Abstracts/Résumés

GUEST SPEAKER: ABIOLA IRELE, University of Harvard, USA
LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR OUR ANCESTOR

PANEL 1: HISTOIRE ET TEMOIGNAGES I
Chair: Claver Mabana, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill

NAJIB REDOUANE, California State University, Long Beach
« Léopold Sédar Senghor et Aimé Césaire : Pour quelle Négritude? »
Stanislas Adotévi dans Négritude et Négrologues a évoqué la fameuse rencontre à Paris entre Léopolod Sédar Senghor et Aimé Césaire ainsi que la naissance de ce sentiment racial qui allait déterminer leur combat pour la valorisation de l’etre noir : «… Un jour, Césaire dit à Senghor : il faut que nous affirmions notre Négritude. Le mot était lâché ; la Négritude naissait. Un jour paraît-il, place de la Sorbonne». Ainsi, le réveil de la conscience des jeunes Africains et Antillais se traduit par le regroupement d’un trio composé de Léopold Sédar Senghor, sénégalais, d’Aimé Césaire, martiniquais, et du guyanais Léon Damas. C’est la réunion de ce trio avec d’autres étudiants africains et antillais pour défendre les cultures noires par-delà les différences géographique. Il convient de préciser que la préface de Jean-Paul Sartre Orphée noir pour l’ouvrage de Senghor l’Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, est un espace constitué de symboles qui propose des repères à une lecture objectivisante de la poésie négro-africaine par son ton de plaidoyer et de justification de la verve poétique que l’anthologie offre. Il fournit au lecteur français des motifs d’acceptation et de soutien à l’entreprise des peuples négro-africains de produire leurs propres discours sur leur drame de colonisés et, sur un plan strictement esthétique, participe d’une stratégie de construction de sens dans la perspective du lecteur français. En fait, Sartre situe la problématique de la Négritude dans une «poétique» définie et l’appréhende en établissant l’essence de cette notion chez Césaire et chez Senghor. Le but de notre communication est justement de montrer la différence de ce concept chez deux intellectuels qui ont marqué leur temps. Qu’est-ce que la Négritude Senghorienne? Comment se définit-elle? Quels principes véhicule-t-elle? Et comment se différencie-t-elle de la Négritude Césairienne? C’est que nous allons aborder pour bien comprendre le mouvement de la Négritude, son développement pour devenir l’architecture de l’être noir et expression d’une force vitale.

KAHIUDI CLAVER MABANA, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
« Tchicaya U Tam’si et la Négritude »
Les rapports entre la Négritude et Tchicaya U Tam’si sont intéressants dans la mesure où ils rendent compte du parcours d’un écrivain dont la vie a coïncidé avec les grands moments de la Négritude. Le jeune Tchicaya a grandi, évolué dans la mouvance de la Négritude et a adhéré à un certain moment à ses grands principes. Il envoyait par le canal de son père député des poèmes à Césaire, membre de l’Assemblée nationale française. Le deuxième recueil de ses poèmes, Feu de brousse, a été préfacé par LS Senghor. En dépit de cette reconnaissance, c’est aussi lui le pourfendeur de la Négritude qui, plus tard, l’a déclarée « bonne à vendre dix sous le quatrain ». Le but de ma contribution est de montrer que Tchicaya, bien qu’il s’en défende, est un épigone de la Négritude. Non seulement sa première poésie s’apparente idéologiquement à la Négritude, son univers mythique ne s’en démarque pas fondamentalement. A juste titre il a été souvent comparé à Aimé Césaire. Même sa prose publiée dans les années 80, longtemps après le festival d’Alger, fait unité avec sa vision initiale du monde. Pour illustrer cette position, je vais spécialement examiner la poétique des œuvres en prose de Tchicaya, notamment son esthétique du parler-écrit comme l’a si bien vu B. O’Grady. Les traits d’oralité, le traitement des proverbes et des chants, l’usage des langues africaines essaimées à travers ses romans et nouvelles, dénotent d’une option linguistique propre au mouvement de la Négritude. Si la Négritude comme courant philosophique et littéraire a été vivement décriée, elle n’en est pas restée moins vivante à travers les productions créatives. C’est une question de générations.

ANDREE-MARIE DIAGNE, Université Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar
« Léopold Sédar Senghor ou l’universel comme viatique et comme éthique »
La place de la « civilisation de l’universel » dans la pensée de Léopold Sédar Senghor est l’une des questions qui suscitent le plus d’intérêt et qui donnent matière à réflexion, en ce début du XXIè siècle. La célébration du centenaire de l’écrivain nous donne l’occasion d’interroger quelques un des concepts clés de la Négritude.
Notre communication se propose d’en faire une sorte d’archéologie, en suivant trois grandes pistes :
- 1°) La biographie du poète, pour observer les étapes de l’édification de ce destin qui fait d’un petit enfant sérère l’un des maîtres à penser de notre époque ;
- 2°) La carrière de l’homme d’Etat, dans ce qu’elle a de singulier et d’exemplaire à la fois, entre 1945 et 1980, une période capitale pour le monde noir et les pays en développement ;
- 3°) Le combat de l’homme de culture, dont la vision est un appel à fonder un nouvel humanisme.
Comment Senghor lui-même a-t-il développé une « morale de l’universel » ? Quelles exigences en a-t-il tirées pour affronter son temps et la politique En quoi nous permet-elle d’affronter la mondialisation en préservant en chacun le particulier ? Tels sont les grands axes de notre propos.

PANEL 2: IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS I
Chair: Dr Bernadette Farquhar, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill

FREDERICK OCHIENG-ODHIAMBO, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
"Nationalism in African Philosophy: The Case of Senghor".
Within academic circles, Senghor is better known for the theory of negritude, of which he was one of the chief exponents, rather than his political ideas as such. The paper will focus more on the latter. Senghor’s contribution to African political philosophy, just like those of his intellectual African contemporaries, is anchored on the ideological notion of African socialism in which traditional African society is conceived as having been communalistic. The paper will explicate and discuss the Senghorian notion of African socialism paying particular attention to his conception of property rights, labour, nation and homeland. Attempts will also be made at comparing his views with those of his intellectual African contemporaries such as Nkrumah and Nyerere.

BIODUN J. OGUNDAYO, University of Pittsburgh, Bradford Campus
“Between Senghor and Césaire: The Two Négritudes”
The historiography of Africanist discourse leaves no doubt as to the relevance and currency of Negritude as a mode of resistance to the hegemony of western or Euro-American exclusivist, supremacist, epistemologies, especially as these relate to African peoples and cultures. Over six decades after the first mention of the term, Negritude continues to generate vigorous (if not passionate) polemics among Africanist scholars. The purpose of this paper is to first posit that there exists two distinct Negritudes which reflect both the temperaments and ontologies of the two key figures of the movement, namely Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor. While Césairien Negritude can be conceived as definitely militant (even verging on the violent, Senghorian Negritude may be seen as an ideology of compromise. Both tendencies of the movement have the same ultimate goal—the re-centering of Africa and Africans in the ideological scheme of things. Next, I propose to use the works of these two giants as an opportunity to reassess the current state of Africanist discourse and politics... Through readings of primary texts of Senghor and Césaire, and selected secondary texts, a preliminary (and obvious?) conclusion is that the two Negritudes are yet another reiteration of the ongoing methodological battle that, for example, pitched radicals against so-called compromisers within the Harlem Renaissance; W.E.B. Du Bois against Booker T Washington; Malcolm X against Martin Luther King Jr; and, on the African continent, the Casablanca group against the Monrovia group in the founding of a continental Africanist organization.

