NEW YORK
-Senghor
Léopold
Seder Senghor (9 October 1906 – 20 December 2001) was
a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two
decades served as the
first president of Senegal (1960–1980). Senghor was the
first African elected as a member of the Academic française before
independence; he founded the political party called the Senegalese
Democratic Bloc. He is regarded by many as one of the most important African
intellectuals of the 20th century.
“A New York” was published
in 1956 in Ethiopiques. would love to talk here about “négritude”
poetry, but it would take more than one post. However, it is important to know a few things in order to understand
this poem better, which can seem quite obscure (which IS obscure, in fact). The
poet thinks about New York as a melting pot, in the literal sense of the words.
It is the place where the renewal he longs for can happen, where the black and
the white can melt and form a new culture. The end of the poem in particular
emphasizes this new genesis. The poem’s subtitle is “for a jazz orchestra:
trumpet solo”; Jazz music bore, for Senghor, this potentiality of a whole new
culture, itself a composure of black and white cultures. The music here is
created in particular by the incantatory power of the poet’s words.
Leopold Sédar Senghor
believes that every African shares certain distinctive and innate
characteristics, values and aesthetics. In the poem ‘New York’, Senghor argues
that the black community of Harlem should ‘Listen to the far beating of your
nocturnal heart, rhythm/ and blood of the drum’ and ‘let the black blood flow
into/ your blood’. The word nocturnal is interesting because it refers to the
image of night. By using the imagery of night, Senghor is asserting that one’s
African heritage (one’s Blackness) is both inescapable and natural (like
night-time). Negritude is the active rooting of a Black identity in this
inescapable and natural African essence. The major premise of Negritude is
therefore that one’s biological make-up (race) defines one’s outer (skin
colour) as well as inner (spirit/essence) traits. Negritude is a concept which
holds that there is a ‘shared culture and subjectivity and spiritual essence’
among members of the same racial group. As Irele explains, there is a ‘parallel
between this conception and the racial doctrines propounded in Europe,
presenting the Negro as an inherently inferior being to the white man, and
which provided the ultimate ideological rationale for Western
imperialism’. Instead of rejecting the (colonialist) theory that race defines
one’s being; Negritude rejects the assumption that the African is inherently
inferior to the “white man”. To Senghor, this makes Negritude a weapon against
colonialism and an ‘instrument of liberation’.
To Senghor,
the African essence is externalized in a distinctive culture and philosophy.(
This claim is supported by Senghor’s assertion that Negritude – the rooting of
identity in one’s natural essence – is ‘diametrically opposed to the
traditional philosophy of Europe’ (the colonizer). To Senghor, European
philosophy is ‘essentially static, objective… It is founded on separation and
opposition: on analysis and conflict’. In contrast, African philosophy is based
on ‘unity’, ‘balance’ negotiation and an appreciation of ‘movement and rhythm’.
As Loomia notes, Senghor describes African culture ‘in terms of precisely those
supposed markers of African life that had been for so long reviled in
colonialist thought – sensuality, rhythm, earthiness and a primeval past’. The
traditional stereotypes of African culture are not directly challenged by
Negritude – Africans areessentially spiritual according to Senghor
– they are modified. Negritude is a process of negotiation which proposes a
counter-myth or counter-reading of those traditional stereotypes with the aim
of valorizing and celebrating the African personality.
Senghor’s
conception of Negritude holds that one’s inner and outer essence is informed,
defined by one’s race. This position – that race is biological and informs one’s
character – has encountered criticism because it relies on an incorrect
conception of race. Senghor’s conception of race asserts that a person from
Ghana, Senegal and Liberia are all biologically African – and therefore share
the same African essence. However, as Michael Jones notes ‘there is no
biological or genetic foundation for the grouping of individual humans into a
racial group’. There is no such thing as a race biologically speaking; race is
a social construction. If there is no biological foundation for Senghor’s
assertion that the African race shares certain essential features then the
concept of Negritude appears to be invalidated. It therefore appears that
rooting Black identity in an inescapable and natural African essence becomes
problematic.
A possible
response to this criticism is to adopt a more sophisticated understanding of
race. Although Senghor’s Negritude relies on a biologically constructed concept
of race, the sophisticated-Negritude critic could cite racial constructivism.
Racial constructivism is the position that holds that as society labels
individuals as belonging to certain racial groups (regardless if they are
justified to) and that belonging to racial groups entails ‘differences in
resources, opportunities, and well-being, the concept of race must be
conserved, in order to facilitate race-based social movements or policies, such
as affirmative action, that compensate for socially constructed but socially
relevant race differences’, There is no biological foundation for race but the
concept can be used to enable a common identity. A shared history (of slavery,
colonialism) and shared experiences (of being African, the interaction between
white Europe and black Africa, institutional racism) allow for the rooting of
identity in Africa. The sophisticated-Negritude critic is able to cite racial
constructivism as the foundation for a shared African identity and escape the
criticism against Senghor’s biological conception of race.
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