the concept of Negritude

**Ja. Jewel** · 06-20-2010, 07:49 PM

Re: the concept of Negritude

I had to google the definition of "cartesian", since I had never heard that word before....to anyone who is unfamiliar with the word, this is the best definition I came across in my search : logical analysis and its mechanistic interpretation of physical nature.....so, to me, this is comparing the African culture's connection with nature & spirituality, in dealing with "issues", as opposed to the European more "logical" approach to the world.

All cultures have their own "methods" of reasoning, that's what makes "cultures" Neither is better or worse, just different.

**evanovitch** · 06-20-2010, 08:02 PM

Re: the concept of Negritude

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> had to google the definition of "cartesian", since I had never heard that word before </div></div>

really....not even in Math class?...u know, cartesian graph

**Ja. Jewel** · 06-20-2010, 10:43 PM

Re: the concept of Negritude

I had two years of college, then got married & had to work....my college years were spent in "art ed" & I'm sure there must have been a math class in there somewhere but since I use very of that info. in my life, can't remember much about the math.....was never one of my strongest subjects. I'm not a "number" person, more a "language" person.

Now, my husband, on the other hand, remembers EVERY date & phone number that means something to him, but I, on the other hand, forget them all, but DO usually remember peoples names, which he never remembers.....we are all talented in our own way, nah tru?

**evanovitch** · 06-21-2010, 12:41 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

i still find the US education system to be truly amazing...kids going thru dem school career widdout maths and geography where u would have come upon the term....

guess i am not use to the choice that is afforded students in the US system...u haffi understan dat i came up unda di yaad system whe u had to study every striking subject for the first three years of HS...

n even primary school had a varied subject matta...good ole days indeed...even sent mi son bak to yaad to go to mi ole primary school for his first year...came bak to the States at 6 yr ole an tested 2yrs ahead

**Ja. Jewel** · 06-21-2010, 01:10 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">i still find the US education system to be truly amazing...kids going thru dem school career widdout maths and geography where u would have come upon the term....

guess i am not use to the choice that is afforded students in the US system...u haffi understan dat i came up unda di yaad system whe u had to study every striking subject for the first three years of HS...

n even primary school had a varied subject matta...good ole days indeed...even sent mi son bak to yaad to go to mi ole primary school for his first year...came bak to the States at 6 yr ole an tested 2yrs ahead </div></div>

Sorry Evan, but I have to beg to different with you....the one youth that I've been close to here, who is very bright, btw, (14 years old) has NO concept whatsoever of where things are in the world (geographically speaking), but he is extremely tech. saavy (unlike me)....I brought a globe with me for that very reason.....to give peeps an idea of the size of countries & where they were located in relation to other countries, not only him but other big people who had no concept of that.

I do not think that there is a whole lot of geography taught in the schools taught here, but my opinion may be clouded by the youths I am in contact with (very few)....but the one that I do know well, is a very good student, so it does have me wondering....

**evanovitch** · 06-21-2010, 02:55 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

memba , i said wen 'i came up' wich means wen i went to school,dat was di tradition....my reality is that in my HS class alone, there are at least 15 doctors, a myriad number of lawyers, architects, chartered accountants etc...dat was my reality in the time i lived and went to school in Ja...

and it all started at the primary level..i will not deny that there have been changes but my reality was one of great teachers and a wide curriculum

**franksterr** · 06-21-2010, 05:37 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

Ja. Jewel

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I had to google the definition of "cartesian", since I had never heard that word before....to anyone who is unfamiliar with the word, this is the best definition I came across in my search : logical analysis and its mechanistic interpretation of physical nature.....so, to me, this is comparing the African culture's connection with nature & spirituality, in dealing with "issues", as opposed to the European more "logical" approach to the world.

All cultures have their own "methods" of reasoning, that's what makes "cultures" Neither is better or worse, just different. </div></div>

If you are using the cartesian mode of thought, then your opinion on which is better is well said.
The Intuitive may differ as we are not impersonal beings...we have survive 2millions yrs on intuition, in less than 2000yrs cold reason has brought us to the brink of possible self-annihilation.

**franksterr** · 06-21-2010, 06:17 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

Negritude, is wrong to the extent that it creates the impression that reason, logics, mathematics, and scienitific enquiry is foreign to Afrika and Afrikans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnCGvOlTEzQ

Stolen Legacy By G M James

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLl8xd7QsIs&feature=related

Black Athena By Martin Bernal

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7131659833327794272#

**jah_yout** · 06-21-2010, 08:47 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">the concept of Negritude. With this term they intended to refer to the culture characteristic to all Africans and all members of the African Diaspora, also including those the Europeans forcefully took to the Americas. In their own words:

"One cannot deny that Negritude is a reality, a culture: It's the entirety of all the economic, political, intellectual, moral, artistic and social values of not only the peoples of Africa, but also the minorities of America, Asia and Oceania."</div></div>

i don't think that there is any "negritude" any more than there is a "blankitude" or "amarillitude"...
too generalized...

i also disagree with the signature ting weh seh negritude is emotion, reason is greek or sumn suh

Blackstar* · 06-21-2010, 09:17 AM

Re: the concept of Negritude

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Negritude, is wrong to the extent that it creates the impression that reason, logics, mathematics, and scienitific enquiry is foreign to Afrika and Afrikans.</div></div>@franksterr: Well said.

