Week 5 Renaissance as Resistance? Harlem, Paris, Sophiatown Right: Bust of a Woman (1909)

Key Issues Is Africa being romanticized by these movements? In what ways? How does the image of Africa in these literary movements help and/or hinder their social and political purpose? What features, in terms of language, medium, tropes, structure are similar to the previous eras we have studied? What is different? In what ways were these literary movements acts of political resistance. Or should they be considered as a separate sphere?

Outline Outline Why look at both Sophiatown and Harlem? Harlem Negritude Sophiatown Coda: Dissimilarities?

Why look at both Sophiatown and Harlem? Different historical periods, but… Social and economic commonalities (urban migration, industrialisation, Imaginative affinities (‘New Negro’ and ‘New African’) Common criticisms (renaissance as revolution, product of white imperialism, role of women)

Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s) First stage - 1917 premiere of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre. Featured Negro actors conveying complex human emotions and yearnings. Rejected the stereotypes of the black face and minstrel show traditions. 1919 Claude McKay, ‘If We Must Die’ AUDIENCE: appealed to a mixed audience. The literature appealed to the middle class and to whites. Performance, and particularly jazz, originally a lower-class music that became more upper class black and white with introduction of piano.

Characteristics of the New Negro (Alain Leroy Locke, 1925) Every-man, the masses. NOT the intellectual, ‘The Sociologist, the Philanthropist, the Race-leader’ Rejection of the traditional idea of the Negro as a ‘problem’ Self-respect and self-dependency Collective effort, race cooperation Reconnection with Africa Harlem as ‘place’ (forged in diversity of black experience in one spot)

Black culture as ‘cool’ (Langston Hughes)

Claude McKay, The Radical Way (1929) A black man, despite his education, is able to preserve the closest relations with the rhythm of the primitive life of the earth And may be his failure in the organization Of the modern world Was the true force that saved him From the miserable thing Commonly known as the Whites

Negritude (Paris) Aime Cesaire (1913-2008), Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (first use of Negritude) Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-2001), soul of the African as distinct, emotional. Negritude is…essentially instinctive reason, which characterizes all these values. It is reason of the impressions, reason that is “seized”. It is expressed by the emotions through an abandonment of self and a complete identification with the object; through the myth of the archetype of the collective soul, and the myth primordial accorded to the cosmos. In other terms, the sense of communion, the gift of imagination, the gift of rhythm – these are the traits of Negritude, that we find like an indelible seal on all the works and activities of the black man. (from Discours Prononce a l’Universite d’Oxford, Oct 26, 1961)

Expressions of Negritude a critique of imperialism a revolutionary Afr development distinguished from the proletarian revolt the birth of a new black civilization a philosophy of life an ideology for African unity a methodology for development a justification for rule by indigenuous elites a defense of the dignity of cultured blacks Aime Cesaire Leopold Senghor

Sophiatown (1950s) Temporality Gang culture (distinct, appropriated, mimicked identity?) Writers reflecting urban society, violence, sex, temporality in the form of the literature (ie short stories)