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Frantz Fanon and the Négritude Movement: How Strategic Essentialism

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Frantz Fanon and the Négritude Movement: How Strategic Essentialism
Subverts Manichean Binaries
Cynthia R. Nielsen

Callaloo, Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2013, pp. 342-352 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/cal.2013.0084

For additional information about this article

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 FRANTZ FANON AND THE NÉGRITUDE MOVEMENT
How Strategic Essentialism Subverts Manichean Binaries

by Cynthia R. Nielsen

In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon recounts how his subjectivity as a colonized
other was constructed and how a politics of white assimilation contributed to his self-
fragmentation.1 With white social and cultural norms imposed at every turn, the black colo-
nized subject must wear a white mask—a mask whose foreignness and forced application
produces in the colonized subject a deep sense of alienation and homelessness. Although
Fanon is attuned to social forces at play in systemic racialized contexts, he, nonetheless,
refuses to deny the black person’s freedom and agency. In other words, Fanon recognizes
that the colonized person in some sense actively participates in and thus accepts aspects

as, “I transported myself” and “I gave myself up as an object”—all of which acknowledge

Fanon’s own participation in his social construction as a colonized subject (Fanon, Black
Skin 92). Clearly, the colonized person’s internalization of the white narrative occurs as a
result of great duress and extreme psychological and emotional pressures created by the
dominant society. Granting this, Fanon rejects vehemently the claim that human freedom
and the power to resist is extinguished even in systemic oppressive social contexts such as
those in which colonized and enslaved persons dwelt. Although constrained and severely
limited, the oppressed retain the ability to choose, to act as a free agent, and to resist and

philosophical import, as it highlights the fact that the colonized, enslaved, or otherwise
subjugated and exploited person is not a mere thing determined from the outside. To the
contrary, just as several contingent factors coalesced to create the historical situation in

oppressed engaging in intentional subversive acts and resistance strategies—can emerge

and help to bring about socio-political transformations, even if gradual, partial, and local.
Moreover, as I shall argue, Fanon, like his teacher Aimé Césaire, understood that the
process of decolonization and subject re-narration would occur over a period of time and
in various stages. By studying Fanon’s complex relationship to the Négritude movement

resistance tactics come into sharper focus. That is, contrary to worries of Fanon promoting
a reactionary racialized essentialism, I argue that Fanon’s employment of essentialized
narratives can be interpreted as a variant of (what Spivak calls) strategic essentialism. In

resistance strategies. His recognition of the need to adopt for a time essentialized narra-
tives for therapeutic and up-building purposes, coupled with his understanding of the

342 Callaloo 36.2 (2013) 342–352

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productive nature of socially constructed identities signals a movement beyond a mere

reactionary response still trapped within a binary Manichean framework. With this sketch

then I move into an analysis of Fanon’s complex relation to the Négritude movement.
Fanon’s text, Black Skin, White Masks, is more than an account of alienation and angst. It

closely to Fanon’s own refusal to be bound by and imprisoned within the white narrative.

myself: the right to demand human behavior from the other. And
one duty: the duty never to let my decisions renounce my freedom.
. . . I am not a prisoner of History. I must not look for the meaning
of my destiny in that direction. I must constantly remind myself that
the real leap consists of introducing invention into life. In the world
I am heading for, I am endlessly creating myself. (Black Skin 204)2

These emancipatory proclamations in no way undermine Fanon’s famous schemata,

and concepts such as a “black essence.” Fanon develops his historico-racial and racial-

construction as the black, (alleged) inferior “other.” With the historico-racial schema, he
emphasizes how the colonized (black) person, given the socio-political imbalances and
prejudices built into the very fabric of colonial society, has a world differently than his or
-
tention to the contingencies—the discursive practices, economic drives, and institutional

epidermal schema, Fanon foregrounds the production of the historico-racial schema—that

consciousness and incorporated in the political, cultural, and legal practices of a society.
Given Fanon’s framework and his stress upon the historical, contingent character of how
racialized subjectivities are created, we are better situated to grasp the emancipatory

