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Je suis de la race de ceux qu\u2019on opprime.<\/em><\/p>\n Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I would really like to thank Romuald Fonkoua and Souleymane Bachir Diagne for their wonderful presentations. As far as I am concerned, I will be very brief and just raise two general issues before opening the floor to discussion. I will mix up English and French, since in this session of Nietzsche 13\/13 (probably more than in any other) the question of the language we use is a political one \u2013 or, at least, it was clearly a political issue for the writers and thinkers of the Negritude movement. I am referring to the well-known idea of Negritude as a \u201clitt\u00e9rature mineure<\/em>\u201d (in Kafka and Deleuze\u2019s sense), that is, of a tactical appropriation of French language and a transfiguration of it from an instrument of domination into a creative, revolutionary tool: c\u2019est une minorit\u00e9 qui \u00e9crit dans la langue de la majorit\u00e9<\/em>. This is why I do not feel like speaking (or writing) about Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire and L\u00e9opold S\u00e9dar Senghor only<\/em> in English.<\/p>\n The first issue I would like to raise has to do with a very old querelle<\/em> about the nature and aims of the Negritude movement itself. Defined in different terms by the main thinkers who gave it voice and life, it is possible to find in C\u00e9saire and (even more clearly) in Senghor\u2019s ways of describing Negritude a tension that has already emerged several times during our Nietzsche 13\/13 seminar: the tension between Being and Becoming, Identity and Difference. It was and still is quite common to interpret the Negritude movement as defending a more or less radical form of essentialism \u2013 a sort of \u201ccounter-essentialism\u201d opposed to the European one, but an essentialism nonetheless. Sartre speaking of a \u201cracisme antiraciste<\/em>\u201d in his \u201cOrph\u00e9e noir\u201d (the preface he wrote to Senghor\u2019s Anthologie de la nouvelle po\u00e9sie n\u00e8gre et malgache de langue fran\u00e7aise<\/em>, published in 1948) greatly contributed to this kind of reading. Of course, it is undeniable that C\u00e9saire and Senghor often used, at least apparently, an essentialist language and essentialist formulae (\u201cl\u2019\u00eatre n\u00e8gre<\/em>\u201d, \u201cl\u2019art n\u00e8gre<\/em>\u201d), but at the same time \u2013 and I wonder whether the reference to Nietzsche could be relevant in this respect or not \u2013 they were also interested in highlighting the importance of conceiving of Negritude as a movement, or better, as movement<\/em>, that is, as becoming, as a perpetual self-overcoming. A \u201cdevenir-n\u00e8gre<\/em>\u201d, as Deleuze would have said.<\/p>\n Seen in this light, the \u201ccivilisation de l\u2019universel<\/em>\u201d they aspired to, far from being the opposite, the contrary of European (scientific) universalism, should perhaps be interpreted as a (Nietzschean) overcoming of such a universalism \u2013 and I say \u201cNietzschean\u201d because we are not confronted here, it seems to me, with Hegelian dialectic, but rather with the will to affirm and create new values for life itself. At page 161 of C\u00e9saire\u2019s text \u201cPo\u00e9sie et connaissance\u201d uploaded on our website, C\u00e9saire quotes Andr\u00e9 Breton:<\/p>\n Tout porte \u00e0 croire qu\u2019il existe un certain point de l\u2019esprit d\u2019o\u00f9 la vie et la mort, le r\u00e9el et l\u2019imaginaire, le pass\u00e9 et le futur, le communicable et l\u2019incommunicable, le haut et le bas cessent d\u2019\u00eatre per\u00e7us contradictoirement. Et c\u2019est en vain qu\u2019on chercherait \u00e0 l\u2019activit\u00e9 surr\u00e9aliste un autre mobil que l\u2019espoir de d\u00e9termination de ce point.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And C\u00e9saire comments: \u201cJamais au cours des si\u00e8cles ambition plus haute n\u2019a \u00e9t\u00e9 exprim\u00e9e plus tranquillement. Cette tr\u00e8s haute ambition, c\u2019est l\u2019ambition po\u00e9tique elle-m\u00eame\u201d. Ici on voit donc clairement que le sch\u00e9ma que l\u2019on applique n\u2019est pas du tout dialectique : le probl\u00e8me est plut\u00f4t celui d\u2019une unit\u00e9, d\u2019une \u00ab\u00a0fraternit\u00e9 primitive\u00a0\u00bb, avec l\u2019id\u00e9e \u2013 que C\u00e9saire exprime dans ce m\u00eame texte \u2013 selon laquelle l\u2019arbre qui dit \u00ab\u00a0oui\u00a0\u00bb \u00e0 la vie est sup\u00e9rieur \u00e0 l\u2019homme qui dit \u00ab\u00a0non\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0; et bien s\u00fbr, c\u2019est le po\u00e8te qui est capable de dire \u00ab\u00a0oui\u00a0\u00bb, de consentir \u00e0 la vie, de s\u2019installer en ce point de l\u2019esprit dont parle Breton o\u00f9 toute contradiction (apparente) cesse d\u2019\u00eatre per\u00e7ue comme telle et s\u2019ouvre ainsi la possibilit\u00e9 pour un \u00e9panouissement vital. Voil\u00e0 ce qu\u2019est la connaissance po\u00e9tique d\u2019apr\u00e8s C\u00e9saire\u00a0: c\u2019est cet art as philosophy<\/em>, cet art as knowledge<\/em> dont nous a parl\u00e9 Bachir. Therefore, the question I have is very simple: since essentialism seems to have no part at all in this kind of discourse, how can we reconcile \u2013 and should we do it?