SOURCE: Yoder, Carroll. “The Birth of Negritude.” In White Shadows: A Dialectical View of the French African Novel, pp. 79-104. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1991.

[In the following essay, Yoder focuses on various political and cultural perspectives regarding Negritude, comparing and contrasting the views expressed by Senghor and others during the 1930s and beyond.]

One of the more audacious and supposedly noble goals of the colonial writers was to put words into the mouths of the Africans so that they, too, could for the first time contribute to world civilization, it being of course assumed that inferior peoples could not speak for themselves. As long as the colonial writers set themselves up as the only authentic spokespersons for Africa—in view of the ignorance of the tourists and the illiteracy of the indigenous peoples—one could hardly expect the thesis of white supremacy to be denied. Although historians, ethnologists, administrators and missionaries were constantly expanding their knowledge of the continent, their information was inevitably brought into a Western frame of reference. Furthermore, the very presence of the European in Africa derived its justification from the assumption that the dark continent could not make progress by itself. Thus the answer to white supremacy could only come from those who were experiencing its alienating effects.

It was the Negritude movement of the 1930s and the emergence of an authentic African literature in French following World War II that provided the first powerful rebuttals to the false premises of colonial literature. But long before this well-known cultural awakening took place in Paris, a few voices of dissent had made themselves heard in Haiti. Independent since 1804, but culturally alienated and economically oppressed by the West, this small country had become the target of racists who resented the existence of Western institutions in a free black state. Gobineau, for example, mentions it specifically when trying to disprove the feasibility of assimilation.

Thus it is perhaps not surprising to find that the most direct and best documented response to Gobineau's affirmation of white superiority came not from an African, but from a Haitian, Anténor Firmin. While in Paris after having been received as a member of the Society of Anthropology, Firmin prepared his lengthy defense of the black race, De l'égalité des races humaines (1885).

A close examination of the innumerable physical variations resulting from the crossing of races led him to believe in the original unity of the human species. Egypt was used as an example to show that the black had in the past contributed to civilization; the whites had no right to claim the dark-skinned Egyptians or Indians as a part of their heritage! Since progress depended upon environmental conditions such as climate, as well as native ability, Firmin believed it unjust to compare Africa and Europe in order to establish a basis for racial superiority. The rise and decline of important civilizations signaled the danger of drawing general conclusions from a particular historical situation.

While drawing his ideas from the enlightenment, Firmin saw himself as a nineteenth-century positivist and therefore attacked racism in the name of science:

La doctrine anti-philosophique et pseudo-scientifique de l'inégalité des races ne repose que sur l'idée de l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme.

The anti-philosophical and pseudo-scientific doctrine of the inequality of the races rests solely on the idea of the exploitation of man by man.¹

The thrust of his argument is directed against Gobineau's thesis that the blacks are innately inferior and destined to remain so. Racial differences can in no way be used to explain the inferiority of certain nations:

En somme, il y a des nations sauvages et des nations civilisées. Naturellement, les premières sont inférieures et les secondes supérieures; mais la race n'y est pour rien.

In short, there are savage nations and civilized nations. Naturally, the former are inferior and the latter superior, but race has nothing to do with it.²

Firmin reacted strongly against the claims of white moral superiority, condemning the religious views which portrayed Christ as a white man and the devil as black. In his conclusion, he even suggests that the black race may one day find itself in a position of superiority, given the necessary historical conditions, since all peoples are equally capable of high achievement.

Hannibal Price, another Haitian writer of the same period who reacted against the thesis of white supremacy, saw his own country as a source of hope for the black race in general. His book, De la réhabilitation de la race noire par la République d'Haiti, contains some of the key ideas to be found in the Negritude movement some forty years later. Instead of rejecting his ancestry, Price gladly accepted his African blood, believing that color should be neither an advantage nor an obstacle, for all people with their ability to reason were essentially equal. As the only independent black country, Haiti had a special mission to destroy all race prejudice:

Cette nation a certainement une mission providentielle à remplir en ce monde et qu'elle ne peut trahir sans encourir la malédiction de Dieu.

Cette mission, comme il a éte déjà dit, c'est la destruction de tout préjugé de race par l'évidence de ses progrès.

Certainly this nation has a providential mission to fulfill in this world, which she cannot betray without incurring the wrath of God.

This mission, as has already been said, is the destruction of all race prejudice through the evidence of her progress.³

Although now completely overshadowed by the black liberation movements of Africa and the United States, Haiti in the nineteenth century had become a symbol of freedom and long served as the only representative of the black race at international conferences.

While Price, like many of the assimilated writers of his era, devoted a good deal of time to proving that the blacks were capable of “civilization,” he also vigorously condemned the quarrels between blacks and mulattoes. It was not a question of denying one's blackness or of positing equality sometime in the future. The blacks' equality with the other races was a fait accompli in no way dependent upon the good will of the whites:

Nous n'avons rien à demander à la bienveillance des blancs et n'avions que faire de leur pitié. Nous n'avions même pas à implorer la reconnaissance de notre droit à l'Egalité: nous sommes en possession de cette égalité; nous l'avons acquise de la seule façon qu'elle s'acquiert jusqu'à présent en ce monde; nous la maintiendrons jusqu'à ce que “le règne de Dieu arrive sur la terre.” par la force des armes, par notre détermination de vivre libre ou de mourir.

We have nothing to demand of the goodwill of the whites and nothing to do with their pity. We don't even have to ask for their recognition of our right to Equality. We are already in possession of that equality; we acquired it through the only way that it can be acquired as of yet in this world. We will keep it until “God's Kingdom comes to earth,” through armed force, through our determination to live free or die.⁴

Both Firmin and Price, while making use of contemporary historical and scientific data, also relied on the egalitarian theories of the eighteenth century philosophes. The transition from an abstract and rationalistic belief in racial equality to an unreserved acceptance of the particularity of one's own group can be found in the writings of Dr. Jean Price-Mars, another Haitian who has often been considered the precursor of Negritude. While in Paris as a young student, Price-Mars encountered the well-known Gustave Le Bon, whose book Les Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples held that mankind was divided into four races representing different stages of evolutionary development.

Determined to prove the historical and psychological inaccuracy of Le Bon's idea, Price-Mars returned to Haiti where he made for the first time a thorough study of the oral traditions of his own people. A careful examination of his own heritage provided the most effective answer to the thesis of white supremacy; no matter how poor his own culture might appear to the outsider, it did nevertheless contain authentic and universal humanitarian values:

Acceptez donc le patrimoine ancestral comme un bloc. Faites-en le tour, pesez-le, examinez-le avec intelligence et circonspection, et vous verrez comme dans un miroir brisé qu'il reflète l'image réduite de l'humanité tout entière.

So accept ancestral heritage as a whole. Take a look at it, weigh it, examine it intelligently and cautiously, and you will see that, like a broken mirror, it reflects a reduced image of all of humanity.⁵

In 1923 Price-Mars obtained his doctorate in medicine at Port-au-Prince; five years later in his book Ainsi parla l'oncle was greeted enthusiastically by a young and increasingly nationalistic audience, who recognized it as the best description of Haitian culture attempted up to that time. The American occupation of the island (1915-1934) had helped to create a new awareness of Haitian culture and of the value of its African heritage, thus adding interest to Price-Mars' valorization of folklore. This new awareness contrasted with the traditional stance, held by intellectuals in both Haiti and the French Antilles, which recognized the superiority of the French culture; most writers prided themselves upon their imitation of the Romantic and Parnassian poets of the nineteenth century.

