The seemingly ubiquitous notion of objectivity being the only form of authentic knowledge is one of the deepest legacies of colonialism. For the colonial subject this, combined with the gaping lack of history, identity, and connection with the past, forms, and constructs their relationship with themselves and to those around them. It is this void that Negritude attempts to fulfill by positioning itself as an alternative to the ubiquity of objectivity.

Senghor makes a case for “African Ontology” emphasizing its moral law and aesthetic as a response to “modern humanism that European philosophers and scientists have been preparing since the end of the nineteenth century”. Negritude, in this sense, makes its case against the idea that the world, and one’s relation to it, must, and can only be, expressed empirically and quantifiably.

To illustrate this point, Senghor’s analysis of aesthetics and language is crucial. In contrasting the way with which European thought distinguishes between the body and the soul, and how this translates into the art they have historically emphasized (realism), to how African aesthetic, and language, makes no such distinction emphasizes the idea that an alternative way of being exists and can be adhered to.

Similarly, in emphasizing the rituals, beliefs, and even “intermediacy of ancestral beings” Senghor attempts to re-establish a severed link between the colored subject and their past and in doing so attempts to instill a sense of pride and continuity that the subject thoroughly lacks.

One can argue that such a link never really existed, that Senghor’s idealization of locating “Africanness” in the past is ahistorical, and that his praise of African artform being picked up by European artists only feeds into the exoticization of African culture.

Such a critique, however, misses the fundamental point of Negrtiude and, ironically, uses the very categories of objectivity that Negritude seeks to provide an alternative to. Negritude is a humanism for each and every subject that lacks a past, a narrative, and a connection to those before them. It is a humanism that is able to link the poet from the African Diaspora, the inhabitant of the African continent and colored subjects around the world robbed of their identity and sense of being by “diametrically opposing” them to the rational, scientific, quantifiable, empirical ways of being that have been thrust upon them.

It is an alternative way of being in the world that opposes the calculability of life, that opposes the notion of the rational, utilitarian, actor in the market, and that opposes the notion that such a calculability is the only way to be in the world.

By elucidating upon the African past, untainted by colonial intervention, and especially by emphasizing how African art “is not a separate activity, in itself or for itself . . .” but a “social activity, a technique of living” Senghor, invites us to consider that in order to decolonize one must be provided alternatives that can prove to be equally as valid as objectivity that the Western world parades as their contribution to humanity.  

For Cabral, there exists a striking commonality between foreign domination and its antithesis, national liberation, that of their understanding of, and engagement with, culture.

Calling culture, a vigorous manifestation of the materialist and historical reality of society, Cabral develops this notion further by analogizing it with a plant. The roots of which plunge into the material reality of the soil but, nevertheless, whose growth and vitality depends on factors beyond just its foundation based in forces of production. He uses this analogy to highlight just how dynamic the manifestation of culture is, and this analogy is always at the background of his speech, sometimes represented by an influenced flower, sometimes as the very seed of popular, mass indigenous resistance.

To describe culture in these terms allows for an understanding of the organic nature of the entire enterprise. Culture to Cabral is not static, in fact, he believes that culture untainted by foreign domination and intervention is on a trajectory guided by an organic process, like a plant that takes sustenance from its roots and grows if the external conditions are conducive. Imperialist domination, however, is the negation of, what he describes as, the true historical process of the oppressed people.

The Imperialist domination is only exacted by, and maintained, Cabral argues, by the harnessing, and subsequent creation of, particular manifestations of culture. Cabral’s notion of culture, and how it can be manipulated, is inextricably linked with class. He illustrates this relationship fully when he speaks of two broad categories of colonized peoples, the indigenous elite and the rural leaders.

The former is assimilated into the oppressor’s culture to such an extent that their own culture, their roots if one is to follow the analogy, becomes alienating for them. Strangers in their own land, they adopt the habits, sophistication, and tastes of the oppressors to the extent that they may even simply become unaware of the existence of a people, just like them, whom they share roots with. These assimilated elite, ones who Fanon would say to possess Black Skins but White Masks, are able to rise up the ranks and often take up the leadership of the national liberation struggle itself, something Cabral emphatically cautions against, in that their cultural alienation remains consistent long after foreign powers are cast off and this proves damning for all national liberation movements. The second category is that of the privileged groups in rural areas, they are similarly co-opted by the oppressive foreign regime but an emphasis in class is paramount in understanding their importance. Their cultural assimilation may be close to nil, but colonial administrations are able to harness, and sometimes create, their cultural authority over popular masses. Knowing full well of the dangers of the popular masses if they manifest anything culturally significant, colonial administrations support and protect the prestige of cultural influence of the indigenous ruling classes by granting them material privileges.

It is not to say that the groups discussed above are not interested in national liberation, given the material privileges that they exact via the oppressive regime, but, in fact, are almost always at the forefront of the struggle. Cabral is deeply suspicious of this and argues that their cultural assimilation, alienation, and supported cultural authority, allows for them to hijack the resistance and maintain the very structures that informed colonial oppression in the first place. This analysis is prophetic, in that it cuts across almost all instances of colonial administration and the subsequent national liberation movements they give rise to, consequences of which we see in almost all “independent” colonial states to this day.

