Negritude and a New Africa: An Update

Abstract

clear: what seems like a low reputation is simply contrast with past eras when feelings about Negritude were more generally positive. There is now a lack of consensus about movement. Inevitably, an age-old lack of agreement over definition of Negritude plays a part in this discussion. It is time to try to clarify multiplicity of views about Negritude, and to give some reasons for complexity of critical opinions on subject. The goal here is to be sufficiently precise about latter to be of use to specialists, while also helping generalists who may have been surprised to read that there are not uniformly positive views of movement. The question arises-and as yet remains impossible to answer: can Negritude movement still serve as an inspiration to writers and leaders in black cultures, as a step towards the creation of a meaningful perspective of collective life and action for African people in modern world (86)? A status report of present kind follows, in part, a simple chronology, from conception of movement in late thirties by Leopold Sedar Senghor and Aime Cesaire, through its changes and voluminous defenses (chiefly by Senghor) into seventies. Three strains of thought, which grow more insistent in seventies and eighties, add interest to chronological approach: accusations of a neocolonialist (economic) presence in Africa; language problem and African languages in literature; and demand for multiculturalism in school curricula. All three of these