In 1932, a group of angry young Martiniquan students at Paris unleashed a scathing attack against the bourgeois traditions of their homeland. The first and only issue of their review, Légitime Défense, took note of the alienation which accompanied the process of assimilation:

Progressivement l'Antillais de couleur renie sa race, son corps, ses passions fondamentales et particulières.

The colored West Indian progressively rejects his race, his body, his fundamental and ethnic passions.⁶

Although their condemnation of the bourgeois class did not carry nationalistic overtones or explicitly question French colonial rule, there was no mistaking the severe criticism leveled against the religious, political and social structures of a French society founded upon the thesis of white supremacy.

Two years later, another short-lived review, L'Etudiant Noir, signaled the emergence of a new unity and cultural awareness among black students in Paris. Its leaders, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas, have been commonly accepted as the true founders of Negritude. By contrast to the works of the Légitime Défense group, emphasis was placed upon cultural rather than political matters; Marxism and surrealism were regarded as tools to be used against racial oppression instead of ends in themselves.

The sharpest attack against white supremacy came from the Martiniquan poet, Aimé Césaire. In 1939, he published his dramatic poem, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, which, although unrecognized at the time, exercised a profound impact upon African intellectuals after World War II.

The first movement of the poem sketches a horrible picture of fear, famine and decay in Martinique; it is an uncompromising denial of the easy exoticism splashed across tourist brochures and used by the Antillean writers themselves in their efforts to gain recognition in France. The misery of a silent people immobilized by hunger bears no resemblance to the alleged material and moral progress brought by colonialism. The corruption and death Césaire describes belongs not to primitive jungles but to an urban scene, to a people assimilated by French civilization.

The poet has but one hope—to flee the intolerable conditions of his homeland. Instead of identifying with the despair of his own people, he will shoulder the burdens of all the oppressed, recreate the world through the magic power of poetry and lose himself in the glorious fraternity of Negritude, which reaches on beyond his lonely island. He will gladly accept even the devilish traits attributed to him by the whites, thus uniting himself with the dark spirits of the earth to frighten his rationalistic oppressor.

But during this moment of triumph blood suddenly wells up in his memory, reminding him of the ugly reality of a people whom he has rejected and who remain far removed from the glorious African past, from the beauty of Negritude. This blood and his own smile of complicity at the sight of a comical old black man on a streetcar awaken him to the meaning of his betrayal. Now stripped of romantic illusions, he can begin the final return to his native land to honestly assume the consequences of his own condition, which is neither French nor African.

It is at this point that the poet sings forth the praises of those who have not participated in Western technology:

Eia pour ceux qui n'ont jamais rien inventé
pour ceux qui n'ont jamais rien exploré
pour ceux qui n'ont jamais rien dompté.
for those who have never discovered
for those who have never conquered.(7)

These often quoted lines represent neither childish defiance of a superior order nor humble submissiveness. Instead, the poet is delivering a powerful moral indictment of those who would dominate people and nature. And this daring refusal of European technology came at a time when society had not yet measured the ecological consequences of its actions nor felt the heat of its atomic weapons.

Scorning “superior” civilization acquired unjustly, the poet gladly accepts his own wretched island, recognizing no need to apologize, to compare or to prove his equality with the whites. Refusing to be drawn into the eternal process of self-justification required by assimilation, he regains from the physical universe itself the dignity, hope and power to change his condition. Cahier is therefore not a simple negative reaction to white supremacy, nor a romantic quest of a pure African past, but the poet's own successful pilgrimage into the depths of his Martiniquan soul.

Shortly after the publication of Cahier d'un retour au pays natale, Césaire returned to Martinique, where he and his wife founded the review Tropiques in order to combat the bourgeois and assimilationist literature of the Antilles. His most explicit denial of white supremacy took the form of a political statement against colonialism, Discours sur le colonialisme, published in 1950 and issued in 1955, revised so as to include an attack against an article by Roger Caillois in La Nouvelle Revue Française.

Instead of attacking specific abuses within the colonial system, Césaire's dialectical analysis concentrates upon the effects which colonization has had, not upon African society, but upon Europe itself. It is an aggressive approach that transfers all the blame for the difficulties found within the colonial situation onto the colonizers themselves. The traditional colonization-equals-civilization equation is replaced by a new formula: colonization equals barbarianism.

Il faudrait d'abord étudier comment la colonisation travaille à déciviliser le colonisateur, a l'abrutir au sens propre du mot, à le dégrader, à le réveiller aux instincts enfouis, à la convoitise, à la violence, à la haine raciale, au relativisme moral.

First, we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to disgrace him, to awaken him to buried instincts of covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism.⁸

For his most convincing evidence of the dehumanizing effects of colonialism, Césaire points to World War II and to the first bloody reprisals of the French in Indochina and Madagascar. Well aware that the West was being pushed into an increasingly defensive posture, Césaire emphasizes the injustice and racism found in Europe while defending the values of the traditional African societies. Quotations from de Maistre, Renan, Lapouge, Psichari, Faguet, and others revealing a confident and outmoded racism are used to embarrass the French reader who claimed to be free of prejudice, while the most ironic observations are reserved for a contemporary writer, Roger Caillois:

Ayant établi la supériorité, dans tous les domaines de l'occident; ayant ainsi rétabli une saine et précieuse hiérarchie, M. Caillois donne une preuve immédiate de cette supériorité en concluant à n'exterminer personne. Avec lui les nègres sont sûrs de n'être pas lynchés, les Juifs de ne pas alimenter de nouveaux bûchers.

Having established the superiority of the West in all fields, and having thus re-established a wholesome and extremely valuable hierarchy, Mr. Caillois gives an immediate proof of this superiority by concluding that no one should be exterminated. With him the Negroes are sure that they will not be lynched, the Jews that they will not feed new bonfires.⁹

In contrast to the decadence and bad faith of Europe, Césaire points to the prevailing harmony and justice of pre-colonial societies:

C'étaient des sociétés communautaires, jamais de tous pour quelques-uns.

Cetaient des societes pas seulement anté-capitalistes comme on l'a dit, mais aussi anticapitalistes.

C'étaient des sociétés démocratiques, toujours.

C'étaient des sociétés coopératives, des sociétés fraternelles.

They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few.

They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist.

They were democratic societies, always.

They were cooperative societies, fraternal societies.¹⁰

While this idealization of the African past definitely contrasts with the poet's praise of “those who invented nothing,” both approaches represent an attempt to deny the thesis of white supremacy in order to avoid cultural assimilation.

As a poet, Césaire was less concerned about making logical arguments against European colonialism than in establishing his identity and proving the integrity of his own values. His was a message directed first of all to the oppressed who had lost faith in themselves. Later, as a polemicist, he was to shift his entire attention to a European audience, while replacing the poetic theme of cultural rehabilitation with a specific political issue—independence.

By the early 1950s, when Discours sur le colonialisme appeared, Africa was finding itself in a more favorable position vis-à-vis a Europe that had lost much of its political and economic strength during the war. Recognizing the significance of this new situation, Césaire was quick to utilize all the tools at his disposal to strip the colonizers of any self-justification they might offer. Making use of recent developments in African history and ethnography to sharpen his dialectical opposition of colonization and civilization, he also found it convenient to recall the actions of the great European barbarian, Hitler. No longer could the whites dismiss as preposterous the suggestion that African civilizations were comparable—in some respects superior—to Western civilization.

