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Historical Origins and Literary Destiny of Negritude
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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Ever since the mediaeval quarrel over universais, there have invariably been minds for whom every general concept is a flatus vocis. And for many African intellectuals, the term “negritude,” introduced by Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor around the years 1933-1935, is no more than just a word. Yet the mere fact that it came into being, even though it should have no intelligible content, is in itself significant. It is indicative of the same growing awareness that led to the struggle against racial discrimination and the liberation movements of colonial peoples. But a growing awareness of what?
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- Copyright © 1964 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 E. E. Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change, Dorsey Press, Homewood, 1962, pp. 185-86.
2 Ibid., p. 414.
3 R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Ill., 1957.
4 Quoted in L. Kesteloot, Les écrivains noirs de langue française. Naissance d'une littérature, Brussels, 1963, p. 29. The present article owes much to this work, which contains a valuable documentation on the genesis of French-language negro literature.
5 J. A. Portuondo, Bosquejo histórico de las letras cubanas, Havana, 1960, p. 61. The main figure of the negrista movement was the poet Nicolas Guillén, an exact contemporary of Langston Hughes, since he too was born in 1902.
6 Kesteloot, p. 184. The allusion to Sartre refers to "Orphée noir," the preface to L. S. Senghor's Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, Paris, 1948, pp. 60-61.
7 M. J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, Boston, 1962, p. 2.
8 V. Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems, 1914.
9 C. Cullen, Color, New York, 1925.
10 The Jamaican Marcus Garvey declares in Phisolophy and Opinion (New York, 1926, II, p. 19): "When Europe was inhabited by a race of cannibals, a race of savages, naked men, heathens and pagans, Africa was peopled by a race of men who were cultured and refined…" In a sonnet, entitled Africa, his compatriot Claude McKay writes:
The sun sought thy dim bed and brought out light. The sciences were suckling at thy breasts; When all the world was young in pregnant night, The slaves toiled at the monumental best. Thou ancient treasure house, though modern prize, New peoples marvel at thy pyramids. The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes Watches the mad world with immobile lids.
The work of the Senegalese Sheik Anta Diop, Nations nègres et culture (Paris, 1954), has this significant subtitle: "De l'antiquité négro-egyptienne aux problèmes culturels de l'Afrique noire d'aujourd'hui." The Malian Fily-Dabo Sissoko, in Les Noirs et la culture (New York, 1950), considers important the fact that Aesop was a Negro. It is perhaps necessary to consider this tendency as a form of ritualism, since it aims at rehabilitating Africa in the name of European criteria, albeit by distorting historical reality somewhat. As Herskovits said, works of this type are part of polemic literature and are interesting mainly as "manifestations of the psychology of interracial conflict." (Op. cit., p. 2).
11 G. R. Coulthard, Raza y color en la literatura antillana, Seville, 1958; English translation, Race and Color in Caribbean Literature, Oxford University Press, Lon don, 1962. The quotes used in the notes that follow are taken from this fine work, which, like that of Mme Kesteloot, is an indispensable tool for the study of contemporary Negro literature.
12 For instance, Trahison, by the Haitian Raymond Laleau:
And this despair, equal to no other for taming, with words from France, this heart which came to me from Senegal.
(tr. by G. R. Coulthard)
13 In his Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Paris, 1947) the Martiniquan Aimé Césaire writes:
Listen to the white world horribly tired from its immense effort, hear its rebellious joints cracking under the hard stars, its blue steel stiffness piercing the mystical flesh, hear its victories trumpeting its defeats, hear its miserable strumbling accompanied by grandiose alibis, pity for our conquerors, omniscient and naive.
(tr. by G. R. Coulthard)
14 The Haitian, Jacques Roumain, displays especially spirited vengefulness in Bois d'ébène (Port-au-Prince, 1945) :
Surprise Jesus Mary Joseph when we catch the missionary by the beard laughing horribly to teach him in our turn by kicking his bottom that our ancestors were not Gauls, and that we don't give a damn for a God who, if he is the father, well, we, dirty niggers, it is obvious that we must be his bastard sons, and it won't help yelling Jesus Mary Joseph like an old bladder spilling over with lies.
(tr. by G. R. Coulthard)
15 See in particular Le Drapeau de demain by the Haitian Jean Brierre (Port-au-Prince, 1931):
Men led by the low instincts of beasts, and draping themselves in the vain name of civilisers, and believing themselves the kings of the whole planet, command that the Negro, branded by his colour, throughout the world, should be an unconscious thing, a stepping stone for their ostentation, should live in the night, and die in filth while Civilisation, carrying its torch stained with the blood of our race, watches them parade under triumphal arches.
(tr. by G. R. Coulthard)
16 Portuondo, op. cit., p. 58.
17 Coulthard, op. cit., pp. 31 and 34.
18 The three texts are quoted by Coulthard.
19 E. E. Burgum has given a detailed interpretation of Native Son from this point of view in The Novel and the World's Dilemma, New York, 1947.
20 These two quotes are taken from the work of the South African writer Ezekiel Mphahlele, The African Image, New York, 1962.
21 J. Baldwin, Nobody knows my Name, New York, 1961, p. 29.
22 Mphahlele, pp. 25-26.
23 Ibid., p. 194.
24 Ibid., p. 2 7.
25 Ibid., p. 53.
26 N. Jabavu, review of a novel by V. S. Naipaul, "The Middle Passage," New York Times Book Review Suppl., September 22, 1963.
27 For an interesting but too brief comparison between this work, Ingqumbo Yeminyanya (The Wrath of the Ancestors) and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, see Mphahlele, pp. 200-203.
28 Quoted by C. Legum, Pan-Africanism, New York, 1962, p. 94.
29 Baldwin, p. 35.
30 Sartre, loc. cit. (see note 6 above), p. xxx.
31 Kesteloot, p. 156.
32 Legum, p. 216.
33 Ibid., p. 217.
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