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| omnipoetics:cesaire_on_negritude [2025/02/05 06:20] – [Biography of René Depestre] rachel | omnipoetics:cesaire_on_negritude [2025/04/24 00:45] (current) – [References on Negritude:] admin |
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| ====== Aimé Césaire & René Depestre, "On Negritude" ====== | ====== On Negritude, by Aimé Césaire & René Depestre ====== |
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| <fs x-small>__Graffiti of Aimé Césaire \\ | <fs x-small>__Graffiti of Aimé Césaire \\ |
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| Text goes here \\ | Negritude began as a collective "resistance to the politics of assimilation" (Rothenberg and Rothenberg 52). As a response to the struggle of the Haitians (a struggle which sought independence solely politically, not culturally), this resistance took back the unfavored or "offensive" terms used by Frenchman at the time as insults, "negre, as a term of defiance" (Rothenberg and Rothenberg 53).\\ |
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| Text goes here \\ | Cesaire states on page 53 that there was a real history of what he would call Negritude in Haiti during their independence movement (Rothenberg and Rothenberg). Haiti, in Cesaire's view, "is the country where Negro people stood up for the first time, affirming their determination to shape a new world, a free world." ((Rothenberg and Rothenberg, eds. Symposium of the Whole 53))\\ |
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| | According to Cesaire, Negritude is very individual, as "everyone has his own Negritude". He says that Negritude, to him, is an embracing of "a concrete rather than an abstract", the abandonment of the "atmosphere of rejection" and "an inferiority complex" which has developed in black people, and that there must be established "a concrete consciousness of what we are—that is, of the first fact of our lives: that we are black; that we were black and have a history, a history that contains certain cultural elements of great value; and that Negroes were not, as you put it, bom yesterday, because there have been beautiful and important black civilizations" (Rothenberg and Rothenberg 54)\\ |
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| | It is important to state this was not the first movement for black independent identity (Rothenberg and Rothenberg 55), particularly there was a notable one during the interwar period (1919-1936). It is also important to note that Cesaire states this movement is intersectional, also linking with the issues of class raised by the Martinican Communists at the bottom of page 55 (Rothenberg and Rothenberg).\\ |
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| Text goes here \\ | Aimé Césaire was a poet and influential politician from Martinique who lived from 1913 to 2008. As many influential postcolonialists from the French colonies, he was educated in Paris and got engaged in the political scene of Martinique after the Second World War.\\ |
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| Text goes here \\ | According to [[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aime-Cesaire|the Encyclopedia Brittanica]], he became a member of government on behalf of Martinique, joined the Communist Party, and fell in love with surrealism as a tool to liberate himself from traditional colonial uses of language. This newfound expression led him to poem against the colonial regime and in favor of a free African Martinique. This use of poetry and surrounding movement became the backbone for the Negritude movement. Later in life (circa 1963), he switched his preferred method of literary creation from poems to theatrical productions, and from Negritude to Black Militantism. His two plays, La Tragédie du Roi Christophe (1963) and Une Saison au Congo (1966) are unapologetically political tragedies which show the overlying motif of the black power movement in Africa always ending in failure.\\ |
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| ======Biography of René Depestre====== | ======Biography of René Depestre====== |
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| René Depestre is a currently living (aged 98) Haitian-French poet. He was born in 1926, and from the age of 10 was raised by his maternal grandmother. He was a communist and anti-French colonialism activist. Although Haiti and the Caribbean is a central focus of his work, he lived in exile in Cuba and settled in France. According to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Depestre| his biography on Wikipedia]], "One of his most famous collections of poetry is Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works." These themes can be seen in works that are available online, including the political in [[https://genius.com/Rene-depestre-mere-caraibe-caribbean-mother-annotated|Mère Caraïbe / Caribbean Mother]], and [[https://www.cerisepress.com/02/06/haiti-adrift#french|Hàïti a la dérive / Haiti Adrift]]; the erotic in [[https://hdn.org/rene-depestre-the-enchantment-of-a-rainy-hour/|The Enchantment of a Rainy Hour]], and a fusion of all three in [[https://archive.org/details/hadrianainallmyd0000depe|Hadriana in all my dreams : a novel]]. | René Depestre is a currently living (aged 98) Haitian-French poet. He was born in 1926, and from the age of 10 was raised by his maternal grandmother. He was a communist and an activist against French colonialism. Although Haiti and the Caribbean are central to his work, he lived in exile in Cuba and has settled in France. According to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Depestre| his biography on Wikipedia]], //"One of his most famous collections of poetry is Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works."// These themes can be seen in works that are available online, including the political in [[https://genius.com/Rene-depestre-mere-caraibe-caribbean-mother-annotated|Mère Caraïbe / Caribbean Mother]], and [[https://www.cerisepress.com/02/06/haiti-adrift#french|Hàïti a la dérive / Haiti Adrift]]; the erotic in [[https://hdn.org/rene-depestre-the-enchantment-of-a-rainy-hour/|The Enchantment of a Rainy Hour]]; and a fusion of all three in [[https://archive.org/details/hadrianainallmyd0000depe|Hadriana in all my dreams : a novel]]. |
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| * [[https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/negritude-movement/|Micklin, A. (2008, June 29). Negritude Movement. BlackPast.org]] | * [[https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/negritude-movement/|Micklin, A. (2008, June 29). Negritude Movement. BlackPast.org]] |
| * [[https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/negritude|Négritude - Art Term, contextualized by the Tate]] | * [[https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/negritude|Négritude - Art Term, contextualized by the Tate]] |
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| | {{tag>French Pan-African Haiti Martinique Negritude Interview Theory Postcolonial Symposium_Of_The_Whole Aimé_Césaire René_Depestre}} |
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