AYOTUNDE BEWAJI, University of the West Indies, Mona
"Senghor and Garvey - kindred thinkers from similar spaces"
In this discussion I explore the relationship between Negritude and Garveyism,
hoping in so doing to annotate the similarities in the tropes of discourse,
presuppositions of ideas, and visionary nature of understanding of the Africana
experience, historical location of existence and futuristic implication of
being. In this regard, I examine their critical analysis of the
historiogenesis of Africana being, the theoretical exigency of knowledge and
the way these matters implicate leadership concerns for Africana peoples
globally. This exploration of their pan-Africanisms necessitates a critical
understanding of the background of their social, political and philosophical
thoughts. In doing this, it is hoped that we will stimulate discourse of both
Senghor and Garvey as connected sides of an Africana intellectual existence.

PANEL 3: HISTOIRE ET TEMOIGNAGES II
Chair: Elisabeth Bladh, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill

ISABELLE CONSTANT, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
« Le rêve politique dans le roman de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. (Kourouma, Fantouré, Lopes, Sassine) »
Les rêves reçoivent une attention particulière dans la tradition africaine, qui accorde à l'oniromancie comme à l’interprétation une place de choix que l'on retrouve aussi dans les romans africains. Comme une poésie intégrée à la narration ils possèdent une valeur ésotérique, dans la mesure où ils doivent être interprétés, où ils recèlent des secrets, où ils ne sont pas immédiatement compréhensibles comme le reste du texte. La poésie et le rêve possèdent leur propre langage et contiennent une charge de pouvoir qui n’existe pas dans la narration principale. Le rêve se situe clairement dans une constante oscillation entre la création poétique et la magie. Le rêve précède la création comme l’état de rêveur précède l’écriture et c’est le procédé du rêve à la création qui porte le sceau du magique. La mise en forme du poème tient de l’acte ésotérique, unique et original. C’est pour cela que ce sont surtout des poètes, Novalis, Jean-Paul, les surréalistes, Cocteau, Césaire et Senghor qui se sont le plus intéressés au rêve. Il semble que la poésie soit une étape entre le rêve et l’écriture du roman, comme si elle gardait le mystère du monde onirique et le réfléchissait dans son état le plus proche du songe. C’est aussi la raison pour laquelle Bachelard dans L’Eau et les rêves traite essentiellement de poésie. Je parlerai ici exclusivement du rêve politique dans certains romans africains. Le rêve politique apparaît dans les romans engagés du temps de la colonisation, comme dans les "romans du désenchantement" (J. Chevrier, Littérature nègre, 115) de la période post-indépendance. Le poète est le personnage de son poème, l’opacité lui permet de se passer d’interface à l’inverse du romancier qui trouve des subterfuges, tels les rêves, pour explorer le moi profond, qu’il soit personnel ou collectif.

CHANTAL P. THOMPSON, Brigham Young University
« De Femme noire (Senghor) à Douceurs du Bercail (Aminata Sow Fall): Evolution de la Négritude »
1938: exilé en France, Senghor chante l’hymne sacré de la Négritude, Femme nue, femme noire… Après avoir idéalisé l’Europe, soudain, au cœur du Midi de sa vie, le poète « découvre » la Terre promise des savanes et des tamtams. Plutôt que de faire appel aux images du négrier et d’exhorter « la négraille » à briser ses chaînes, Senghor choisit d’évoquer la beauté et la douceur de l’Afrique pour donner à l’identité africaine ses titres de noblesse. Il suffit d’écouter « battre le pouls profond de l’Afrique, dans la brume des villages perdus » (Senghor, « Nuit de Sine ») pour découvrir la Terre promise, « du haut du col calciné » (Senghor, « Femme noire » qui marque la fin d’un exode forcé qui a duré plus de quatre siècles.
1998 : Soixante ans se sont écoulés, marqués par les soleils des indépendances et la nuit des tâtonnements. Plongée dans le chaos, l’Afrique voit ses enfants partir à la recherche de l’espoir ailleurs. Mais cet ailleurs, selon Aminata Sow Fall, n’est qu’un « dépôt », un monde artificiel qui n’est ni l’Afrique ni l’Occident, un « no man’s land » où l’on perd son identité. L’aventure ambiguë n’a donc jamais cessé, et le message de Senghor résonne encore : il faut re-découvrir les Douceurs du bercail, car « l’eldorado n’est pas au bout de l’exode mais dans les entrailles de notre terre.»(Fall, 68) Armés d’espérance et de détermination, les personnages du roman d’Aminata Sow Fall défrichent leur terrain, un microcosme de l’Afrique : il y a des mauvaises herbes à arracher (dont les racines ne sont pas nécessairement blanches), une multitude de bonnes plantes à régénérer, et d’autres à importer. A la sueur de leur front, Asta et ses amis font renaître les Douceurs du bercail. Au seuil du vingt et unième siècle, la Négritude se redéfinit donc comme un appel à l’action pour sauver cette Terre promise « dont la couleur est vie et la forme est beauté », « avant que le Destin jaloux ne [la] réduise en cendres.» (Senghor, « Femme noire »)

ROSE MARIE KUHN, California State University Fresno
« Enseigner le génocide du Rwanda dans le contexte de la littérature post-coloniale de l’Afrique noire »
Mon intervention se propose de montrer comment il est possible de créer – à l’aide de certaines techniques de l’information – un espace intellectuel unifiant dans lequel des étudiants anglophones de troisième année d’université entreprennent une étude critique de la littérature francophone post-coloniale de l’Afrique noire et analysent, à travers des textes littéraires, la tragédie génocidaire qui a déchiré le Rwanda en 1994 et qui a coûté la vie à plus d’un dixième de la population de ce petit pays d’Afrique centrale. Tout d’abord, j’aborderai la question de la quête identitaire que la Négritude a suscitée chez bien des auteurs africains de langue française. A cette quête littéraire et intérieure correspond, bien sûr, un mouvement identitaire extérieur : c’est l’Afrique toute entière qui cherche à se définir par rapport à son passé et qui tente, en même temps, de faire face à un avenir incertain. Ses traditions ancestrales se heurtent à la fois à son lourd héritage colonial et aux maintes contradictions que lui impose l’occident moderne. Le choc de ces trois cultures provoque des affrontements politiques, des querelles religieuses ou des conflits ethniques… dont le génocide du Rwanda n’est qu’un triste exemple, immortalisé à jamais grâce au talent des auteurs africains qui participèrent au projet « Ecrire par devoir de mémoire » . En guise de conclusion, je parlerai de certaines approches pédagogiques qui permettent une réflexion critique sur le génocide, telles les stratégies d’écriture qui encouragent les étudiants à remettre en cause leurs propres convictions, à explorer d’autres cultures, traditions et idéologies, à en respecter les divergences, à prendre conscience des disparités qui existent dans toutes les sociétés, et peut-être même… à les encourager à les éliminer dans leur propre communauté, sinon à l’échelle internationale.

PANEL 4: IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS II
Chair: Barbara Chase, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill

JENNIFER HURLEY, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
"Valorizing Blackness: A Fanonian interpretation of Black Male identity in a francophone Context"
Négritude is essentially a concept that is based on the valorization of blackness. This paper discusses this issue as it relates to the black Francophone male. The point of departure is Frantz Fanon=s discussion on black men in Peau Noire Masques Blancs (1952). Fanon uses Freudian psychoanalysis intertwined with the issue of race to develop his theory on the black Francophone male. Not only are Fanon=s arguments analyzed along with relevant critical responses to his thesis but the paper also critiques certain Francophone novels written by women to explore how in his attempt at self-valorization the black Francophone male has created an identity based on the conquest of the white female and the concomitant degradation of the black female. These novels are Hérémakhonon (1976) and Une Saison à Rihata (1981) written by Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe and C=est le soleil qui m=a brûlée (1987) and Tu t=appelleras Tanga (1988) by the Cameroonian Calixthe Beyala. The paper concludes by discussing the link between personal freedom and the valorization of blackness as revealed in the novels.

