The negritude movement : W.E.B. Du Bois, Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and the evolution of an insurgent idea / Reiland Rabaka.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Negritude Movement provides readers with not only an intellectual history of the Negritude Movement but also its prehistory (W.E.B. Du Bois, the New Negro Movement, and the Harlem Renaissance) and its posthistory (Frantz Fanon and the evolution of Fanonism). By viewing Negritude as an "insurgent idea" (to invoke this book's intentionally incendiary subtitle), as opposed to merely a form of poetics and aesthetics, The Negritude Movement explores Negritude as a "traveling theory" (à la Edward Said's concept) that consistently crisscrossed the Atlantic Ocean in the twentieth century: from Harlem to Haiti, Haiti to Paris, Paris to Martinique, Martinique to Senegal, and on and on ad infinitum. The Negritude Movement maps the movements of proto-Negritude concepts from Du Bois's discourse in The Souls of Black Folk through to post-Negritude concepts in Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. Utilizing Negritude as a conceptual framework to, on the one hand, explore the Africana intellectual tradition in the twentieth century, and, on the other hand, demonstrate discursive continuity between Du Bois and Fanon, as well as the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude Movement, The Negritude Movement ultimately accents what Negritude contributed to arguably its greatest intellectual heir, Frantz Fanon, and the development of his distinct critical theory, Fanonism. Rabaka argues that if Fanon and Fanonism remain relevant in the twenty-first century, then, to a certain extent, Negritude remains relevant in the twenty-first century.

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CHOICE Review

This book joins the respected tomes on critical Africana social thought that Rabaka (ethnic studies, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) edits for the publisher's "Critical Africana Studies" series. His book proves, if ever proof is needed, that there are kindred links between the Africana intellectual traditions in Africa and in the African diaspora. He traces that intellectual lineage to the "central intellectual antecedent" of "Du Boisian Negritude" that is detected in the Pan-Africanism of Du Bois and in his influential text The Souls of Black Folk. Rabaka organically links Du Bois to the New Negro Movement of the Harlem Renaissance and to the tendencies Rabaka identifies as Damasian, Cesairean, Senghorian, and, contentiously, Fanonian, negritudes. Rabaka argues that negritude intellectual activists centered their social thought on Africa and must therefore be reinterpreted with the Afrocentric theories of Du Bois rather than depend on paradigms from Eurocentrism, against which most of those intellectuals rebelled. Using the ideological differences between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as a model, Rabaka suggests that there were conservative and radical tendencies in the Harlem Renaissance and in the negritude movement as well. The repetitive introductory chapter needs closer editing. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Biko Agozino, Virginia Tech