See also Mathematics in Ancient Africa.

**evanovitch** · 06-21-2010, 08:50 PM

do y'all therefore call the originators of the concept

ill-informed or wat....the concept was derived by the first President of the newly independent Senegal..along wid a noted WI writer...

do u all know of these two gentlement and the totality of their arguments ?

**blugiant** · 06-21-2010, 09:14 PM

Re: the concept of Negritude

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Negritude, is wrong to the extent that it creates the impression that reason, logics, mathematics, and scienitific enquiry is foreign to Afrika and Afrikans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnCGvOlTEzQ

Stolen Legacy By G M James

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLl8xd7QsIs&feature=related

Black Athena By Martin Bernal
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9833327794272# </div></div>

soo yu usinn oyinbo definition aff negritude. dat way to blakk enlitement iss fii name ann define owaself soo wii own owa blakkness

**evanovitch** · 06-21-2010, 09:18 PM

Leopold Sedar Senghor’s Concept of Negritude

Leopold Sedar Senghor’s Concept of Negritude
Monday, February 8, 2010

Leopold Sedar 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’.(1.) 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 an Black identity in this inescapable and natural African essence.(2.) 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.(3.) 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’.(4.) 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’.(5.)

To Senghor, the African essence is externalized in a distinctive culture and philosophy.(6.) 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).(7.) To Senghor, European philosophy is ‘essentially static, objective… It is founded on separation and opposition: on analysis and conflict’.(8.) In contrast, African philosophy is based on ‘unity’, ‘balance’ negotiation and an appreciation of ‘movement and rhythm’.(9.) 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’.(10.) The traditional stereotypes of African culture are not directly challenged by Negritude – Africans are essentially 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’.(11.) 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’.(12.) 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.(13.)

Negritude is a process of negotiation which attempts to alter the value of those labels attached to Africa. This negotiation with the coloniser has been criticised. Frantz Fanon explains ‘the efforts of the native to rehabilitate himself and to escape from the claws of colonialism are logically inscribed from the same point of view as that of colonialism’.(14.) The attempt to produce an African personality ensures the “native” uses the same logic of the coloniser. As Ran Greenstein notes ‘no pre-colonial discourses of Africa are known and it is highly doubtful that indigenous conceptualizations of African… ever existed’.(15.) “Africa” is a colonial concept that reduces a multitude of cultures, tribes, sects, religions and peoples into a simply defined and generic “essence” which is easily controlled and understood by the coloniser.(16.) Negritude doesn’t appear to challenge colonisation.

A possible reply may be that it is permissible for the colonised to utilize the tools of the coloniser if used to the fight against marginalization and cultural domination. A strategic move can be made to accept the “essentialism” of the coloniser (as Negritude does in asserting that race defines one’s being) with the aim of liberation. However, the strategic-essentialist Negritude remains unsatisfactory because it mirrors identically the way colonialism works and therefore offers no meaningful opposition to the coloniser. The main problem arises because strategic essentialism is itself the logic of colonialism. Strategic essentialism holds that for political and practical purposes it is advantageous to adopt the position that all people of a certain grouping share the same “essence”. In the colonisation of Africa, this is exactly the process the coloniser took in regards to the inherent value of those peoples it encountered. Colonisation holds that all Africans are the same because it is advantageous politically as well as financially. Therefore strategic essentialism, being itself the logic of colonisation, will ultimately commit the same crimes of marginalization (between classes, sexes and religions) and cultural domination (from more powerful tribes over lesser ones).(17.) Naturalized and apparently organic in nature – because it proclaims being African as a positive thing – Negritude becomes a tool in furthering the process of colonisation in the minds of the colonised. Although Senghor saw Negritude as a way of combating colonialism, Negritude is implicit with the process of colonial domination. The counter-reading of racial stereotypes which Negritude proposes fails to challenge the cultural domination of colonialism at its root.

1Leopold Sedar Senghor, ‘New York (Jazz orchestra: solo trumpet)’, in J. Reed and C. Wake (trans), L.S. Senghor: Prose and Poetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1965), pp. 155-157, p. 157.

2Leopold Sedar Senghor, ‘Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century’ in, P. Williams and L Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory, London: Longman, (1993), pp. 27-35, p. 27.

3Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Oxon: Routledge, (2005).p. 176.

4Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, p. 71.

5Leopold Sedar Senghor, ‘Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century’, p. 27.

6Ibid, p. 27.

7Ibid, p. 30.

8Ibid, p. 30.

9Ibid, p. 32 & 34.

10Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, p. 177.

11Michael James, ‘Race’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/f.../entries/race/>.

12Ibid.

