by French philosopher and public intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre for the anthology that would propel Négritude into the broader intellectual conversation.
Damas' introduction was more political and cultural in nature. A distinctive feature of his anthology and beliefs was that Damas felt his message was one for the colonized in general, and included poets from Indochina and Madagascar. This is sharply in contrast to Senghor's anthology. In the introduction, Damas proclaimed that now was the age where "the colonized man becomes aware of his rights and of his duties as a writer, as a novelist or a storyteller, an essayist or a poet." Damas outlines the themes of the work. He says, "Poverty, illiteracy, exploitation of man by man, social and political racism suffered by the black or the yellow, forced labor, inequalities, lies, resignation, swindles, prejudices, complacencies, cowardice, failure, crimes committed in the name of liberty, of equality, of fraternity, that is the theme of this indigenous poetry in French." Damas' introduction was indeed a calling and affirmation for a distinct cultural identification.
Reception
In 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre analyzed the négritude philosophy in an essay called "Orphée Noir" ("Black Orpheus")[10] that served as the introduction to a volume of francophone poetry named Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, compiled by Léopold Senghor. In this essay, Sartre characterizes négritude as the opposite of colonial racism in a Hegelian dialectic and with it he helped to introduce Négritude issues to French intellectuals. In his opinion, négritude was an "anti-racist racism" (racisme antiraciste), a strategy with a final goal of racial unity.
Négritude was criticized by some Black writers during the 1960s as insufficiently militant. Keorapetse Kgositsile said that the term Négritude was based too much on Blackness according to a European aesthetic, and was unable to define a new kind of perception of African-ness that would free Black people and Black art from Caucasian conceptualizations altogether.
The Nigerian dramatist, poet, and novelist Wole Soyinka opposed Négritude. He believed that by deliberately and outspokenly being proud of their ethnicity, Black people were automatically on the defensive. According to some, he said: "Un tigre ne proclame pas sa tigritude, il saute sur sa proie" (French: A tiger doesn't proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey).[11] But in fact, Soyinka wrote in a 1960 essay for the Horn, "the duiker will not paint 'duiker' on his beautiful back to proclaim his duikeritude; you'll know him by his elegant leap."[12][13]
After a long period of silence there has been a renaissance of Négritude developed by scholars such as Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University), Donna Jones (University of California, Berkeley),[14] and Cheikh Thiam[15] (Ohio State University) who all continue the work of Abiola Irele (1936–2017). Cheikh Thiam's book is the only book-length study of Négritude as philosophy. It develops Diagne's reading of Négritude as a philosophy of art, and Jones' presentation of Négritude as a lebensphilosophie.[citation needed]
Other uses
American physician
Novelist
) in October 1974.The word is also used by the rapper Youssoupha in his eponymous album "Négritude" but also before this one.
See also
- Black Skin, White Masks
- Black Consciousness Movement
- Black Surrealism
- Black Arts Movement
- Black Power Movement
- Angolanidade ("Angolan-ness")
- Authenticité
- Afro-pessimism
- Afro-Surrealism
Notes
- ISSN 1760-6454. Retrieved 2021-10-13.
- ISBN 978-1-4008-8488-9.
- . .
- S2CID 162812806.
- ^ Edwards, Brent Hayes (2003). The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Harvard University Press. pp. 20–38.
- ^ a b c d Reilly, Brian J. (2020). "Négritude's Contretemps: The Coining and Reception of Aimé Césaire's Neologism". Philological Quarterly. 99 (4): 377–98 – via ProQuest.
- ^ Filostrat, Christian (2008). Negritude Agonistes, Assimilation against Nationalism in the Frenchspeaking Caribbean and Guyane. Africana Homestead.
- .
- ^ S2CID 146582416.
- ^ The title subsequently inspired the name of the Nigerian magazine Black Orpheus — see Peter Benson, Black Orpheus, Transition, and Modern Cultural Awakening in Africa, University of California Press, 1986, p. 24.
- ISBN 978-9988-647-96-4.
- JSTOR 3819421.
- ^ "Tigritude". This Analog Life. 2013-08-05. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
- ^ "Donna V. Jones", English Department, University of California, Berkeley.