EBENEZER A. OMOTESO, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
"Ideology and Commitment in Agostinho Neto and Leopold Sedar Senghor: A Comparative Perspective"
This monograph on Agostinho Neto (Angola) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) is a major contribution to the study on literature as a weapon by the oppressed to combat his oppressors, apart from contributing to the study of comparative African literature, especially on the role of ideology in the African writer’s commitment to the struggles of African nations for liberation and national reconstruction. The study highlights the differences (and similarities) in the commitment of Neto and Senghor to the liberation of Africa from colonial oppression. Special emphasis is placed on the study of the influence of their respective ideologies (Neto’s radical philosophy of Marxism and Senghor’s Négritude, especially Senghorian Négritude) on their literary and political careers. The study of their poetry (Neto’s Sagrada Esperança (1974) and Senghor’s Chants d'Ombre (1945) and Hosties Noires (1948) shows that Neto, much more than Senghor, is more committed to the anti-colonial struggles of his people. His functional use of stylistic devices and revolutionary message are geared towards raising the socio-political consciousness of the oppressed/colonized in order to arise and combat his oppressor for freedom. Senghor however uses all his energy to illustrate and defend traditional African culture. His vision is less altruistic and pragmatic than that of Neto, because his struggle appears half-hearted as he devotes himself more to the service of his colonial masters, actively seeking to amend the colonial system in order to make it acceptable and palatable to Africans. Consequently, Neto’s poetic and political thoughts apparently supersede Senghor’s, for going ahead to call for struggles to liberate the colonized.

CHIKE JEFFERS, Northwestern University
“Black Civilization and the Dialogue of Cultures:
Senghor’s Combination of Cultural Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism”
As a reaction to colonialism, Senghor’s philosophy can be seen as part of a tradition in Africana thought that directs conceptual resources toward an understanding of the role of culture in the fight against racism. My essay treats Senghor as part of a stream within this tradition according to which we must work against both the temptation to assimilate and the temptation to prize cultural purity. Senghor is both a cultural nationalist and a cosmopolitan. In his view, black people must embrace black cultural values. And yet, this is not for our benefit alone – these cultural values constitute our contribution to world culture, our gift to the world, and as we share, we are meant to benefit reciprocally from non-black cultural values. My primary task is to reconstruct and discuss Senghor’s arguments for this view. Afterward, I shall engage two reasons one might resist it: the twin problems of essentialism and Eurocentrism. It seems clear to many that Senghor promotes a grotesque racialism that does not sufficiently combat the measurement of black people by racist Western standards. While I agree that Senghor’s theorizing is made less attractive by essentialist and Eurocentric dimensions, I also defend a way of reading his work that treats his efforts as charitably as possible in order to gain insight from his unique vision of the black world.

GUEST SPEAKER : SOULEYMANE DIAGNE, Northwestern University, Chicago
LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR : LE DIALOGUE DES CULTURES ET DES RELIGIONS

Une constante de la pensée philosophique et politique de Léopold Sédar Senghor est la nécessité du dialogue des cultures et des religions pour construire ce qu’à la suite du Père Pierre Teilhard de Chardin il a appelé « la civilisation de l’universel ». Cette « civilisation de l’universel », insiste-t-il, n’est pas l’expansion d’une civilisation qui uniformiserait le monde. En ces temps marqués par la mondialisation et où l’on se demande s’il faut lire les événements qui se produisent comme autant de signes d’un « choc des civilisations » il est utile de se pencher sur l’œuvre du poète-philosophe Senghor pour s’interroger avec le sur les voies d’un humanisme fondé à la fois sur la diversité culturelle et la convergence des différences.

PANEL 5: INTERCULTURALITES
Chair : Lacina Yeo, Université de Cocody-Abidjan

LACINA YEO, Université de Cocody-Abidjan
« Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001) intermédiaire culturel et politique entre l’Afrique noire et l’Allemagne. »
Chantre de la Négritude, précurseur de la Francophonie, Léopold Sédar Senghor était également habité par une germanophilie prononcée, qui se traduit par les images lumineuses qu’il avait des civilisations germaniques. N’affirmait-il pas que « Les militants de la Négritude qui ont goûté à la ferveur germanique en gardent toujours la saveur ?» . Senghor avait une passion pour la philosophie mais surtout pour la poésie allemande qui présenterait des similitudes avec la poésie négro-africaine. Comment le poète a-t-il contribué à mieux faire connaître la culture germanique en Afrique noire et inversement la culture négro-africaine dans l’espace culturel germanophone ? La présente communication se propose d’y répondre. Elle mettra en évidence la réception de Senghor et de la Négritude en Allemagne et de la culture allemande en Afrique noire francophone.

JEAN C. KAPUMBA AKENDA, Facultés Catholiques de Kinshasa
« Identités culturelles noires et interculturalité à l’ère de la mondialisation : le noble apport de Senghor »
En partant des textes de L.S. Senghor sur l'essence des cultures nègres et sur l'exigence d'ouverture de ces cultures à d'autres cultures de la planète ainsi que sur leur contribution à la civilisation de l'Universel, l'auteur tente d'analyser - à partir des processus symboliques - aussi bien la constitution des identités culturelles des Noirs d'Afrique et de la Diaspora que les défis auxquels ces identités culturelles noires doivent faire face. Il s’agit de montrer que les identités culturelles se développent et ne se programment pas. Elles se laissent comprendre comme des formes de métissage et elles sont dans ce sens des lieux d'interculturalité. Le processus actuel de mondialisation peut-être interprété comme paradigme d'interculturalité. Il se présente aussi comme un grand défi aux peuples appelés à rendre compte de leurs capacités d'être-au-monde. Senghor, par sa formation et son oeuvre à la fois politique et littéraire, reflète le paradigme d'interculturalité tout en militant pour la personnalité culturelle africaine. Son actualité consiste en ce fait que sa pensée et sa personne reflètent le processus actuel de mondialisation culturelle; l'héritage reçu de lui réside dans la poursuite de la lutte pour les identités culturelles africaines qu'il faut insérer dans le processus actuel de mondialisation. L'héritage se transforme en défi actuel.

PANEL 6: PHILOSOPHIE ET MONDIALISATION
Chair : N. André Siamundele, Wells College, Aurora, NY

ZEKEH S. GBOTOKUMA, Morgan State University
« Senghoritude: Le Credo senghorien comme défi à la mondialisation »
Dans une certaine mesure, le Credo senghorien est un véritable défi à la mondialisation. Les trois principaux articles de ce Credo sont: la Négritude ou Négrité, la Francophonie ou Francité et la Civilisation de l’Universel. Selon Senghor, l’universel, ou plus précisément la Civilisation de l’Universel ne peut se concevoir que comme la somme de toutes les civilisations particulières. C’est pourquoi sa croyance en la Civilisation de l’Universel commence par la Négrité et passe par la Francité, la Latinité et bien entendu, les cultures de tous les continents. C’est aussi pourquoi en 1961, Senghor croyait que la civilisation du XXème siècle ne peut être universelle que si elle devient une synthèse dynamique des valeurs culturelles de toutes les civilisations. Le Credo senghorien contient un pan-humanisme qui nous rappelle l’importance de l’égalité, la fraternité, l’interconnectivité/l’intersubjectivité et l’unité de la race humaine dans notre village global. Le Credo senghorien nous permet de réviser certaines conceptions surannées de l’homme qui le divisent, le déshumanisent en le réduisant à ses facticités ethniques, culturelles, sexuelles et sociales (classes sociales). Sauf pour le rôle de modèle et moteur de la Civilisation de l’Universel que Senghor accorde à la Francophonie, nous sommes de l’avis que son Credo pourrait sauver la Mondialisation de certaines de ses tendances négatives et aliénantes, y compris, inter alia, son eurocentrisme ou réductionnisme européen, la pensée unique et l’homogénéisation. La symbiose culturelle à la Senghor est une opportunité pour passer de la Mondialisation sauvage et éconocratique à la ‘mondialisation pan-bantoue’ ou Mondialisation pan-anthropocentrique fondée sur le respect des droits de l’homme et la règle d’or.

