SOURCE: Irele, Abiola. “The Negritude Debate.” In European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Albert S. Gérard, pp. 379-93. Budapest, Hungary: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986.

In the following essay, Irele explores the various interpretations of Negritude by writers through the decades, placing it in a historical-political perspective.

There is a sense in which the development of negritude,¹ both as a movement and as a concept, has been marked by a fundamental irony. This irony stems from the fact that the first extended discussion and systematic formulation of negritude was provided by Jean-Paul Sartre. In many ways, it was Sartre's brilliant analysis in the essay “Orphée noir” that consecrated the term and gave negritude the status of one of the most important ideological concepts of our time. At the same time, it can be argued that his very formulation has been in large measure responsible for the ambiguity...