PAN-AFRICANISM & NEGRITUDE.   Term Paper ID:20616 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Origins, principles, development & impact of two movements defining role of Africans in Africa & around world.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Origins, principles, development & impact of two movements defining role of Africans in Africa & around world. Paper Introduction: Different circumstances produce different forms of political action, and the plight of black people in different parts of the world has produced different movements for rights and autonomy given the differing political conditions in which the people find themselves and the different specific goals they themselves develop. Pan-Africanism and Negritude are terms applied to certain movements having ideas in common about the way different African populations should view themselves and their relationship to the world. Both approaches have been active and influential in the Caribbean region and in South America where a large black population resides. The two approaches have certain things in common even as they have their differences, and an examination of some of the writings on the subject as well as a specific study of how the movements have developed in Brazil will show the Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Pan-Africanism is an old dream that has been held by Africans livingoutside of Africa for generations. Thismovement included Americans like W.E.B. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1992.----------------------- 1 New York: The Viking Press, 1975.Kesteloot, Lilyan. While assimilation may have been basedtheoretically on a belief in the equality of all, it still assumed thesuperiority of European culture and civilization over that of Africa. Both approaches have been active and influential in the Caribbeanregion and in South America where a large black population resides. A century ago a small group of African-American and African-Caribbean writers and teachers collectively developedthe basis of what would be the African-consciousness movement. Pan-Africanism has been thought ofas a movement conceived and developed by Africans living outside of Africa,but it is in fact a worldwide movement affecting Africans in every part ofthe world. Blacks in the U.S. Pan-Africanism and Negritude are termsapplied to certain movements having ideas in common about the way differentAfrican populations should view themselves and their relationship to theworld. Even then,most of the negritude writers of the Caribbean and other regions remainedunknown for the most part in the English-speaking world (Kennedy xix-xxi). The cultural emphasis of negritude can be seen in the works of anumber of writers and artists from the 193 s on, with the purveyors of themovement being primarily those who wrote in French in different parts ofthe world--the Caribbean, Africa, and the Indian Ocean among them. "Haiti and Aristide: The Legacy of History." Current History (February 1992), 65-69.Nascimento, Abdias Do and Elisa Larkin Nascimento. Impetus was given to the Pan-African movement by the independence ofthe African nations in this century. Links between the United States and different Pan-African andnegritude movements around the world have been developed because of sharedinterests, shared concerns among blacks, and the fact that Americanliterary and political influences helped form or give direction to themovement in its formative period. They noted that theissues involved extended far beyond specific regions to concern the wholeblack race. It has beenexpressed even in Africa itself, where it generally takes the form of armedresistance to slavery and colonialism. Themovement was started when a group of university students from Africa andthe West Indies grouped themselves around Lйopold Sйdar Senghor, aSenegalese; Aimй Cйsaire, a native of Martinique; and Lйon Dumas fromGuyana. . For some populations, notably those speakingPortuguese and Spanish, this is a particular burden given the ascendancy onthe international scene of English and French, adding one more layer ofdependence, here on translation. Different circumstances produce different forms of political action,and the plight of black people in different parts of the world has produceddifferent movements for rights and autonomy given the differing politicalconditions in which the people find themselves and the different specificgoals they themselves develop. In the 196 s the Civil RightsMovement in the United States forced a new black self-awareness to come tofruition and extended the idea of negritude into new areas. InPortuguese, "negritude" means "blackness." In Brazil, negritude refers notonly to the historical movement of that name but also is a term used toencapsulate the essence of the black struggle worldwide: It indicates the fight for our people's dignity and the courageous statement of our human protagonism in the face of those who deny it (1 3). The imposition of European languages isitself an act of neocolonialism that the movement has yet to overcome(Nascimento and Nascimento 125-126). Withina decade of the founding of the movement, black poets in French were makingan impact on English-language readers. Ithas used different approaches depending on the political climate of thecountries where African people live in large numbers. Subsequently, the United States would be admitted, butHaiti was not. They then started a vigorous assault on the doctrine ofcultural assimilation and created a new sense of importance in Africansources after three centuries