ELSA DORLIN, Université de Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne
« Franz Fanon, la Négritude et la dialectique »
Je propose d'effectuer un travail de philosophie sur l'œuvre de Franz Fanon. Je voudrais analyser la philosophie de Franz Fanon – principalement Peau Noire, Masques Blancs - dans son dialogue, ses échos, ses oppositions tant avec la philosophie de la Négritude -
telle que définie par le trio Senghor, Césaire et Damas -, qu'avec la philosophie dialectique de Sartre. Mon hypothèse de lecture est que Fanon refuse tout autant les dérives essentialisantes de la Négritude que les injonctions au dépassement de l'identité noire auquel l'invite la tradition dialectique. Cet entre-deux non résolu de la pensée de Fanon permet de mieux comprendre ses relations avec les philosophes de la Négritude, mais aussi de définir les différents modes de conceptualisation de la résistance, en tant que marque caractéristique des philosophies afro-caribéennes. Fanon pense ainsi la résistance comme un moment de pure négativité, un mouvement de sortie de soi, qui n'est pourtant jamais un dépassement de soi vers autre chose; comme si l'homme noir devait se dépasser vers l'horizon du Sujet - par définition blanc, européen. Dans ces conditions, la Négritude offre-t-elle une issue? Pour Fanon, de même qu'il est impossible de renoncer à l'immanence de l'homme noir - immanence dans et par laquelle il se constitue - de même il est également impossible de construire dans la réification de cette identité héritière de la rationalité racialisante des dominants - et quand bien même cette identité serait valorisée ou esthétisée - une identité politique viable. La question à laquelle invite Fanon est donc: Comment penser le devenir politique du sujet, de l'Homme, depuis les processus historiques d'assujettissement ?

N. ANDRE SIAMUNDELE, Wells College, Aurora, NY
« Senghor : Négritude et Postcolonie »
Je me propose d’aborder sous l’angle postcolonial, les questions et idées soulevées par Senghor dans le cadre de sa philosophie de civilisation de l’universel. Pour ce faire je m’appuierai essentiellement sur les réflexions mises en relief par Achille Mbembe (De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine, Paris, Karthala, 2000). Je poserai la question de la place et de la contribution de l’Afrique actuelle à l’ère de la mondialisation par rapport à la Négritude senghorienne prônant la civilisation de l’universel. D’abord, comment se construit le sujet africain dans l’univers chaotique qui caractérise l’Afrique post-indépendante ? Ensuite, j’examinerai les différentes voies empruntées après les indépendances. Enfin, je revisiterai l’esprit prophétique et visionnaire de Senghor tout en soulignant les limites de la question identitaire dans un monde de « remue-ménage » - l’expression est d’Ahmadou Kourouma - que constitue l’Afrique postcoloniale.

PANEL 7: NEGRITUDE IN LITERATURE AND POST COLONIAL THEORY
Chair: Mawena Logan, University of the West Indies, Mona

UNION EDEBIRI, University of Lagos
“Bernard Dadié: From Negritude to Realism”
Early in his career, the Ivorian, Bernard Dadié was heavily influenced by the Negritude movement. He wrote poems characterized by revalorization of African cultural values, celebration of the African and his past and denunciation of colonialism. Many critics rightly classified him as a disciple of the Negritude movement. In the post-colonial period, his theatre, including even historical plays are anchored on realism – historical and socio-political. This paper seeks to show that Bernard Dadié, a poet of Negritude in the past is now a realist who does not deserve the continued strictures of anti-Negritude critics.

MAWENA LOGAN, University of the West Indies, Mona
“The Negritude-Postcolonial Interface in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure”
The jury is still out on the definition and appropriateness of the terms “Negritude” and “postcolonial.” Negritude writing emerged in the 1930s in an attempt to repudiate ‘assimilation’ and reaffirm African/Black culture denigrated and/or dismissed by the French colonial enterprise. It is noteworthy that it borrowed from the Harlem Renaissance: Senghor once stipulated that, Claude McKay was “the true inventor of the values of Negritude.” On the other hand, since the late 1970s and early 1980s the term “postcolonial” has been used to define and critique the literature that, emanating predominantly from the former European colonies, endeavors to revisit and reassess the colonial encounter and legacy. While Negritude writing differs from postcolonial writing in many ways, as literary tropes and in a broad sense, both essentially aim at self-representation in favor of a Eurocentric one. Even though Anglophone writers didn’t have the French assimilationist doctrine/ideology to contend with, most of them, like their Francophone counterparts, wrote to challenge European hegemony and (mis)representation of their cultures. This paper seeks to argue that postcolonial literature revises the tenets of the Negritude movement, and that Negritude writing is “postcolonial” avant la lettre. In spite of the vehement and negative reaction to the concept of Negritude by many scholars and critics, I would argue that, in significant ways, postcolonial literature expands and signifies on the doctrines of Negritude which have never ceased to haunt the literary imagination in the former colonies. My analysis will reveal that Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1962) stands out as a Negritude as well as a postcolonial text.

VICTOR CHIAGOZIE ARIOLE , University of Lagos
“Ahmadou Kourouma: Negritude Tigritude Interface personality”
Kourouma is an Ivorian Author of Malinke origin. The Malinkes span Mali, Senegal through Guinea to Cote d’Ivoire. He is a “Tiger” by totem and his works reflect that fearless and bold approach in asserting Africanness. He does not romanticize about it a la Senghorian Negritude. He practicalises it a la “Tigritude”. We studied his works, Les Soleils des indépendances (1970), Monnè outrages et défis (1990), En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages (1994), Allah n’est pas obligé (2001), Quand on refuse, on dit non (2004), Le diseur de vérité (1999). And in them, there are lots of evidence to prove that Negritude was a phase that gave rise to his Tigritude approach and that his approach was a maturity phase started from Negritude readiness. The language, the form, the themes and the style are clear impression of Africanness. We are exposing them in this presentation for more critical appreciation.

STELLA BORG BARTHET, University of Malta
"Fanonian Unease in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions"
Frantz Fanon’s concern with suffering is universal in scope, whether dealing with black skins or with the wretched; with racism or with poverty. At the same time, his writing is rooted in concrete experiences that make him reject attempts to generalise – hence Fanon’s criticism of Leopold Senghor’s concept of Negritude, which Fanon blamed for creating “erosive stereotypes.” Fanon was equally angered by the Jean-Paul Sartre’s relativization of the black man’s poverty by reference to the working class of the whole world. “The most ardent poets of Negritude are at the same time militant Marxists” writes Fanon in expressing his sense of having been betrayed by both. Yet Fanon knew that in mustering forces for resistance, one had to speak in terms that generalise individual experiences. The difficulty of maintaining a balance between the general and the particular emerges in the need to create overlapping collectives - “Blacks,” “Africans,” “wretched,” “colonised” are terms of both inclusion and exclusion. Algerians are not quite black, their culture is not really African, the wretched can be white, and the colonised may well include settlers. It is through understanding the discursive difficulty of dealing with the concrete and the abstract that the reader acquires a deeper understanding of the complex positions of these three highly important figures in postcolonial studies. Frantz Fanon saw his work as being in conflict with that of Leopold Senghor, and of Jean-Paul Sartre but all three have deeply influenced generations of postcolonial writers. In my paper I propose to explore different strands in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions to show that her espousal of Fanon still allows the recuperation of elements that can be traced, via Fanon, to Senghor and Sartre.

