Négritude et condition africaine (review)

Abiola Irele's collection of essays Négritude et condition africaine sets out to revisit the ideology of negritude that, as he rightly asserts, is once more in fashion, certainly in Paris, where it was created in the first place. The recent death of Aimé Césaire, the Martinican poet and politician who coined the term, and the wave of adulation it provoked, has further reinforced this tendency. Irele's book is therefore timely and, translated into French and published in France, is aimed primarily at the discussion of black identity in the context of the identitarian cultural politics that is sweeping Europe. Irele also takes us back to the beginnings of the academic exploration of negritude and in particular the founders Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor. While Léon Damas features prominently on the cover of the book, he unfortunately gets short shrift in these essays. The essays from the 1960s demonstrate how thoughtful and eloquent a guide Irele was in establishing the field of francophone literature as a whole. The more recent discussions of negritude demonstrate the extent to which he is still a measured and informed historian of ideas as he examines the resurgence of black cultural nationalism today.

As much as anything else this is a book by an African scholar writing from an African perspective about what he calls the "African condition." The deeper purpose of these essays is arguably to raise the question of, as Anthony Appiah put it, a "philosophy for Africa" (Appiah 228). In this regard, Irele begins with an assessment of negritude in the context of African thought and its legacy for Africa today. He is particularly well equipped to do this because of his interest in this movement, which dates back to the mid-sixties. The first two essays published originally in 1965 in English are general surveys of the antecedents and influences of negritude. Inevitably it is Senghorian negritude that concerns him, and while he is aware of the danger of "narcissime noir" that lurks in this ideology, he proposes that we consider it the first attempt to construct an ideology for Africa that was not merely religious or messianic. This sets the tone for the collection, which always seeks to ground ideas and writers historically and geographically. For instance, the discussion of Césaire's poetry is less about form and more about the peculiar social, historical, and political situation that provoked it. There is, he concludes, never anything gratuitous about Césaire's poetry, which is profoundly engaged with "le réel." He approaches Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in the same manner in emphasizing the novelist's "conscience historique" (101).

The final three essays center on the question of African thought. Irele sets out to refute the idea of ideological differences between anglophone and francophone Africa by demonstrating the similarities between the idea of an "African Personality" from anglophone Africa and negritude. If Wole Soyinka once rejected negritude as absurd as "tigritude," it was to turn the latter away from a kind of self-serving passéisme towards a new moral realism. In his assessment of negritude, Irele acknowledges its essentialism and ahistoricism but maintains that it was the point of departure for situating "l'homme africain au coeur du devenir historique" (159). The decision to end the book with his inaugural professorial lecture "In Praise of Alienation" is no coincidence. Irele, with a refreshing directness, critiques the cult of tradition and cultural nationalism that is not exclusive to Africa. He rejects the romanticizing of the past and shows how dangerous it has been for Nigeria's political and social transformation. For Irele, like Appiah, the challenge of "grounding oneself in Africa … in the present, not the past" is the only way forward (Appiah 229). An African system of thought must take "la direction de la modernité inaugurée par notre rencontre avec l'Occident" (172). It is with this call to surmount the Africa's painful colonial encounter with...