FRANTZ FANON AND THE NÉGRITUDE MOVEMENT: How Strategic Essentialism

Subverts Manichean Binaries

Author(s): Cynthia R. Nielsen
Source: Callaloo , Spring, 2013, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Spring, 2013), pp. 342-352
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24264913

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Callaloo

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 FRANTZ FANON AND THE NEGRITUDE MOVEMENT
How Strategic Essentialism Subverts Manichean Bin

by Cynthia R. Nielsen

In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon recounts how his subjectivity a
other was constructed and how a politics of white assimilation contribu
fragmentation.1 With white social and cultural norms imposed at every turn
nized subject must wear a white mask—a mask whose foreignness and force
produces in the colonized subject a deep sense of alienation and homeless
Fanon is attuned to social forces at play in systemic racialized contexts, he,
refuses to deny the black person's freedom and agency. In other words, Fan
that the colonized person in some sense actively participates in and thus
of her white-scripted history. For example, throughout the book, we find
as, "I transported myself" and "I gave myself up as an object"—all of which
Fanon's own participation in his social construction as a colonized subjec
Skin 92). Clearly, the colonized person's internalization of the white narrati
result of great duress and extreme psychological and emotional pressures cr
dominant society. Granting this, Fanon rejects vehemently the claim that h
and the power to resist is extinguished even in systemic oppressive social co
those in which colonized and enslaved persons dwelt. Although constrained
limited, the oppressed retain the ability to choose, to act as a free agent, an
(re)configure their subjectivity. Fanon's insistence on this point has politica
philosophical import, as it highlights the fact that the colonized, enslaved,
subjugated and exploited person is not a mere thing determined from the o
contrary, just as several contingent factors coalesced to create the historica
which the colonized subject finds herself, other equally contingent factors—
oppressed engaging in intentional subversive acts and resistance strateg
and help to bring about socio-political transformations, even if gradual, par
Moreover, as I shall argue, Fanon, like his teacher Aime Cesaire, under
process of decolonization and subject re-narration would occur over a period
in various stages. By studying Fanon's complex relationship to the Negritud
and by highlighting his appropriation and critique of its themes and variat
resistance tactics come into sharper focus. That is, contrary to worries of Fan
a reactionary racialized essentialism, I argue that Fanon's employment
narratives can be interpreted as a variant of (what Spivak calls) strategic ess
short, Fanon, like Cesaire, understood that different historical moments re
resistance strategies. His recognition of the need to adopt for a time ess
tives for therapeutic and up-building purposes, coupled with his unders

Callaloo 36.2 (2013) 342-352

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

productive nature of socially constructed identities signa

reactionary response still trapped within a binary Manichea
in view, I turn first to Fanon's retelling of his own experie
then I move into an analysis of Fanon's complex relation to
Fanon's text, Black Skin, White Masks, is more than an acc
is also a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human s
affirmation of freedom as a distinguishing mark of human
closely to Fanon's own refusal to be bound by and imprison

1 find myself one day in the world, and I acknowl

myself: the right to demand human behavior fro
one duty: the duty never to let my decisions ren
... I am not a prisoner of History. I must not look
of my destiny in that direction. I must constantly
the real leap consists of introducing invention into
I am heading for, I am endlessly creating myself.

These emancipatory proclamations in no way undermin

particularly his account of the emergence and subsequent o
and concepts such as a "black essence." Fanon develops
epidermal schemata as he reflects upon his and others' ex
construction as the black, (alleged) inferior "other." With t
emphasizes how the colonized (black) person, given the
prejudices built into the very fabric of colonial society, has a
her white counterparts. More specifically, Fanon's histor
tention to the contingencies—the discursive practices, econ
configurations—involved in the creation of the so-called "b
epidermal schema, Fanon foregrounds the production of th
is, the resultant "naturalized" understanding of blackness f
consciousness and incorporated in the political, cultural, and
Given Fanon's framework and his stress upon the historical
racialized subjectivities are created, we are better situat
significance of his schemata. White narratives of "blackness
no way reflect necessary realities or givens; rather, they are
of re-invention. Thus, throughout Black Skin, White Masks
be balanced with his repeated calls to effect socio-politic
of resistance—acts which, of course, include subject re-narr
Quite similar to and certainly compatible with Michel
of power relations, which both presuppose free subjects and
possibility of resistance,3 Fanon's understanding of powe
tion likewise upholds human agency. Thus, even in conte
wherein power relations are oppressive and freedom is l
rendered completely passive. Rather, they remain active
to resist, subvert, and transform their own subjectivities a
socio-political "landscape" in which they dwell. If resistance
linked to contingent power relations and the latter involve

