A REVIEW OF CHAPTERS 4&6 AND PAGES 126-135 OF THE BOOK: A HISTORY OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY BY B. ABANUKA
CHAPTER 4
LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR: NEGRITUDE
leopold sedar senghor, son of Basile Diogo Senghor and Gnilane Bakhoum was born on 9th October, 1906 in Joel, Senegal. He spent his childhood in Djilor, Senegal with his maternal family. After his education in Ngazobil near Dakar and Liebermann College in Dakar, he obtained a grant to continue his studies in France.
In France, he was admitted to the Louis-le-Grand college where he met George Pompidou. In 1932, Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire and Senghor developed Negritude and in 1934, founded the Black Student newspaper to defend their values. Senghor was the first black student to receive an aggregation in grammar and became a professor in Tours and later in Saint-Maur-des-Fortes, France. Up until the First World War, he wrote man poems.
He was convinced b Lamine Guee, the Senegalese deputy at the French parliament, and Senghor was elected to represent the second constituency, that of the peasant class. He married Ginette Eboue, the daughter of the governor general of AOF (the French African Colonies).
In 1956, he was elected maor of Thiles, Senegal. He was, in September 1960, elected President of the independent Republic of Senegal. On December 1980, Leopold Sedar Senghor handed power to Abdou Diouf, withdrew from the political scene and moved to Normand. Senghor passed away on 20th December 2001 in verson, France, his adopted commune
NEGRITUDE
Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar Senghor formed a student group in the years 1931-1935, while they were yet students. It was in this group that in 1932 they coined the word “negritude”. Colonialism is Africa was in its golden age and the hope of the black man as a future contributor to world civilization was bleak. The Blackman was believed to have contributed nothing he could be proud of both in the sciences and in the arts. Whatever positive accomplishment the Black man had was due only to assimilation – i.e. the colonizing cultures. Thus, the only thing these students could fall back on their race as such – negritude – a type of blackhood without apparently anything to show for it, but defined as the totality of the cultural values of black Africa.
EXPLANATION OF TERMS
This part talks about how Negritude was formed and thus can be looked at subjectively and objectively. Objectively, negritude is a worldview and corresponds to what the European ethnologists and sociologists called African civilization. Negritude is formed b a certain number of structures and values which is derived from a kind of feeling.
Subjectively, negritude is the project for action in the student circle, which senghor and his fellow students formed in Paris in the ears 1931-1935.
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