Although it is quite tempting to associate the thesis of white supremacy with the bourgeois class, it would be a mistake to assume that Césaire was only protesting against a certain segment of European society. Negritude did not simply repeat the criticisms made by the communists and the surrealists. At the time of his withdrawal from the Communist party, Césaire clearly spelled out his ideological independence of those who would assert their superiority over him:

… nous constatons chez les membres du Parti Communiste Français: leur assimilationnisme invétéré; leur chauvinisme inconscient; leur conviction passablement primaire—qu'ils partagent avec les bourgeois européens—de la supériorité omnilatérale de l'Occident; leur croyance que l'évolution telle qu'elle s'est opérée en Europe est la seule possible; la seule désirable; qu'elle est celle par laquelle le monde entier devra passer; pour tout dire, leur croyance rarement avouée, mais réelle, à la civilisation avec un grand C; au progrès avec un grand P …

… we notice in French Communist Party members: their inveterate assimilationism; their chauvinism, with them a nigh unto involuntary reflex; their as good as primary conviction—which they share with the European bourgeois—of the omnifarious superiority of the West; their belief that evolution as it has come about in Europe is the only sort possible or desirable: that it is the one that the whole world has got to sweat through; to summarize it all, their rarely avowed but nonetheless real belief in civilization with a capital C; in progress with a capital P …¹¹

Like Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, the well-known African leader of Negritude, also believed it necessary to eliminate certain Western elements in the European interpretation of socialism. As a poet, Senghor became the first African to gain international literary fame; as a politician he served in the French National Assembly before being elected as the first president of Senegal.

Born in a Senegalese village in 1906, Senghor enjoyed a relatively easy childhood as the member of a respected and prosperous family; his father could boast of being a friend of the king of Sime Saloum. After receiving a Catholic education, Senghor left for Paris in 1928. At Lycée Louis-le-Grand he met Aimé Césaire, with whom he shared the exhilarating discovery of an Africa that no longer needed to apologize for its past. At a time when Europe was turning its attention to jazz and primitive art, Senghor found himself stimulated by Western writers to re-examine and validate his own culture. There was the provincial patriotism of Barrès, Gide's pluralism, Bergson's intuitive reason and, above all, the writings of Delafosse and Frobenius, two African ethnographers who spoke sympathetically of a “civilized” African past.

The appearance of L'Etudiant Noir in 1934 clearly indicated the emphasis Senghor and his friends were to place upon cultural rehabilitation and black unity, as contrasted with the political orientation of Légitime Défense. Indeed, Senghor's preoccupation with cultural matters and his diplomatic friendliness towards France drew the wrath of Negritude's most bitter criticism. Long accused of being an assimilated Frenchman because of his reluctance to attack colonialism, Senghor nevertheless opposed the thesis of white supremacy quite strongly.

A basic assumption of France's mission civilisatrice was the belief that Africa had nothing outside of her natural resources to contribute to the West. Since Europeans supposedly embodied universal values, they took on the role of eternal philanthropists. It was precisely this denial of the African's ability to give something in return that challenged Senghor to write one of his early essays, “Ce que l'homme noir apporte” (“What the Blacks Contribute”).¹² His argument against white supremacy is based upon a sympathetic presentation of African culture rather than upon a direct attack against European civilization.

Central to Senghor's thought, and particularly annoying to the present generation of African artists, is the statement that emotion belongs in some special way to the blacks just as reason has become associated with the West: “L'émotion est nègre, comme la raison hellène.” (“Emotion is Negro, just as reason is Greek”).¹³ Emotion contrasts with intellectual analysis; instead of critically removing themselves from the object in order denotes a cosmic unity that alienated Western peoples lost in their attempts to dominate the universe. It also recalls the ideas of Lévy-Bruhl on primitive mentality, while the emphasis placed upon emotion and rhythm reminds the reader of Gobineau's theories on the artistic abilities of the blacks. Did Senghor unwittingly play into the hands of white supremacists? While he accepted certain condescending observations made by Europeans about African society, however, Senghor stripped them of their customary negativism. Taking advantage of the critical reaction against Western rationalism, he stressed the positive value of emotion, as had the romantics of the nineteenth century.

What are some of the valid contributions that the African can make in the establishment of a world civilization, according to Senghor? Noting the contemptuous attitude displayed towards African religions which were long considered to have no dogmas or moral values, Senghor first points out the unconditional monotheism of the blacks:

Le Nègre est monothéiste, en effet, si loin que l'on remonte dans son histoire, et partout.

The negro is monotheistic; indeed as far back as one goes in history, and everywhere.¹⁴

Worship involves participation and communion in a spirit of love with one's ancestors. Neither fear nor material concerns predominate; morality is concerned with maintaining the community of the living and the dead rather than with obedience to a legalistic code. It is the African's ability to perceive the supernatural in the natural, his “abandon d'amour,” which constitutes his most unique contribution in the religious domain. Needless to say, Senghor's picture of the faith of his people contrasts sharply with the reports given by early missionaries of morally degraded, superstitious and fearful “primitives” hungering for the gospel.

Another common target of European criticism was the African family, which was said to have stifled all individuality while maintaining sterile traditions. Reacting against this negative appraisal, Senghor describes the family as the basis of a unified society unmarred by the class consciousness found in Europe. At the center of a series of expanding concentric circles, the family reaches out to include tribe and kingdom; since one begins with a common, family goal, there is moral and economic unity throughout society. This unity includes a necessary historical dimension, since the family can be defined as “l'ensemble de toutes les personnes qui descendent d'un Ancêtre commun” (“all of the persons taken as a whole who go back to one common Ancestor”).¹⁵

All-encompassing as this unity may be, it does not crush the individual, since it is a unity that

… n'ignore pas les individus, tout subordonnés qu'elle les veuille à l'unité du groupe. La femme comme les enfants ont, a côté du bien commun, leur bien personnel, qu'ils peuvent accroître et dont ils disposent librement.

… does not ignore individuals, however subordinated they may be to the unity of the group. The women, like the children, have their common goods, their personal effects, which they may accumulate and dispose of freely.¹⁶

Contrary to common belief, the woman is not man's slave, but rather his equal; the heavier her task, the greater her sense of dignity and responsibility. Senghor even suggests that the “assimilated” woman loses some of her status:

Pour paradoxal que cela puisse paraître, la femme noire, qui devient “citoyenne française,” perd de sa liberté, de sa dignité.

As paradoxical as that may appear, the black woman who becomes a French citizen loses some of her freedom and dignity.¹⁷

As for the basic problems of all societies, work and property, Senghor criticizes Western capitalism for having separated the two. African society, on the other hand, has always considered productive work the sole source of property; natural resources and the means of production are common property.

To answer the charge that African society has tended to oppress the individual, Senghor asserts that personality should not be defined as the need for individual peculiarity, but rather in terms of the intensity of spiritual life. The Africans define themselves by their participation in various groups that have their own particular personalities (the family, corporation, age group, etc.) and by their relationship to the living objects used in their work (natural resources such as the earth, the rivers, forests, etc.). Thus, instead of becoming alienated objects, replaceable gears of some gigantic machine, a condition that would suggest a true loss of personality, they joyously enter into their work. This profound harmony between people and the rest of creation proves the humanitarian nature of African society, and is represented by the living rhythm of their work:

Travail nègre, rhythme nègre, joie nègre qui se libère par le travail et se libère du travail.

