The chapter continues the discussion of Iran–Senegal relations in Chapter 7 and the nature of Iran’s aid policy in Chapter 8 to explore the expansion of these ties in the mid- to late 1970s. During this period, President Senghor travelled to Iran multiple times and Empress Farah travelled to Senegal to lay the foundation stone of a city that would bear her name: Keur Farah Pahlavi. The chapter explores this extraordinary Iranian–Senegalese joint venture, that was planned to result in the construction of an oil refinery, petrochemical complex and adjoining town, which would have an eventual population of 200,000. An important asset of Keur Farah Pahlavi was to be its cultural centre, reflecting the close cultural relations that developed between Iran and Senegal during this period. The chapter examines in detail the extensive cultural ties that were nurtured, through which African art, culture and philosophy were broadcast to the Iranian public, and how these came to shape Iranian perceptions of Africa and Africans.

The chapter explores Iran’s policy in West Africa through two very different relationships; those with Senegal and Nigeria. Senegal was identified early in the 1970s as a country that Iran would pursue a special relationship with. This political partnership was facilitated by the strong personal bonds developed between the two sets of leaders, which were shaped by their francophone backgrounds. The president of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, in particular, shared a close bond with Empress Farah Pahlavi, and spoke eloquently about the inherent similarities between his philosophy of Négritude and Iran’s Iranité. On the other hand, Iran’s relationship with Nigeria was very pragmatic. Iran’s ambassador there, Shāhrokh Firuz, found himself frustrated by the rigidity of Iran’s policy, and the lack of freedom he had to explore new opportunities for Iran, not only in Nigeria, but also other countries in the region. These two relationships provide fascinating insights into Iran’s strategy in arguably the only part of Africa in which it had no immediately obvious security or strategic interests. The chapter explores what drove these relationships, and what each side gained from them.

Iran engaged with global decolonization movements on two levels: state-to-state and non-elite contexts. As Iranians observed global crises such as apartheid and race riots unfold in South Africa and the United States, they sharpened their understanding of racial politics. At the same time, Iran tried to assume a prominent role in these debates by hosting the UN Human Rights Conference in 1968. The shah faced a quandary: on the one hand he saw Iran as aligned with other Third World countries that had suffered from imperial politics. On the other hand, he wanted Iran aligned with the United States and the West in a partnership of equals. Moreover, although the king supported global human rights, he was unable to facilitate democratic political participation in Iran.

The routes of Caribbean interactions with Africa during the 1950s and 1960s were several and varied: not only did Africa appear in the literature as forms and interrogations of an ideological homeland, but African and Caribbean writers met on European soil, exchanged ideas in conversations with each other, and became part of literary projects fostered through European universities and publishers. During this period, many writers and scholars from across the Caribbean region moved to the newly independent African countries, and engaged with the cultures in their writing and professional and personal lives. Conversely, many African writers turned to the Caribbean for models of how to engage with the cultures of colonialism and their afterlife. This chapter examines the pilgrimage of identity and diaspora enacted through the African–Caribbean connection, the new literary movements that it generated, as well as the shared project of political and cultural decolonization.

The chapter examines racist and colonialist assumptions in Bergson’s philosophy and outlines what is at stake in the various approaches to these assumptions that recent interpreters have taken. Focusing on two readers of Bergson, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Messay Kebede, the chapter shows how the Négritude movement deployed a Bergsonian epistemology to challenge the dominance and domination of a European conception of rationality, mobilizing instead what Senghor calls an “embracing reason.” Critically assessing recent identifications of racism, the racialization of bodies, and whiteness as a transcendental norm in Bergson’s philosophy, the author concludes that Bergson cannot altogether escape the charges, given that his central distinction between open and closed in Two Sources relies on a notion of “primitives” as an indispensable foil for the achievements of the mystics. The question then becomes to what extent Bergson’s thought can be mobilized to remedy the evils it cannot wholly be extricated from. In conclusion, the essay surveys contemporary appropriations of the conception of the open society and suggests that Senghor’s rearticulation of Bergson’s intuition as sympathetic "embracing reason" offers theoretical and practical ways to address racist and colonial discourses.