Négritude

The recent death of Caribbean poet/politician Aimé Cesaire, and French state funeral with the presence of Sarkozy (although Cesaire had refused to meet him while still alive) calls for the inclusion of the concept of négritude in our discussion of Rastafarian movement.

Négritude was coined by Cesaire in the 1930s, first in an article for the magazine Etudiant Noir, which he had founded together with the another young African student, Leopold Senghor, later to become President of Senegal (1960 -1980).

The concept of négritude affirmed a shared black heritage of the African Diaspora in opposition to French colonialism and cultural imperialism. Slavery, new world plantation system and colonialism had created a distinct black cultural memory that united the negre community. In the heyday of the decolonization of Africa, Négritude appealed to many anti-colonial leaders like Senghor, who turned it into a sort of black essence. Likewise many French intellectuals like Sartre (Black Orpheus) or Cocteau reflected the work of Cesaire, who participated in the surrealist movement

Like the Rastafarian movement and other emancipative movements that have helped give a political voice to the black community in Africa, US and the Caribbean, Négritude has contributed to creating a black identity.

The derogatory Black or Négre where transformed into positive concepts (I’m Black and I’m proud). Although they dealt with common themes, the discourse of négritude did not pierce into its English counterpart. Cesaire was a French poet and his influence reached those who could understand his language.

Furthermore his writings did not contain religious or revolutionary assertions, although he belonged to the communist party until the Soviets marched into Hungary. Although he later became a prominent politician in Martinique, he never advocated for independence from France and has been criticized for not making more radical claims like his student Frantz Fanon, who was much more vehemently activist. Cesaire has sparked one of the most vivid Francophile discussions on anti-colonialism and black identity.

Tags: black