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On Negrohood: Psychology of the African Negro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Léopold Sédar Senghor
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Extract

How surprised the psychologists of the French army were when they discovered that Senegalese conscripts were more sensitive to the vicissitudes of the climate, and even to extreme heat, than the soldiers of “metropolitan” France; that they reacted to the least changes in the weather, and even to such barely discernible events as minute inflections of the voice. These warriors who had passed for brutes—these heroes—turned out to have the sensitivity of women. It is often said, and not without reason, that the Negro is a man of Nature. The African negro, whether peasant, fisherman, hunter or herdsman, lives outdoors, both off the earth and with it, on intimate terms with trees and animals and all the elements, and to the rhythm of seasons and days. He keeps his senses open, ready to receive any impulse, and even the very waves of nature, without a screen (which is not to say without relays or transformers) between subject and object. He does, of course, reflect; but what comes first is form and color, sound and rhythm, smell and touch.

Hail to the royal Kaicedrat! Hail to those who have invented nothing, To those who have explored nothing, To those who have subdued nothing, But abandoned themselves to the grip of the essence of every thing, Ignorant of the surface, but gripped by the movement of every thing, Not caring to subdue, but to play the game of the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 10 , Issue 37 , March 1962 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, Gallimard.

2 Preface to the Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, P.U.F., p. xxxi.

3 Letter of Sept. 21, 1952.

4 Cf. "Physiologie de l'art," by Tanneguy de Quénétain, Réalités, No. 141, Oct. 1957.

* The French connaître (to know) may suggest that knowledge is common birth. To bring out this suggestion, the author writes connaître (to know) as co-naître (literally : to be born with). Since there is no English equivalent which would carry this suggestion, the literal and the suggested sense will have to be conveyed by different words. - TR.

5 Translated from the German of the Moscow edition, 1946, p. 40.

* That is, their underlying reality. - TR.

6 Gallimard. Cf. G. Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifique, P.U.F., and P. Guaydier, Les grandes découvertes de la physique moderne, Corréa.

7 Op. cit., p. 11.

8 Ibid., p. 25.

9 Ibid., p. 26.

10 Ibid., p. 27.

11 Cf. Maurice Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le mythe dans le monde mélanésien, Gallimard.

12 Diogenes, No. 16, Oct. 1956.

13 Orphée noir: Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, by L. S. Senghor, p. xxix.

14 Jean-Paul Sartre, Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions, Hermann et Cie, pp. 16-7.

15 Phénoménologie et matérialisme dialectique, pp. 259-60.

16 Op. cit., p. 49.

17 Quoted by André Breton in Art magique, Club français du livre, p. 14.

18 Jean-Paul Sartre, Op. cit., p. 41.

19 Ibid., p. 45.

20 May-June 1948.

21 This is the title of a work by Jules Monnerot (Gallimard).

22 Jean-Paul Sartre, Op. cit., p. 29.

23 Ibid., p. 30.

24 Ibid., p. 30.