343

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

re-narration and communal transformation are ever-p

of course, good news for the oppressed, as it means th
they find themselves is not a necessary order; rather,
and thus open to new configurations and ways of bein
On the one hand, Fanon, as we have seen, was well aw
at play in the construction of the colonized subject
that the process of decolonization and subject re-narra
time and in various stages. Here as postcolonial scho
complex relationship to the Negritude movement serve
us to make sense of his strategy to move beyond the "
world (Ahluwalia 58). In light of the immense influenc
Cesaire in particular on Fanon's thought, I now turn
the movement's modulations, as well as Fanon's approp
and variations.

Aime Cesaire (1913-2008), the internationally acclaimed surrealist poet and social
activist, is credited with coining the term "Negritude" in 1939 in his work, Cahier d'un
retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land). Cesaire and Leopold Sedar
Senghor—a likewise accomplished poet and sociopolitical critic—met in Paris and eventu
ally became the founders of the Negritude movement (Rabaka 119).5 Given Negritude's
many expressions, one must stress the movement's plurality, diversity, and particular
inflections. Reiland Rabaka, for example, distinguishes between Sartrean Negritude, Ce
sarean Negritude, and Senghorian Negritude.6 In contrast with Sartre's account, Senghor
lays stress on the positive value of Negritude in the historical struggle to (re)constitute an
African subjectivity both acceptable to Africans and those of African descent and flexible
enough to incorporate cultural infusions and expansions over time. As Rabaka explains,
"Negritude, for Senghor, was ... an affirmation of African humanity that was perpetually
open to revision and redefinition" (160).7
In addition, both Senghor and Fanon refused to give up on humanism and both sought
to reform and to purge it of its racist, non-inclusive Eurocentric elements. For Senghor,
appropriating political, philosophical, or other insights from different cultures—what he
referred to as "cultural borrowing"—was to be expected in light of each culture's unique
contributions to humankind (Rabaka 160). Nonetheless, Senghor is clear that Negritude's
cultural borrowing—given the black/ white power differential and the particular historical
moment in which blacks found themselves—was strategically aimed at bolstering and
strengthening African culture, traditions, and values. Moreover, and here again Senghor
and Fanon are united, Senghorian Negritude with its culturally blended, polyphonic hu
manism cannot be understood within Sartre's narrowly defined and overly abstract view
of history. Senghor, in other words, presents a more concrete view from below, engaging
"'the' world, as it actually exists," rather than as "a series of binary oppositions between
blacks and whites, or Africans and Europeans" (Rabaka 160).8 The "world" for which
Fanon and Senghor labored was a world constituted by manifold voices and rhythmic
movements sounding together yet retaining their distinct qualities. So long as one voice
neither dominates nor overpowers the others, but instead allows others to sound and be
heard, difference creates the possibility for rich extended harmonies. However, harmonies
dissolve when one voice demands strict and unflinching unison. In fact, when union is