Negro work, Negro rhythm, Negro joy which frees itself through work and from work.¹⁸

Another common assumption made by Europeans was that Africans had no true political sense because of the absence of written law; political organization involved only the immediate family or tribe. According to Senghor, one must obtain authority and wisdom from the people in order to justly formulate and execute laws. Unfortunately, these elements are lacking in Western democracies, where authority rests upon a growing police force and where wisdom is forgotten in the political maneuvers of a few private interests in the legislature.

By contrast, the legislative assemblies of African kingdoms were composed of leaders of family clans, representatives truly aware of their responsibility to the people. The king's authority was both spiritual and temporal, relating to the ancestors and to the chiefs who had elected him. Again replying to the accusation that the individuals may find themselves neglected within this harmonious community, Senghor states his preference for communal values, which he believes to be more truly humanitarian:

Ce besoin de communion fraternelle est plus profondément humain que celui du repliement sur soi, autant que celui du surnaturel.

This need of fraternal fellowship is more profoundly human than inward withdrawal, just as human as the need for the supernatural.¹⁹

The most widely recognized contributions of the blacks have undoubtedly been made in art. It is here that Senghor finds the key concepts of Negritude. Through rhythm, the Africans express their aesthetic values, their very style of life. Although much has been written about style as a means of identifying the African qualities of a work, it remains one of the most controversial and difficult to prove of Senghor's theories.

According to him, the non-intellectual quality of rhythm obliges one to go beyond a superficial realism in order to discover that which is essential within the object. Far from being a gratuitous creation for the sake of the artist's own pleasure, the work of art must signify (deliver a message); it must provide an access to the surréel (super-real). African intellectuals have almost unanimously rejected the idea of art for art's sake. Because of the social relevance of traditional forms and the highly charged political atmosphere of the independence era, the new African artists have been deeply involved in the struggles of their people.

Whether discussing the religious, social, political or aesthetic aspects of culture, Senghor made a strong case for the inherent dignity and humanity of African civilization. Not only did he try to show through personal achievement that the African was capable of equaling the intellectual feats of the European, but he also attempted to convince his white reader that even before the arrival of the whites, traditional society could have justifiably compared itself to European civilization.

Senghor's discovery of African values, which he described at one point as “l'ivresse du Royaume d'Enfance … la Négritude retrouvée” (“the ecstasy of the Childhood Kingdom … Negritude recaptured”)²⁰ and which characterized his thought during the 1930s, took a different emphasis after World War II. Having himself drawn inspiration from two different worlds, he became increasingly preoccupied with the idea of a universal civilization. This new orientation did not represent a dramatic shift in his thought, for even during his most militant stage Senghor had phrased his anti-Europeanism in diplomatic terms that stressed the helpful contributions that Africa had to make to the rest of the world, rather than the negative aspects of colonialism.

Two essays entitled “Le Message de Goethe aux Nègres-Nouveaux” (“Goethe's Messages to New Negroes”) and “De la liberté de l'âme ou l'éloge du métissage” (“Freedom of the Soul or in Praise of Miscegenation”) do, however, indicate that Negritude was beginning to view itself in relative and historical terms. Senghor's own explanation of the changing role of Negritude closely follows the analysis made by Sartre in “Orphée noir.” The first reaction against Europe, negative but absolutely necessary, corresponded to Sartre's “racisme antiraciste” label:

Je le confesse, notre orgueil se transforma vite en racisme. Il n'est pas jusqu'au nazisme qui fût accepté pour renforcer notre refus de coopération. “Racisme antiraciste,” c'est ainsi que Jean-Paul Sartre définissait la Négritude, a juste raison. Nous avions, alors la sincerité de la jeunesse et de la passion. Tout ce qui était de l'Europe blanche nous était fade: sa raison, son art, ses femmes.

Le triomphe du Nazisme et la Deuxième Guerre mondiale allaient nous dégriser, à notre tour. Nous comprenions, enfin, que le racisme, c'était la haine et la violence: la guerre se faisant planétairement totale grâce aux nouveaux engins de destruction.

I admit that our pride transformed itself quickly into racism. We went so far as to accept nazism itself to reinforce our refusal to cooperate. “Anti-racist racism” was the way Jean-Paul Sartre rightly defined Negritude. At that time, we had a sincerity born out of youthful fervor. Everything from a white Europe was tasteless—her reason, her art, her women.

Eventually the triumph of nazism and the Second World War was to bring us back to our senses. We finally understood that racism was hate and violence; because of the new instruments of destruction, war was fought on a global scale.²¹

Senghor traces his first critical reappraisal of Negritude not to Sartre, but to the writing of Goethe, which he read while in a prison camp during the war. Reading Goethe opened his eyes to the dangers of cultural solitude and the tendency to limit oneself to one's own race or nation. He saw the need to incorporate complementary values within the same civilization:

“Romantisme dominé,” équilibre parfait entre deux valeurs complémentaires, le coeur et la tête, l'instinct et l'imagination, le réel et le fait. équilibre parfait de Zeus lançant la fondre, tell est la leçon que, pour nous, Goethe tire de l'art antique.

“Tamed romanticism,” perfect equilibrium between two complementary values, the heart and the head, instinct and imagination, reality and fact, the perfect equilibrium of Zeus hurling thunderbolts—that was the lesson which Goethe drew out of ancient art for us.²²

By proposing a universal civilization composed of the best elements of differing cultures, Senghor hoped to avoid stagnation on one hand and cultural assimilation on the other.²³ He has long been accused of doing both by his critics. Writers such as Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon were quick to see that the idealization of the past could be used by the colonial powers to prevent political independence. It is not surprising to find that in the later colonial novels the “good” African characters often emerge as the most traditional, while the educated young are accused of harboring the evil traits of both groups. One could also cite the example of South Africa, where the apartheid government places a good deal of self-righteous importance upon the study of Bantu culture.

Recognizing the reactionary tendencies inherent in Negritude because of its idealization of the past, Senghor tried to temper his subjective enthusiasm of the 1930s with a more tolerant view towards Europe. In terms of Sartre's dialectical structure, he believed that the time had come to negate the antithesis (his earlier anti-white stance) in order to enter the realm of the universal, the only truly progressive solution:

Le problème est de transcender la fausse antinomie assimilation-association dans la mesure où ce dernier mot signifie mise en conserve des civilisations indigènes, de rendre à la Culture son mouvement dialectique, d'en faire un dialogue fécond entre deux civilisations ou mieux: un colloque entre des amis, divers d'esprit et de tempérament. Car, sous peine de disparaître, toute civilisation doit avancer, se développer, se transformer. Nous marchons sur des sables mouvants, “vivants” comme on dit en Afrique noire, où s'arrêter, c'est s'enfoncer et périr … La civilisation idéale serait comme ces corps quasi divins, surgis de la main et de l'esprit d'un grand sculpteur, qui réunissent les beautés réconciliees de toutes les races.

The problem is to transcend the false assimilation-association antinomy to the extent that the “association” signifies a frozen preservation of native civilizations. We must restore to Culture its dialectical movement, setting up a fruitful dialogue between two civilizations or, better yet, a conversation between friends of differing mind and temperament. For, at the risk of otherwise disappearing, every civilization must advance, develop and undergo transformation. We walk on quicksand, “living” as it is called in black Africa, where stopping means going under and losing out … The ideal civilization would be like those almost divine bodies, emerging from the hand and mind of a great sculptor, that unite and reconcile the ideas of beauty held by all races.²⁴

The early phase of Negritude had represented a passionate and necessary cultural reaction to Europe; now that the Africans had regained their sense of identity and forced the Europeans to acknowledge their presence, the moment of reconciliation had arrived.

