Negritude: Genesis and terms of a cultural and political movement

Résumé du document

As Jean-Paul Sartre's famous quote was explaining, The concept of Negritude is based in response to a condition, a context. "The denial of the black man" is thus the expression of the conditioning that was subjecting populations of colonies, particularly in France, ie moral subjugation of indigenous peoples. Negritude is a concept of reaction to a situation, hence the necessity to explain the context of its appearance, its precursor movements, to then show its shapes and then the legacy that follows.

Negritude appeared as a cultural and then political movement between the two World Wars, based on the struggle of some intellectuals from French colonies' elites in order to assert the role of the "black man", ie the man from European settlements and have undergone European domination, in a society that refuses an equal status. Understand the origin of the concept of Negritude requires an explanation of the context of France and its colonies at the end of the First World War.

Extraits

[...] Writers such as Du Bois, along with activists such as Marcus Garvey, uphold the idea of black culture that opens the potentiality of a "Pan-Africanism", at first cultural, but also political. While the thoughts of these intellectual differed, including the future to give to Africa, to be ruled by African Americans for Garvey, left to Africans Du Bois, They have had a strong impact in Europe. Indeed, from 1921, these African-American went to Europe several times on the occasion of conferences to spread the idea of black cultural nationalism. [...]

[...] This idea had been promoted since the beginnings of black identity movements. Politics have been a way to transcend ideas expressed in Negritude concept and litterature. Indeed, one must consider politics as the finality of negritude, since it follows identity movements that raised in order to face a state of things, the alienation of african culture towards european culture, that had to be fought. Conclusion When asked about a common denominator between population from Africa, Caribean and even North America, during his lecture at the First Meeting of Black Writers and Artists in 1956, that was taking place in Paris, Aimé Cesaire declaired that it was that they all lived in a situation that could be described as colonial, semi-colonial or para-colonial Hence according to Cesaire the existence of two kinds of solidarity, horizontal and vertical The horizontal solidarity lies within the people of the African diaspora, facing colonization. [...]

[...] Negritude: Genesis and terms of a cultural and political movement Table of Contents Introduction: colonised populations in France at the beginning of 1920s 1 I. Genesis of the concept 2 A. Precursors: prior protests and Harlem Renaissance 2 B. Foundation of Negritude: 4 II. A dual nature: litterature and politics A. Negritude through litterature: comparative analysis of Senghor and Césaire works B. Negritude as a political struggle Conclusion Genesis and terms of a cultural and political movement Negritude: Genesis and terms of a cultural and political movement Introduction As Jean-Paul Sartre's famous quote was explaining, The concept of Negritude is based in response to a condition, a context. [...]

[...] Thus, it is this desire to reconnect with African roots and the purpose to an universalism that Césaire and Senghor overlap in literature. To understand the literature associated with the current Negritude, one must understand the influence that had Paulette Nardal's literary salon, where had been authors such as Césaire and Senghor, among others, and where they met many other writers, for example, some authors of the Harlem Renaissance such as Alain Locke. Locke's New Negro, Trying to federate multiple perceptions of blackness to overtake the old conceptions and reach a new definition, had a strong influence on French authors including Senghor, attached as we have seen to Negritude as the broad definition of "being black." The literary works of Senghor is essentially poetic, it is composed of several volumes, some of which are then assembled in Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, which was intended to be a kind of aesthetic manifesto of the movement, supported by Sartre. [...]

[...] In a context where the protests started to appear and movements have begun to rise, we will show how the concept of negritude was developed, and how it became a literary and political movement. Genesis of the concept A. Precursors: prior protests and Harlem Renaissance Because of the disparity of conditions, we talked about previously; the defense of interests grouping all blacks in France was not obvious. The Communists were the first to attempt to create an intercolonial solidarity under the banner of anti-colonialism. [...]