344

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

required in every respect, music comes to a complete stan

deafening silence or maddening monotony.
Anyone who has spent any time with Cesaire's prose-poe
natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) would lik
the strong revolutionary soundings resonating throughou
a result of their oppressive context and their social and cu
educational system, many educated blacks in the West Ind
Ashamed of their African heritage, they took up their w
themselves as part of the educated French elite. Thus, Ces
a distant homeland, calling blacks to return not only to t
but to their "pre-colonial and anti-colonial indigenous, con
history and culture" (Rabaka 120). Cesaire's notion of "retu
theme in Cahier (Notebook). Given the socio-political, cult
of Cesaire's development of Negritude and his complex
employment of the term "return," I examine these two co
more intimately acquainted with these two central the
tuned to their respective deconstructive and constructive
At the end of Discourse on Colonialism, Cesaire respon
regarding Negritude and describes it as "a resistance to th
tion" (88). In a move similar to Senghor's, Cesaire reject
opposition between a civilized European world and a ba
he views Negritude as distinctly African yet combining an
cultural, literary, political, and other insights. This ne
terpiece was formed in the crucible of oppression and exp
symbolizes, and communicates this historical struggle for
cause Antilleans had internalized the degrading discour
which had constructed blackness as evil, inferior, and sub
need both to deconstruct the white narratives and to (re)c
black bard must recapture the term negre and infuse it w
tions. As a skilled poet, rhetorician, and a public intellectu
aware of the power of words to create, as well as alter, so
movement's strategy was to remove the shame the bla
with the term negre. As he explains, "we adopted the term
... There was in us a defiant will, and we found a violent a
and negritude" (Cesaire 88). Through such discursive "w
were able to decontaminate the racist-created "atmosp
colonized lived, moved, and had their being (Cesaire 91)
as the shadow of the white man, the black person interna
Consequently Cesaire was adamant that blacks must cre
narratives wherein blackness, as well as African histor
negative pole of the alleged white superior, but by way of
shaped by a distinctively African inflection and way of b
tory must be told by the black bard, reinterpreted poetic
and ongoing relevance. "We asserted that our Negro herit
that this heritage was not relegated to the past, that its v
make an important contribution to the world" (Cesaire, D
345

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

Cesairean Negritude, as Rabaka observes, "is wide-r

radical politics and a distinct pan-African perspective; a p
only at 'returning' to and reclaiming Africa, but perhaps
creating an (present) authentic African or black self" (Rab
ity with all colonized and enslaved people of African d
likewise occupy Fanon. Cesaire voices his pan-African
his interview with Depestre. Having acknowledged tha
imprint of European civilization," Cesaire then adds,

but we thought that Africa could make a con

It was also an affirmation of our solidarity. Tha
I have always recognized that what was happ
ers in Algeria and the United States had its r
understood that I could not be indifferent to
in Haiti or Africa.... And I have come to the realization that there
was a "Negro situation" that existed in different geographical areas,
that Africa was also my country. There was the African continent,
the Antilles, Haiti; there were Martinicans and Brazilian Negroes,
etc. That's what Negritude meant to me. (Discourse 92)

As part of his aim to establish a positive black identity, Cesaire pulled from various ele
ments of his French educational training and created something new, something bearing
the distinctive marks of the African spirit. For example, Cesaire in no way denied but
rather affirmed the French influences shaping his work. "Whether I want to or not, as a
poet I express myself in French, and clearly French literature has influenced me" (Ces
aire 83). Even so, Cesaire states emphatically that while elements of the French literary
tradition function for him as a "point of departure," his goal has always been "to create a
new language, one capable of communicating the African heritage" (83). Here one might
draw an analogy between Negritude's relation to French culture and literature and the
relation between African American jazz and European classical music. That is, just as Af
rican American musicians infused European musical practices with their own distinctive
African-inspired syncopated rhythms, phrasings, and improvisatory emphases creating
a new and unquestionably African American music, Cesaire, Senghor, and others took
elements of the French intellectual traditional and reharmonized them to sound with a
decisive African tonal center. "French was a tool that I wanted to use in developing a new
means of expression. I wanted to create an Antillean French, a black French that, while
still being French, had a black character" (Cesaire 83). Cesaire then explains how the sur
realist movement became a creative means by which he could enact a "return" to Africa.
Surrealism was a "weapon that exploded the French language," and one that could be
used for emancipatory purposes (Cesaire, Discourse 83).
With this new black-inflected improvisatory language as his weapon, Cesaire begins
his Discourse on Colonialism with a triple staccato firing of single sentence paragraphs, each
carefully crafted to condemn Europe's so-called civilizing mission.10 Listen to Cesaire's
diagnosis of a "decadent," "stricken" [atteinte], "dying" Western civilization (31)—a Europe
revealed as "morally [and] spiritually indefensible" (32).