This type of re-evaluation of Negritude did not in the least satisfy Senghor's critics, who believed that rather than to blunt the anti-Europeanism of the early days, it was necessary to transfer it from the cultural to the political domain, for so long as Africa remained politically or economically under the tutelage of Europe, one could not truthfully speak in terms of a universal civilization.

To the casual observer, it might appear that Senghor had successfully negotiated the transition from the antithesis to the synthesis, thus freeing himself from the white supremacy thesis by turning his attention from racial to social, economic and political matters. The problem involved in this interpretation stems from the differences separating theory and historical reality. Just as the universal brotherhood postulated by French colonialism did not coincide with reality, so the universalism of Senghor contradicts the contemporary situation of his country. The hard economic realities facing the illiterate masses in Senegal hardly fit into Sartre's picture of a future raceless and classless society. Furthermore, in France, racist feelings among the general population did not appear to have lessened appreciably since the birth of Negritude. According to Aimé Césaire, writing in 1971, the situation had, if anything, grown worse:

Il y a beaucoup plus de racisme en France à l'heure actuelle qu'en 1936 quand j'étais étudiant. C'est absolument sûr!

There is a lot more racism in France at the present time than in 1936 when I was a student. That is absolutely certain!²⁵

In all fairness to Senghor, it should be pointed out that this conception of the universal does correspond very well with his own personal situation. A man astride two cultures, he attempted to balance his classical and highly intellectual French education with the memories of a carefree African childhood. The vision of an ideal universal civilization, where technological progress and French culture have been welded to African communitarian concerns, would justify both aspects of his life.

The Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin has aided Senghor in reconciling Marxist materialism with African spirituality. Chardin, who includes all of nature and not just humankind in his dialectical movement towards perfection, stresses the need for individuals to sacrifice themselves to the total community; truly great civilization can only spring from the convergence and synthesis of differing cultures.

It is with Chardin's emphasis upon social harmony that Senghor identifies perhaps the most easily, as he applies his basic mistrust of the individual to the world scene. Just as individuals must lose themselves within the group, so national states will eventually join a larger world government, with technology serving as the unifying force. Negritude's relationship with the rest of the world becomes analogous to the role of the individual in a socialist society; the advent of a truly humanitarian civilization will justify its disappearance within the universal:

Malgré la passion des débuts, il n'a pas été question, chez nous, de s'isoler des autres civilisations, de les ignorer, de les haïr ou mépriser, mais plutôt en symbiose avec elles, d'aider à la construction d'un humanisme qui fut authentiquement parce que totalement humain. Totalement humain parce que formé de tous les apports de tous les peuples de la planète Terre.

In spite of our original enthusiasm, it was not a question of isolating ourselves from other civilizations, of ignoring, hating or despising them, but rather of joining with them to help build a humanism which would find its authenticity in the fact that it was totally human. Totally human because it was made up of all the contributions from all the people of planet Earth.²⁶

In his book De la Négritude dans la littérature négro-africaine, the Cameroonian critic Thomas Melone compares Negritude to the spirit of German nationalism during the eighteenth century; while there was a strong attack against French literary conventions, there remained nevertheless

… le souvenir commun de cette période où ils avaient marché ensemble et “une commune mesure selon laquelle ils jugeaient le present.”

… the common memory of that period when they had walked together, and “a common measure with which they judged the present.”²⁷

Following the pattern of the German response to the French cultural monopoly, Negritude did not question the basic tenets of Western civilization, being too closely tied to it:

Comparant le fait Nègre à l'aventure culturelle allemande nous y avons découvert la même caracteréristique: un double mouvement, l'un centrifuge et l'autre centripéte dont la résultante est qu'ils s'annulent, c'est-à-dire ne remettent pas sérieusement en cause les conquêtes de la civilisation occidentale sur la civilisation négro-africaine, une même survivance: la communauté des souvenirs du passé, d'instruments intellectuels, de canons spirituels qui font que Senghor est à la fois le plus français des Nègres d'Afrique en même temps que l'apôtre de la Negritude. Celle-ci cesse donc de présenter à priori un caractère original ou spécifique dans sa démarche. La Négritude est un phénomène historique, une loi nécessaire.

Comparing Negritude to the German cultural adventure, we find the same characteristic: a double movement, the one a centrifugal force and the other a centripetal force, whose end result is the cancelling out of each other, meaning that the reason for Western civilization's conquest of Negro-African civilization is never seriously questioned. What survives are common memories of the past, intellectual tools, spiritual canons which make Senghor at the same time the most French of all Negro-Africans and also the apostle of Negritude. This movement thus does not demonstrate a priori an original or specific character in its procedure. Negritude is a historical phenomenon, a necessary law.²⁸

The “necessary law” to which Melone refers points out the dialectical relationship existing between Negritude and white supremacy. Although Senghor knew and thoroughly appreciated French culture, and later took a critical view of the first phase of Negritude, his ideas nevertheless remained in direct opposition to the thesis of white supremacy. His preoccupation with the universal betrays a certain fear of exclusion and the need to convince European readers that Africa has rightly won an honorable place among the nations:

Devant les préjugés des uns, les lâchetés des autres, les railleries, il fallait frapper fort pour faire admettre notre culture au banquet de l'Universel. C'était la condition sine qua non de notre participation à l'édification d'un nouvel humanisme.

Faced with prejudice from some, cowardice and scoffing from others, we had to knock hard to have our culture admitted to the banquet of the Universal. It was the sine qua non condition for our participation in the construction of a new humanism.²⁹

The importance attributed to a universal society by the Negritude leader undoubtedly stems from the nature of his audience. Since Senghor is speaking not only to the Senegalese people, but to the French as well, the final proof of the validity of his message will need to come from those who formerly opposed him. This explains the significance of the 1966 Dakar festival, which was supposedly a symbolic victory for Negritude:

Enfin, en avril 1966, se tenait, à Dakar, le Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres, inventaire et illustration magistrale des valeurs de la négritude. Désormais, on pouvait considérer le combat comme gagné: la négritude, consacrée, en Afrique, par André Malraux et, avec lui, par des écrivains, professeurs, chercheurs blancs parmi les plus célèbres, avait désormais droit de cité. Personne ne pourrait plus en nier l'originalité, ni prétendre faire de nous de suiviste, tout juste bons à exécuter de mauvaises copies. Cette victoire nous rendait, de ce fait, encore plus ouverts à tous les apports, à tous les dialogues fécondants.

Finally, in April, 1966, the First World Festival of Negro Arts was held at Dakar, providing an inventory and masterful illustration of Negritude values. Henceforth, the battle could be considered as won. Negritude, consecrated in Africa by André Malraux, along with some of the most famous white writers, professors and researchers, could from then on claim to have arrived. No one could any longer deny its originality, nor accuse us of being followers-after, only good for producing bad copies. That victory made us, thereby, even more open to all contributions, to all enriching dialogues.³⁰

The non-existence of pre-colonial African history has long been a basic tenet of white supremacists. The lack of written records and material artifacts, along with a total mistrust of oral traditions, provided a convenient reason to dismiss all of African history as a lost and quite useless heritage. There was a natural tendency to regard European development as an inevitable historical process to be repeated by the rest of the world. An evolutionary interpretation of history automatically compared contemporary Africa to a distant Europe taking its first steps towards civilization. African history thus began with the arrival of the whites; its progress was synonymous with Westernization.

