Forms of Protest: Anti-Colonialism and Avant-Gardes in Africa, the Caribbean, and France (review)

The convergence between radical or liberal thought and anti-colonial sentiment, has been, at least since the eighteenth century, an important aspect of French intellectual life, one that has often been remarked upon, but never been systematically investigated. Montaigne's ironic essay on cannibals is the earliest example we have of the interest in "exotic" peoples and their representation in the French collective imaginary, but Voltaire's report in Candide of the Surinam slave's ordeal and his laconic comment ("C'est à ce prix que vous mangez du sucre en Europe") may be said to have finally set the stage for an identification by radical French writers and intellectuals with the victims of French/Western domination and for an effort to generate sympathy for them by invoking the humanist ideals claimed for European civilization. The obvious contradiction between these ideals and the institution of slavery gave impetus to the Abolitionist movement, and inspired Abbé Grégoire's effort to vindicate the humanity of blacks in De la littérature des nègres, a work that provides an early example of the enlistment of literature in the cause of enslaved and colonial populations. Abolitionist literature was not without effect, for as is well known, slavery was abolished by the Convention after the French Revolution. It was Napoleon's attempt in 1802 to re-impose slavery that led to the most epic phase of the Haitian revolution, first led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, and after his capture by Dessalines, culminating in the establishment of Haiti in1804 as the first independent black State of modern times. Napoleon's invasion led to one of the most humiliating episodes in French military history, presaging later colonial disasters such as Dien Bien Phu and the loss of Algeria.

The history evoked above has an immediate relevance here, for it represents the background to this important study by Phyllis Taoua, concerned with the ideological and literary manifestations of the profound impact that the colonial adventure has had on the French national consciousness. There is a sense in which the anti-colonial movement among French writers and intellectuals claims descent from the work of Voltaire and Abbé Grégoire and flows directly out of the moral stances adopted by them. Taoua does not go back that far, for she starts only with Rimbaud in the nineteenth century and his self-definition as "nègre" in "Mauvais Sang"—a poem designed to express a mood of dissidence with the prevailing social order—and his extension of this mood to colonized peoples in the ironically titled "Démocratie" that celebrates what he calls their "révoltes logiques." The idea of a connection between social causes within France and the colonial situation intimated by Rimbaud in this poem came to condition the interaction between left-wing discourse in France, on one hand, and on the other, the main articulations of francophone black literature in the years between the two world wars and beyond.

Perhaps the best illustration of the connection between radical thought in France and black literature in French is the determining role played by Jean-Paul Sartre in the development of Negritude as a movement and as a concept, a role that threw into sharp relief the direct involvement of French intellectuals in the elaboration of the distinctive discourse we now associate with francophone black writers and the subsequent course of their literature. Taoua's chapter on Sartre's role is illuminating, although it might be observed that the chapter could have benefited from a more extended discussion of other texts—apart from "Orphée noir"—directly associated with his personal commitment to the anti-colonial struggle in Africa, in particular the preface to Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, and the magnificent essay on the political thought of Patrice Lumumba.

The significance of Taoua's study resides especially in...