La violation d'un pays et autres écrits anticolonialistes by Lamine Senghor (review)

The riots that took place in France during the autumn of 2005 drew widespread public attention to the appalling economic and social circumstances in banlieues housing projects. Some observers focused on class as a way of interpreting this inequality, while others attributed this to longstanding patterns of discrimination associated with ethnicity. New racial advocacy organizations were born, most notably the Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires (CRAN) and the Indigènes de la République, and heated debates followed pertaining to the treatment of visible minorities in French society today. Since this time, several influential works have been published on what is now commonly referred to as "Black France." Yet, historical contextualization has often been lacking in these contemporary discussions, which is why David Murphy's edition of Lamine Senghor's complete work is such an invaluable resource: "[Lamine Senghor] mérite d'être mieux connue d'abord par ceux qui souhaitent tracer l'histoire intellectuelle et politique des Noirs en France, domaine où il joua un rôle indéniable de pionnier; mais aussi par ceux qui veulent élaborer une histoire plus complexe de la pensée anticolonialiste de l'entre-deux-guerres" (xvi-xvii) '[Lamine Senghor] deserves to be better known, in particular by those who wish to trace the intellectual and political history of the black community in France, an area in which he indisputably played a pioneering role, but also by those who wish to develop a more complex history of anti-colonial thought in the interwar period.'

Lamine Senghor (1889-1927) was a veteran of the First World War, one of the many tiraillleur sénégalais who displayed such selfless and memorable bravery in defense of France. Having survived the war itself, he would die less than a decade later from complications resulting from the lung damage incurred when his battalion was gassed in 1917. However, his activities and body of work—now available to us as a result of extensive archival research (Aix-en-Provence, Dakar, Amsterdam), augmented in this edition with an insightful introduction and a comprehensive bibliography—played a foundational role in anti-colonial thinking and in the conceptualization of racial identity in France during the interwar period. Likewise, Lamine Senghor also established the groundwork for the subsequent négritude movement and the groundbreaking works that such influential thinkers as Frantz Fanon and Léopold Sédar Senghor would later produce, while also shaping racial thought in a broader context. Murphy's introduction outlines the major contours of Senghor's intellectual development: from his early ties with communism to a more encompassing Panafricanist internationalism, as the president of the Comité de défense de la race nègre (CDRN), the first autonomous black organization in France committed to the defense of the black community, to his involvement in 1927 with the breakaway Ligue de défense de la race nègre (LDRN).

The importance of establishing organizations that specifically targeted black populations and promoted and defended their interests cannot be underestimated. Developments and maturation in Lamine Senghor's thinking can be traced through his contributions to publications such as Paria, La Voix des Nègres, and La Race Nègre that provided a space for discussion of issues relating to blacks, in whose columns "Senghor tente de tracer le lien entre exploitation économique, domination et identité. . . . La masse du monde noir se constitiue de 'nègres,' ceux qui sont opprimés, ceux qui refusent de coopérer avec le système capitaliste-impérialiste" (xxxvi-xxxvii) 'Senghor attempts to trace the links between economic exploitation, colonial domination and questions of identity. . . . The great mass of black people are 'negroes', those who are oppressed, those who refuse to co-operate with the capitalist-imperialist system,' Lamine Senghor and activists of his generation endeavored to "créer un langage politique et culturel qui réunirait les différents peuples colonisés en prônant de nouvelles formes de solidarité" (lx...