The most dramatic re-interpretation of African history came from a gifted and controversial Senegalese scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop. A prolific and firmly committed writer, Diop has attempted in Nations nègres et culture (1955) to establish the continuity and cultural unity of African history which he traces back to ancient Egypt. In his comparison of Africa (the southern cradle of humanity) to Europe (the northern cradle) he not only defends his own continent, but in many cases asserts that white civilization is inferior.

The central thesis of Diop's work deals with the relationship between Ancient Egypt and Black Africa. Linguistic and ethnological arguments are used to prove that the various African peoples all trace their origins to the Egyptians, who were themselves members of the black race. Egyptian discoveries formerly claimed by European historians are thus attributed to the blacks. By establishing the black character of Ancient Egypt, Diop sets forth a unified and concrete point of departure for his study of African history:

Le problème général qui se pose donc pour l'histoire africaine est d'arriver, par des recherches fructueuses, à rattacher, d'une façon hypothétique, mais effective tous ces tronçons de passé à une antiquité, une origine commune qui rétablit la continuité.

The general problem for African history is to successfully bring together in a hypothetical but effective way by means of fruitful research all the broken ends of the past to a common origin in antiquity that re-establishes a sense of continuity.³¹

He rejects the commonly accepted belief that the emergence of civilization was associated with the white race.

Having postulated the anteriority of black civilization, Diop proceeds to compare it to the Western world. This is done in terms of a basic global division that separates the northern cradle of humankind (the Aryans) from the southern cradle (Negro-Egyptian culture). Diop's explanation for the radical differences he finds between the two is based upon geographical circumstances rather than innate human qualities found in either group. The difficult climatic conditions, which imposed a nomadic existence upon the first northern peoples, and the annual flooding of the Nile, which favored an agricultural and highly organized life in Egypt, are used as evidence to refute critics who attack the subjective nature of his historical method. Diop insists upon the objectivity of his work:

Dans la mesure où le collectivisme africain et l'individualisme occidental découlent des conditions matérielles d'existence, les considerations qui précèdent reposent sur une base objective.

To the extent that African collectivism and Western individualism are derived from the material conditions of existence, the preceding considerations rest upon an objective base.³²

To characterize the differences separating the Aryans from the Negro-Egyptians, Diop makes use of the matriarchal and patriarchal theories first developed during the nineteenth century by J. J. Bachofen and L. H. Morgan. But while Western historians had favored the patriarchal system as an indication of superior political organization and as the necessarily restrictive force that inspired technological development, Diop regards it as an essentially negative factor. Its development could be explained by the nomadic, more primitive, conditions of the Indo-Aryan world, where the woman was economically less favored and only used in order to insure the ancestral line of the man. By contrast, matriarchy was linked to agricultural life and the woman, regarded as the most stable element of society, assured the transmission of the rights of inheritance.

Humankind did not evolve from a primitive matriarchal state to a higher, more complex patriarchal system. Determined from the beginning by geographical conditions that were responsible for the basic orientation of all societies, the two systems had remained basically the same:

There has been no passage from one to the other in the internal sense of the word, that is to say that it has never been demonstrated that a people, by autonomous evolution, without external influence, has passed from one form of organization to the other. The attenuation of the matriarchal system which is observed today in Negro Africa, can without any doubt be imputed to the penetration of Islam and Christianity and the temporal presence of the West.³³

According to Diop, the southern, matriarchal cradle of humanity has always possessed a sense of the universal which was largely lacking in the North. In the area of religion, the conception of a universal God who made no tribal distinctions appeared in Egypt a thousand years before it was adopted by Greek philosophers; not until the time of Saint Paul did the Jewish tradition in the form of Christianity recognize a God who was open to the rest of the world. The harsh living conditions of the Aryan people were responsible for producing a strongly materialistic religion that contrasted with the spirit of generosity and justice displayed by the gods of the South, “la terre d'élection de l'idéalisme religieux” (“the chosen land of religious idealism”).³⁴ The Germanic or Greek representation of paradise with its fighting and drinking gods appeared morally inferior when compared to the Egyptian conception of life after death:

In the tribunal of Osiris, the balance of Thot and Annubis is the supreme symbol of equity … it is the ideal of peace and justice which has prevailed over the necessity of war and of warlike morals.³⁵

In the political sphere, Diop notes the fierce individuality born of nomadic existence in the North, where each family was an entity in itself, autonomous and economically independent. The city-state (the equivalent of a settled tribe) became the predominant political organization up through the time of the ancient Greeks. Only within one's own city could one find political rights and security.

This contrasted with the territorial society of Egypt, where the collective work associated with irrigation required an extended cooperative effort. The universalism of the South was reflected in the divine role ascribed to the king. In the North the kind traced his origin to a family and ruled only as a representative of God. As for the contemporary nationism expressed in Africa, Diop excuses it as a defensive reaction to Western colonialism and therefore not as chauvinistic in the final analysis:

L'Afrique Noire restera au stade de cette conscience universelle sur le plan politico-social, jusqu'à la rencontre avec l'Occident. C'est alors qu'ayant subi les effets d'un nationalisme conquérant, expansionniste, elle essaiera de riposter avec les mêmes armes; ainsi le nationalisme africain ne pourra jamais verser dans le chauvinisme quant au fond.

Black Africa will remain at the stage of this universal conscience on the socio-political level until the encounter with the West. At that point, having felt the effects of a conquering, expansionist nationalism, she will attempt to riposte with the same arms; thus African nationalism will never become fundamentally chauvinistic.³⁶

It is in the area of morality that Diop launches his sharpest attack against European civilization. Citing Nietzsche's preoccupation with crime and guilt and his use of the Prometheus myth, Diop concludes that a consciousness of sin has characterized Northern thought. It is this strong sense of guilt which has given rise to the tragedy:

La tragédie est donc spécifiquement une création de la conscience aryenne qui est la seule, peut-être au monde, à contenir à l'origine les éléments indispensables à son enfantement.

The tragedy is thus specifically a creation of the Aryan conscience, which is perhaps the only one in the world that contains the necessary elements to give birth to it.³⁷

Its origin can be traced to an individualistic morality that glorified war and oppressed women, an idea which directly contradicts the colonial cliché of the savage warrior and his brutalized wives.

Should Diop succeed in convincing his reader that a cosmopolitan, peace-loving and xenophilous African civilization had preceded European barbarianism, there still remain the problems of slavery, the caste system and technological inferiority. Although deploring slavery, Diop notes that the African slaves nevertheless enjoyed a much easier life than their European counterparts.

While admitting to the hierarchical structure and aristocratic nature of African society, Diop stresses the lack of alienation and oppression thanks to the strong sense of collective responsibility. Not unduly preoccupied with material possessions, the African does not hesitate to share: “Les réflexes de conservation de biens matériels sont très atténués chez lui.” (“The natural reflex to conserve material goods has been greatly diminished in his case.”)³⁸ Since land was always considered communal property, the African caste system should not be equated with European feudalism. The lack of technological progress Diop explains by the inherently stable nature of African society. The absence of nationalistic wars, of periodic famines or of oppressive regimes tended to discourage revolutionary activity, while a comparatively equitable distribution of available wealth prevented class struggles.

