SOURCE: Benamou, Michel. “Demiurgic Imagery and Césaire's Theatre.” Présence Africaine 93 (1975): 165-77.

In the following essay, Benamou explores Césaire's demiurgic role in African theatre through a discussion of the imagery and thematic concerns of his dramas.

I. Introduction

Demiurgic politics call for demiurgic poetics. If a leader does not have a people to lead, but must first create the people's consciousness of itself, his relationship to the people is the same as that of a dramatist who, because he lacks an audience, creates an audience by the drama he writes, and both creations, the theatre and the people, demand that the leader/playwright exert demiurgic power to the utmost degree which language and history make available. This was exactly the condition of Césaire's writing at the moment when he decided to leave the French Communist Party, and to found both a party and a theatre...