later commented, Négritude was at once a literary and ideological movement that signaled a “collective consciousness” that resisted the strictures of French colonialism.24 It represented an act of counter-acculturation against the French policy of assimilation maintained during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which promised equal citizenship and dignity provided that French language and moral values were adopted. Colonial subjects had to demonstrate their aptitude on French terms.25 Négritude, in contrast, asserted a black identity that was not only positive—thus fighting against racist stereotypes of cultural primitivism and intellectual inferiority—but construed as civilizational, rather than merely local, in scope. Négritude argued for the innate unity of black culture, a common heritage that preceded Western colonialism. Yet, it implicitly worked within the French notion of “association” that stressed distinct cultures and pathways toward civilization.26 Négritude therefore paralleled, but also retained specificity from, the Pan-Africanism espoused by Anglophone intellectuals like Henry Sylvester Williams (1869–1911) and W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) during the same period, a movement which cited a shared experience of racism and political disenfranchisement across the Atlantic world from colonial Africa, to Europe, to the Americas.
It is important to stress, then, that Négritude as defined during the 1930s was not anticolonial. Though it condemned racial exclusion, it desired accommodation within French cultural life, not the end of French imperial rule as such—a key contrast with Fanon’s vehement anticolonialism during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Reflecting on the expression in 1968, Damas remarked that Négritude “had a very precise meaning in the years 1934–35, namely the fact that the black man was seeking to know himself, that he wanted to become a historical actor and a cultural actor, and not just an object of domination or a consumer of culture. . . . The word ‘negritude’ was coined in the most racist moment of history, and we accepted the word nègre as a challenge.”27 Négritude thus presented an internal critical position both cultural and political in scope—a self-defined black humanism counterposed against a French colonial humanism that diminished African civilization.28 Expressing its resistant stance in aesthetic fashion, Césaire demonstrated Négritude to powerful effect in his epic poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, 1939), by conjuring in one section the spirit of Toussaint L’Ouverture and those who rebelled during the Haitian Revolution.29
The ambitions of Négritude therefore centered on sparring with the tacit limitations of long-standing colonial policies of assimilation, but without wholly rejecting French cultural and political ideals. Indeed, Césaire, Senghor, and Damas all wrote in French. They were all French citizens. Each eventually served in the French National Assembly at different points, representing their respective territories, and thus fulfilling what the policy of assimilation had promised—through the embrace of French civilization, a colonial subject could attain cultural citizenship and a measure of equality. Though Négritude did create a vital space for black culture, it retained a conservative quality, as Fanon would note, by primarily looking toward the past, not the future. Césaire and Senghor did turn toward a sharper rhetoric after the Second World War, as seen in Césaire’s fierce polemic Discourse on Colonialism (1955) and Senghor’s ascension to the presidency of Senegal.30 But these shifts occurred in the wake of Négritude, which attained a peak in 1948 with the publication of an anthology of Négritude poetry edited by Senghor that included an influential preface by Sartre titled “Orphée noir” (“Black Orpheus”), Orpheus referring to the mythological Greek poet.
Sartre depicted Négritude as a form of antiracist racism—a race-based cultural movement intended to counter Eurocentrism. But, as such, it served as a temporary measure, part of a cultural dialectic that would lead to “the abolition of racial differences.” “The unity which will come eventually, bringing all oppressed peoples together in the same struggle,” Sartre argued, “must be preceded in the colonies by what I shall call the moment of separation or negativity,” an instance of strategic essentialization that Négritude represented.31 Though Sartre’s preface introduced the work of Césaire, Senghor, and Damas to a wider audience, it also oversimplified Négritude’s complex dimensions and foreclosed the possibility of an enduring black cultural autonomy, in a manner criticized as paternalistic.32 Yet other black writers would sharply critique the movement. Echoing views articulated by Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka has cited Négritude not only as elitist, but as a project of romantic “race-retrieval” that problematically “adopted the Manichean tradition of European thought” and applied it to African societies that were “radically anti-Manichean.” Négritude oversimplified African culture. It made no effort to understand the diversity of African cultural practices and values.33
Though Négritude began to decline before Fanon’s intellectual maturation during the 1950s, it was an unavoidable influence on his early thinking, given its presence on Martinique. Césaire was not alone, but joined by his wife, Suzanne, and by René Ménil (1907–2004), who also taught at the Lycée Schoelcher. All three were involved in the journal Tropiques (founded in 1941), which promoted surrealism, critiques of colonialism, and anti-Vichy sentiments, given its establishment during World War II.34 Yet Césaire in particular cast a shadow that Fanon both respected and sought to escape. Not only was Césaire a key figure within a pivotal group of black intellectuals, whose work André Breton (1896–1966), the founder of surrealism, praised highly, but their shared origins meant that engaging with Césaire in some fashion was unavoidable.35 Césaire both liberated and constrained Fanon’s ambitions. In an essay published in 1955, Fanon wrote, “Before Césaire, West Indian literature was a literature of Europeans.”36 Césaire thus marked a fundamental shift. Fanon soon followed a path similar to his former teacher’s, but his intellectual future was still far from certain on the eve of the Second World War. Indeed, the conditions for Fanon’s introduction to Europe proved to be far more dramatic than attending school, leading him down a different path from his esteemed predecessor.
2
France
In the world I am heading for, I am endlessly creating myself.
I show solidarity with humanity provided I can go one step further.
—Black Skin, White Masks 1
With the exception of Martinique, Frantz Fanon spent more years of his life in France than in any other country, including Algeria. The Second World War initiated this long, contentious relationship. The war significantly affected Martinique, as it did the rest of the French Empire. By the same stroke, it profoundly changed the course of Fanon’s life. On June 22, 1940, the French government signed an armistice agreement with Nazi Germany, only eight days after German tanks had entered Paris and less than two months after Germany had invaded France. Its swift defeat astonished the international community and especially France’s overseas colonies. This course of events generated an immediate response in support of resistance. Before the truce was signed, General Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) rejected its terms and called on a Free French movement to liberate France from foreign occupation—a declaration known as the Appeal of June 18 (L’Appel du 18 juin), later broadcast by the BBC on June 22, 1940. He specifically called on France’s imperial territories, declaring, “France is not alone. She has an immense Empire behind her.”2
French colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean gradually aligned with de Gaulle, a bulk of support coming from Francophone Africa.3 Popular political sentiment in Martinique also fell behind de Gaulle. Fanon’s introduction to continental France consequently came through the roles of patriot and liberator. Movement forms an essential part of Fanon’s personal history, constituting the extensive geography his life encompassed. His service in the Free French forces initiated this theme.
Military Service
Despite de Gaulle’s appeal for imperial loyalty, the high commissioner for the French West Indies placed Martinique under the authority of the Vichy regime that collaborated with Nazi Germany. While