In general, Western historians have taken a critical view of Diop's broad conclusions destined to establish the unity and continuity of African cultural history. Few, however, possess the necessary knowledge and experience to fairly evaluate the extremely complex and varied data upon which Diop's syntheses are based, concentrating instead upon the militant and apologetic tone of his work. This tendency to view Diop's interpretation of history as a useful myth or as a simple reaction to biased colonial history betrays a certain condescension upon the part of the white historians. Typical of this attitude is Austin Shelton's explanation of the more extreme “new African history” which he defines as “… politically and culturally biased, part of a mystique being created by Africans, American Negroes and some Europeans who are over-zealous … and ‘careless.’”³⁹

This approach is contrasted to “objective history … written by professional historians interested mainly in discovering and recording the truth about African pasts.”⁴⁰ Shelton does not explain how the professional historians can be so certain of their objectivity in light of the racist theories propounded by those most “scientific” and “objective” of all historians, the nineteenth-century evolutionists.

One of the most fascinating responses to the thesis of white supremacy as applied to the colonial situation came from a Tunisian Jew, Albert Memmi, whose book Portrait du colonisé suivi du Portrait du Colonisateur (1957) concentrated on the inevitable negative consequences of colonization. Neither French nor Muslim, his ambiguous cultural role prevented him from identifying completely with either European or African values; at the same time, his personal involvement in the colonial situation provided him with insight normally lacking in the case of a neutralist observer:

J'étais une espèce de métis de la colonisation, qui comprenait tout le monde, parce qu'il n'était totalement de personne.

I was sort of half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone because I belonged completely to no one.⁴¹

Like Sartre, Memmi views white supremacy and Negritude as opposing terms of a dialectical structure. Whether the Africans claimed the negative values imposed upon them by Europe (as did Césaire in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal) or reversed the situation to postulate purely positive values for their own culture (as in Discours sur le colonialisme), they were in either case reacting to the thesis of white supremacy.

Wishing to go beyond the mythical aspects of white supremacy or Negritude without sacrificing the urgency of his message, Memmi makes a deliberate attempt to avoid idealizing either the colonizer or the colonized person. Instead, he fixes his attention upon the actual effects of the colonization process. Thus one is dealing neither with a European problem (racism, technology, imperialism, etc.), nor with an indigenous problem (laziness, poverty, superstition, etc.), but with the inevitable disintegration of human relationships based upon exploitation and economic repression. Contrary to Césaire's idea that modern European colonialism was the worst kind, Memmi holds that all forms of colonialism are equally bad, for they eventually lead to identical results.

Through his analysis of colonization as a negative process, Memmi skillfully disassociates himself from the mythical elements of Negritude; his own interpretation can, however, be considered in turn as the antithesis of the white supremacy thesis that held that colonization would naturally produce positive results such as material wealth, intellectual growth, and moral advancement for both groups.

Memmi bases his argument of the negative consequences of colonization upon the premise that all whites living in the colonies receive special privileges enjoyed by neither those of the home country nor by the colonized peoples themselves. The only possible explanation for these advantages is that the indigenous population must have been in some way deprived of its rights or of its resources. Thus no European within the colonial situation can escape his role of usurper. In order to accept himself, he must either leave the colonies or else in some way legitimize his privileges. He accomplishes the latter by simultaneously proving his own superiority and the inferiority of those whom he is oppressing. Unfortunately, this measure accentuates, in turn, feelings of guilt, which require further self-justification. The logical end of this vicious circle would be the annihilation of the colonized peoples, which would bring to an end the privileged situation of the colonialist. The process of colonialism therefore carries within itself contradictory principles leading to its own destruction.

Another writer who represents the movement away from cultural rehabilitation toward political activism during the 1950s was Frantz Fanon, a young West Indian revolutionary. Born in 1925, Fanon left his country to join the French army during World War II, and subsequently became a psychiatrist after completing his medical studies at Lyon. His first book, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), shows the reaction of a man who knows French culture from the inside but is rejected because of his color; it is above all an impassioned plea for the liberation of oppressed people everywhere. His most widely known work, Les Damnés de la terre (1961), reflects his experiences during the Algerian war and lays out blueprints for the independent Africa of the future.

According to Fanon, his reason for writing Peau noire, masques blancs was not to deny the idea of white supremacy but in order to liberate the blacks from their own complexes. While it is true that the author spends considerable time in exposing the traits of the assimilated blacks who have allowed themselves to be determined by white culture, one can hardly overlook his analysis of the intolerable colonial situation. In his constant focusing upon the present, Fanon cannot avoid addressing his white oppressor; in this sense his first book does fall within the scope of Sartre's second term of his dialectical analysis of Negritude.

Fanon himself angrily rejects this black-white dialogue, for its very existence reminds him of the way in which white culture has impinged upon his freedom. Much of the book relates his personal search for identity, a quest to free himself from the shadow of white supremacy and from the analysis made by Sartre.

Having rejected assimilation, Fanon first turned to liberal rationalism to prove the ridiculous nature of racism. Unfortunately, intellectual theories provided little comfort in a racist society; it was an unnerving experience for a man who had placed his faith in reason:

Je dirai personnellement que, pour un homme qui n'a comme arme que la raison, il n'y a rien de plus névrotique que le contact de l'irrationnel.

I would personally say that for a man whose only weapon is reason there is nothing more neurotic than contact with unreason.⁴²

Since the supposedly rationalistic European society refused to meet Fanon on these terms, he next adopted the weapons of irrationality as exemplified in Negritude:

J'avais rationalisé le monde et le monde m'avait rejeté au nom du préjugé de couleur. Puisque, sur le plan de la raison, l'accord n'était pas possible, je me rejetais vers l'irrationalité. A charge au Blanc d'être plus irrationnel que moi. J'avais, pour les besoins de la cause, adopté le processus régressif, mais il restait que c'était une arme étrangère; je patauge dans l'irrationnel.

I had rationalized the world and the world had rejected me on the basis of color prejudice. Since no agreement was possible on the level of reason, I threw myself back toward unreason. It was up to the white man to be more irrational than I. Out of the necessities of my struggle I had chosen the method of regression, but the fact remained that it was an unfamiliar weapon; here I am at home; I am made of the irrational; I wade in the irrational.⁴³

In their haste to dominate the world, the whites had corrupted their own souls; the blacks' sensitive identification with nature could not, needed not, be expressed in the rationalistic terms used by the West. Was this primitive emotion only a phase of universal history? A newly discovered past resplendent with forgotten civilizations proved the contrary!

But even during this exhilarating plunge into Negritude when all white values had been scornfully rejected, Fanon could not escape the voice of Western culture. This time it was a well-meaning friend, Jean-Paul Sartre, who fixed the boundaries of his existence. Sartre's “Orphée noir” viewed race consciousness as only a part of a historical process destined to dissolve into universality.

Fanon quickly understood the implications of Sartre's dialectical analysis. Negritude had proven to be nothing more than an inevitable reaction to white supremacy, which was fated to eventually disappear within the universal. Once again, Fanon found himself determined by the whites, who interpreted every black gesture from their own point of view.

