philosophy 3330

Final Exam Prompt

Aguilar Jose

California State University, Los Angeles

PHIL 3330-04

1) How does Sartre, in his essay “Black Orpheus,” define the poetic-political movement of Negritude? Your account of this definition should reference, and reflect your engagement with, writings by Damas, Césaire, and Senghor.

In order to understand how Sartre defines the poetic political movement of negritude we must understand it’s the transformation of black men and how he comes to this understanding of Negritude. Sartre begins his essay by laying out a depiction of how it felt as a European to see these individuals changing, while still trying to grasp at what they once had. Not feeling at ease with the feeling of lacking the privileges they once held and being brought down to the same level of the very people they colonized finding solace nowhere. Not understanding their words through poetry seeing them as an attempt to bring shame to them, however these poems were not about Europeans their poetry is meant as an awakening to consciousness, a hymn by everyone for everyone. Stating that this is a world in which they cannot understand nor venture in to. He then wants to bring awareness to white men what black men have already realized, also mentioning that through this poetry, in the black man’s present condition, he must first become conscious of himself. Therefore, black poetry in its current time is the only great revolutionary poetry. Bringing to light that white proletariats rarely use poetic language to speak of their suffering, anger, or pride because talent has lost its meaning in a culture where claiming that talent is more widespread in one class than another. Stating furthermore, that black workers are no less gifted than white workers, recognizing their present circumstances of the class struggle is what keeps the workers from expressing themselves poetically. Sartre then mentions that the black man through gaining professional, economic, and scientific now how he will someday be able to control business management. Through this he will develop a profound practical knowledge of what poets call nature, but his knowledge is gained more through his hands than through his eyes: Nature to him is matter, this crafty, inert adversity in which he works on with his tools; matter has no song. The black man must also be in a constant state of political calculation, precise forecasting, discipline and organization of the masses because for them to dream is a luxury they can’t afford. Rationalism, materialism, positivism the themes of the black man's struggle are favorable for his creation of poetic myths. Stating the oppressed class must find itself, this self-discovery however, this is not to say it is a subjective examination of oneself but recognition of the objective situation of the proletariat by determining the circumstances of production or redistribution of property. Unified by the struggles they face workers are not usually acquainted with the contradictions that fertilize the work of art and that are harmful to the continued practice. And in order to situate themselves regarding the forces around them, this requires them to determine both their exact position in their class and their class function in the party. the poetry of the future revolution has remained in the hands of well-intentioned bourgeois who found inspiration through their personal psychological contradictions in the contrast between their ideals and their class, uncertain of the old bourgeois language. Like the white man the negro is also a victim of the capitalist structure of our society.

This situation reveals to Sartre apart from the color of his skin with certain classes of Europeans who like him are oppressed, this incites him to imagine a privilege less society in which skin pigmentation will be considered a mere fluke. Sartre feels that regardless of the situation the black man is a victim of it because he is a black man. And he is oppressed within the confines of his race, needing to become aware of his race. Giving an example that a Jew a white man can decline that he is a Jew, while the negro cannot deny that he is a negro. His back is up against the wall, formerly insulted and enslaved picks up the racial slurs thrown at him draws himself erect and stands proud proclaiming he is a black man face to face with white men. The unity that will come eventually, bringing together all oppressed people must be preceded by what he calls the moment of separation of negativity, and that anti-racism is the only road that leads to the abolition of racial differences. Stating that a black man cannot count on a distant white proletariat dealing with his own struggles before they are united and organized on their own. This discovery is different from what Marxism tries to awaken in the white worker, to the European worker class consciousness is based on the nature of profit and present conditions of ownership of the instruments of work, based on the objective characteristics of the position of the proletariat. This transitions into race consciousness which is based on the black soul, a certain quality common to the thoughts and conduct of negroes which is called Negritude, thus the black man who asserts his negritude by means of a revolutionary movement immediately places himself in the position of having to look within himself, either because he wishes to recognize himself to have objectively established traits of the African civilization, or because he hopes to discover the essence of blackness in the well of his heart. This brings us to the black man who asks his colored brothers to “find themselves” will try to present to them an exemplary image of their negritude looking into his own soul to grasp it. Attempting to be both a beacon and a mirror, the first revolutionary being the harbinger of the black soul, the half prophet and half follower who tear blackness from himself in order to share it with the world. In brief he will be a poet in the literal sense of vates (prophet). Stating that black poetry has nothing in common with heartfelt writing, it is functional and serves a purpose, it answers a need that needs being defined in precise terms. And in this case the subject of that matter is the single idea to reveal the black soul, in which black poetry in its evangelical state announces good news that blackness has been rediscovered. However, this negritude does not fall under the soul's gaze all by itself, the prophet has gone through white schools he has stolen from his oppressor. And it is through this contact with white culture that his blackness has passed from immediacy of existence to a meditative state. In choosing to do so he has become split already being exiled from himself he reveals himself, so he begins by exile. Sartre compares black peoples exile from Africa is comparable to the exile of the black man and his soul from which the negro is exiled from. An ever-present negritude haunts him he turns around to look squarely at his negritude it vanishes and the walls of white culture, its silence, its words, its mores rise between it and him. The walls of this culture prison must be broken down, it will be necessary for his return to Africa someday, thus the theme of returning to his native country and the descent into the glaring hell of his black soul are mixed up in the vates (prophecy) of his negritude. The struggle the black man has within himself, his tireless descent into himself makes Sartre think of Orpheus and his going to claim Eurydice from Pluto. Through letting himself meditate on his tormented self, singing of his angers, regrets, hatred, his torn life between civilization and his old black substratum. It is through this that the black man becomes his most lyrical not only speaking to himself from within he speaks to all negroes. It is when he is suppressed by the serpents of European culture that he becomes his most revolutionary, for he then undertakes to ruin European knowledge he has attained, and this spiritual destruction symbolizes a great future in which black man will take arms to destroy their chains.  Sartre discusses that for one to understand one’s self one must be Irish for example but to be Irish one must also think Irish, to think in Irish. And for the negro and the prophets of negritude they are forced to write their gospel in the language of their colonizers. It is because of this that black man across the world have no common tongue, so in order for the oppressed to unite they must use the language of their oppressors so while rejecting their colonizers culture with one hand they also accept with the other.

This would not matter but because far away vocabulary forged miles away are not suitable for him to furnish himself with the means to speak of himself creates a disconnect. He goes into explaining how negritude is a definable or describable concept. Sartre states that it is not true that the black man speaks in a foreign tongue he was taught as a child since he is at ease with using said language the thinks in terms of the technician. However, Sartre explains that one must identify the difference that separates what he says from what he would like to say. Whenever he speaks about himself this foreign tongue steals his ideas from him, bends them in a way to mean what he wanted. Rendering him not able to speak of his negritude in a precise fashion, creating this frustration when a language is supposed to be the means of direct communication. Even though this foreign language creates difficulty the “black evangelists” must answer the colonist's ruse with a similar but inverse ruse. Since their oppressor is present in their language the black man must speak the language in order to destroy it. Giving an example of how the French poet dehumanizes words in order to give them back to nature while the black man defrenchifizes them in order to crush them. Sartre feels that it is only through poetry that the black man can communicate and since French lacks the terms and concepts to define negritude these black poets will use allusive words never direct reducing themselves to silence in order to evoke it. It is the black man’s self-portrayal, his personal way of utilizing the means of expression to his disposal that seems poetic to Sartre. Upsetting hierarchy poetizing “the blackness of innocence” “the darkness of virtue”. Bringing to light that black poets don’t want to be poets of the night but accepting of both day and night, they want to be poets of the promise of dawn in which they welcome. Furthering this notion that there is blackness in white and whiteness in black, a state of being and non-being referencing Césaire in a poem that describes whiteness in black and blackness in white in the form of day and night. In addition to alluding to the tension between the coexistence of black and white by writing “our beautiful faces like the true operative power of negation”. Césaire also further goes into describing how black is black is not color, but the destruction of borrowed clarity from the white sun, night is no longer absence it is a refusal. The humiliated negro asserts his rights through the private aspect of darkness which establishes its value, “liberty is the color of the night” renouncing previous notions by destroying them. Negritude like liberty is a point of departure and a goal, a matter of making negritude pass from immediate to mediate. Having the black man find death in white culture in order to be reborn with his black soul. It is through this that the black man discovers himself and becomes what he is, not through his knowing not his existential struggle in exiling himself from him. The black poet attempts to use his origins/culture to find himself attempting to render himself possessed by his people's negritude, hoping that this will awaken sleeping instincts from within him. Through this the black man has more of a connection to his culture through his poetry while the French poet cannot recreate the same effect due to centuries of poetry that separates them from a similar process being achieved. Césaire attempts to back track unto himself, words go beyond themselves not to allow words as a diversion towards the heavens or earth. Quite the opposite they work in a strange and flexible way, both solid and liquid/black and white/day and night, taking the form of what is ascribed of them. Not limiting one’s self under the superficial crust of reality, in order to touch one’s soul and waken the timeless force of desire one must plunge into the breast of nature and through nature one can achieve the affirmation of his right to be unsatisfied. However, Césaire is not the only black man to take this approach Senghor states that it was more a cultural movement than a review. Through Marxist analysis of society, stating that if one is to compare lero to Césaire we can come to the realization that they have dissimilarities. Through this comparison we find that surrealism is one thing that could deliver a man from his taboos and help him express his entireness. Césaire destroys not all culture but rather white culture, he brings to light the desire for revolutionary aspirations of the oppressed negro, touching a concrete from of humanity. Césaire finding from within himself the inflexibility of demands and feelings, tying his words together brought together by his furious passion.

