Jean-Paul Sartre and the philosophy of négritude: Race, self, and society

Abstract

In this article, Jean-Paul Sartre’s relationship to the negritude movement and black intellectuals in Paris between the 1940s and the 1960s is examined in sociological and historical context. Sartre’s version of negritude, developed in his 1948 treatise “Orphee noir” prefacing Leopold Senghor’s collection of African and Malagasy poetry, is analyzed in terms of its role in shaping the discourses and debates surrounding negritude and the relationship of black intellectuals to the rest of French society. Sartre’s phenomenological theories of race, juxtaposing dominant and subaltern ideologies, are contrasted with his dialectic of negritude. The antinegritude movement of the late 1960s is also considered with reference to Sartre’s theories and inspiration. During this period, the relationship that Sartre established with Martinican intellectual and revolutionary Frantz Fanon helped to place Sartre into prominence as an activist and a theorist of decolonization and Third World politics. Sartre’s theories of race, self, and society were integral to both his early and later works and warrant review as approaches to the sociology of culture and sources of reflection for contemporary postcolonial studies.