Pitfalls of Negritude: Solace-driven tertiary sector reform

Abstract

Leopold Senghor’s Negritude is a failed attempt to resurrect African pride from the ashes of humiliation. It fails because it simply provides a façade of pride that covers up the humiliation. It offers consolation rather than genuine cure. Franz Fanon shows us why this is so, and so does Wole Soyinka. I make use of their critiques, particularly Fanon’s, to show the extent to which some prominent streaks in the current South African Africanisation movement—manifested in intellectual production, primarily thinking about curricular reform, and protest action—aimed at bringing about tertiary sector reform also work to numb pain rather than offer a cure. Under the consoling veneer of proud righteousness lays something very much like what Friedrich Nietzsche terms ressentiment, a condition in which the downtrodden are both fascinated and repulsed by those who they perceive to be their subjugators. I offer an alternative version of Africanisation, which is forward-looking and aims to move beyond mere consolation, beyond ressentiment. This piece is not so much an exploration of the specific content that an Africanising movement should have. Instead, it offers a picture of what needs to be overcome, psychologically speaking, for properly conceived tertiary sector reform genuinely to succeed in South Africa. It is aimed at starting a conversation that needs to be had rather than offering the last word.