Negritude as a universal ethic

Before establishing Senghor’s position on Negritude as a universal ethic, it is necessary to situate negritude in itself, that is, as an alternative. Although it is historically contextualized within a certain framework of Black identity, it may be useful to read it simply as another way of being. It offers a different vantage point from which to imagine the human, not the black, but the human. A distinct point of origin, it is the re imagination of oneself in terms of their own authentic being and traces itself back to a beginning.

Negritude is an acknowledgement by the individual to find within themselves the possibility of moving beyond the state of object-hood. And in the case of the African, to embody an ontological resistance. It is a sense then, reactionary. Senghor’s vision speaks largely to Cesaire’s; a resurgence of black existence before the white man. They hearken to an African rhythm, one that roots nature to man, and man to God. A synthesis between the spirit and body, it enables a transcendent connection to the source of ‘life forces’ as he puts it. Senghor sees the African as sensitive to the external world, to the material aspect of beings and things. Beyond this there is also a deliberate emphasis placed on myth, magic and folktale. Art becomes a method through which to assert this rhythm, this uniqueness of blackness. It embodies a conception of ‘self affirmation’, of a previous model which needs to be reinstated, it is therefore tied to a past.

But whose past? This becomes a point of contention for the modern negro. Where does this past exist and who is it now for? This quality of Senghor’s and even Cesaire’s vision places Negritude on a relatively more particularistic plane, whereby it becomes slightly difficult to access. The past they are trying to reawaken is no longer in existence. It has fallen into the recesses of time, pushed out of the collective black conscience. However, one can argue that this is precisely the point. Senghor’s description of Negritude speaks to Cesaire’s because he is trying to rebirth the elements that made the past their own. His attempt in establishing the African as more wholesome than the white man, being able to pass from ‘existing to being’, is rooted in a concept that is inherently linked to the mystic past. One that although difficult to remember can be re imagined and instilled in the contemporary memory of the African.

He speaks of re creating the universe and contemporary world in a more harmonious way by making use of African humor, to adopt a different aesthetic, a new standard of beauty. Such a conception of negritude is what establishes it as universal. The African rhythm expressed through the harmony of color, movement and shape within art, incorporates a new face of the universe, extending beyond the continent and reaching the diaspora. This new face carries new meaning, instilling a common spirit within the children of Africa, wherever they may be, bringing them back home to the life forces embedded within the land. Thus, it is through Senghor that Africa is discovered, brought into the black conscience and forced through.

However, it is also important to respond to the criticism against Senghor, of Negritude being built solely as a response to Western humanism. Reducing the invocation and celebration of African art as a source of the white man’s pleasure, as if the black man has to prove himself and will never measure up to the intellectual freedom, is ignorant. To follow such a pattern of thought is to overlook the nuance in black reality, and the nature of the violence that took place. By labeling Senghor as nativist and narcissistic, one risks reducing other such decolonizing attempts of creating new humanisms as futile. Of course to a great extent this is a response to the other, but it is solely the other in question which has inherently been the nativist.

Negritude in Senghor’s mind adopts the universal through the particular. He shows how this magical African rhythm sets into motion a process whereby art is able to culminate a sense of harmony; connecting man to god, nature to man, and nature with itself. It seeks to make the world whole again, showing another way out. This takes Negritude beyond just being a reaction to the white man, the other. It sets for itself a place in the universe, it becomes recognizable for those that yearn for some African identity, it invokes pride in blackness. It ensures that in the end … there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory.