네그리뛰드와 민족주의: 셍고르와 쎄제르

Negritude and Nationalism: Leopold Sedar Senghor and Aime Cesaire

This paper re-shapes the notions of "negritude" and "nationalism" in terms of "strategic essentialism" which provided Leopold Sedar Senghor and Aime Cesaire with the Joci of resistance to colonialism during the 1930s The two concepts have been criticized as sentimental or nostalgic "nativism" and/or oppressive "essentialism" m a pejorative sense especially since 1960s and 1970s, however, Senghor's and especially Cesaire's notions of "negritude" and "African nationalism" were historically specific counter-discourses to the French discourse of Africanism under the "direct rule" of French colonialism as distinguished from the "indirect rule" of English one In the making of the counter-discourse of "negritude" and "African nationalism" as opposed to the French colonialist discourse, Senghor tended to show the nativist or essentialist notions of Africa while Cesaire's did the surrealist or deconstructive ones However, they shared the idea that "negritude" and "African nationalism" as the emancipatory discourse of decolonialization did not refer to essential "temperaments" or "states" of black Africa but to Its "actions" or "movements" in the concrete historical contexts