Aimé Césaire (1913-2008): Architect of Négritude

I' I' AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) ARCHITECT I' OF NEGRITUDE Locksley Edmondson O n his death (April 17, 2008) at the age of ninety-four in hi s native land , Martinique, Airne Cesaire was especially remembered and revered as the founding father of "Neg ritude," a Black cultural mo vement developed in the 1930s by Fran cop hone literary pioneers (and dissidents) from Caribbean and African components of the French empire, then resident in Paris. Two of Cesaire's prominent collaborators were Leop old Senghor (who eventually became independent Senegal's first President in 1960) and Leon Damas from French Guiana. It has often been said th at th e term "Negritude" first appeared in print in Cesa ire's epic book-length poem , Cahier d'un retour all pays natal (Notebook of a Return to /IlY Native Landi, published in 1939. Whether or not that claim is accurate, it is beyond dispute that it was th rough Cesaire's articulation that Negritude initially acquired internati onal recognition and legitimacy as a school of thought representing on e of the most significant cultural movements for Black World dignity and liberation. From his Caribbean island native land of Martinique, where he lived for mo st of his life and where he EI::lm!I Journal of Contemporary African Art died, Cesaire felt compelled to embrace not only his ancestral "land" of Africa, but also the wider lands of the African diaspor a and indeed the world of Global Africa. What was there in Martinique, a very small island of 425 square miles with an estimated 2007 population of 439,000, that produced a giant like Aime Cesaire (or, for that matter, Frantz Fanon, who was taught by Cesaire in his earlier career as a high school teacher)? A critical factor is that the modern (post-fifteenth century) Caribbean was essentially an invented region, primarily through th e cum ulative and rein fo rcing impositions of the transatlantic enslavement of Africans and entrenching patterns of European imperialist expa nsion/ do mination, which for the mo st part obliterated the original indi genous inhabit ants. Consequently, small Caribbea n islands such as Martinique, far from being insular, were in their modern invention part and parcel of a globalizing Europea n imperialist enterprise and were, as well, fundam entally connected to the African continent at the outset. Martinique is at times remembered as the birthplace of Napoleon's Empress Josephine, but Aime Cesaire: A Voice for the 21st Century, 2006. Courtesy California Newsreel that intimate connection invites attention to the long-established ties between Martinique and France, beginning in 1635 when Martinique first fell under French colonial control. Martinique thereafter became a domain of the French Crown in 1673 and eventually an overseas department of France in 1946. That French presence lasted for 373 years (1635-2008), a very long time. This longevity was not only structured by French political and economic power but also underpinned by the cultural imperialism that informed the French colonial mission. The French colonialist cultural notion of "assimilation" on the surface appeared to contradict the typical British colonialist practice of racial differentiation and separation. But the reality was that French "assimilation" was a one-sided affair, based on African assimilation to a "superior" French culture, an inherently racist notion. Such French imperialist cultural arrogance explains the cultural resistance (indeed, cultural warfare) waged by Francophone colonized intellectuals involved in the formation of the Negritude movement. When Blaise Diagne—the first African to be elected to the French National Parliament as Senegal's representative from 1914 to 1934—once proclaimed that "I am a Frenchman first and an African second," such an eloquent testimony to the triumph of the French cultural hegemonic enterprise had to be resisted and fought by Cesaire and others of his ilk. Beyond the historical French connection, it is also worthwhile to situate Cesaire's life in a broader global context of critical transitions. He was born in 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I and in the same year of Woodrow Wilson's election as President of the United States. Cesaire lived through the time span of sixteen U.S. presidents (including George...