PANEL 8: LITTERATURE DES ANTILLES
Chair : Isabelle CONSTANT, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill

CHANTAL MAIGNAN-CLAVERIE, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane
« Négritude et Créolité à la Martinique : inventaire d’un héritage »
En 1989 paraît un manifeste intitulé Eloge de la créolité qui affirme avec force sa singularité culturelle. Se défiant du mot « métissage » qui leur semble renvoyer à la biologie et à l’histoire coloniale, les trois auteurs - Bernabé, Chamoiseau et Confiant - revendiquent bien davantage leur créolité que leur « Négritude », mot qui leur paraît, lui aussi, entaché de connotation raciale. Et s’ils acceptent l’héritage de Césaire, ils refusent catégoriquement la classification inégale, suggérée par le poète, selon laquelle la créolité ne serait qu’un département de la Négritude. Ainsi ils n’hésitent pas à pratiquer le meurtre symbolique et rituel du père ; ce dont s’acquitte Confiant dans La traversée paradoxale d’un siècle. Se revendiquant « à jamais fils d’Aimé Césaire », Confiant lui adresse cependant cette apostrophe comminatoire. Cependant, si les théoriciens de la Créolité s’opposent radicalement à une Négritude qui déterritorialise, symboliquement, l’Antillais, les romanciers, eux, sont constamment retravaillés par ses valeurs, son éthique et sa poétique : les œuvres ancrées dans la matrice de l’Habitation – plantation, se construisent inlassablement sur la déclinaison pédagogique de la révolte césairienne, le refus de l’aliénation et de l’enfermement dans l’étroitesse insulaire, et sur l’expérimentation d’un métissage des langues et des cultures pour exprimer la singularité et l’unicité de l’Antillais ; donnant ainsi acte à Césaire quand il affirme qu’il n’existe pas de culture métisse. Les romanciers de la créolité développent, pour le peuple et avec le langage de la communauté, la poétique césairienne, la rendant ainsi accessible à ceux pour qui le poète s’était fait bouche et conscience.

ALEX LOUISE TESSONNEAU, Université de Paris 8
« Price-Mars : ‘Père de la Négritude’ »
Depuis 2002, j’ai commencé une recherche sur les littératures post-coloniales et le mouvement de la Négritude. Les premiers résultats ont fait l’objet d’une intervention au colloque (1), Écrire en situation bilingue, qui s’est tenu à l’Université de Perpignan, les 20, 21, 22 mars 2003, dont les actes ont été publiés en 2004. Dans cette intervention, je retraçais le rôle joué par les premiers écrivains haïtiens dans la défense des valeurs nationales haïtiennes, prélude au mouvement de la Négritude. En ce qui concerne ma proposition, à ce colloque, je souhaiterais revenir sur Price-Mars, en qui Senghor voit « le Père de la Négritude » et plus particulièrement sur Ainsi Parla l’Oncle, œuvre qui a été le moteur de sa quête. En effet, selon moi, on ne peut pas parler de la Négritude sans citer le rôle joué par les premiers écrivains haïtiens, et ce d’autant plus que Senghor lui-même le reconnaissait. Replacer ce mouvement dans le contexte de son apparition permet de mieux mesurer en quoi il a marqué un tournant et impulsé toute une dynamique aux écrivains issus de la colonisation.

MALIK FERDINAND, Université Paris III
« ‘La force de l’écorce en dessous crie…’ La Négritude comme esthétique antillaise de la révolte chez Aimé Césaire et Reinaldo Arenas »
De singulières et fortuites déclinaisons de la Négritude césairienne traversent l’œuvre d’Arenas. Ici, le poème épique El central (La Plantation) établit, à la manière du Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, une généalogie des « mains esclaves » de la canne à sucre, de la colonisation à la dictature. L’auteur cubain partage ainsi l’humanisme césairien des « mains blessées du monde » du poème « Pour saluer le Tiers Monde » de Ferrements. Ailleurs, à la sentence du rebelle de Et les chiens se taisaient, « on a beau peindre blanc le pied de l’arbre la force de l’écorce en dessous crie… », répond l’allégorie des négresses enfermées vivantes dans un baobab de El central. De même, dans le roman La Loma del Angel (La Colline de l’Ange), la scène de la négresse centenaire qui meurt d’avoir été entièrement peinturée de blanc, apparaît en original écho. Pourtant, Césaire et Arenas, poètes de générations différentes, n’ont en commun ni la langue ni l’histoire, seules leurs expériences antillaises semblent constituer le lieu d’une convergence. Dans cette optique, le Cahier et l’œuvre polymorphique Otra vez el mar (Une autre fois la mer) peuvent être lus à travers une même problématique antillaise, la relation entre la construction d’un énoncé collectif et le propre questionnement identitaire d’un narrateur. Cependant, plus encore que motifs et thèmes communs, ce sont bien l’inventivité formelle, l’audace des images, l’hybridation de la prose avec des passages versifiés ou l’exigence éthique de déconstruction des récits coloniaux qui dessinent une sympathie poétique. Dès lors, nous pouvons nous demander si la Négritude de Césaire, saisie à travers le prisme d’un auteur antillais a priori étranger à toutes Négritudes, n’est pas intelligible aujourd’hui, hors du contexte de la décolonisation, comme une expérience esthétique spécifiquement caraïbéenne, dans son ambition cosmologique et dans son potentiel de libération.

PANEL 9: CARIBBEAN LITERATURE
Chair: La Verne M. Seales, Canisius College, Buffalo, New York

KATHLEEN GYSSELS, University of Antwerp
“Léon Damas in dialogue with L.S. Senghor: divergences and dissonances”
In this paper, I want to examine how Léon Damas, co-founder of the Négritude movement but always in the shadow of Césaire and Senghor, replies to a certain number of statements to the Senegalese poet and intellectual. Through three different types of poems, I will show how the question of “race”, “class”, but also gender has been on top of Damas’ preoccupations, and how also class is inherently linked to the “military” exploitation and oppression of the Black soldiers during World War I and World War II. First I will deal with the love poems in which Senghor personalizes Africa as the beautiful and seductive woman, where Africa and French Guyana will quite similarly be admired and feminized through Damas’ famous “Limbé” poem. At the same time, Damas highly problematizes interracial love in “Je le confesse mon Révérend”, in “Contre notre amour qui ne voulait rien d’autre”, and “La romance de sang”. In a second type of poems, in which the engagement of colonized subjects in the French army is at stake, Damas bleakly refuses African soldiers fighting for France’s fame and the French-German war. He warns against this kind of pernicious imperialism in different poems, such as “Et caetera”, “S O S”, next to other poems clearly formulate an anti-militarism. Damas refuses the role of the subaltern that Afro-Caribbean, African and other ex-colonized people are expected to play out and the kind of loyalty the French Republic asks from the Senegalese soldiers. Last but not least, I will show how “faith” and religion are constantly mocked as “tools” of oppression of the colonized masses everywhere in the French (ex-)empire. Senghor remains much more respectful of the European foundations, which are “the Nation”, the “language”, the Church and the School. To conclude, my paper argues that Damas went further than his fellow writers Senghor and, because of raising the interracial love, Césaire, in decolonizing the mind of the Caribbean and African people. His ‘marvelous weapons” were much more overtly anti-colonial, antiracist (and anti-facist see Cailler B), anticlerical and anti-sexist. Where the two “brothers in arms” were judged too “polite” and not enough postcolonial, the French-Guyanese poet, politician and essayist condemns all the forces that have played down subjects of empire everywhere, in France as in the United States.