346

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

A civilization that proves incapable of solving the p

is a decadent civilization.
A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems
is a stricken civilization.
A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying
civilization. (Cesaire 31)

Cesaire then adds that this European "Western civilization" for all its claims to Enlighten
ment and progress has proved "incapable of solving the two major problems to which
its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem" (31).
Unlike the white Marxists, including Sartre, Cesaire and other black Negritude writers
could not separate the class problem from the race problem, nor did they overlook the
connection between capitalism and colonialism. As Rabaka observes, "Cesaire understands
European civilization to rest on the colonization of non-Europeans, their lives, labor and
lands. His Negritude, like Du Bois's . . . discourse, was a revolutionary humanist enter
prise" attuned to the sufferings of all those exploited by the machinery of colonialism and
slavery (122). Although appreciative of Marx, the Negritude movement (and Fanon as
well) sought to expand and revise Marxist teachings not only to include but also to give
top priority to race-based economic exploitation.11 As Cesaire puts it, the Communists
"acted like abstract Communists" in their failure to address the "Negro problem" (85). In
contrast, the colonized and enslaved, given their concrete experience of racialized existence
past and present, do not have the option to overlook the race question; thus, concludes
Cesaire, Negritude has a crucial role to play in the ongoing reformation of Marxism. "Marx
is all right, but we need to complete Marx" (Discourse 86).
Cesairean Negritude is thus concerned not only for the "political emancipation" of
oppressed blacks but also, as we have seen, one of its chief goals is the creation of a posi
tive black social identity. However, in the context of colonialism, with their past already
written and their present constantly under (white) construction, the opportunities afforded
the colonized to shape and develop their own identity are severely restricted. Because
the colonial system is built on the exploitation of blacks and non-European others, the
oppressed are increasingly viewed as things or as non-human animals. This reduction
of humans to the subhuman realm harms both the colonized and the colonizer, and thus
leads to the degradation of society at large. Cesaire refers to this phenomenon as the
"boomerang effect of colonization." As he explains,

colonization . . . dehumanizes even the most civilized man; that

colonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, which is
based on contempt for the native and [is] justified by that contempt,
inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it; that the colonizer,
who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the
other man as an animal accustoms himself to treating him like an
animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal.
It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted
to point out. (Cesaire, Discourse 41 )12

In his writings, Fanon also highlighted the damage inflicted upon humankind as the result
of colonizing practices. Like Cesaire, Fanon was convinced that when humans, through
repeated acts of self-deception, eventually habituate themselves to treat other humans
347

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

as animals and objects, they perform a violence on th

produce ripple effects throughout the entire social bod
the body politic.13
Cesairean Negritude, captured through his powerful pro
surrealist poetry, provided a way for the oppressed t
white world with a "violent affirmation" of black identit
serves both a sociopolitical critical function and a product
the decolonization process to reach not only society in
Boisian note, the very souls of black folks. With these go
in Cesaire's footsteps, advocates a "critical return to the p
the colonized nation, a radical rediscovery of the preco
colonized people" (Rabaka 126); however, this Cesairean
precolonial past must not be understood as a quest for som
originary moment, but rather as a critical engagement w
to bring its past to bear upon present emancipatory strug
As was mentioned earlier, this notion of "return" is
misunderstood aspects of Cesaire's thought. For Cesair
requires a recovery of a pre-colonial African past. The col
ers of white mythology, which decade after decade taugh
history and culture, while forcing them to embrace whit
to go forward and to carve out a new present and futu
their ancestral roots "to learn the lessons of Africa's
128). Here it is important to stress that this Cesairean retu
infallible Africa that must somehow be recreated in the pr
cover African values—values emphasizing a communal
with one another rather than individualistic, consumer, a
economic structures. Thus, Cesaire encouraged a return to
a non-repetitive translation into contemporary society of
cultural values, and ancestral practices lacking in West