Cabral makes a case that dominated peoples can only be culturally free when i) they understand the positive contributions of the oppressor’s culture, ii) of other cultures, iii) recapture the commanding heights of their own culture, and iv) equally reject the harmful influences of foreign culture. In this way, the dynamic nature of culture is revealed. He is simultaneously able to make an argument for the manifestation of a universal culture of resistance, one that does not necessarily rely on its roots alone, but also communicates with the sentiments of other liberation struggles, but, nevertheless, has it its own distinct character due to its distinct historical backdrop.

Cabral’s diagnosis of the problem is extremely sound, but his prescription is suspect of utopianism. The solution, Cabral thinks, is to, in a sense, cast away the very phenomenon that worsened and tightened colonial grip on the minds of the indigenous peoples. To meet this end, the national liberation struggle, one of a mass, popular kind, is indispensable and becomes a cultural phenomenon in itself.

The resistance, for Cabral, can bring together various social categories of people, including the two groups described above, into the fold of a single converging, popular, indigenous and mass national cultural force in the mold of an armed struggle. Through this armed resistance, itself, the indigenous ruling elite will become aware of the existence of their brethren, ones they could not even identify before, and the laboring masses will be able to cross the boundary of their village when they will see their indispensable role in the national liberation movement.

To Cabral, the national liberation will become a cultural reality in itself, clinging to which the identity of the entire indigenous populace, irrespective of their historical background, or if the analogy still flows, their roots, will take shape, and in doing so oppressed peoples will be liberated from their oppressor’s grip.

Thunderously the band struck the International and the Russians proudly sang in their own language, “Arise the children of starvation; Arise the wretched of the world…” I too for the first time, felt in the red flag a symbol of victory over the exploiting system.

Dada Amir Haider Khan finds himself in a strange land, with its strange ideas and is confronted by the strange ways with which the people around him go about their strange lives. A complete inversion has taken place. The very same pigment that is so threatening to the “Old World” is celebrated in a land that has, in a way, formed an alternative World Government.

In an even stranger university, that is set to export the revolution beyond this newly initiated center, groundbreaking work is being done. A thorough revamping of any conception of a curriculum is observed. The Eastern Soviet students’ main task is to consolidate power and to build Socialism within their own space but the group that Dada is a member of, one that is as wide in scope as the multiple peoples it represents, has a far more complex task at hand. The group must assist in the national liberation movements for their brethren back home and organize a communist party in their own country and with this bring back the strangeness that Dada finds fascinating and one that he falls in love with.

University Curriculum designed to reach this end gives Dada a spatial imagination. For centuries the only geography that mattered was the link between the colony and metropole but for the first time there is displacement and a new center has emerged that individuals like Dada, and the people he mentions in his memoir, gravitate to. The new center reels people in from corners of the world, ones so disconnected from one another geographically yet connected by the same exploitative system that has been imposed on them. There is, for once, a shred of optimism and it is this optimism that is at the very foundation of Soviet Propaganda posters so characteristic of the time.

The posters are surreal, the thought of colored men hand in hand with their white comrades with wide smiles on their faces and life in their eyes lit by a shared purpose of improving the well-being of all they know is a complete inversion of what Dada has known, has seen and has experienced.

For the first time, he has been granted recognition, self-worth, pride and, most importantly, a sense of dignity. The very essence of his humanness that had been denied to him all his life is returned to its rightful place and this is the promise that ties all Soviet Propaganda posters together.

Dada experiences this triumphant feeling for the first time when the red flag is hoisted on the Russian Captains command, replacing the old one. For the red flag to be hoisted up the old Italian flag must be brought down, and Dada vividly recounts the former, now replaced, Italian Captain’s reaction.

One could see in the face of the Italian Captain that he, after witnessing the lowering of the Italian flag, felt as though he had lost his little kingdom, he looked depressed.

In the same way that the Soviet propaganda posters are able to communicate the optimism and the promise of triumph that Dada holds so dear, anti-Soviet propaganda is able to reach into the depths of the “loss” that the Italian Captain has felt.

This “loss” can often translate into fear of the bizarre, and strange changes that may unfold if the Soviet dream is realized, and it is this very fear that needs to be understood to make sense of the, perhaps, equally sophisticated techniques with which anti-Soviet propaganda became so effective.

Artwork produced to counter Soviet Propaganda leading up to the Afghan-Soviet War of 1979 is able to communicate this sense of “loss” and is subsequently channeled into feelings of fear and hatred. The strangeness that Dada feels an unwavering optimism toward is translated to a threat to the very way of life of the Mujahedeen.

It is in these subtle ways that propaganda is able to reach its ends and is able to stir emotions strong enough for people to risk their lives to reach Moscow and for the Mujahideen to be mobilized in the name of God’s work.