<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the (seemingly) essentialist language of Negritude thinkers with their reject of any reference to \u201cessences\u201d? In other words, how can we reconcile \u2013 and should we do it?<\/em> \u2013 Nietzsche and Heidegger, Becoming and Being, within the history of the Negritude movement?<\/p>\n The second issue I would like to raise is linked to the first and has to do with the role played by theater at the same time as an artistic practice and as a way of conceiving of (and practicing) philosophy itself. In the Deleuze session of our Paris reading group on Nietzsche, we discussed at length a very interesting passage in the introduction to Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em> (pp.\u00a018-19) in which Deleuze oppose Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Hegel, en disant que ce qui compte, ce qui est important chez les premiers, c\u2019est le mouvement, l\u2019activit\u00e9\u00a0: leur probl\u00e8me \u2013 le probl\u00e8me de Kierkegaard et Nietzsche \u2013 est de faire du mouvement lui-m\u00eame une \u0153uvre, tandis que chez Hegel on n\u2019a que du faux mouvement, celui de la m\u00e9diation, de la dialectique. Ainsi, d\u2019apr\u00e8s Deleuze, Kierkegaard et Nietzsche font de la philosophie un \u00ab\u00a0th\u00e9\u00e2tre de l\u2019avenir\u00a0\u00bb, un th\u00e9\u00e2tre dont l\u2019essence est le mouvement perp\u00e9tuel, la r\u00e9p\u00e9tition, la diff\u00e9rence, alors que la dialectique h\u00e9g\u00e9lienne n\u2019est qu\u2019un faux th\u00e9\u00e2tre<\/em> \u2013 th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la repr\u00e9sentation, du concept, de la g\u00e9n\u00e9ralit\u00e9. Si Hegel \u00ab\u00a0repr\u00e9sente\u00a0\u00bb les concepts, Nietzsche de son c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00ab\u00a0dramatise\u00a0\u00bb les id\u00e9es \u2013 la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence de Deleuze \u00e9tant ici, bien entendu, \u00e0 la fois Zarathoustra (con\u00e7u pour la sc\u00e8ne, o\u00f9 tout est sonoris\u00e9, visualis\u00e9, mis en mouvement, en marche et en danse) et Naissance de la trag\u00e9die<\/em>, avec l\u2019antagonisme bien connu de l\u2019Apollinien et du Dionysien, du R\u00eave et de l\u2019Ivresse, de l\u2019art plastique et de la danse (mais aussi du chant et de la trag\u00e9die). In the first chapter of The Birth of Tragedy <\/em>(at page\u00a018 of the edition uploaded on our website), speaking of the Dionysiac, Nietzsche writes:<\/p>\n Now the slave is a freeman, now all the rigid, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice, or \u201cimpudent fashion\u201d have established between human beings, break asunder. Now, hearing this gospel of universal harmony, each person feels herself to be not simply united, reconciled or merged with her neighbor, but quite literally one with her [\u2026]. Singing and dancing, man expresses his sense of belonging to a higher community,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n a community that cannot but make me think of C\u00e9saire\u2019s \u201cunit\u00e9<\/em> primitive<\/em>\u201d,\u00a0or of his \u201cDiscours sur l\u2019art africaine\u201d (1966), in which he describes African art as a non-imitative art, as an art exploring dynamic and movement themselves and thus succeeding in being really creative<\/em>. Hence, my second question is extremely na\u00efve: to what extent, for C\u00e9saire, art itself is a way of practicing philosophy? And how exactly is it linked to the issue of the creation of a (higher) community? How exactly \u201cdonner une histoire \u00e0 la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 antillaise \u00e0 travers le mythe, \u00e0 travers la trag\u00e9die<\/em>\u201d, as Romuald Fonkoua convincingly explained, can be seen as part of C\u00e9saire\u2019s (and Senghor\u2019s) attempt to create a \u201ccivilisation de l\u2019universel<\/em>\u201d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Je suis de la race de ceux qu\u2019on opprime. Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire I would really like to thank Romuald Fonkoua and Souleymane Bachir Diagne for their wonderful presentations. As far as I am concerned, I will be very brief and… Continue Reading