%HE UNACKNOWLEDGED NEGRITUDE IN AFRICAN ANGLOPHONE PCETS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SOYINKA, OKICBO & ACHEEE" 4 b y Arthur A. I./ Luvai A Thesis submitted in fulfilment for the Degree of Master of Arts in the University of Nairob 19 7 5 UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI LIBRARY 0146880 0 This thesis is my original work and has not been presented for a degree in any other University. ARTHUR A. I. LUVAI (Candidate) Yhis thesis has been submitted for examination with our approval as University supervisors. I s ........................... DR. MICERE MUGO 2: DR. ARTHUR KEMOLI i CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements... ii ••• ••• ••• Abstract ... iii i • • • i Introduction ......................................1 Of Childhood : Birth/lnitiation ... 17 Life and Death ... ... ... ... 41 Renewal and Perpetuation: Theme of Ancestors and Corporate Responsibility 74 • • • • ’ nclusion 93 n 7 Foot Notes ••• ••• ••• •••ax( Select Bibliography ...........................127 ii A c k n o w l e d g ' e m e n t s I wish to record my thanks to my supervisors, Dr. Micere Mugo and Dr. Arthur Kemoli, for their invaluable guidance and criticism during the writing of this thesis; and to the University of Nairobi for giving me a scholarship, in the first place. ill A B S T R A C T The negritude concept has never been easy to define. However, from the various definitions and interpretations of the movement, one soon realizes that generally speaking negritude is a black literary movement which expresses the black man’s assertion of his cultural values in the face of white domination and hangovers from the colonial era. This assertion is to be found in both African anglophone and francophone poets, and yet, in spite of this, negritude is often seen as a francophone preserve. To disprove this assumption the present thesis analyses representative anglophone poetry, namely, the poetry of Soyinka, Okigbo and Achsbe, alongside francophone poetry and establishes that there is negritude in African anglophone poetry. Through a study of these post-independent anglophone poets, it also establishes that the movement lias not altogether phased out of active black struggle even with the attainment of political independence. The introduction briefly discusses some of the definitions ^ of negritude and also examines the crisis that occasioned it. The crisis was the double scourge of slave trade and colonization, a crisis that hit both the areas that would later come to be known as French Africa and British Africa. This is a crucial point to mention in any assessment of negritude. Yet most criticism of the movement, gives the impression that only French black subjects had cause to react against the said crisis. The main body of the thesis - in three chapters - discusses the issues raised above. Eaoh chapter deals with one bread umbrella of what are generally acknowledged as negritude themes. "Of Childhood: Eirth/lnitiation," the first chapter, essentially deals with the reappraisal of the autochthonous cultures, ir: this case traditional African cultures, by the autochthon who is threatened by cultural alienation. The difference in the colonial policies of Franco and England is reflected in the poetry discussed here. The French assimilation policy produces i an exaggerated passion for the autochthonous culture; there is iv a valorization of traditional cultures that is generally absent in the more sedate anglophone search for cultural roots. But the main thing is that there is a coming back to the sources in both the francophone and anglophone poetry; the motivation for this is al30 one. Here is underscored the proposition that a people seek stability in their own cultural roots during times of crises. In the second chapter, "Life arjd Death," poetry that exhibits a juxtaposition of Europe and Africa is discussed. Life-devaluing j aspects of European culture and therefore social systems are rejected in favour of life-affirming values in African cultures. This juxtaposition is not meant to be an equation of Africa with life and Europe with death, a id therefore a purgation of Africa. It simply delineats what negritude reacts against, namely, the European capitalist-individualist ethos as it threatens mere or less traditional socialist communities. The devastation of Africa through European exploitive expansion is highlighted. The European brand of Christianity, couched in this capitalist- individualist culture, is seen as directly responsible for the death of traditional African religions. Its preaching of the J individual’s salvation is shown as contributing to the fragmentation of cohesive communities, for it helps to devalue the now-life by preaching individualist action in this life fer a better after-life. Where dees hope for resistance and renewal lie? The "ancestor" theme in African poetry emerges as the evocation of that, in traditional African‘communities, which resists alien threats as manifested in colonialism and the legacy it left behind after political freedom - nso-colonialism. The so-called ancestor worship is in effect a ritualization of filial respect, whose cultural function is to be seen in the corporate responsibility realized in ancestor-based social set-ups. The socialist trend in African writing is not necessarily explained by Marxism,’ seeing that corporate responsibility - a condition for socialism — is found in traditional African communities. This is the essential argument in the third chapter, "Renewal and Perpetuation: Theme of Ancestors and Corporate Personality." The conclusion is a summary of the "discovery" that there V is negritude in anglophone poetry that goes unacknowledged. It also rakes it clear that negritude as a term came to designate a black awareness which preceded that naming. The identification of any one black writer with the movement is, therefore, wrong. Furthermore, differences in the expression of this awareness must be accepted, for different black writers, as artists, have different styles arising out of their diverse backgrounds. It is here in the conclusion that Ceseire, the coiner of •'negritude," is referred to at some length. His Return to Vy Native Land is briefly matched with the "discovered" anglophone negritude, and the concerns revealed in both are essentially depicted as belonging to the same black awareness. 