13This move doesn’t entirely absolve the Negritude-critic from every criticism concerning the conception of race. An alternative philosophical approach is racial scepticism. Racial scepticism contends, as there is no biological foundation for race, that race as a concept should be eliminated (a normative position called eliminativism). The Negritude-critic therefore, in accepting racial constructivism, has to indicate why racial scepticism is a flawed doctrine.

14Frantz Fanon, ‘On National Culture’ in P. Williams and L Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory, London: Longman, (1993), pp. 36-52, p. 38.

15Ran Greenstein quoted from Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p. 178.

16Amilcar Cabral, ‘National Liberation and Culture’ in P. Williams and L Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory, London: Longman, (1993), pp. 53-65, p. 61.

17As bell hooks notes in regards to why postmodern critiques are useful to issues of race ‘Employing a critique of essentialism allows African-Americans to acknowledge the way in which class mobility has altered collective black experience so that racism does not necessarily have the same impact on our lives. Such a critique allows us to affirm multiple black identities, varied black experience. It also challenges colonial imperialist paradigms of black identity which represent blackness one-dimensionally in ways that reinforce and sustain white supremacy’. bell hooks, ‘Postmodern Blackness’, in P. Williams and L Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory, London: Longman, (1993), pp. 421-427, p. 425.

**evanovitch** · 06-21-2010, 10:46 PM

Re: Leopold Sedar Senghor’s Concept of Negritude

Negritude - Philosophy And Practice: Senghor

<span style="font-weight: bold">Senghor</span> differed from <span style="font-weight: bold">Césaire</span> in both his vision and his practice of negritude; <span style="font-weight: bold">for him, opposing the values of Europe to those of the African world led him to valorize life forces as the essential framework grounding his poetic portraits of African civilization</span>. Arriving in Paris in 1928 on a partial scholarship in literary studies, he studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Sorbonne. <span style="font-weight: bold">It was during this period that he began to be influenced by his discussions with Césaire, Maran, McKay, and the Haitian author and intellectual Dr. Jean Price-Mars. It was around this time that Senghor formed the belief that blacks could benefit by assimilating European culture <span style="font-style: italic">without severing themselves from their own cultural origins.</span></span> <span style="font-weight: bold">He promulgated a return to historical and cultural sources through the cultivation of indigenous languages and traditions, and sought to instantiate this value system through the vocabulary, themes, and symbolism of his published poetry</span>. His Hosties noires (Black offerings) and the collection Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (Anthology of new black and Malagasy poetry in French) appeared to mark the centennial of the French abolition of slavery in 1948, joining the already-published collections by Césaire in rehabilitating the perceived "primitive" character of black colonial civilizations.

Senghor's primary themes are alienation and exile, along with a recognition of the central role played by the culture and tradition of his African homeland. <span style="font-weight: bold">The importance of the cultural heritage that he was thus able to describe and define for his fellow blacks cannot be overemphasized</span>. <span style="font-weight: bold">This valorization of a cultural patrimony became a catalyst for black self-[i]realization, demonstrating negritude's capacity to engender pride in authenticity and racial difference.[/i</span>] Much more so than did Césaire's, Senghor's writing stressed claims for a particular black emotional and psychological experience, an affective rapport that draws on a specifically African relationship to the forces of the universe that are separate and apart from those of the West. Where the black African perceives and internalizes in a subjective way (the argument goes), relating to external stimuli in primarily emotional terms, the Westerner, in his turn, relates to the world through analysis and reason. This is not to claim a monopoly on either category for either group, in his view. While not denying the rational power of blacks or the emotive capacities of whites, Senghor does see very real differences in temperament and worldview that determine the ways in which certain cultures view and relate to the world. As limited and reductionist as this argument might seem today, it extended an elaborate and perhaps necessary ontology to the concept of negritude, providing an enabling framework for literally hundreds of African and Caribbean writers to express their vision of their own cultural and historical experience well into the 1960s.

Negritude, then, was in a certain sense a product of its time; despite its own claims to the contrary, its primary shortcoming was perhaps that it drew unconsciously on the binaries of the colonial era. It opened the way for a flood of creative black expression, but it would in time be superseded by alternative approaches to, and theories of, black identity. Critiques that would be leveled at negritude by Frantz Fanon, the Martinican intellectual, and Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian novelist and Nobel laureate, among others, would center on the concept's racial grounding and its implicit essentialisms, contradictions, and limitations. Given the widely varying social and historical situations involved in the development of black culture, any theory that sought to contextualize and mediate this development needed to be deracialized. By moving away from a race-based analysis of culture to one that reflects the range of influences inflecting black historical reality, the differing cultural expressions of black people could be taken into account, catalyzed, and valorized. The theories of Césaire and Senghor would in time give way to those of Glissant and Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant, among others, acknowledging the opening up of the categories of race and culture whose binary, colonially driven structures established the boundaries of blackness even as they sought to endow them with value and meaning.

Read more: Negritude - Philosophy And Practice: Senghor http://science.jrank.org/pages/10462...#ixzz0rXjk1kTk

the concept of Negritude

the concept of Negritude

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

ads