Négritude

N?gritude is a literary and political movement developed in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President L?opold S?dar Senghor, Martinican poet Aim? C?saire, and L?on Damas. The N?gritude writers found solidarity in a common black identity as a rejection of French colonial racism. They believed that the shared black heritage of members of the African diaspora was the best tool in fighting against French political and intellectual hegemony and domination.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The movement was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, and particularly the works of American writer Langston Hughes, whose work addresses the themes of "blackness" and racism. During the 1920s and 1930s, a small group of black students and scholars from France's colonies and territories assembled in Paris where they were introduced to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane. Paulette Nardal and the Haitian Dr. Leo Sajou founded La revue du Monde Noir (1931-32), a literary journal published in English and French, which attempted to be a mouthpiece for the growing movement of African and Caribbean intellectuals in Paris.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The term n?gritude (which most closely means "blackness" in English) was first used in 1935 by Aim? C?saire in the 3rd issue of L'?tudiant noir, a magazine which he had started in Paris with fellow students L?opold Senghor and L?on Damas, as well as Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, and Paulette Nardal. L'?tudiant noir also contains C?saire's first published work, "Negreries," which is notable not only for its disavowal of assimilation as a valid strategy for resistance but also for its reclamation of the word "n?gre" as a positive term. "N?gre" previously had been almost exclusively used in a pejorative sense, much like the English word "nigger"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a famous analysis of the n?gritude movement in an essay called "Orph?e Noir" (Black Orpheus) which served as the introduction to a volume of francophone poetry called Anthologie de la nouvelle po?sie n?gre et malgache, compiled by L?opold Senghor. In this essay, Sartre characterizes n?gritude as the polar opposite of colonial racism in a Hegelian dialectic. In his view, n?gritude was an "anti-racist racism" (racisme antiraciste) necessary to the final goal of racial unity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The term Negritude was also used by American Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and early abolitionist, to describe a hypothetical hereditary disease which he believed to be the cause of "blackness". http://www.cchr.org/racism/pooaa1.htm

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

President: President is a title held by many leaders of organizations, companies, universities, and countries. Etymologically, a "president" is one who presides, who sits in leadership (from Latin prae- "before" + sedere "to sit"). Originally, the term usually referred to the presiding officer of a ceremony or...

Martinican: REDIRECT Martinique...

Poet: Poets are authors of poems, or of other forms of poetry such as dramatic verse. Poets are often regarded as imaginative thinkers or writers. Bad poets are called poetasters....