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N Negritude, like culture, belongs to that category of concepts which can accommodate several layers of meaning and therefore render itself open to a variety of interpretations and defini­ tions. But to isolate a single aspect and uphold it as a defini­ tion of the whole, is not only misleading but false. Although it is generally held in certain quarters that the movement phased out of active black struggle with^pnlitic.ql-dndependence, it is the proposition of this thesis that the spirit of this movement is still with us now; not only among the francophone blacks but also in anglophone Africa. In order to ascertain whether negritude has died out or merely changed cloaks, it is pertinent to review the circumstances of its birth, examine its historical ramifica­ tions and identify the various interpretations as expressed through poetry and criticism of black literature. Negritude as a literary movement took root in Paris among the Black intellectuals of French expression. No precise date can be given for the actual birth of the movement, because though the most coherent as some kind of literary ideology, negritude is part of that awareness by the black man of his unique presence in a colonial situation. Sunday Anczie writes: "the concept itself can be traced back to the famous nineteenth century Liberian writer and nationalist, Edward Biyden."x However, the term negritude was coined in the early thirties by the black Martiniquian poeu-politician, Aime Cesaire. He is thus- generally regarded by many as the father of the movement. But other blacks gave the movement active sympathy. Leopold Sedar Senghor. the Senegalese president, has come to be regarded as its high priest 2 and full-voiced exponent, a situation that has sadly resulted in partial, or even whole, identification of Ssngnor with the movement. According to Senghor, these were the circumstances of negritude’s birth: We were then plunged with some other negro students in a sort cf panic desperation. The horizon was plugged up, no reform in prospect and colonizers legitimated our political and economic dependence by the theory of clean \ sweep. They esteemed that we had neither invented, nor created, nor written, nor sculp­ tured, nor painted nor sung anything. To set cur own and effective revolution, we had first to put off our borrowed dresses, those of assimilation and affirm our being, that is our ,negritude. Although defined as the ‘mass of !cultural values of black Africa,‘ it could only offer us the start of the solution of one problem and not the entire solution itself. We could not come back to the situation of yesteryear, to the negritude of the sources. Wo were not living under the Askias of Songhai, not even under Chaka* the Zulu. We were students of Faris and of the twentieth century of which one of the realities is the awakening of national consciousness and a century of which another fact, more realistic again, is the interdependence of peoples and continents. To be truly ourselves, we ought \to embody the negro-African culture in the realities of the twentieth century. For our negritude to be an effective instrument of liberation, instead of a section of the museum, we had to shake off the dust and assert it in the international movement of the contemporary world.^ Negritude, then, was a natural and specific reaction against a specific crisis - the colonial situation which affected both the French African peoples and the British African peoples. In fact, because slavery had the same exploitative v characteristics, the trans-Atlantic black man was also suffering under the same duress. Listen to what Aime Cesaire said during the First International Conference of Negro Writers and Artists in Paris, 1956: We may accordingly consider this Congress from two points of view, both of them equally valid, namely that this Congress is a return to the sources, a phenomenon characteristic of all communities in times of crisis, while, it is at the same time an assembly of men who must 3 get to grips with the same harsh reality, hence men fighting the same fight and sustained by the same hope. For my part I can see no incompatibility between the two things. On the contrary, I believe the two aspects to be complementary and that our bearing, which may seem to indicate hesitation and embarrassment between the past and the future, is in fact only natural, seeing that it is inspired by the idea that the shortest way to the future is always one that involves a deep understanding of the past.-' I quote at length not only to bring out the similarity between this statement on the congress and Senghor's on negritude, but also to stress that during a time of crisis it is natural that a people seek stable ground in their own tradition. Thus negritude (as it manifests itself in the themes treated in black poetry) although occasionally described as a literary ideology, was in part a natural reaction against the colonial situation - the European dominance in Africa and the white superiority and racism across the Atlantic. This was the crisis. In spite of the foregoing, however, many definitions of negritude hardly do the movement any justice. It is these wanting definitions that are largely responsible for unacknowledged negritude in Anglophone African writers, which this thesis proposes to analyse. First then, a cursory look at some of these definitions, before outlining the colonial crisis chat did not leave out what was British Africa, and against which, v:e have seen, negritude was a reaccion. Negritude has not been easy to define because of its dynamic character; definition and the manifestations of the movement in the poetic practice Ivave not always concurred. Any definition that has not taken into account the dynamics of negritude has fossilized itself leaving the movement alive; and perhaps this is the case now. It now seems very clear that the crisis which brought about negritude has not disappeared with the attainment of independence. Most African states have adopted the colonial government machinery and economic system. Racism (defined as "only one element in a larger whole, namely the systematic oppression cf a people")^- is still rampant not only across the Atlantic and in South Africa,