The Black Bard and Improvising in Tune with

Fanon, having studied under Cesaire and greatly resp

incorporated many of his teacher's insights and strate
true of any good student, Fanon developed his own di
retains Cesairean echoes.14 Consonant with the Negrit
justice, equality, and the transformation of oppressive soc
for these ends. Both Fanon and Cesaire fall within the
Fanon's Pan-Africanism often collided with the philos
seeking to enact social change through existing political, l
the one hand, Fanon applauded the Negritude writers'
culture and values to the world, having extracted, of cour
and blackness; on the other hand, as Rabaka makes cle
disciple of Cesairean Negritude" (Rabaka 171). Some of
348

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

found, for example, in his book The Wretched of the Eart

"cultural nationalism" was incongruent with a revolutio
he believed necessary given the entrenched, systemic stru
colonized context (Rabaka 171).
Another variant of Negritude was developed by Jean-Pau
like Senghorian and Cesairean expressions, also influen
Sartre claimed that Negritude was in essence reactionary,
the dialectic march toward liberation. In other words, bec
tion to the dominant phase or thesis, namely, white supre
la these), Negritude is in the larger picture a mere moment
to claim that Negritude "exists for its own destruction" (es
is to prepare the way for the ultimate synthesis, namely
a society without races" (realisation de I'humain dans une s
Rabaka explains, the idea of a postracial society places Sart
with both Cesairean and Senghorian Negritude.17 Recall, a
and the (white) Marxists by and large failed to see the con
colonialism and capitalism and racism. For Cesaire and oth
to live on the margins and suffering at the hands of d
tion was a reality they lived day in and day out; consequen
counterparts, they refused to make colonialism and racism
While Fanon does not deny that Negritude is a response
he sees the productive, positive dimension of Negritude
That is, contra Albert Memmi, Fanon's response to Sartre'
critical, hesitant, and sophisticated than Memmi at times
decries Sartre for having failed to recognize that "the bla
differently from the white man" (Black Skin 117).19 Still,
agreement with Sartre that Negritude is in fact a tempor
(and whites) must pass? If we bring Gayatri Chakravor
essentialism" into the conversation, Fanon's position re
but as significantly more "in tune" with the concrete, his
different stages of their collective identity (re)construction
the oppressed group, recognizing its need for group unity
intentionally promotes an essentialist identity. Such a mo
tegic in nature. With respect to the former, a period of h
necessary, given the suffering the group has endured. Wi
to accomplish their socio-political goals, the group mu
velop its own distinctive voice, signature, discursive pract
Thus, on the one hand, Sartre was right to stress the tem
as a movement emerging at a particular point in history.
to grasp that the essentialist inflection of Negritude can
discarded. What is retained is the larger goal with whic
ation of the social reality of Negritude positively conceive
and continues to expand in order to meet new social, polit
short, as feminist theorists and activists are well aware, a
adoption of an essentialist identity can be employed for s
then jettisoned when the group's aims are achieved. Th
349

