Négritude

The Negritude is a literary- philosophical political movement that advocates a cultural self-assertion of all the people of Africa and their African origins. In contrast to the more Anglo -oriented Pan-African francophone Negritude reflected the European discourse on Africa.

Thus, Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of Senegal, they Francité the contrary; Aimé Césaire, who created the concept of negritude, puts him out of combat stressed and forward -facing as Senghor. Contrary to the Eurocentric alleged lack of culture of Africa and their exoticism to ensure an independent, versatile and equal "black" culture and lifestyle are highlighted.

Both Senghor - having regard to Leo Frobenius - and Césaire are assuming that Africans are culturally and historically fundamentally shaped differently from their colonizers. Compared with the created by colonialism negative attributions and devaluation of their culture as " uncivilized " they raise the important cultural skills out for themselves in a positive vote. They question, for example, why sensitive and sensual elements of their culture to be considered as " instinctive " and emphasize their own cultural and philosophical tradition.

In the post-colonial critique underlying approaches of Negritude were corrected. The basic criticism was that the negritude have indeed shown an important factor for the recovery of a self-esteem in the context of oppression, but in their dichotomous thinking of essentialist opposites on the tradition of the Hellenic influenced European backgrounds. Among the critics is one above all, Aimé Césaire, who criticized associated with the negritude Pan-Africanism: There are two ways to lose it, thanks to the fragmentation, the particular or the resolution in the " Universal "

History

The concept of negritude was in the wake of decolonization in the 1930s by French-speaking intellectuals like especially Aimé Césaire ( Antilles), LS Senghor (Senegal) and LG Damas (Guyana ) developed as a political concept of black self-determination and the colonial integration offer the Francité ( the to make assimilating to " hundreds of millions of Frenchmen " colonized ) opposed. It was coined by Césaire in the Paris magazine " L' Etudiant Noir" (1935 ), which from the beginning was already clear that this is a beyond mere art out ambitious comprehensive anti - colonial revolutionary Afrikanitätskonzept.

The move was Leo Frobenius and the authors of the Harlem Renaissance influences, especially from the African American writers Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, whose works sat down with " blackness " and racism apart. During the 1920s and 30s, a small group of black students and scholars was assembled from the colonies in Paris, where they were presented by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Paulette Nardal and the Haitian Dr. Leo Sajou founded La revue du Monde Noir ( 1931-32 ), a literary magazine, published in English and French and a mouthpiece for the growing movement of intellectuals from Africa and the Caribbean was trying to be in Paris. Also had the Negrismo in the Spanish speaking Caribbean connections to the Harlem Renaissance and thus creating a global exchange of these movements in the context of different and the same experiences and situations.

The Euro -centric credentials white dominance is maintained by the Negritude violent shaped and destructive assessment of their actual practice, while practice their own cultures is idealized and the sources of personal strengths (eg the solid social network and the communitarian life and mode of production ) are highlighted.

Césaire Africanity saw itself as a cultural and emancipatory project with immediate policy relevance, it both as a poet / writer ( plays, poetry, articles, va " About colonialism " ) as well as politicians (Mayor in Martinique, member of the French National Assembly ) pursued. The structural proximity of philosophy and practice of negritude appears as the example Senghor, President of Senegal in 1960 was. On the Negritude (the " mass of the cultural values ​​of Black Africa " ) he looked in 1956 as " but only the beginning for the solution of our problem " back:

"In order to start our own and real revolution, we had our borrowed clothes, the clothes of the drop assimilation, and affirm our own existence ... We could not return to the past ... To be really true to ourselves, we should negro - African culture in the realities of the 20th century integrate. To make us out of our N. an effective instrument of liberation, we had to blow away the dust and assign it in the international movement of the contemporary world their place. "

The opposition to white domination was fundamental, the demand consistently for recognition of colonial crime and the appropriate assumption of responsibility. It also still represents an uncompromising prompt and unfulfilled obligation to deliver, how enlightened on still virulent violence ratio of men's white and black slaves and the unbroken rule and ignorant racist images of black people is only too clear. Critics point to the N. " African blood and soil mysticism " or " anti- white racism ", which is not uncommon as a blatant defensive reflex privileged White viewed against accusations like that Césaire:

" Yes, what? the Indians massacred, bringing the Islamic world to himself, desecrated the Chinese world well for a century and disfigured, disqualified the world of blacks, countless voices extinguished for ever, scattered homesteads to the four winds ... and you think, for all the should not be paid? "

Fanon and Negritude

As part of his work Peau noire - masques blancs from 1952 ( ger 1980: Black skin - white masks ) to Frantz Fanon expose with the Negritude movement. In a dialogue with Jean -Paul Sartre on the self-experience of the "black subject " within colonial society forms the negritude is the central theme.

Novels and writers of the negritude

• Mongo Beti ( Cameroon ): The Poor Christ of Bomba
• Bernard Dadie (Ivory Coast): Climbié
• Camara Laye (Guinea): One of Kurussa
• Leopold Sedar Senghor (Senegal)
• Lamine Diakhaté (Senegal)