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Léopold Sédar Senghor

1906–2001

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

For Senghor, African culture has its own way of knowing, through feeling, rhythm and participation, and it belongs in a shared civilisation of all peoples – a view Soyinka, Towa and Hountondji criticised as essentialist.

Placement

African & Africana Philosophy · Africa south of the Sahara · Aesthetics, Society & History, Politics & Law

Poet, co-founder of Négritude and first president of Senegal: African culture as a distinct mode of knowing by participation and rhythm.

Key ideas

  • Négritude
  • African socialism
  • Civilization of the universal

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Influence

Influenced by 4

  • Karl Marx

    influenced by

    Senghor read the young Marx as a humanist and adapted his socialism to African communal traditions, rejecting class struggle and atheism (Nation et voie africaine du socialisme, 1961). L. S. Senghor, “Marxisme et humanisme”, La Revue socialiste 19 (1948); Nation et voie africaine du socialisme (1961)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Karl Marx › 1818–1883

  • Henri Bergson

    influenced by

    Senghor drew on Bergson’s intuition, set against analytic intellect, to describe an African way of knowing by participation (‘Ce que l’homme noir apporte’, 1939). L. S. Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte” (1939), in Liberté I: Négritude et humanisme (1964); S. B. Diagne, Bergson postcolonial (2011)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Henri Bergson › 1859–1941

  • Alain Locke

    influenced by

    Senghor echoed Locke’s The New Negro (1925) when he called the poets of his Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (1948) ‘Nègres-Nouveaux’. L. S. Senghor (ed.), Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948); A. Locke (ed.), The New Negro (1925); A. Mangeon, Études littéraires africaines 29 (2010)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Alain Locke › 1885–1954

  • Paulette Nardal

    influenced by

    Senghor wrote in 1960 that he and his friends had come into contact with Black American writers in 1929–34 through Paulette Nardal and her literary salon. Senghor, letter of February 1960, quoted in L. Kesteloot, Black Writers in French, p. 56; T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, Negritude Women (2002), p. 17

    Evidence: AI draft

    Paulette Nardal › 1896–1985

Influenced 1

  • Souleymane Bachir Diagne

    influenced

    Diagne interpreted Senghor’s Négritude as a philosophy of African art and defended it against the charge of essentialism. S. B. Diagne, Léopold Sédar Senghor : l’art africain comme philosophie (2007; English African Art as Philosophy, 2011); SEP “Négritude” (Diagne)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Souleymane Bachir Diagne › b. 1955

Criticism

Criticized by 4

  • Jean-Paul Sartre

    criticised by

    In “Black Orpheus”, his preface to Senghor’s anthology of new Black poetry (1948), Sartre hailed négritude as revolutionary poetry but called it an “anti-racist racism”, the weak moment of a dialectic destined to be overcome – the reading Fanon rejected. J.-P. Sartre, “Orphée noir”, preface to L. S. Senghor (ed.), Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980

  • Frantz Fanon

    criticised by

    Fanon warned that négritude risks fixing culture as an essence instead of joining the living struggle for national liberation (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961). F. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961), ch. 4 “Sur la culture nationale”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Frantz Fanon › 1925–1961

  • Marcien Towa

    criticised by

    Towa argued that Senghor’s opposition of African emotion to European reason accepts the colonial image of the African and turns subjection into an identity. M. Towa, Léopold Sédar Senghor : négritude ou servitude ? (1971); D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (1994)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Marcien Towa › 1931–2014

  • Paulin Hountondji

    criticised by

    Hountondji counted Senghor’s négritude as ethnophilosophy: it ascribes a fixed collective mentality to Africans, repeating colonial stereotypes in a positive key (Sur la « philosophie africaine », 1976). P. Hountondji, Sur la « philosophie africaine » (1976); L. S. Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte” (1939)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Paulin Hountondji › 1942–2024

Works

Position

With Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas, Senghor founded Négritude, a movement that reclaimed the cultural values of the Black world against colonial contempt. In his poetry and essays he described an African way of knowing that grasps the world less by analytical distance than by participation, emotion and rhythm. Critics, among them Hountondji and Wole Soyinka, accused him of repeating colonial stereotypes in a positive key. Senghor himself understood Négritude as a contribution to a coming “civilization of the universal,” to which every culture brings its own gifts. Politically he advocated an African socialism rooted in communal traditions.

Life & context

Senghor was born in 1906 in Joal, Senegal, and went to Paris to study, where he met Aimé Césaire. In 1935 he became the first African to pass the agrégation. He taught in France, was a prisoner of war, then deputy in the French National Assembly. From 1960 to 1980 he was Senegal’s first president. In 1983 he was elected to the Académie française. He died in Normandy in 2001.

Further main works

  • Chants d’ombre (1945)
  • Éthiopiques (1956)

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

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