Rethinking Negritude through Leon-Gontran Damas

Rethinking Negritude through Leon-Gontran Damas analyses four cases in which Damasian Negritude shifted through generic experimentation: Pigments (1937), Retour de Guyane (1938), Veillees noires (1943) and Black-Label (1956). In doing so, it also advances scholarship on Damas (1912-1978) in two ways. On the one hand, it undertakes the crucial and in-depth research needed to challenge the understanding of Negritude as a bipartite (Cesaire and Senghor) phenomenon. On the other hand, it offers an innovative reading of Damas whose work deserves more complete consideration than it has received thus far. Reading this essay will illuminate Damas's works and their relationship to one another, thus demonstrating the continuity of Damasian Negritude.