An Equivocal Negritude: Léon-Gontran Damas’s Lyric Masterpiece, Black-Label (1956)

Damas was long considered one of the three leading Negritude writers, along with Césaire and Senghor, but in recent years he has been increasingly, unjustifiably overlooked. His lyric masterpiece, the long poem Black-Label, has never been thoroughly analyzed. After contrasting Damas’s poetic vision to that of his peers, this article explains and illustrates his striking originality and esthetic complexity in using verbal repetitions—notably anaphora, local framing, and pervasive refrains—to depict the collective emotional trauma of the black diaspora, slavery, and racial prejudice. Damas’s subtle modulation of anguish and sarcasm explains why Henry Louis Gates’s and Anthony Appiah’s authoritative Africana encyclopedia credits him with having elaborated the most telling and universal representation of “the rising international black consciousness after World War II.” The personal psychodrama of a ceaseless struggle against abjection alternates with a firm refusal to forget or forgive historical injustices, current persecutions by white racists, and the economic exploitation inherent in capitalist globalization.