NEGRITUDE

literary movement of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s that began among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers (who were living in Paris at the time) as a protest against French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation. Its leading figure was Lopold Sdar Senghor (elected first president of the Republic of Senegal in 1960), who, along with Aim Csaire from Martinique and Lon Damas from French Guiana, began to examine Western values critically and to reassess African culture. The group's quarrel with assimilation was that although it was theoretically based on a belief in the equality of man, it still assumed the superiority of European culture and civilization over that of Africa (or rather assumed that Africa had no history or culture). They were also disturbed by the world wars, in which they saw their fellow countrymen not only dying for a cause that was not theirs but being treated as inferiors on the battlefield. They became increasingly aware, through their study of history, of the suffering and humiliation of black people first under the bondage of slavery and then under colonial rule. These views inspired many of the basic ideas behind Negritude: that the mystic warmth of African life, gaining strength from its closeness to nature and its constant contact with ancestors, should be continually placed in proper perspective against the soullessness and materialism of Western culture; that Africans must look to the richness of their past and of their cultural heritage in order to choose which values and traditions could be most useful to the modern world; that committed writers should not only use African subject matter and poetic traditions in their writings but should also inspire their readers with a desire for political freedom; that Negritude itself encompasses the whole of African cultural, economic, social, and political values; and that, above all, the value and dignity of African traditions and peoples must be asserted. In Senghor's poetry one finds all of these themes, and he inspired a number of other writers: Birago Diop from Senegal, whose poems explore the mystique of African life; David Diop, writer of revolutionary protest poetry; Jacques Rabemananjara, whose poems and plays glorify the history and culture of Madagascar; Cameroonians Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono, who wrote anticolonialist novels; and the Congolese poet Tchicaya U Tam'si, whose extremely personal poetry does not neglect the sufferings of the African peoples. Since the early 1960s, however, with the political and cultural objectives of the movement achieved in most African countries, there has been much less work produced with Negritude themes, and the focal point of literary activity in West Africa has moved from Senegal to Nigeria.