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

"skin" (i.e. fixed identity) in no way annuls the socially co

subjectivity. As philosophers of "race" and postcolonia
when it comes to "race" our choice is not between "race" as a natural kind or essence or
the non-existence of "race" in any significant sense. Rather, "race" and racial identities
qua social constructions are social realities, which as both Cesaire and Fanon attest, can
be used to foster group pride and thus contribute to a polyphonic chorus constituting a
symphonic humanity or to mute and render silent the voice of the other, thus replacing
the rich harmonies of humankind with a deafening monotone monotony.
To conclude, a Fanonian strategic essentialism recognizes Negritude's positive re
invention of "blackness" as a social reality, constructed by the oppressed for specific
socio-political, emancipatory, and therapeutic aims. In light of the historical situation into
which blacks were thrown, Negritude begins within the Manichean frame; however, the
social identity it produces through discursive practices and political acts transcends this
white-imposed frame and creates something new. Negritude's initial strategic phase of
course had a different function than its later phase. Fanon, as Nigel Gibson observes, was
cognizant of the stages involved in the historical process of colonized identity construc
tion, deconstruction, and (ongoing) reconstruction: "For Fanon, active resistance was the
first stage toward self-discovery, and he was well aware that in its early stages anticolonial
action was an inversion of colonial Manicheanism and remained within its framework"
(Gibson 13). Fanon's dialectic, in contrast to Sartre's, evinces an acute awareness of how
in a racialized society black and white embodiment produce different worlds. Stated
otherwise, existentially speaking, the black person's ever-present black skin is always vis
ible to the panopticism of the white gaze. Bodily proximity, whether to make eye contact,
what vocal inflections ought to be used—such mundane actions, which never occur to the
white person, become questions over which the black person must labor. Consequently,
an asymmetry permeates the colonized world, creating a situation in which black and
white experiences become, at best, equivocal "all the way down."
With my sketch of Fanon's recognition of something like Spivak's strategic essentialism,
coupled with Fanon's acceptance of Cesaire's dynamic idea of return and the constructive
aspects of his project (subject-re-narration, of course, playing a central role), we can counter
worries about Fanon unwittingly embracing a racialized essentialist subject.20 Fanon, like
Cesaire, understood that different historical moments require different resistance strategies.
Improvisatory skills, socially engaged listening, performative acts, and attunement to the
rhythms of life "on the ground" are perquisites not only for the jazz musician, but likewise
come in handy for the bard qua public intellectual committed to affecting social change.

NOTES

1. Several themes I develop in the present study overlap with my article, "Resistan
Narration."

2. Fanon goes on to say, "[t]he density of History determines none of my acts. I am my own foundation.
And it is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom"
(Black Skin 205).
3. See, for example, Foucault, The History of Sexuality, esp. 95-96. See also Foucault, "The Subject and
Power" 790.

4. See Foucault, "The Subject and Power" 788-89. In his late work, Foucault provides helpful elabora
tions of his notion of productive power relations and his account of the correlativity of and structural
linkage between power and freedom and thus power and resistance.
350

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

5. See also Bouvier, "Aime Cesaire, la negritude et l'ouverture poe

Bouvier recounts Cesaire's formative student years in Paris and
friendship with Leopold Sedar Senghor.
6. See Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory, chapter 4, "Aime Cesaire
Negritude and Radical New Negroes."
7. See also Bernasconi 71, 79-80. Bernasconi reads Senghor as pro
identity and an overly past-centered position, or as Bernasconi pu
on memories and an expression that surpasses the content" (80
8. For a detailed analysis of Sartre's relation to Hegelian philoso
9. See also Gibson chapters 1 and 2.
10. In "Orphee Noir," Sartre makes several astute observations re
poean surrealist poets and the Negritude poets. As he explains,
to the Surrealists" seek the "self-destruction of language" [autode
poets, having not only aesthetic but sociopolitical goals in view
similar but reverse ruse: because the oppressor is present even in
that language in order to destroy it [pour la detruire], The con
to dehumanize words in order to return them to nature; the b
[defranciser] them; he will crush them, he will break their custom
violently" (xx, my translation).
11. Commenting on the capitalism of his day, Cesaire writes, "cap
incapable of establishing a concept of the rights of all men, jus
lishing a system of individual ethics" (Discourse on Colonialism
12. Frederick Douglass makes similar comments about the social d
society. For example, Douglass describes how Mrs. Auld, his mas
glass humanely and with compassion, eventually becomes social
that is, as nothing more than property to be used to further t
Narrative of the Life 40).
13. Cesaire, in fact, claims that Nazism came about as a result of
his linguistic whip, Cesaire unleashes a series of verbal strikes
Europe's back and perhaps reawaken its anesthetized conscienc