Through Césaire the great surrealist traditions are realized taking on a definitive meaning, a black man taking the European movement and turning it against them giving it a thoroughly and defined function. Césaire's originality in his writing lies in his directed concentration of his anxiety as an oppressed negro unto the world's most free and metaphysical poetry at the time. He also takes on negritude “like a cry of pain, love, and hate”. His words do not describe negritude they create it and compose it under his views. So, Sartre feels that it is something that can be observed and learned, stating his subjective method of defining negritude becomes objective. Césaire externalizes his black soul when others try to internalize it. Senghor states “what makes the negritude of a poem is less its them than its style, the emotional warmth which gives life to words, which transmutes  the word into the word” coming to the notion that negritude is not a state nor a definite grouping of vices and virtues or attitudes towards the world. Césaire portrays negritude as an act more than a frame of mind, an inner determination in which a black man takes from his outside and changes it making it his own. Césaire also depicts his black brethren not as inventors nor explorers but giving beauty to the resources available to him. Césaire defines negritude as “patience" appearing as if it is taking the form of passiveness. This act of negritude is an act of one’s self, through this Césaire feels once they have acted on nature a black man reclaims himself and his outside. Sartre feels that white man knows everything but only scratches the surface of all that he knows, unaware of things. While negritude is the comprehension of things through an instinctive connection to it, the sources of his being and origins are identical. Sartre compares negritude to a sort of androgyny, in which the black man encompasses all it means to exist harmoniously with nature. Césaire also evokes this “righteous patience” that ties to the harmonious existence with nature however it also speaks of having patience against suffering it is something that comes from within the negro.

Sartre beings to discuss how the black man endured centuries of slavery, slavery being a past fact that white men have not experienced. Black people having a collect memory in common with respect to this colonization. Sartre quotes pascal in his statement that man experiences an irrational composite of metaphysics and history, his greatness unexplainable, his misery unexplainable if he is still as god made him, in order to understand man one has to go back to the simple basic fact of his downfall. Through this Césaire calls his race “the fallen race”, the black man discovers of his memory that it is not his own, it belongs to that of the white man. Referencing a comparison to religion that to the black man the white man’s religion is a hoax, an attempt to have the black man share the responsibility for a crime that was not of his own accord, for he was a victim. Negritude in its past and future is then inserted into universal history, it is no longer identified as a state or existential attitude, it is a “becoming”. This notion furthers the black man’s claim in his place in nature his suffering, capitalistic exploitation, has awakened in him a sense of revolt and love of liberty more than others, pursuing the liberation of all, while working to set himself free. Senghor distinguishes between degrees of negritude, questioning whether negritude is necessity or liberty? Whether it is given fact or value? The object of empiric intuition or a moral concept? A conquest of mediation? Or does mediation poison? Sartre feels that negritude is a shimmer of being and needing to be, makes you as you make it. Something carries more importance than that however, that being the negro. Not wishing to dominate the world but the abolition of all ethnic privileges asserting his solidarity with oppressed people of every color. Césaire feels though that white symbolizes capital while black symbolizes work, when writing of black men of his race he writes through the adversity created by proletarian struggle. Negritude as seen through a Marxist is described as destroying itself to an end. Sartre also describes negritude as not a state it goes beyond itself, he calls it love. When negritude declares abandonment of itself it then finds itself. Although internally the black man finds race in which he must tear from himself. Therefore, negritude is dialectical not only relating to the reversion of something ancestral, but it represents going beyond a situation defined by free consciousness. Adorning itself with a sorrowful sense of beauty that can only find expression in poetry. Negritude is the content of the poem, it becomes the poem like a thing existing in the world, mysterious, open, obscure, and suggestive it becomes the poet itself.

2) Chapter 5 of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks is the most widely read section of the text. It is also one of the most unusual and challenging. What do you understand the author to be doing in this chapter? Include a treatment of the way the author references Sartre’s “Black Orpheus,” and aspects of the Negritude Movement. Additionally, you should discuss how the references to the Negritude movement in this chapter fits into the author’s treatment of Negritude in the book as a whole (chapter 8 is particularly important in this regard).