- ^ "Cheikh Thiam Appointed to Dean Post for the School of International Training". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 2020-01-06. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
- ^ Randall, Vernellia R. "An Early History – African American Mental Health". Institute on Race, Health Care and the Law, The University of Dayton School of Law. Retrieved 21 December 2008.
References
- Christian Filostrat, "La Négritude et la 'Conscience raciale et révolution sociale' d'Aimé Césaire". Présence Francophone, No. 21, Automne 1980, pp. 119–130.
- Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Orphée Noir". Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache. ed. Léopold Senghor. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, p. xiv (1948).
- Condé, Maryse (1998), "O Brave New World", Research in African Literatures, 29: 1–7, archived from the original on 2001-04-06.
- Rabanka, Leiland. « The Negritude Movement: W.E.B. Du Bois, Leon Damas, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and the Evolution of an Insurgent Idea. » Lexington Books, 2015.
- Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. “Femme Négritude: Jane Nardal, La Dépêche Africaine, and the Francophone New Negro.” Souls (Boulder, Colo.), vol. 2, no. 4, Taylor & Francis Group, 2000, pp. 8–17,
Bibliography
Original texts
- Césaire, Aimé: ISBN 1-85224-184-5
- Césaire, Aimé: Discourse on Colonialism, ISBN 1-58367-025-4
- Damas, Léon-Gontran, Poètes d'expression française.Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1947
- Damas, Léon-Gontan, Mine de Rien, Poèmes inédits.
- Diop, Birago, Leurres et lueurs. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1960
- Senghor, Léopold Sedar, The Collected Poetry, University of Virginia Press, 1998
- Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Ce que je crois. Paris: Grasset, 1988
- Tadjo, Véronique, Red Earth/Latérite. Spokane, Washington: Eastern Washington University Press, 2006
Secondary literature
- Filostrat, Christian. Negritude Agonistes, Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers, 2008, ISBN 978-0-9818939-2-1
- Irele, Abiola. "Négritude or black cultural nationalism." Journal of Modern African Studies 3.3 (1965): 321–348.
- Le Baron, Bentley. "Négritude: A Pan-African Ideal?." Ethics 76.4 (1966): 267-276 online.
- Reilly, Brian J. "Négritude's Contretemps: The Coining and Reception of Aimé Césaire's Neologism". Philological Quarterly 99.4 (2020): 377–98.
- Rexer, Raisa. "Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: L'Étudiant noir, Communism, and the Birth of Négritude". Research in African Literatures 44.4 (2013): 1-14.
- Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Negritude Women, ISBN 0-8166-3680-X
- Stovall, Tyler, "Aimé Césaire and the making of black Paris." French Politics, Culture & Society 27#3 (2009): 44–46
- Thiam, Cheikh. Return to the Kingdom of Childhood: Re-envisioning the Legacy and Philosophical Relevance of Negritude (Ohio State University Press, 2014)
- Thompson, Peter, Negritude and Changing Africa: An Update, in Research in African Literatures, Winter 2002
- Thompson, Peter, Négritude et nouveaux mondes—poésie noire: africaine, antillaise et malgache. Concord, Mass: Wayside Publishing, 1994
- Wilder, Gary. The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude & Colonial Humanism Between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005) ISBN 0-226-89772-9
- Wilder, Gary. Freedom time: Negritude, decolonization, and the future of the world (Duke University Press, 2015).
Filmography
- Négritude: Naissance et expansion du concept a documentary by Nathalie Fave and Jean-Baptiste Fave, first minutes online, with the interventions of Amadou Lamine Sall, Racine Senghor, Lylian Kesteloot, Jean-Louis Roy, Jacqueline Lemoine, Gérard Chenêt, Victor Emmanuel Cabrita, Nafissatou Dia Diouf, Amadou Ly, Youssoufa Bâ, Raphaël Ndiaye, Alioune Badara Bèye, Hamidou Dia, Georges Courrèges, Baba Diop; Maison Africaine de la Poésie Internationale. Shot in Sénégal in 2005, 56' (DVD)