First we must study how colonization works to deciviliz

ize him in the true sense of the word ... a gangrene sets in
begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties
all these lies that have been propagated, all these puniti
been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied u
these patriots that have been tortured, at the end of all
been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been disp
distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely
toward savagery. And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is
boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill u
around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surp
they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, tha
crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms
but that before they were its victims, they were its accom
that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they ab
to it, legitimated it, because until then, it had been applie
peoples... they have cultivated Nazism ... they are respon
on Colonialism 35-36)

14. See Bouvier 146-50.

15. See Rabaka's discussion on Fanon's Pan-Africanism (167-68).
16. See, for example, Sartre xli. For a reading of Sartre's influence on Fanon, differing in significant wa
from mine, see Memmi 255.
17. See, for example, Rabaka, chapter 4, "Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor: Revolutionary Negritud
and Radical New Negroes," esp. 112-19.
18. Ironically, Memmi's own critique of Sartre has much in common with Fanon's sic et non relation
Sartrean Negritude. See especially Memmi's comments on the historical significance of Negritu
in reforming black identity and how this fact gives a positive dimension to Negritude, which Sartre
failed to grasp. For example, Memmi writes,

351

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CALLALOO

s'il est permis de penser avec Sartre que la negritude ...est un te

tivement negative, ce temps-la, ilfaut bien le vivre, avant de p
qu'il est vecu, il acquiert son poids, tris lourd, de positivite. L'e
la meme, est de ne pas assez voir que mime la negativite, le mal
en quelque mani&re chair et sang, en somme positivite. (256)
if it is permissible to think with Sartre that Negritude
even relatively negative, nonetheless, that phase must be
before passing to the next; and from the fact that it was e
enormously profound weight of positivity. Sartre's error
having failed to see that even negativity and misfortune w
life, in some way become flesh and blood, in short, positi

Bouvier also highlights Fanon's appreciative yet ambivalent—and

with Sartre and his analytical conclusions. See Bouvier 90.
19. Fanon makes similar remarks earlier in the chapter. For examp
from "Orphee Noir," where Sartre elucidated his view of Negritu
destruct, Fanon writes, "I wanted to be typically black—that wa
be white—that was a joke. And when I tried to claim my negritu
snatched it away from me. . . . We had appealed to a friend of th
had found nothing better to do than demonstrate the relativity
Masks 111, 112). For a more detailed discussion of the tense yet f
and Sartre, as well as their theoretical and sociopolitical similari
colonization, see Jules-Rosette 276-81.
20. In his book, Refashioning Futures, David Scott voices such a con

WORKS CITED

Ahluwalia, Pal. Out of Africa: Post-structuralism's Colonial Roots. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Bernasconi, Robert. "The Assumption of Negritude: Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, and the
of Radial Politics." parallax 8 (2002): 69-83.
Bouvier, Pierre. Aime Cesaire/Frantz Fanon. Portraits de decolonises. Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
."Aime Cesaire, la negritude et l'ouverture poetique." Esprit 346 (2008): 15-28.
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. D
ographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, My Bo
Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New Yor
America, 1994.15-102.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Rev. ed. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2008.
. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990.
. "The Subject and Power." Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 777-95.
Gibson, Nigel C. Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003.
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. "Jean-Paul Sartre and the Philosophy of Nigritude: Race, Self, and Society." Theory
and Society 36 (2007): 265-85.
Memmi, Albert. "La vie impossible de Frantz Fanon." Esprit 39 (1971): 248-73.
Nielsen, Cynthia. "Resistance Through Re-Narration: Fanon on De-constructing Racialized Subjectivities."
African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society 9.4 (2011): 363-85.
Rabaka, Reiland. Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition from W. E. B. Du Bois and
C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. Landam: Lexington Books, 2009.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Orph6e Noir." Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue frangaise. Ed.
Leopold Sedar Senghor. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948. ix-xliv.
Scott, David. Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999.
Sekyi-Otu, Ato. Fanon's Dialectic of Experience. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 2006.

352

This content downloaded from

165.123.34.86 on Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:13:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms