The crisis of Bandung's new human

Senghor reads Mao at the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists (1956)

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2174356
AutoresDuncan M Yoon (0000-0003-2401-9577, New York University, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume27
Fascículo5
Páginas1-21
Data de publicação2025-01-21
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInterventions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369801x.2024.2439602
OpenAlexW4406644126
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas20

This essay reexamines the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists (1956) by focusing on how the rhetoric of Bandung solidarity manifests in Léopold Sédar Senghor’s provocative reference to Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yenan Forum of Literature and Art (1942). In his opening address, Senghor situates the First Congress squarely in the legacy of Bandung by promoting his definition of what delegates at the Conference in 1955 had referred to as the “African personality”. After the first day’s session, Senghor and the Haitian Jacques Stéphen Alexis debate what they call the “crisis of black African culture”. The debate crystallizes not only the differences between lived experiences on the African continent and in its diaspora, but also the disagreements over how best to establish a culture of decolonization and national consciousness. At the exchange’s key moment, Senghor cites Mao to respond to Alexis’s accusation that a cultural inventory based on the tenets of négritude was essentializing and did not reflect the political moment. In doing so, Senghor captures how negotiating postcolonial identity, that is, the crisis of Bandung’s new human, means to, in his reading of Mao, “stylize for the people”

Art · Literature · Political science · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture