“What is Africa to Me?”: Africa in the Black Diaspora Imagination

Paysan, frappe le sol de ta daba Dans le sol il y a une hâte que la syllabe de l'événement ne dénoue pas

—Aimé Césaire, “A l'Afrique.” ¹

[peasant, strike the earth with your daba in the earth, there is a haste that the syllable of event cannot unravel]

Notes

1. In Cadastre, reprinted in La Poésie, 1998, 189.

2. For the most comprehensive studies, see the biography in 2 volumes by David Levering Lewis, 1993 and 2000, and the studies by Arnold Rampersad (1976, rpt. 1990), and Manning Marable (1986). Du Bois is of course central to the various studies of Pan-Africanism by the following: Philipe Decraene (1959), Colin Legum (1962), Vincent Bakpetu-Thompson (1969), Ayodele Langley (1973), Emmanuel Geiss (1974), and Esedebe (1980, rev. 1994).

3. Appiah's remark occurs as part of a general consideration of the relationship between literature and concepts of race and nation that came to be current with the work of the Romantics. The specific process involved in Herder's association of culture with nation has been summed up by Vassilis Lambropoulos in these terms: “Herder is a paradigmatic modern figure in that he turned his attention to those types of discourse that had been recently associated with the aesthetic, and completed the definition of the project of modernity by aestheticizing the public as national culture” (Lambropoulos, 1993: 70; see also Berlin, 2000).

4. In his work, The Necessary Nation, Gregory Jusdanis offers a re-assessment of nationalism in this positive light by invoking its utopian and transformative potential. Thus he writes: “ Nationalism highlights the capacity of culture to serve as a means for political action and, ultimately, social change. Cultural nationalism enables a people to see itself as separate from others, to pursue a political program of justice and autonomy, and to promote a program of modernization. In this sense nationalism is a creative force, allowing social movements to imagine themselves as achieving greatness, pursuing self-government, and building a society of citizens” (Jusdanis, 2001: 11).

5. As the unhappy experience of the Seminole Indians had made clear, the prospect of a separate and independent state of Blacks in America would never have been tolerated by the white majority.

6. As Kenneth Goings has remarked, many of the ideas expressed in Du Bois's book were to prove seminal to the work of later scholars on Afrrican antiquity, such as Cheik Anta Diop, Basil Davidson, and even Martin Bernal (Introduction to Du Bois, The Negro, 2002: 11).

7. The primordialism that informs the mystique of race in Langston Hughes's “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” as indeed the thematic elaboration of the African theme in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, can be traced to this source of inspiration in Du Bois.

8. The chapter entitled “Andromeda” in The World and Africa (226–260) gathers up the elements of his anti-colonialism in an impassioned indictment of the European colonial powers.

9. For a critical re-appraisal of the Enlightenment from this point of view, see Sala-Molins (1992).

10. Du Bois's attachment to the Enlightenment ideal runs through all his work and is well reflected in his essay “Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization” (in David Levering Lewis, 1995: 17–20).

11. On Garvey, see in particular the 1983 biography by Tony Martin.

12. William Ackah has observed in this regard: “Interestingly in terms of political philosophies, the two men were of similar mind. Du Bois was a rather eclectic figure but his desire to see Africa strong and independent, for blacks to be economically self-sufficient, in the diaspora and for black culture to be promoted through art and literature to elevate the race resonates throughout his work. Marcus Garvey's journal, the Negro World and the activities of the Universal Negro Improvement Society (UNIA), were dedicated to advancing the cause of black men and women all over the world, something that Du Bois certainly had empathy with” (Ackah, 2001: 23).

13. Garvey thus illustrates in a peculiar way the role of anglophone West Indians in the Pan-Negro movement, beginning with J. J. Thomas (author of Froudacity, first published 1889, rpt 1969), Sylvester Williams (convener of the first pan African Congress held in London in 1900—see Mathurin, 1976); C.L.R. James, perhaps the best known of them all, and George Padmore, who became a close collaborator of Nkrumah. A parallel can be drawn for the francophone Caribbean with such figures as Antonin Firmin and Jean Price-Mars, both Haitians (Garret, 1963; Antoine, 1981; Dash, 1987). For the early expression of Black nationalism in the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe, see François Manchuelle (1982).

14. Thus it is that the independent nation of Ghana adopted Garvey's Black Star as its emblem, as the ultimate symbol of the historic and affective connection Nkrumah discerned between Africa and its Diaspora in the New World. Garvey's impact on African nationalism in South Africa has been amply documented by Vinson (2001). The extent of Garvey's influence can be measured further by the activities of francophone African nationalists in Paris in the thirties, in particular the following: Kojo Tovalou-Houénou, with his Ligue Universelle pour la Défense da la Race Noire (See Emile Zinsou and Luc Zouménou, 2004); Lamine Senghor and his Comité de Défense de la Race Nègre, which also published the journal La Voix des Nègres; and Tiémoko Garan Kouyaté, who founded Le Cri des Nègres (see Ayo Langley, 1973; 1979; De Witte, 1985). The hold of Garveyism upon the sentiments of Blacks of all categories in France is evoked by Claude McKay in his novel Banjo, whose plot revolves around the lives of Black seamen and dockers in Marseilles in the years between the two world wars.

15. For example, in this statement by Marcus Garvey : “We are not against the Germans in the sense that we dislike them, but we are against the peculiar ambitions of Hitler, just as we are against those of the madman Mussolini. In a choice between a future Italian or German Empire or British that is to rule the world, we prefer the British Empire. It is more human, more considerate and more liberal, all things considered comparatively. The Italy of today is not the cultured Italy of the past. Under Mussolini it is the most barbaric country in Europe, and we can also say that the Germany of the past is not the Germany of Hitler. The Germany of Hitler is intolerant, so that no sensible Negro could prefer either of those to the British. Mussolini must be smashed with his mad idea of a new Roman Empire. Germany must be prevented from regaining the African colonies.….” (“Italy and Germany” The Black Man, July–August, 1936: pp. 1). The Jamaican newspaper, Plain Talk of August 20, 1938 reported that the “Left Review” of London published the answers of 148 writers and poets of Great Britain on fascism. Among them were Marcus Garvey, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, and Mulk Raj Anand, the Indian writer. (I am grateful to Professor Rupert Lewis of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, for communicating these texts to me).

16. Indeed, Garvey considered himself an intellectual in this sense, as testified by the following statement from a speech he delivered at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the Fall of 1937: “I am a public lecturer, but I am President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. As a public lecturer I endeavour to help educate the public, particularly of the race, as I meet the public …. if the public is thoughtful it will be benefited by the things I say. I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, to realise themselves” (Quoted as Epigram to Robert Hill and Barbara Bair, eds., 1987).

17. Although Africa was never an immediate focus of his work, Alain Locke occupies a position of eminence in the intellectual formulation of the Black experience (see Locke, 1989).

18. Gates and McKay, eds., The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 412. For the poems quoted in this section, all page references are to this edition.

19. For a discussion of the reformulation of modernist primitivism by the Harlem Renaissance, see North (1994) and Lemke (1998).

20. Joseph Farrell (1999) has argued that far from being a Caribbean transposition of Homer's Iliad, Walcott's poem eschews the epic tone and register of its classical Greek model in order to emphasize its grounding in the folk experience.

21. This episode in Toni Morrison's novel is based on historical fact which Redkey has summarized in these terms: “Nationalist separatism led to the foundation of several all-black towns across the South, and in 1890, a black leader attempted to create an all black state in what is now western Oklahoma. Migration within the United States, however, was not notably successful for black peasants. They wanted land above all, but whites wanted the same land, and racial prejudice usually assured white predominance. Many blacks who moved West became even more unhappy when the change did not improve their status.” (15) Redkey provides in Chapter Three of his study fuller details of this westward movement to Oklahoma and the attempt to found a Black State, as well as its collapse, leading to a disillusionment with America and a renewed urge for emigration to Africa, what he calls an “African fever” (100 ff and passim).