of re-invention. Thus, throughout Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon’s alienated strains must
be balanced with his repeated calls to effect socio-political change through various acts
of resistance—acts which, of course, include subject re-narration.
Quite similar to and certainly compatible with Michel Foucault’s productive notion
of power relations, which both presuppose free subjects and allow for the ever-present
possibility of resistance,3 Fanon’s understanding of power relations and social construc-
tion likewise upholds human agency. Thus, even in contexts such as a colonized society
wherein power relations are oppressive and freedom is limited, the subjugated are not
rendered completely passive. Rather, they remain active yet constrained subjects able
to resist, subvert, and transform their own subjectivities and at least to some extent the
socio-political “landscape” in which they dwell. If resistance possibilities are structurally
linked to contingent power relations and the latter involve free subjects,4 then individual

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re-narration and communal transformation are ever-present, open, viable options. This is,
of course, good news for the oppressed, as it means that the socio-political order in which
not

On the one hand, Fanon, as we have seen, was well aware of the socio-historical forces
at play in the construction of the colonized subject. On the other hand, he understood
that the process of decolonization and subject re-narration would occur over a period of
time and in various stages. Here as postcolonial scholar Pal Ahluwalia observes, Fanon’s
complex relationship to the Négritude movement serves as an hermeneutical lens enabling
us to make sense of his strategy to move beyond the “Manichean structure” of a colonized

Césaire in particular on Fanon’s thought, I now turn to a more focused examination of

and variations.
Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), the internationally acclaimed surrealist poet and social
activist, is credited with coining the term “Négritude” in 1939 in his work, Cahier d’un
retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
Senghor—a likewise accomplished poet and sociopolitical critic—met in Paris and eventu-
ally became the founders of the Négritude movement (Rabaka 119).5 Given Négritude’s
many expressions, one must stress the movement’s plurality, diversity, and particular
-
sairean Négritude, and Senghorian Négritude.6 In contrast with Sartre’s account, Senghor
lays stress on the positive value of Négritude in the historical struggle to (re)constitute an

enough to incorporate cultural infusions and expansions over time. As Rabaka explains,

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

contributions to humankind (Rabaka 160). Nonetheless, Senghor is clear that Négritude’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 Négritude with its culturally blended, polyphonic hu-

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

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

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deafening silence or maddening monotony.

Anyone who has spent any time with Césaire’s prose-poem Cahier d’un retour au pays
natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) would likely, as Fanon certainly did, hear
the strong revolutionary soundings resonating throughout the text (Rabaka 119–20). As
a result of their oppressive context and their social and cultural shaping via the French
educational system, many educated blacks in the West Indies suppressed their blackness.
Ashamed of their African heritage, they took up their white masks and sought to present
themselves as part of the educated French elite. Thus, Césaire’s poem sounded notes from
a distant homeland, calling blacks to return not only to their local West Indian culture
but to their “pre-colonial and anti-colonial indigenous, continental and diasporan African
history and culture” (Rabaka 120). Césaire’s notion of “return” thus emerges as a central
theme in Cahier (Notebook
of Césaire’s development of Négritude and his complex, polysemous articulation and
employment of the term “return,” I examine these two concepts in detail. As we become
-
tuned to their respective deconstructive and constructive functions.
At the end of Discourse on Colonialism
regarding Négritude and describes it as “a resistance to the [French] politics of assimila-
tion” (88). In a move similar to Senghor’s, Césaire rejects the abstract and (false) binary
opposition between a civilized European world and a barbarian African world. Instead,
he views Négritude as distinctly African yet combining and improvising upon multiple
cultural, literary, political, and other insights. This new improvisational (ongoing) mas-
terpiece was formed in the crucible of oppression and exploitation. Négritude embodies,
symbolizes, and communicates this historical struggle for a positive African identity. Be-
cause Antilleans had internalized the degrading discourses of white society—discourses
which had constructed blackness as evil, inferior, and subhuman—Césaire recognized the
need both to deconstruct the white narratives and to (re)construct new narratives.9 The
black bard must recapture the term nègre and infuse it with inspiring, positive connota-
tions. As a skilled poet, rhetorician, and a public intellectual par excellence, Césaire was
aware of the power of words to create, as well as alter, social realities. Thus, part of his
movement’s strategy was to remove the shame the black person had come to associate
with the term nègre. As he explains, “we adopted the term nègre,
nègre,
and negritude” (Césaire 88). Through such discursive “warfare,” the Négritude writers
were able to decontaminate the racist-created “atmosphere of rejection” in which the
colonized lived, moved, and had their being (Césaire 91). Constantly seen and presented
as the shadow of the white man, the black person internalizes a deep sense of inferiority.