DANIELLE GEORGES, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA
“Caliban’s Mirror: The Re-making of Caliban through Negritude and Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête”
Shakespeare’s play The Tempest has informed a number of texts considered cornerstones of Caribbean literature and theory. Novelists George Lamming and Maryse Condé, historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite, theorist Gordon Rohler, and poet and playwright Aimé Césaire are among those who have explored the character of Caliban as metaphor for the Caribbean. My paper will explore this trope; looking first at Shakespeare’s Caliban then at the Caliban of Aimé Césaire’s 1969 Une Tempête: d’après La Tempête de Shakespeare- Adaptation pour un théâtre nègre)- (adaptation for a black theater). What interested me was why in the 20th and 21st century, Caribbean writers in particular (as opposed to English writers, or say Russian writers) have found the play salient—why they have chosen to draw from the relationship between Caliban and Prospero (with some touching upon Caliban’s mother Sycorax) rather than focus on other relationships; and why it is that it is these writers who are propelling Shakespeare into the 21st century by incorporating Caliban into their own texts; using the character and play as matrix for further creation. I turn to Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête as a representative text that delineates or participates in the creation of the Caribbean Caliban. I chose Césaire’s text because it most explicitly connects itself to Shakespeare’s - calling itself an adaptation. I chose Césaire because of his influence on Caribbean literature, identity and politics through his founding the Negritude movement, along with Léon-Gontran Damas and Léopold Sedar Senghor, and through his plays, volumes of poetry, criticism and other literary and political work. Césaire’s life and work can be seen as one devoted to decolonization in a number of ways - and Caliban can be read as the decolonizing Caribbean.

ERIN M. FEHSKENS, Duke University
“ ‘Constellations of a Dream World’ and a Jar of Gold: Negritude’s Legacies in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows”
In Eloge de la Créolité, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé and Rafaël Confiant announce themselves as sons and epigones of Aime Césaire. Claiming filiation and a derivative status to one of the founders of Negritude exemplifies their tendentious but always engaged relationship to the work and the legacy of Césaire, Senghor, and Damas. I contend that Chamoiseau’s fictional works, especially The Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows, articulates and explores an(other) relationship with Césaire: one of cultivation. The beautifully transforming poet at the end of Notebook of a Return to the Native Land reappears, though split by the earth and spliced through storytelling, in The Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. Pipi, the retired king of the market djobbeurs goes searching for Afoukel, the slave of legend who keeps his master’s gold in a glass jar. Pipi, desperate for money, coaxes Afoukel to rest just below the surface of the earth. Together they give us an image of waiting, listening, and the shifting value of excavation—from the value of recovered past to the value of Afoukel’s jar: one man supine with his ear to the ground and one man rising to whisper Martinique’s past of slavery, maroonage, and a lost connection to Africa. These figures recall the end of Césaire’s Notebook, of the poet surrendering, embracing, being bound and then raised, strangled by a “lasso of stars.” In Chamoiseau’s reworking, this vertical image of rising is complimented with the horizontal spread of Pipi’s body and the baroque creole garden he will cultivate. In this paper, I would like to explore the Chronicle’s alternative relationship to the legacies of Negritude that counteracts the Eloge’s declarations of derivativeness and filiation to Césaire. How do the concepts of value, memory, production and exchange interact in this story of a desperate man and a fabled zombie, and what is the purpose of this bit of storytelling in the overall project of the Chronicle, which is, as Chamoiseau declares, “only the ethnographer mourn[ing] trifling ethnocides.”? In addition to the role of the Afoukel episode in the Chronicle, I will attend to the notion of legacy, debt, and inheritance and the particular literary forms that Chamoiseau and Césaire look to for a mode of articulation. Put differently, what is the connection between literary form, the work of Negritude, and the work inherited from Negritude?

PANEL 10: HUMAN RIGHTS
Chair: Mikela Lundahl, University West, Sweden

MIKELA LUNDAHL, University West, Sweden
”Negritude – An Antiracist Racism? Or Who is The Racist?”
In Eloge de la Créolité, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé and Rafaël Confiant announce themselves as sons and epigones of Aime Césaire. Claiming filiation and a derivative status to one of the founders of Negritude exemplifies their tendentious but always engaged relationship to the work and the legacy of Césaire, Senghor, and Damas. I contend that Chamoiseau’s fictional works, especially The Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows, articulates and explores an(other) relationship with Césaire: one of cultivation. The beautifully transforming poet at the end of Notebook of a Return to the Native Land reappears, though split by the earth and spliced through storytelling, in The Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. Pipi, the retired king of the market djobbeurs goes searching for Afoukel, the slave of legend who keeps his master’s gold in a glass jar. Pipi, desperate for money, coaxes Afoukel to rest just below the surface of the earth. Together they give us an image of waiting, listening, and the shifting value of excavation—from the value of recovered past to the value of Afoukel’s jar: one man supine with his ear to the ground and one man rising to whisper Martinique’s past of slavery, maroonage, and a lost connection to Africa. These figures recall the end of Césaire’s Notebook, of the poet surrendering, embracing, being bound and then raised, strangled by a “lasso of stars.” In Chamoiseau’s reworking, this vertical image of rising is complimented with the horizontal spread of Pipi’s body and the baroque creole garden he will cultivate. In this paper, I would like to explore the Chronicle’s alternative relationship to the legacies of Negritude that counteracts the Eloge’s declarations of derivativeness and filiation to Césaire. How do the concepts of value, memory, production and exchange interact in this story of a desperate man and a fabled zombie, and what is the purpose of this bit of storytelling in the overall project of the Chronicle, which is, as Chamoiseau declares, “only the ethnographer mourn[ing] trifling ethnocides.”? In addition to the role of the Afoukel episode in the Chronicle, I will attend to the notion of legacy, debt, and inheritance and the particular literary forms that Chamoiseau and Césaire look to for a mode of articulation. Put differently, what is the connection between literary form, the work of Negritude, and the work inherited from Negritude?

ANNE W. GULICK, Duke University
“A Universal Rich in All Its Particulars: Aimé Césaire’s Negritude and Human Rights”
The apex of the Negritude movement coincided with a transformative moment for twentieth century global power structures. Recent legal scholarship indicates that post-second world war international law and its connection to a novel set of “universal” human rights norms are best understood as a continuation and expansion of much older Western projects of global regulation and control of capital. This paper argues that Negritude, as articulated in the work of Aimé Césaire, recognizes this continuity and challenges it with an alternative narrative of what human rights and global justice should mean in the late twentieth century. Recent appraisals of Negritude in critical postcolonial scholarship have attended closely to the movement’s unique interweaving of Marxism and anti-colonialism through radical aesthetic experimentation. I propose to extend this conversation by asking what this literary movement can tell us about the discursive and material consequences of human rights and global justice in an era we uncomfortably, and often inaccurately, call postcolonial. My reading of Césaire’s work attends to how this author problematizes both a series of Eurocentric definitions of universal humanism as well as the rhetoric of law and ethics in which they are couched. Césaire exposes how the laws of global capitalism organize other kinds of “laws,” and excoriates a humanitarian logic that loses sight of colonialism’s economic, social and political violence even as it claims to champion universal human equality. Césaire’s vision of Negritude, in contrast, offers a way of thinking about the category of the human and the idea of justice outside of this tradition. I explore the consequences of such an alternative vision for the Negritude movement as a whole, for its afterlives, and for how we conceive of universalism and human rights in the present.