An intense desire to remain free, to be bound neither by his black essence nor by his white oppressor, prompted Fanon to break with Negritude. He would not accept the dictats of his past—“en aucune façon je ne dois tirer du passé des peuples de couleur ma vocation originelle” (“in no way should I derive my basic purpose from the past of the peoples of color”)⁴⁴—nor would he take refuge in black community: “Ce n'est pas le monde noir qui me dicte ma conduite. Ma peau noire n'est past dépositairé de valeurs spécifiques.” (“it was not the black world that laid down my course of conduct. My black skin is not the wrapping of specific values.”)⁴⁵

The ideal universal society of the future offered little hope to the existentialist-oriented Fanon. Emphasis upon the past or the future only served to obscure the unbearable realities of the present, thus alienating the individual. There was no obligation to pursue the universal!

Je ne suis pas une potentialité de qualque chose, je suis pleinement ce que je suis. Je n'ai pas à rechercher l'universel. En mon sein nulle probabilité ne prend place. Ma conscience nègre ne se donne pas comme manque. Elle est. Ell est adhérente à elle-même.

I am not a potentiality of something. I am wholly what I am. I do not have to look for the universal. No probability has any place inside me. My Negro consciousness does not hold itself out as a something lacking. It is. It is its own follower.⁴⁶

According to Albert Memmi, Fanon's “no” to Negritude stemmed from his situation as an assimilated Frenchman who had rejected himself and his past. As evidence, Memmi points to the fact that Fanon did not return to Martinique and only rarely mentioned his homeland.⁴⁷

The truth of the matter is that both Memmi and Fanon resemble each other in a number of ways. Culturally speaking, they stood on the outer edge of the black African world, but were well-acquainted with the inner circles of French society. Consequently, they could anticipate the objections of their critics and were especially sensitive to the patronizing attitudes displayed by white liberals who wished to ally themselves with the black liberation struggle.

Both writers saw economic oppression as the direct cause of racism and consequently emphasized political action ahead of cultural rehabilitation. Suspicious of traditional forms which had come under the corrupting influence of colonialist regimes, they felt that true cultural renewal involved a definite break with the past, a break that was best accomplished through a cleansing political struggle.

The demystification of Negritude brought with it the problem of relativism: how does one wage a militant struggle without absolutes? To resolve this problem both writers concentrated upon the colonial situation rather than upon racial differences. Instead of attempting to convince the average Europeans of their racism through rational arguments, they chose to address the liberals who had put their faith in well-meaning reforms.

As long as economic oppression, the original cause of racism, continued to exist, no amount of good will or intellectual enlightenment could bring about an improvement. Fanon's uncompromising statement that a society is either racist or not illustrates the way in which the situation had been radicalized, leaving no middle ground between the colonizer and the colonized.

It was inevitable that the African renaissance movement, which had begun as a cultural awakening, became increasingly political in its orientation. Once it was assumed that African values were equal to those of the European oppressor, independence was only logical; the failure to end economic and political exploitation would have implied the eventual demise of the cultural revolution.

The diversity and contradictions inherent in the African renaissance did not obscure its remarkable unity, which stemmed from a common audience (Europe) and a common purpose (the eradication of white supremacy attitudes). There was no strong desire to withdraw from the rest of the world, but rather an attempt to engage the West in dialogue and to contribute universal values after having so long been denied access to the world community.

Notes

1. Anténor Firmin, De l'égalité des races humaines (Anthropologie positive), (Paris: F. Pichon, 1885), p. 204. My translations throughout.

2. Firmin, p. 424.

3. Hannibal Price, quoted by Maurice A. Lubin, “Les Débuts de la Négritude en Haiti,” in Mélanges, réflexions d'hommes de culture (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1969), p. 296. My translations throughout.

4. Lubin, p. 296.

5. Jean Price-Mars, quoted by Lubin in Mélanges, p. 304.

6. Lilyan Kesteloot, Les Ecrivains noirs de langue française: Naissance d'une littérature, 3rd ed. (Bruxelles: Editions de l'Institut de Sociologie de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1965), p. 60; Lilyan Kesteloot, Black Writers in French: A Literary History of Negritude, trans. by Ellen Conroy Kennedy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), p. 53.

7. Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal/Return to My Native Land, trans. by Emile Snyder (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1971), p. 116; p. 117.

8. Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, 4th ed. (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1962), p. 12; Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. by Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 13.

9. Césaire, pp. 63-64; Césaire, p. 54-55.

10. Césaire, p. 25; Césaire, p. 23.

11. Aimé Césaire, Lettre à Maurice Thorez (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1957) p. 10; Aimé Césaire, Letter to Maurice Thorez (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1957), p. 10.

12. Léopold S. Senghor, Liberté I: Négritude et humanisme (Paris: Seuil, 1964), pp. 22-38. My translations throughout.

13. Senghor, p. 24.

14. Senghor, p. 26.

15. Senghor, p. 74.

16. Senghor, p. 28.

17. Senghor, p. 28.

18. Senghor, p. 31.

19. Senghor, p. 32.

20. Senghor, p. 83.

21. Léopold S. Senghor, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin et la politique africaine (Paris: Seuil, 1962), pp. 20-21. My translation.

22. Senghor, Liberté I: Négritude et humanisme, p. 86.

23. Senghor, p. 105.

24. Senghor, p. 96.

25. “Aimé Césaire: ‘Nous sommes à la veille de 1789,’” Le Nouvel Observateur, No. 329 (March 1-7, 1971), 35. My translation.

26. Léopold S. Senghor, “Qu'est-ce que la négritude?” Etudes françaises, III, No. 1 (February, 1967), 25. My translations throughout.

27. Paul Hazard, quoted by Thomas Melone in De la négritude dans la littérature négro-africaine (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1962), p. 44. My translations throughout.

28. Melone, p. 51.

29. Léopold S. Senghor, “Qu'est-ce que la négritude?”, 4.

30. Senghor, 29.

31. Cheikh A. Diop, Nations nègres et culture (Paris: Editions Africaines, 1955), p. 15. My translation.

32. Cheikh A. Diop, L'Afrique noire pré-coloniale: Etude comparée des systèmes politiques et sociaux de l'Europe et de l'Afrique noire, de l'antiquité à la formation des états modernes (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1960), p. 120. My translations throughout.

33. Cheikh A. Diop, “African Cultural Unity,” Présence Africaine, No. 24-25 (February-May, 1959), 69.

34. Cheikh A. Diop, L'Unité culturelle de l'Afrique noire: Domaines du patricat et du matricat dans l'antiquité classique (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959), p. 153. My translations throughout.

35. Diop, “African Cultural Unity,” 70.

36. Diop, L'Afrique noire pré-coloniale, p. 76.

37. Diop, L'Unité culturelle de l'Afrique noire, p. 169.

38. Diop, L'Afrique noire pré-coloniale, p. 59.

39. Austin Shelton, “Historiography and ‘New’ African ‘History’: A Short Exposition,” Génève-Afrique, III, No. 1 (1964), 82.

40. Shelton, 82.

41. Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé, précédé du Portrait du colonisateur et d'une préface de Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1966), p. 25; Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. by Howard Greenfeld (New York: Orion Press, 1965), p. xvi.

42. Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Seuil, 1952), p. 115; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. by Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 118.

43. Fanon, p. 119; Fanon, p. 123.

44. Fanon, p. 203; Fanon, p. 226.

45. Fanon, p. 204; Fanon, p. 226.

46. Fanon, p. 129; Fanon, p. 135.

47. Albert Memmi, “Frantz Fanon,” New York Times Book Review, Section 7, March 14, 1971, pp. 5, 20.