negative pole of the alleged white superior, but by way of an aesthetic amenable to and
-

and ongoing relevance. “We asserted that our Negro heritage was worthy of respect, and
that this heritage was not relegated to the past, that its values were values that could still
make an important contribution to the world” (Césaire, Discourse 92).
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Césairean Négritude, as Rabaka observes, “is wide-ranging and grounded in black

only at ‘returning’ to and reclaiming Africa, but perhaps more importantly, consciously
creating an (present) authentic African or black self” (Rabaka 121). A concern for solidar-
ity with all colonized and enslaved people of African descent occupied Césaire and will
likewise occupy Fanon. Césaire voices his pan-African perspective toward the end of
his interview with Depestre. Having acknowledged that he and his colleagues “bore the
imprint of European civilization,” Césaire then adds,

but we thought that Africa could make a contribution to Europe.

I have always recognized that what was happening to my broth-

ers in Algeria and the United States had its repercussions in me. I
understood that I could not be indifferent to what was happening
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,

etc. That’s what Negritude meant to me. (Discourse 92)

As part of his aim to establish a positive black identity, Césaire 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, Césaire in no way denied but

-
aire 83). Even so, Césaire 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 Négritude’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
African American music, Césaire, 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” (Césaire 83). Césaire 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 (Césaire, Discourse 83).

his Discourse on Colonialism

carefully crafted to condemn Europe’s so-called civilizing mission.10
diagnosis of a “decadent,” “stricken” [atteinte], “dying” Western civilization (31)—a Europe
revealed as “morally [and] spiritually indefensible” (32).

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A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates

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. (Césaire 31)

Césaire 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, Césaire and other black Négritude writers
could not separate the class problem from the race problem, nor did they overlook the
connection between capitalism and colonialism. As Rabaka observes, “Césaire 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 Négritude 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 Césaire 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

Césaire, Négritude has a crucial role to play in the ongoing reformation of Marxism. “Marx
is all right, but we need to complete Marx” (Discourse 86).
Césairean Négritude 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. Césaire refers to this phenomenon as the
“boomerang effect of colonization.” As he explains,

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. (Césaire, Discourse 41)12

repeated acts of self-deception, eventually habituate themselves to treat other humans

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as animals and objects, they perform a violence on themselves that has a tendency to
produce ripple effects throughout the entire social body, including the “white” part of
the body politic.13
Césairean Négritude, captured through his powerful prose and his distinctively black
surrealist poetry, provided a way for the oppressed to transgress the boundaries of a

serves both a sociopolitical critical function and a productive, creative function enabling
the decolonization process to reach not only society in general but also, to sound a Du
Boisian note, the very souls of black folks. With these goals in mind, Fanon too, following
in Césaire’s footsteps, advocates a “critical return to the precolonial history and culture of
the colonized nation, a radical rediscovery of the precolonial history and culture of the

originary moment, but rather as a critical engagement with the African tradition in order
to bring its past to bear upon present emancipatory struggles (Rabaka 127).
As was mentioned earlier, this notion of “return” is one of the most important, yet
misunderstood aspects of Césaire’s thought. For Césaire, the process of decolonization
-
ers of white mythology, which decade after decade taught them to be ashamed of their
history and culture, while forcing them to embrace white European values. Thus, in order
to go forward and to carve out a new present and future, the colonized must return to
their ancestral roots “to learn the lessons of Africa’s tragedies and triumphs” (Rabaka
128). Here it is important to stress that this Césairean return is not a call to a romanticized,
infallible Africa that must somehow be recreated in the present. Rather, it is a call to redis-
cover African values—values emphasizing a communal existence and a sharing of goods
with one another rather than individualistic, consumer, and capitalistic sociopolitical and
economic structures. Thus, Césaire encouraged a return to Africa’s past with the aim of
a non-repetitive translation into contemporary society of those sociopolitical principles,
cultural values, and ancestral practices lacking in Western “enlightened civilization.”

