Cultural movement born in a context of international ferment, marked by the rise of Communism, the mingling of peoples resulting from World War I, and the diffusion of the work of Delafosse, Delavignette, Hardy, and Monod on cultural relativism.
In Paris between 1930 and 1940 black intellectuals from Africa, America, and the Caribbean were meeting and debating together. Even before this, however, the Harlem Negro Renaissance of the 1920s, signalled by the work of W. E. B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey, had clearly posed the problem of the destiny of the black peoples, their consciousness and their solidarity, in other words, their identity. The presence in France of Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and other writers from Harlem galvanized the black intellectuals, and in 1931-2 La Revue du monde noir published in French a number of texts of the Negro Renaissance.
In the West Indies, most earlier writers, eager to promote their integration into metropolitan France, had favoured a literature of assimilation. The contact between African blacks and West Indians living in Paris led to a new awareness of the treatment accorded to black peoples. Négritude thus grew out of what Fanon called ‘l'expérience vécue du Noir’.
The theory of the movement appeared in periodicals such as Les Continents, La Dépêche africaine, La Revue du monde noir. The last-named, founded by Sajous and Paulette Nardal, was the first major meeting-place for black intellectuals, including Price-Mars, Félix Ebony, Maran, Étienne Léro, Menil, Césaire, Senghor, and Damas. One of their main concerns was to reassert the value of black cultures by setting the historical record straight. In spite of its commitment to truth, the Revue was a moderate publication; it appeared between November 1931 and April 1932.
On 1 June 1932, several former contributors to the Revue, declaring their allegiance to Breton and Surrealism, founded Légitime défense. This journal was strongly influenced by the West Indians, through the contributions of Léro, Menil, Jules-Marcel Monnerot, and Maurice-Sabas Quitmas. Claiming that the Revue du monde noir was a ‘revue à l'eau de rose’, in other words moderate and Catholic, they set out to ‘develop an ideology of revolt’. The tone of the new journal irritated the French authorities, who prevented more than one number appearing.
In 1935 a little journal, L' Étudiant noir, was published containing the work of writers from both Africa (e.g. Senghor, Socé Diop, Birago
Négritude thus had both a cultural and a political dimension. If Césaire invented the term, it was Senghor, with his numerous writings, who appeared as the leading spirit and propagandist for the movement. For him, it represents ‘le patrimoine culturel, les valeurs, et surtout l'espirit de la civilisation négro-africaine’.
Following in the wake of its American forerunner, the movement established itself as a place of rehabilitation for black culture. As a literary school, it produced such major works as Damas's Pigments, Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal and Les Armes miraculeuses, Rabemananjara's Rites millénaires, or even Rabéarivelo's Traduit de la nuit and Vieilles chansons des pays d'Imérina. Other writers such as Camara Laye or Sembène Ousmane also helped give body to the great ‘cri nègre’.
But the concept of négritude is far from having won universal support among black intellectuals. By insisting on the cultural unity of the black world and the permanent qualities of the black soul, Senghor seems to have brushed to one side socio-historical considerations. For Fanon, a cultural renaissance was impossible in a context of oppression; it was essential above all to struggle against the domination of the black peoples. Césaire's Discours sur le colonialisme of 1955 is in the same vein.
Négritude was an essential turning-point in the awakening of political awareness in Africa and the West Indies. It occupies a vital place in the recovery of the historical initiative by dominated black peoples. But it has given rise to many different interpretations and controversies. Although Senghor continued to defend the original négritude, while modifying its content, many African intellectuals saw it as a dated movement, and in some cases an ideology of enslavement, e.g. Marcien Towa in Léopold Sédar Senghor: négritude ou servitude (1971). Others, including Stanislas Adotévi, author of Négritude et négrologues (1972), believe that the movement should confine itself to cultural questions, and that it has been misused for political purposes. (There is a clear allusion here to Senghor, who governed Senegal from 1960 to 1980 under the aegis of négritude.) The most extreme argue that, as the tiger does not go on about tigritude, the negro should not waste his time proclaiming his negritude, imprisoning himself in coterie politics. Such is the position of Wole Soyinka and many English-speaking intellectuals, who prefer to speak simply of the African personality.
At all events, it seems that the debate on négritude is now closed. The movement has definitively entered the literary-historical Pantheon of the black peoples.
[Ambroise Kom]
