"Locating Senghor's École de Dakar: International and Transnational Dimensions to Senegalese Modern Art, c. 1959-1980." (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sembene in Senegal: Radical Art in Neo-colonial Society
University of Birmingham UBIRA e theses, 1998
Abstract This study asks whether it is possible to produce revolutionary art – in this instance cinema - in the neo-colonial context. It defines revolutionary art in terms of its ability to expose the exploitative structures of neo-colonialism in a language accessible to the masses, and to inspire the exploited to fight back. It takes as a case study the films of Ousmane Sembene produced during the first two decades of neo-colonialism in Senegal. The study first examines Senegal and Sembene prior to 1960, confirming that France's continuing grip on Senegal is the result of a high level of hegemonic control. Sembene emerges as a complex product of the contradictions of French colonialism in its specific Senegalese form. The production of the films is looked at as concretely as possible, taking into account the ideological conditioning of Sembene himself, the contradictions of the medium and mode of production, the direct and indirect interventions of the state, and the ideological and cultural obstacles to communication between the artist and the masses. The study concludes that it is possible to see Sembene's work as stretching to the maximum the margin of manoeuvre provided by the contradictions of neo-colonialism in Senegal, or as an example of the power of hegemonic forces to incorporate even the most radical artist such a society can produce.
Draft paper - Senegal and the 1966 "First World Festival of Negro Art and Culture" in Dakar
This paper examines the urban transformations of Dakar between 1963 – 1966 before the First World Festival of Negro Art and Culture using the archives of the newspaper Dakar Matin. The paper’s main finding is that Dakar’s transformations in the premices of the Festival were mostly based on the State’s concern to shape a touristic city. First, these touristic concerns brought about the construction of international infrastructures in Dakar, especially in the sectors of transportation, trade and housing. Second, the concerns led State’s to increase its control over local behaviours and even repress marginalized people in the city center since they were seen as threats to the capital’s touristic reputation. In the end, dicourses on urban modernit interact with perceptions of modern nation-state, in the Weberian sense.
Poetic Injustice: The Senghor Myth and Senegal’s Independence
Review of African Political Economy | Africa Is a Country, 2020
The mythification of ‘poet-president’ Léopold Sédar Senghor has blurred our understanding of his real legacy. This article argues that recalling that he was both a poet and a president is a fact, but associating both, while refusing to recognize the authoritarianism he displayed, creates a dangerous historical myth.
Souleymane Bachir Diagne explores in detail Léopold Sédar Senghor’s philosophy of Negritude as a product of Africa and its diaspora in an important historical period of transition marked by the questioning of Western values and the breakdown of colonial rule. Negritude is presented in the wider context of resistance to colonialism and affirmation of difference influenced by Black American ideology and Marxism. But the author also presents Senghor’s personal philosophical exploration of what he calls Africanity, within universal questions of what it means to be human, drawing from diverse sources of inspiration from Jean Paul Sartre, Henri Bergson, Lucien Lévy-Brühl, Karl Marx, and Friendrich Engels, to Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, Pablo Picasso and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin among others.
The growth of artistic nationalism in Senegal
In the 1960s, Senegal's first national leaders narrowly defined how artists should practise nationalism through their work, particularly in the weaving craft, and enforced this definition through selective state patronage. This ideological and stylistic control echoed state control over economic markets. As subsequent administrations have restructured the economy, leading to a powerful informal business sector, so have independent contemporary weavers redefined artistic nationalism. Using ethnographic and archival interviews, this article examines nationalism in Senegalese weaving, placing the perspectives of contemporary weavers alongside those of two arts administrators who helped to develop state-sponsored programmes in the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that contemporary weavers find inspiration from Senegalese nationalism of the mid-twentieth century, yet have modified it to encompass individual expression. Because definitions of artistic nationalism in Senegal have shifted, it remains a significant ideology within the national arts scene.
Inside Dakar’s Musée Dynamique: reflections on culture and the state in postcolonial Senegal
World art, 2019
, a conference was held in Dakar to mark the 50 th anniversary of the First World Festival of Negro Arts which had been held in the city from 1-24 April 1966. The conference closed with the public reading of a declaration that the organizers would later publish in the Senegalese daily newspaper, Le Soleil ('Déclaration finale' 2016). One of its main demands was the restitution of the former Musée Dynamique to the Ministry for Culture. This was unsurprising, as the destiny of the museum had been a bone of contention between the government and key figures in the Senegalese cultural scene ever since the building was abruptly closed in December 1988 and handed over to the judiciary as the new home for Senegal's Supreme Court. Senegalese President Léopold Senghor had envisaged the 1966 festival as a celebration of Negritude, his concept of an essentialised blackness centred on emotion, rhythm and spontaneity. The Musée Dynamique, specially constructed for the event, hosted the festival centrepiece, an exhibition, entitled Negro Art, which featured over 600 objects of 'traditional' African art, borrowed from major museum collections in Europe and North America, from private collectors, and also from traditional kingdoms across the African continent. The objects had been chosen on the basis of aesthetic criteria and were designed to illustrate the richness of Africa's cultural heritage. For two decades, the museum lived on as the most tangible legacy of the 1966 festival: after the museum's closure in 1988, however, it became the most visible symbol of the decline of President Senghor's cultural programme and the occupation, appropriation and interpretation of buildings. London: Routledge.