of exile as a way of recovering theirpersonality and of leaving aside western ways of thinking and feeling. Intellectual Origins of the African Revolution. The Negritude Poets. Abdias Do Nascimento and Elisa LarkinNascimento note the importance of negritude to the black community inBrazil as well as the accompanying influence of Pan-Africanism. Different leaders in the Caribbean have been important to the Pan-African movement, some because they promoted its interests, and some forless savory reasons. Pan-Africanism inthis hemisphere has been faced with the need to overcome this sort ofprejudice in order to include all black populations in this part of theworld in the movement. There was also a call forunity among the nations of Africa that extended in spirit to blackpopulations everywhere. Poets and writers of the region have alsohad an influence, though it has been more limited beacause, as noted, theyare virtually unknown outside their local regions. In Haiti, Papa Doc Duvalier represented the worstexample of what could happen. It is a movement by the blackpopulation to recover and reclaim its history, culture, and nationalidentity, and "pan" movements come to populations after a war or amigration, whether forced or otherwise. What may have started with more of a cultural base would be extendedinto history to become a major political tenet, a precursor of the BlackPower movement in the United States and other movements reviving a sense ofindividuality on the part of black people and a sense of their own historyand culture as being important. Thus, J.A. They started a small newspaper called The Black Student in whichthey discussed the problems then preoccupying them. DuBois, Africans who had beenthrough the period of slavery and who were now freed and reconsideringtheir ties to both their area of origin and the country in which they nowresided (Nascimento and Nascimento v-vii). Africa America spans the hemisphere from Nova Scotia to Scotia Sea. Negritude started as a literary movement of the 193 s and extendedinto the 195 s among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers (thenliving in Paris) as a protest against French colonial rule and the policyof assimilation then in force. Washington, D.C.: Black Orpheus, 1972.Maingot, Anthony P. havesympathy for the plight of Haitian blacks because of a perception that bothhave been the victims of Western imperialism, colonialism, anddiscrimination (Maingot 65-67). was seen as having imperialistic inclinations, and Haiti was madeup of Africans. Jahannescan talk about "Africa America" as a mystery, a foundation, a force, a fulcrum for the realization of future development of America and for people of African descent everywhere. Inthis fashion, they created one single mystique and elaborated the notion ofnegritude, which would have a great impact on subsequent history (Kesteloot31). "Africa-America." Vital Speeches of the Day (September 1, 1988), 695-699.Kennedy, Ellen Conroy. The first such rejection came in 1825 when SimonBolivar organized the Congress of Panama and refused to invite either theUnited States or Haiti because "they each present special inconveniences."The U.S. In the past, Haiti is a country whose membership in the hemispherewas rejected because it had a majority black population. At the same time, Pan-African movements everywherefelt that their interests and needs were being ignored as the Africanstates took up more and more time and concern (Nascimento and Nascimento121-122). Kesteloot states that negritude can be defined as follows: "it is onone level the Black man's way of thinking, acting, living, and creating"(32). Among the problems facing Pan-Africanism are differences thathave been imposed on black populations by the fact that they reside indifferent parts of the world far from their origins as a people. Works CitedJahannes, Ja A. The works of these writers wasrelated not to the african poetry of English-speaking countries but to thework of contemporary black West Indians and poets from the FrenchCaribbean. . There are particular ties between Pan-African movements in the New World and the U.S. The U.S. They shared with these writers the international racialawareness called negritude, and they in turn had been influenced byAmerican poets of the Harlem Renaissance. The disassembling of the system ofcolonialism left the new governments of Africa with enormous problems andresponsibilities for the building of new states. Slavery and colonialism havestrained but not broken the cultural ties between Africans in Africa andthose who now live in the Western world. would occupy Haiti from 1915 to 1934, leaving alegacy of resentment that continues to this day. Thetwo approaches have certain things in common even as they have theirdifferences, and an examination of some of the writings on the subject aswell as a specific study of how the movements have developed in Brazil willshow the nature of those similarities and differences. It is usually thought of as a twentieth-century phenomenon. because they share thehemisphere in which they live, if for no other reason. Africans in Brazil. The negritude movement is onlyone manifestation of Pan-Africanism, and it is not even the first literaryexpression of these concepts. Theyspeak different languages. If you want to find Africa America you have to go to the source of her connectedness, that is the blood and legacy of Africa (695).This is a clear statement of a Pan-African view of the connectedness ofnations through the back population. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.