Jean Paul Sartre’s “Orphée noir”: A programmatic reading of Négritude

Abstract

In 1948, Senghor published his Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (Presses Universitaires de France), with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. The current article proposes to take a closer look at this preface, entitled “Orphée noir”, which, in retrospect, offers one of the most original readings of the Negritude movement, and demonstrates a natural prolongation not only of Sartre’s thought, but also of his experience of alienation during the Occupation. The existential experience of the Occupation is structurally similar to the lived experience of colonization, to the extent that both force individuals to face the same pain, harassment and constraint. This is why, it seems to us, Sartre was able to solidly understand, and to a certain degree, develop an authentic attachment to the poetry and literature of the Negritude movement. From this perspective, we permit ourselves to suggest that Sartre’s reading is not simply one among many, but rather a lucid and profound reading of what is still at work in the movement; a programmatic reading, in short. Sartre’s “Orphée noir” reminds us that the Negritude movement cannot be ‘completed’ or assigned to a moment in history – it is all of history. It necessarily continues to inform the higher level of actuality (the becoming) of Black literature, which in turn means one can describe the entire history of that literature following the ternary model of dialectical auto-realization (i.e., the Domination position of the master / the Revolt of the slave / the Overcoming of that contradiction), with all the interesting ideological, philosophical, literary and linguistic variations that result.