EDMUND J. CAMPION, University of Tennessee
“Levels of Meaning in Senghor’s “ ‘Elégie pour Georges Pompidou’”
Although Léopold Sédar Senghor’s numerous elegies have remained justly admired after his death in December 2001, his elegies differ significantly in their focus. Some elegies such as his “Elégie de Carthage” and “Elégie pour la Reine de Saba” are philosophical in nature and express the unity of black African and Arab African cultures. Senghor composed very personal elegies after the accidental death of his beloved son Philippe-Maguilen, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the death from multiple myeloma of Senghor’s old friend Georges Pompidou (1911-1974). The death elegy that he wrote after his son’s death is now generally considered the finest poem of consolation written in French and his death elegy for Dr. King stresses the profound unity between the African American and black African experiences of racism. The elegy that Senghor wrote after Pompidou’s death in April 1974 does not merit the relative oblivion into which it has fallen. The profound friendship between Senghor and Pompidou began in 1930 when they met as students in Paris’s Louis-le-grand high school. Senghor introduced Georges Pompidou to his future wife Claude and they nursed Senghor back to health after his release from a prisoner of war camp in 1942. He dedicated his powerful denunciation of racism entitled “Prière de paix” (dated January 1945) to them. In 1971, the Pompidous made an official trip to Dakar where they were received by President and Mrs. Senghor. In 1974, Senghor composed his elegy for Georges Pompidou in China and India as he was on an official trip and he dedicated this poem to Claude Pompidou. He affirms that he will not praise his friend as a classical European poet but rather as an African poet who associates Pompidou’s struggle with cancer with the struggle against racism and slavery by unnamed “combatants noirs.” He imagines the presence of his friend on the eternal “rive” to which Senghor himself would like to travel. He questions his friend about the nature of the beatific vision and suggests that Pompidou can now intervene with God to bless Senghor’s “people noir.” The purpose of my presentation at the Barbados conference on Senghor is to explore levels of meaning and the intimate links connecting friendship, grieving, and spirituality in Senghor’s death elegy for his life-long friend.

PANEL 11: NEGRITUDE IN OTHER TERRITORIES
Chair: Victor Simpson, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill

LA VERNE M. SEALES-SALY. Canisius College, Buffalo, New York
“Shades of Negritude in Latin America: Costa Rica and Panama”
In this paper I will explore how the history of people of African descent in Latin America has come to shape their perception and understanding of Negritude; the case of Costa Rica and Panama will be used as examples of the process regarding this issue in the region. A further look into the complexities will be examined on the racially complex and misunderstood history of people of African descent especially West Indians during and after the construction of the Panama Canal. In this study, I will also point out the variants of the concept of Negritude as it applies to people of African descent in the region, as we explore issues facing them today.

FABIAN A. ADEKUNLE BADEJO, Editorial, House of Nehesi Publishers, St Marteen
“Negritude in the forgotten territories: Lasana Sekou and Aimé Césaire”
Negritude as a literary/philosophical/political movement began as a direct response to the colonial experience. Since the “winds of change” swept through Africa and most of the Caribbean, following World War II, ushering in a period of independence, the written literature in European languages that emerged from the newly-independent nations – strangely baptized with the eurocentric, unliberating label of “Post-colonial” - began to focus on different themes, severely criticizing, abandoning or rejecting outright, the basic tenets of Negritude. This paper seeks to find answers to these and other relevant questions by comparing some of the works of Lasana M. Sekou of St. Martin and one of the founding fathers of the Negritude Movement, Aimé Césaire of Martinique. Sekou is without doubt among the most important poetic voices of his generation in the Caribbean. With 13 books to his name (including two volumes of short stories and monologues), he has firmly established himself as a major poet of international repute whose works are studied at universities in the Caribbean, Europe, Canada, and the U.S. With a style obviously influenced by Kamau Brathwaite, Sekou’s uncompromising stand in favor of the political independence and reunification of his island, St. Martin, still groaning under the yoke of the Netherlands and France, recommends the study of his works from the point of view of the Negritude Movement. Born Here (1986), Nativity and Monologues for Today (1988) and the most recent 37 Poems are the three main publications that will be analysed in this paper. Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land) (1939) will be used as the main Negritude reference point. As a literary critic who has been closely following the works of Lasana Sekou, and who has a background in African and Caribbean Literatures, I will attempt in this paper to show that the role of the writer in a colonial situation remains eminently the same, whether at the genesis of the Negritude Movement, or today when certain powers insist on stripping decolonization of its ideological cloak.

PANEL 12: NEGRITUDE IN OTHER TERRITORIES II
Chair: Darien J. Davis, Middlebury College

DARIEN J. DAVIS, Middlebury College
“Understanding the Black Anthropophagists: The Legacy of Negritude and the Celebration of Blackness in Brazil”
This paper examines the dialogue between the French articulation of “Negritude” and its Brazilian counterpart “negritúd,” the Brazilian neologism developed from Negritude in modern Brazil. In 1930s, Lepold Senghor and Aimé Césaire (though the journal Légitime Dèfense) articulated an anti-colonial anti-racist movement that celebrated blackness in the Western World. In the tradition of the Brazilian modernist Anthropophagist Movement, (which celebrated the Brazilian ability to take foreign influences and make them their own), Abdias do Nascimento, the founder of the Teatro Experimental do Negro in 1944, was one of the first to adapt ‘Negritude’ to the Brazilian milieu. In the 1940s, he transformed and translated “Negritude” to address the particularities of the Brazilian social, cultural and political realities. Since the 1940s, “negritúd” has became an important Brazilian idea for black protest, celebration, and pride by black organic intellectuals many of whom use music and art to spread their message of social equality and justice. This paper chronicles the French cultural influence on Brazilian culture and examines the ways in which TEN utilized and dialogued with Césaire and Senghor’s ideas within the context of Brazilian patriotism and cultural cannibalism. Black pride and defiance in Brazil predates the “Negritude” movement but the trans-national language of Negritude in the 1930s, allowed Afro-Brazilians such as Nascimento to garner international and national attention. In this paper, I lay out the successes and failures of this adaptation, and highlight how “negritúd” challenged prevailing ideas of Brazilian nationhood just as Negritude challenged ideas of the French nation. Negritúd, unlike “Negritude” in the Francophone regions, has remained both politically and culturally salient and a tool for Afro-Brazilian artists, musicians and intellectuals.

VICTOR SIMPSON, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
“The Influence of the Negritude Movement in Puerto Rico: Luis pales Matos”
Luis Palés Matos is regarded and the most outstanding poet in the literary history of Puerto Rico. While his poetry covers diverse themes, it is his black poetry (“poesía negra”) for which he is best known and which, perhaps, has provoked the greatest discussion, and indeed controversy. It may be argued that Palés’s black poetry does not fall within the definition of Négritude, but he certainly evinces a strong interest in (even preoccupation with) the black subject. This paper analyzes the relationship between the black poetry of Palés and the Négritude movement while highlighting significant areas of difference.

ALEJANDRA COY COY, UWI Cave Hill & FADY ORTIZ ROCA, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota
“The Heritage of the Oral Tradition in San Andres Archipelago (Colombia): Anancy Stories”
The aim of this document is to reflect on the Oral Tradition as part of the cultural instrument in our African roots. In addition to this it looks at how the African oral tradition is used as the bridge that brings together the different groups of the African Diaspora. One of the characters that represent the struggle and is a symbol of the everyday life in these groups is Anancy. Anancy was brought from West Africa and was appropriated with similar characteristics in the territories where African slaves were shipped. The oral tradition of Anancy Stories is found in Colombia - not just in the Pacific Coast and the Caribbean Colombian Cities but especially in the Archipelago de San Andres Providence and St Katherine in Colombia. This tradition is a result of the History of the Archipelago, when the Africans were brought to the Islands by the English, the French, and the Spanish and by runaway slaves from plantations or emigrants traveling around from other Caribbean Islands. Anancy taught us about varying aspects of our folklore, our costumes, our struggles and our heritage in our different languages (Spanish, English, and “Creole” and in our different ways of seeing life. This presentation therefore seeks to contextualize the influence of Africa in the Oral Tradition of Colombia with Anancy Stories, especially in the Archipelago of San Andres, Providence and St Katherine. It will also introduce the Raizal Community from the Archipelago and their struggles to preserve the oral tradition from disappearing as a means of preserving our African Heritage.

