Fighting humiliation from the fringes: Poeticizing militancy in the Negritude poetry

Abstract

Negritude poetry is often considered the bastion of African literary engagement with the Europe and ultimate summation of the determination of people of the black race to confront racism. But if Negritude as a cultural movement serves as an enduring watershed in the decolonization process of the black Africa and the Caribbean, Negritude poetry on the other hand is incontrovertibly grounded in the committed promotion through writing of the avowed philosophy engraved in the movement's criticism of racial discrimination against Africans and blacks in the diaspora, by the white supremacist Europeans. Indisputably, Negritude essentially celebrates the African cultural renaissance in music, folklore and orature. Despite Senghor's magisterial father figure portraiture and his occupation of a dignified position in the halo chamber of fame in African literature, his writing has been largely described by the critics as conciliatory due to his remarkable volte-face in his latter poetry. An affirmation of this charge has been exemplified in Africanite and metissage culturel. However, David Diop has consistently cut the image of enfant terrible of the Negritude poetry and his poetics have been profoundly iconoclastic. Remarkably, Senghor and Birago Diop's poetry have been strikingly portrayed as confrontational and their poetics belligerent, Aime Cesaire, Leon Damas and David Diop's poetry exuberantly amplify militancy and radicalism mediated by the combative bravura. The paper seeks to evaluate how the selected Negritude poets have eloquently appropriated protest in the language of their poetry, in order to seek restoration of the battered African dignity.