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Négritude
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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 francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians in the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora. Négritude gathers writers such as sisters Paulette and Jeanne Nardal (known for having laid the theoretical basis of the movement), Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Abdoulaye Sadji, Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, racism and Eurocentrism. They promoted African culture within a framework of persistent Franco-African ties. The intellectuals employed Marxist political philosophy, in the black radical tradition. The writers drew heavily on a surrealist literary style, and some say they were also influenced somewhat by the Surrealist stylistics, and in their work often explored the experience of diasporic being, asserting one's self and identity, and ideas of home, home-going and belonging.
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.
Négritude is a constructed noun from the 1930s based upon the French word nègre, which, like its English counterpart, was derogatory and had a different meaning from "black man". The movement's use of the word Négritude was a way of re-imagining the word as an emic form of empowerment. The term was first used in its present sense by Aimé Césaire, in the third issue (May–June 1935) of L'Étudiant noir, a magazine that he had started in Paris with fellow students Léopold Senghor and Léon Damas, as well as Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, Louis T. Achille, Aristide Maugée, and Paulette Nardal. The word appears in Césaire's first published work, "Conscience Raciale et Révolution Sociale", with the heading "Les Idées" and the rubric "Négreries", which is notable for its disavowal of assimilation as a valid strategy for resistance and for its use of the word nègre as a positive term. The problem with assimilation was that one assimilated into a culture that considered African culture to be barbaric and unworthy of being seen as "civilized". The assimilation into this culture would have been seen as an implicit acceptance of this view. Nègre previously had been used mainly in a pejorative sense. Césaire deliberately incorporated this derogatory word into the name of his philosophy. Césaire's choice of the -itude suffix has been criticized, with Senghor noting that "the term négritude has often been contested as a word before being contested as a concept", but the suffix allows Césaire to trope the vocabulary of racist science.
In 1885, Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin published an early work De l'égalité des races humaines (On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur l'inégalité des Races Humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races). Firmin influenced Jean Price-Mars, the initiator of Haitian ethnology and developer of the concept of Indigenism, and 20th-century American anthropologist Melville Herskovits. Black intellectuals have historically been proud of Haiti due to its slave revolution commanded by Toussaint Louverture during the 1790s. Césaire spoke, thus, of Haiti as being "where négritude stood up for the first time".
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 Harlem Renaissance, namely Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane. The Nardal sisters contributed to the Négritude discussions in their writings and also owned the Clamart Salon, a tea-shop venue of the Afro-French intelligentsia where the philosophy of Négritude was often discussed and where the concept for La Revue du Monde Noir was conceived. Paulette Nardal and the Haitian Dr. Leo Sajou initiated La Revue du Monde Noir (1931–32), a literary journal published in English and French, which attempted to appeal to African and Caribbean intellectuals in Paris. This Harlem inspiration was shared by the parallel development of negrismo and acceptance of "double-apparantence", double-consciousness, in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean region.
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. 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. 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.
The Dakar School art movement in Senegal, active from 1960 to 1974, was directly influenced by the philosophy of Négritude, and was also founded under the paternalism of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
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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 francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians in the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora. Négritude gathers writers such as sisters Paulette and Jeanne Nardal (known for having laid the theoretical basis of the movement), Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Abdoulaye Sadji, Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, racism and Eurocentrism. They promoted African culture within a framework of persistent Franco-African ties. The intellectuals employed Marxist political philosophy, in the black radical tradition. The writers drew heavily on a surrealist literary style, and some say they were also influenced somewhat by the Surrealist stylistics, and in their work often explored the experience of diasporic being, asserting one's self and identity, and ideas of home, home-going and belonging.
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.
Négritude is a constructed noun from the 1930s based upon the French word nègre, which, like its English counterpart, was derogatory and had a different meaning from "black man". The movement's use of the word Négritude was a way of re-imagining the word as an emic form of empowerment. The term was first used in its present sense by Aimé Césaire, in the third issue (May–June 1935) of L'Étudiant noir, a magazine that he had started in Paris with fellow students Léopold Senghor and Léon Damas, as well as Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, Louis T. Achille, Aristide Maugée, and Paulette Nardal. The word appears in Césaire's first published work, "Conscience Raciale et Révolution Sociale", with the heading "Les Idées" and the rubric "Négreries", which is notable for its disavowal of assimilation as a valid strategy for resistance and for its use of the word nègre as a positive term. The problem with assimilation was that one assimilated into a culture that considered African culture to be barbaric and unworthy of being seen as "civilized". The assimilation into this culture would have been seen as an implicit acceptance of this view. Nègre previously had been used mainly in a pejorative sense. Césaire deliberately incorporated this derogatory word into the name of his philosophy. Césaire's choice of the -itude suffix has been criticized, with Senghor noting that "the term négritude has often been contested as a word before being contested as a concept", but the suffix allows Césaire to trope the vocabulary of racist science.
In 1885, Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin published an early work De l'égalité des races humaines (On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur l'inégalité des Races Humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races). Firmin influenced Jean Price-Mars, the initiator of Haitian ethnology and developer of the concept of Indigenism, and 20th-century American anthropologist Melville Herskovits. Black intellectuals have historically been proud of Haiti due to its slave revolution commanded by Toussaint Louverture during the 1790s. Césaire spoke, thus, of Haiti as being "where négritude stood up for the first time".
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 Harlem Renaissance, namely Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane. The Nardal sisters contributed to the Négritude discussions in their writings and also owned the Clamart Salon, a tea-shop venue of the Afro-French intelligentsia where the philosophy of Négritude was often discussed and where the concept for La Revue du Monde Noir was conceived. Paulette Nardal and the Haitian Dr. Leo Sajou initiated La Revue du Monde Noir (1931–32), a literary journal published in English and French, which attempted to appeal to African and Caribbean intellectuals in Paris. This Harlem inspiration was shared by the parallel development of negrismo and acceptance of "double-apparantence", double-consciousness, in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean region.
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. 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. 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.
The Dakar School art movement in Senegal, active from 1960 to 1974, was directly influenced by the philosophy of Négritude, and was also founded under the paternalism of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.