Rereading Aimé Césaire: Negritude as Creolization

We need to reassess our reading of Negritude literature. Justice is not done to the literary, philosophical, and political movement founded by Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor when it is simply considered an essentialist reversal of colonial essentialism. When Senghor declares that Negritude is not an essence but an existence, he is precisely calling attention to the fact that its literature was produced during more than fifty years, with contradictions, rectifications, palinodes. This contribution is an invitation to reread Negritude in general, and Césaire’s works in particular, as a movement and not an essence. It is a reflection on Césaire’s latest work, Nègre je suis, nègre je resterai (Negro I Am, Negro I Shall Remain), which is a response to those who considered Negritude something of the past to be superseded by the movement of creolization. What that response says is that Negritude is creolization.