Négritude

Negritude was developed in the 1930s in the French-speaking black space as a literary, political and philosophical current. From the Caribbean to Senegal, poets, writers and activists of the same generation questioned being black under the tutelage of an imperialist power. They challenged both cultural assimilation and racial hierarchies in place in colonial societies, and more broadly the colonial project itself. In 1935, Aimé Césaire developed a first definition of negritude as "simple recognition of being black, and the acceptance of this fact, of our destiny as Black, of our history and of our culture." (Liberté 3). Borrowing from Marxism, African literary and artistic traditions, but also from the writings of the Harlem Renaissance (a New York artistic current exploring and celebrating black condition, of which the journal Fire !!! was the manifesto), negritude spreads in the French-speaking area first of all via Légitime Défense (1932). However, it was the birth of Présence Africaine (1947- ), published simultaneously in Dakar and in Paris, that marked the culmination of the concept.

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