The Co-Centrality of Racial Conciliation in Negritude Literature

There is a disconcerting gap between the texts of African anticolonial literature of the period 1940-60, on one hand, and their literary appreciation, on the other. This is particularly evident in the texts of Negritude literature. Critics' evaluation of these works overemphasized vitriol and remonstrance to the conventional neglect of the theme of racial reconciliation.. It appears curious that in schools, colleges, and universities, the themes of political domination, economic exploitation, anticlericalism, colonial prejudice, and brutality continue to be generally presented as synonymous with African anticolonial literature of the period under review.

This paper seeks to underline the theme of racial conciliation as equally central in the works of that period. The curious omission of so important a dimension of African anticolonial literature meant that the theme of conciliation was pushed out of critical discourse. The pertinent question here is: Was the vitriol of angry protest not contemporaneous with the herald of racial conciliation and harmony? Did they not constitute the two feet of the steps on the road to a new multiracial community of equals? The expression of the themes of historical rediscovery, cultural self-affirmation, anthropological self-celebration, and ideological revival in the poetry, novels, and theater of this period was a legitimate and understandable demonstration of "protest against exploitation and racial discrimination, of nostalgic evocation of Africa's past and vision of her future" (Senanu and Vincent 3). Regrettably, countless critics of these texts have relegated to the background the dynamics of the element of "future vision" as regards interrace relations.

Racial reconciliation is highlighted as the thematic antithesis of anticolonial protest literature. The intention here is not to destroy the general purpose of earlier criticisms of those works. This focus will equally present modifications by introducing new perspectives and new strands and patterns whose overall effect on African literary texts and their criticism will be reinforcing and renascent.

The hostility-centered approach has been characterized by comments inspired by anticolonial sentiments then in vogue:

Our novelists reject among other things, the European's greed--"A white man has never wanted anything except to make money; his arrogance--what do they bring you? Nothing. What do they leave you? Nothing but scorn for your own people, for those who gave life. His hypocrisy--They only seek to fool you; his injustice--Even those days l knew that all colonial systems have one thing in common: the cudgel. The italicized rejoinders come from two novels by Mongo Beti of Cameroon: Ville Cruelle and Mission Terminée. (Cook 22)

Willfried Feuser rightly remarked on this approach to African Literature in these terms: "As a critical theory it underestimates the social and geographical determinants of literature while setting up racial militancy as an artistic yardstick" (124-25). From whatever angle we look at it the fact still remains that the question "Where do we go from here--chaos or community?" (King 1) was given serious thought by the authors' texts but critics have not accorded it the prominence it deserves. The answer to that question pointed forcefully to a vibrant hope for racial harmony, equality, and conciliation in a postcolonial Africa.

The establishment of the co-centrality of the theme of racial conciliation requires that we reappraise widely prevalent but insubstantial and misleading opinions about the concept of Negritude and its literary aesthetics. The first is the perception of Negritude as a form of "antiracist racism" in which the Negro is "a hawker of rebellion" (Sartre 48). For Sartre and those who share his opinion, therefore, the "Negro" predicament, traditionally attributed singularly to European slavery and colonization, should produce a backlash that cannot but be racist and anti-European.

In this regard even the use of European languages as the medium of expression was singularly a tactical instrument of struggle. Hostility, and precisely mutual racial hostility, is torn open and becomes complete in this literature. Sartre asserts again: "To the guile of the...