PANEL 13: TRANSLATION, TECHNOLOGY AND CINEMA
Chair: Jane Bryce

ELISABETH BLADH, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
“African and Caribbean Authors in Swedish Translation”
Translation facilitates exchange of ideas from different cultural settings, so also in the case of the Negritude movement. It has for example been claimed that if Soyinka hadn’t read Senghor’s Hosties noires in English translation, the famous debate of Tigritude contra Négritude would never have taken place (Antia 1999). We also know that Senghor was a keen translator of English poetry, although it was mostly intended for his own pleasure (Kandji 2003). Sweden has a population of 9 million people and a large book industry for its size. Even though most books are translated from (American) English, quite a few titles by African and Caribbean authors are available in Swedish versions. There are also a few government-initiated projects to promote African and Caribbean literature to the general reading public. In the case of the three “founders” of the Negritude movement, Senghor is known to a Swedish audience through three editions of poetry (1967, 1969, 1979); four works by Césaire are translated into Swedish (1969, 1974, 1988 and 2002), but nothing has been translated from Léon-Gontron Damas’s production. In this paper I intend to give an overview of the existing African and Caribbean literature in Swedish translation. The paper will also include some comments on single translations.

BARBARA CHASE, University of the West Indies Cave Hill
“Digital Caribbean and African francophone literature: an exploration of access to electronic resources in the light of current institutional ICT strategies”
ICT strategies at UWI Cave Hill give the promise of instant delivery of materials and information; but are we maximizing the benefits? This paper explores that question, focusing on French literature, one of the core subjects studied and researched at this campus. It will address the availability and accessibility of francophone Caribbean and African literature content and connections for annexing and augmenting resources in this discipline. The search for Caribbean items in any format is critical if the UWI libraries are to maintain their function as collectors of and repositories for Caribbean literature and the digital medium is no exception. This paper concludes that librarians, faculty and students can collaborate to keep this discipline alive in its own digital space for study, teaching and posterity.

ELLIE HIGGINS, Pennsylvania State University
“From Negritude to Migritude? Some Examples from Senegalese Cinema”
In his article “Afrique(s) sur Seine(s): autour de la migritude,” Jacques Chevrier describes African writers who move between countries, languages and cultures. Building on Chevrier’s work, Pius Adesanmi discusses recent migrant African authors in Paris who “negate the return to the source philosophy of Negritude.” Both authors use the term migritude to describe contemporary cosmopolitan African artists, a term that clearly invites comparisons with its predecessor, Negritude. Migritude here suggests dynamic cosmopolitan movement, movement that can be characterized by multiple belongings or perpetual uprootings. It also describes transnational artistic movements, and indeed, the Negritude movement was transnational. Migritude artists often force critics to abandon the idea of locating a single identity for African writers. The project of linking art to national or cultural identity then becomes especially challenging. For example, how does one trace the surrealism of Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety’s dream-like Touki Bouki - The Journey of the Hyena? To the Surrealist films of French cinéaste Jean Cocteau, to the Dogon masks that influenced the Surrealists, or to the poetic Surrealism of the Caribbean Negritude poet Aimé Césaire? Is such a tracing possible? Does migritude involve a move from "the source" to "sources," or a problematization of sources? My paper explores the work of Senegalese filmmakers - especially Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambety, and Moussa Sene Absa - whose rooted cosmopolitanism mirrors that of Negritude poetry. At the same time, I argue that although each director diverges from Negritude's apparent essentialism, they return to - and diverge from - their sources in unique ways.

PANEL 14: NEGRITUDE IN THE CARIBBEAN
Chair : Hélène Zamor, University of the West Indies Cave Hill

MARA DE GENNARO, Bucknell University
“Ancestors and Precursors: Brathwaite, Césaire, and Transcultural Self-Definition”
I would like to present a paper on Kamau Brathwaite’s ongoing engagement with
Negritude, in both its Africanist and its broader universalist implications, with emphasis on The Arrivants and Ancestors. Despite a frequent tendency among prominent critics such as Soyinka, Henry Louis Gates, and the Créolistes to define and criticize Negritude on the basis of overly simplistic and not fairly representative formulations of the movement (most often by a young Senghor at his most romantic), Brathwaite has fruitfully drawn on Césaire’s more diffuse images of Negritude as a means of connecting the African diaspora to other and even broader-based collectivities. Brathwaite has done this while escaping, particularly in his most recent work, some of Césaire’s difficulties in imagining material realities and solidarities of women apart from their potential to inspire the male poet, and in both contextualizing and stylistically appropriating West African speech, song, and rites so as to make a new kind of orature, one not entrenched in European concepts and styles to the extent that Césaire’s poetry was, but rather one that is, with startling multifacetedness, at once indebted to West African, Caribbean, English, and United States poetic, oral, musical, and discursive forms of cultural expression. My paper considers how Brathwaite complicates and challenges the too often one-sided Afro-Caribbean and African criticism of Negritude, and considers how, in bringing together diverse particulars both thematically (as in his motifs of the bereaved and suffering worldwide, especially women) and formally (as in his paradoxical evocation of orality through his innovative “sycorax style” of typography), he deepens and transforms Césaire’s vision of a global Negritude based not, finally, in Africanness alone or in
isolation, but in human experiences of trauma and its relationship to collective imagination, identification, and solidarity.

JEROME TEELUCKSINGH, University of the West Indies, Trinidad.
“Rise of the Black Jacobins: An Examination of Negritude in the work of CLR James’”
My paper will investigate the impact of not only the historical masterpiece of James but also the staging of plays, based on the Black Jacobins. Such questions will be explored: the work’s contribution to a better understanding of the dynamics of a slave society and the link between the Black Jacobins and the demise of colonialism and imperialism. The personalities involved such as Toussaint Louverture will be considered in the context of power relations. The paper will also examine the radical influence of the events in France on the slave colony of San Domingo in the West Indies. There was a noticeable similarity between the ancien regime in France and the San Domingo society with both possessing a rigid class structure. In the French West Indian colony, there were clearly demarcated class divisions separating Whites, Mulattoes, free Blacks and slaves. However, the onset of the French Revolution in 1789 resulted in a similar societal transformation as the San Domingo revolution ousted the whites and replaced them with Toussaint Louverture, a former slave. Certain questions will be addressed- was the race question subsidiary to the class question in the progress of the San Domingo revolution? could the revolution have succeeded without the leadership of Louverture? There will also be an examination of the chaos which ensued during the San Domingo revolution such as the rivalry among Louverture, Dessalines and Christophe for power and authority. Secondly, I will examine the role of mulattoes and their shifting loyalties to the evolution, especially since they were perceived by some as an intermediate class with political instability. Finally, my paper will deal with the attempt by the bourgeoisie to restore slavery through the overthrow of Louverture by the cunning tactics of Leclerc and Napoleon.

PANEL 15: SENGHOR: HERITAGE CULTUREL
Chair : PRISCILLA R. APPAMA, Université de Cergy-Pontoise

GAYE, Matar,
« 1960-1980: Le Vécu politique du projet humaniste senghorien au Sénégal »