The Black Bard and Improvising in Tune with History

Fanon, having studied under Césaire and greatly respecting his intellectual talents,
incorporated many of his teacher’s insights and strategies in his own work. Yet, as is
true of any good student, Fanon developed his own distinctive style, which no doubt
retains Césairean echoes.14 Consonant with the Négritude writers’ concern for social

Fanon’s Pan-Africanism often collided with the philosophies of other black activists
seeking to enact social change through existing political, legal, and other structures.15 On
the one hand, Fanon applauded the Négritude writers’ endeavors to re-present African
culture and values to the world, having extracted, of course, white distortions of Africa

disciple of Cesairean Negritude” (Rabaka 171). Some of Fanon’s critical remarks can be
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found, for example, in his book The Wretched of the Earth. There he claims that Césaire’s
“cultural nationalism” was incongruent with a revolution-from-below approach, which
he believed necessary given the entrenched, systemic structures in place in a (racialized)
colonized context (Rabaka 171).
Another variant of Négritude was developed by Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartrean Négritude,

Sartre claimed that Négritude was in essence reactionary, a weak stage (le temps faible) in
the dialectic march toward liberation. In other words, because it was birthed out of a reac-
tion to the dominant phase or thesis, namely, white supremacy (la suprématie du blanc est
la thèse), Négritude is in the larger picture a mere moment of negativity.16 Sartre goes on
to claim that Négritude “exists for its own destruction” (est pour se détruire), as its purpose
is to prepare the way for the ultimate synthesis, namely the “realization of a human in
a society without races” (réalisation de l’humain dans une société sans races) (Sartre xli). As

with both Césairean and Senghorian Négritude.17 Recall, as was mentioned earlier, Sartre
and the (white) Marxists by and large failed to see the connection between capitalism and
colonialism and capitalism and racism. For Césaire and other black radicals—those forced
to live on the margins and suffering at the hands of dominant society—such a connec-

counterparts, they refused to make colonialism and racism secondary issues.

While Fanon does not deny that Négritude is a response to the violence of colonization,
he sees the productive, positive dimension of Négritude as more than mere negativity.

critical, hesitant, and sophisticated than Memmi at times portrays.18 For example, Fanon

differently from the white man” (Black Skin 117).19 Still, how are we to understand Fanon’s
agreement with Sartre that Négritude is in fact a temporary stage through which blacks
(and whites) must pass? If we bring Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of “strategic
essentialism” into the conversation, Fanon’s position reveals itself as not only coherent

different stages of their collective identity (re)construction (Spivak 205). As Spivak explains,
the oppressed group, recognizing its need for group unity and a positive self-conception,
intentionally promotes an essentialist identity. Such a move is both therapeutic and stra-
tegic in nature. With respect to the former, a period of healing and regaining strength is
necessary, given the suffering the group has endured. With respect to the latter, in order
to accomplish their socio-political goals, the group must have time to solidify and de-

Thus, on the one hand, Sartre was right to stress the temporary character of Négritude
as a movement emerging at a particular point in history. On the other hand, Sartre failed

discarded. What is retained is the larger goal with which the movement began: the cre-
ation of the social reality of Négritude positively conceived—a reality that endures today
and continues to expand in order to meet new social, political, and cultural challenges. In
short, as feminist theorists and activists are well aware, a subjugated group’s temporary

then jettisoned when the group’s aims are achieved. The shedding of one’s essentialized
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subjectivity. As philosophers of “race” and postcolonial scholars point out repeatedly,

when it comes to “race” our choice is not between “race” as a natural kind or essence or

qua social constructions are social realities, which as both Césaire 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 Négritude’s positive re-
invention of “blackness” as a social
socio-political, emancipatory, and therapeutic aims. In light of the historical situation into

social identity it produces through discursive practices and political acts transcends this
white-imposed frame and creates something new. Négritude’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

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,

an asymmetry permeates the colonized world, creating a situation in which black and

With my sketch of Fanon’s recognition of something like Spivak’s strategic essentialism,

coupled with Fanon’s acceptance of Césaire’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

