Négritude and Humanism (Liberté I)

Introduction

The volume, published in Paris in 1964, is the first of five collections of Senghor’s essays, speeches and lectures under the title Liberté; it gathers texts from 1937 to the early 1960s. Among them is the essay “Ce que l’homme noir apporte” (What the Black Man Contributes, 1939), with its much-quoted formula pairing emotion with the Black world (“nègre”) and reason with the Greeks (“hellène”), which later critics attacked as a reversal of colonial stereotypes. Other texts discuss African art, rhythm, African socialism and the relationship between Négritude and French culture, often with reference to Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin. The book documents how Senghor’s idea of Négritude changed from the 1930s to his presidency.

Connections

Builds on

• Creative Evolution1907 · Henri Bergson

Taken up in

• African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude2007 · Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Criticized in

• Léopold Sédar Senghor: Négritude or Servitude?1971 · Marcien Towa
• African Philosophy: Myth and Reality1976 · Paulin Hountondji