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Leopold Sedar Senghor: Prospects and Perspectives

Leopold Sedar Senghor: Prospects and Perspectives

Publié le par Marielle Macé (Source : Journal on African Philosophy)

 

Call for Papers

Journal on African Philosophy

 

Papers will be accepted in French and in English.

 

Leopold Sedar Senghor: Prospects and Perspectives

 

Since the 1940s, most of the major critics of Negritude analyze Leopold Sedar Senghor’s oeuvre through two opposing perceptions.  It is either presented as a legitimate resistance against the colonial system or ­as a compliant leniency towards Western cultural domination.  Marcien Towa and Stanislas Adotevi, for instance, refer to Senghor as a proponent of assimilation. Janet Vaillant portrays him as Black, French, and African, while Lilyan Kesteloot presents him as a champion of Negro cultural values.  Although these critics have such radically opposed interpretations of Senghor’s scholarship, they seem to converge in how they approach his work.  These critics limit Negritude in space and time and, following the evolution of Senghor’s discourse in his poetic oeuvre, they analyze Negritude as a black francophone nationalist movement that started as an anti-racist racism in 1932, developed into a theory of métissage after 1948, and became a means of nation building after 1960. 

            The confinement exercised by the critics’ interpretation is a direct result of their constant focus on Senghor’s poetic production, while they fail to take into account the totality of his long, rich, and complex philosophical work.  In effect, the traditional tripartition of Negritude under which Senghor’s oeuvre has been analyzed since the 1940’s, corresponds to the publication of his main poetic oeuvres, Chants d’Ombres and Hosties Noires, Ethiopiques, and Nocturnes.  This relation to Senghor’s texts limits the possible meanings of the concept of Negritude to a reaction to colonization.  Thus, interesting aspects of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s theory such as his epistemology, his ontology, and his groundbreaking race theory have seldom been studied. 

It is important to note, however, that the traditional anti-colonial reading of Negritude has been superseded, at the close of the 20th century and at the beginning of this century, by new, albeit rare, readings of Senghor’s oeuvre.  Contemporary scholars such as Abiola Irele, Obi Oguejiofor, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Donna Jones analyze Senghor’s oeuvre as a philosophical interpretation of the world that needs to be placed in its intellectual context in order to be fully appreciated.  Following Abiola Irele’s call to read Negritude beyond the anti-colonial paradigm, these scholars announce a new way of reading Negritude as a philosophy that proposes a particular Negro epistemology and a progressive race theory.  Although still rare, these new approaches to Senghorian Negritude have paved the way for a more complex understanding of the movement beyond the colonial and anti-colonial paradigms.  

It is time to expand these latter scholars’ readings of Negritude, through a hermeneutics of Senghor’s oeuvre, particularly his ontology, his epistemology, his constructive race theory, his critique of the universalization of the provincial Western subject, and his eulogy of the primacy of intuition.  Such a perspective may lead to the presentation of Negritude as a reiteration of the Western modern paradigm, a blackening of the universal Western subject.  It can also, on the contrary, lead to the acknowledgement that Senghor’s philosophy remains one of the most important intellectual movements of the 20th and 21st centuries as it critiques Western modern philosophy and the universalization of Western reason, continues early African descended scholars’ theories, such as those of W. E. B. Du Bois, while constantly questioning and expanding contemporary discourses such as Glissant’s Antillanité, and Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, etc.  In either case, such a perspective makes possible a more in-depth analysis of Leopold Sedar Senghor’s oeuvre beyond the simplistic and reactionary anti-colonial dialectic in which it has been constricted.  It is along these lines that eighty years after Senghor’s first philosophical productions and half a century after the independence of most African countries from Western powers, this special issue of the Journal on African Philosophy is an opportunity to reveal the complexity of Senghor’s body of work, and to break down the ideological barriers that limit the Senegalese philosopher’s rich intellectual endeavors to a mere reaction to colonialism. 

Proposals are invited that address new perspectives on Senghor’s philosophy through one of the following categories:

 

Negritude as Philosophy

Negritude and Philosophy

Negritude as Cultural Anthropology

Negritude is not dead

Post-Negritude?

Negritude and Modern Philosophy/ers

Negritude and Decolonial Theory

Negritude and Postcolonial Theory

Negritude and Ontology

Negritude and Epistemology

Negritude and Contemporary Race Theory

Negritude and Afro-centricity

Rethinking Blackness

Race, Reason, and the Idea of the Negro in Leopold Sedar Senghor’s Philosophy

From Negritude to Créolité

Métissages

Negritude: A Eurocentric Philosophy?

Negritude: An Afri-centered Philosophy?

 

Papers will be accepted in French and English.

 

The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 1 May 2013

Finished papers must be submitted by 1 August 2013

This special edition will appear in November of 2013. Authors should submit manuscripts electronically, prepared as a Word document attachment, and emailed to . Authors should include their full name, affiliation, and address for email correspondence with their submission.

 

Further enquiries can be addressed to Dr. Cheikh Thiam (thiam.5@osu.edu) or Dr. Azuka Nzegwu, managing editor (azuka@africaresource.com).

 

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