Improvisatory skills, socially engaged listening, performative acts, and attunement to the

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, “Resistance Through Re-
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.
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6. See Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory

Negritude and Radical New Negroes.”
7. See also Bernasconi 71, 79–80. Bernasconi reads Senghor as promoting an essentialist view of black
identity and an overly past-centered position, or as Bernasconi puts it, a “poetry of the past relying
on memories and an expression that surpasses the content” (80).
8. For a detailed analysis of Sartre’s relation to Hegelian philosophy, see Sekyi-Otu 62–72.
9. See also Gibson chapters 1 and 2.
10. In “Orphée Noir,” Sartre makes several astute observations regarding the diverse goals of the Eur-
poean surrealist poets and the Négritude poets. As he explains, the French poets “[f]rom Mallarmé
to the Surrealists” seek the “self-destruction of language” [autodestruction du langage]. The Négritude
poets, having not only aesthetic but sociopolitical goals in view, “answer the colonist’s ruse by a
similar but reverse ruse: because the oppressor is present even in the language they speak, they speak
that language in order to destroy it [pour la détruire]. The contemporary European poet attempts

[défranciser
violently” (xx, my translation).
11. Commenting on the capitalism of his day, Césaire writes, “capitalist society, at its present stage, is
incapable of establishing a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved incapable of estab-
lishing a system of individual ethics” (Discourse on Colonialism 37).
12. Frederick Douglass makes similar comments about the social degradation that takes place in a slave
-
glass humanely and with compassion, eventually becomes socially habituated to see him as a slave,
that is, as nothing more than property to be used to further the goals of white society (Douglass,
Narrative of the Life 40).
13. Césaire, in fact, claims that Nazism came about as a result of the “boomerang effect.” Employing
his linguistic whip, Césaire unleashes a series of verbal strikes calculated to leave their marks on
Europe’s back and perhaps reawaken its anesthetized conscience.

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutal-
ize him in the true sense of the word . . . a gangrene sets in, a center of infection

all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have
been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and “interrogated,” all
these patriots that have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has
been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been
distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds
toward savagery

to it, legitimated it, because until then, it had been applied only to non-European
peoples . . . they have cultivated Nazism . . . they are responsible for it.” (Discourse
on Colonialism 35–36)

14. See Bouvier 146–50.

15. See Rabaka’s discussion on Fanon’s Pan-Africanism (167–68).

from mine, see Memmi 255.

and Radical New Negroes,” esp. 112–19.

sic et non relation to

in reforming black identity and how this fact gives a positive dimension to Négritude, which Sartre
failed to grasp. For example, Memmi writes,

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s’il est permis de penser avec Sartre que la négritude … est un temps faible, et même rela-
tivement négative, ce temps-la, il faut bien le vivre, avant de passer au suivant; et du fait
qu’il est vécu, il acquiert son poids, très lourd, de positivité. L’erreur de Sartre, toujours
la même, est de ne pas assez voir que même la négativité, le malheur, vécus, deviennent
en quelque manière chair et sang, en somme positivité. (256)
if it is permissible to think with Sartre that Négritude . . . is a weak stage, and
even relatively negative, nonetheless, that phase must be lived through in reality

enormously profound weight of positivity. Sartre’s error—always the same—was

having failed to see that even negativity and misfortune when experienced in real

Bouvier also highlights Fanon’s appreciative yet ambivalent—and in no way uncritical— relation
with Sartre and his analytical conclusions. See Bouvier 90.

from “Orphée Noir,” where Sartre elucidated his view of Négritude as a weak stage that must self-

be white—that was a joke. And when I tried to claim my negritude intellectually as a concept, they
snatched it away from me. . . . We had appealed to a friend of the colored peoples, and this friend
had found nothing better to do than demonstrate the relativity of their action” (Black Skin, White
Masks 111, 112). For a more detailed discussion of the tense yet fecund relationship between Fanon
and Sartre, as well as their theoretical and sociopolitical similarities and differences regarding de-
colonization, see Jules-Rosette 276–81.
20. In his book, Refashioning Futures, David Scott voices such a concern (205).

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