Frantz Fanon against Negritude, the mask

If Leopold Sedar Senghor is the capital figure of Negritude, Frantz Fanon is the reaction that tries to make it revolutionary; an effort in which he ends dissolving it, because it precisely attacks the exceptionality that gives it its meaning. Fanon's dynamic in this sense reproduces that of self-confessed communism, as in the case of the Haitian René Depestre; but it is more interesting than this, because his anti-culturalism is pseudo-culturalist, in his psychological diagnosis of the political problem.

To begin with, it is impossible to have an anti-culturalism that does not participate in the culturalism that is criticized, as it’s determination; the praise of Jean Paul Sartre, the target who rationalizes Senghor's poetics, subordinates it to him, is enough for suspicion. As with Senghor, Sartre seizes Fanon in the prologue to The Wretched of the Earth, imposing his exegesis; which responds to that false universalism of political determination, to which he reduces Marxism even from its economism.

In fact, Fanon's critique of Senghor —about the idealization of the African past— is erroneous and uncomprehending; for although Irrationalist is not romantic, and even romanticism is not historicist but referential in its reflexivity. This type of reduction is recurrent, precisely because of this misunderstanding of that object, in its extrapositivity; clarifying their incapacity, both to understand the real, and to provide a viable solution to their contradictions.

As if in an act of mockery (MogiNganga?), Fanon wears the black mask on the white spirit of Marxism; and gives lessons —although putting the body as a neo-cristical praxis— of how blacks should not be blacks but proletarians. Unfortunately, Fanon does not have the reference of English liberalism, which gives existential scope to W.E.B. Du Bois; his whole life is of a pure praxis, which does not allow him to peer into the paradoxical walls of history, but only to suffer it, at its feet.

Hence his poetic enthusiasm for the second verse of The Internationale, which still moves even its victims; even more so to his revolutionary and practical sensibility, not an intellectual one, exhausted in that pure existence. The mistake is in giving intellectual connotation to the groan of the slave who cannot maroon, believing in the contra mayoral; that Sartre of a ladino Marxism —not theoretical but political— as a monk who weaves theological subtleties about Marian virginity.

Fanon's books are thus only manuals of revolutionary theology, their reference is morality and not intelligence; and Negritude can do nothing in the face of this, because it is not a reality but a necessity, supposed as formal. Negritude, on the other hand, is another extension, not necessary but possible in its own formality, which is therefore not constrictive; instead of rational dogmatism, it responds to irrationalist probabilism, not to the psyche but to poetry, as poetic.

Fanon nevertheless has a capital value, enhancing the hermeneutical density, still necessary, by contradicting it; a function that becomes more amiable in that anti-culturalist pseudo-culturalism of his, instead of the political aridity of Depestre. After all, Fanon does not speak to the wretched of the earth but to himself, as yet another among them, hopeful; while Depestre participates in that elitism of the Haitian mestizo bourgeoisie, without the level of praxis that Fanon exhibits.

Leopold Sedar Senghor, or the Hermeneutical Contraction of Western Culture

In the spirit of civilization, Sedar Senghor stresses the political importance of art, but as a cultural function; not in the discursive sense of W.E.B. Du Bois[1], but of the analogical quality of aesthetic reflection as an existential function. Of course, that is only in principle, and requires the adjustment that makes it functional, in a gnoseological rather than a political sense; in a systematization, in which it already loses that analogical specialty, but is organized in a conventional hermeneutics.

This is what religious thought resolves, in its practical principle, organized in a mythological body; by which it represents an understanding of the real in its cosmic dramas, in relation to the specific culture in question. This peculiarity would then be common to all cultures, resolving the projection of the human as real, in its political expression; but also susceptible to distortion, due to the eventual superposition of that political expression, as determination; which would happen with the inevitable development of this expression, at the basis of its existential practice, as a religious one.

The contradiction is not paradoxical but apparent, due to the diachronic nature of the processes of these cultures; differing in this affectation from one to another, with their successive collisions, as they relate to each other. In the case of the West, the problem would not be in its final monotheism, which reflects —but does not determine— that superposition; but would come from the other development of philosophy, also peculiar, as a specialty of its culture.

The problem with this peculiarity would be in the political function, that this philosophical practice acquires; replacing the religious one, with conventions such as power, in an abstractionist hermeneutic, allowing its economic isolation. This would have caused the political overdimension of power, as a problem of that culture, more than in any other; since in the others it would lack this abstract nature, which allows its ideological manipulation, as the center of its ontology.

As an example, Western ontology is always resolved around the problem of Being; to the point of providing the nomenclature for its reflection, from the second generation of physiologism[2]. This is the problem of the Heracliteo-Parmenidean contradiction, from the preoccupation with the real of his first generation; that from Thales of Miletus to Anaxagoras and Anaximenes, dealt with the real as the mythological tradition, as a totality.

Being, however, is not isolable, not even in its individual condition, making this nomenclature problematic; to the point of confusing the early schools of Arab realism, trying to order the Aristotle's determination of the substance; which own condition is simultaneity, even in the other diachronic condition of these determinations. This is nevertheless compatible with quantum exceptionalism, reconciling even Einstein's doubts in a moderate determinism; treating the real no longer in the conventional abstraction of a nature, as an extension, but as a condition of phenomena, in their punctual realization.

In turn, as a body of cosmological reference, mythology had practical and existential sense, not conceptual; organized into representations, similar —as systematic— to that of Aristotle's determination of the substance; whose realism was a contraction to the efficiency of mythology, as opposed to Plato's idealist abstractionism. This will be what affects the Western religious base, conditioning its realistic probabilism with determinism; solved reflexively with its hermeneutical rationalism, no matter if it is eventually and necessarily contradicted by culturalist eruptions, as Romanticism and Irrationalism.

This is what Senghor's contraction with Negritude is about, as probably the final crisis of that tradition; in which he participates, in his parallelism to the hermeneutical emergence of science, like a postmodern physiologism. For this reason, his recognition of the special function of black art lacks the Platonic sense that it has in W.E.B. Du Bois; but allowing a conciliation with its ontological efficiency, by providing the hermeneutical framework it needs in its existentialism. Du Bois is thus the Hegel of black ontology, making it immanentialist, and Cornel West the Heidegger who explains it; Senghor is then the Marx who gives it political scope, from the anthropological sense of the Haitian Jean Prince Mars; all of them in this contraction, which culminates the hermeneutical tradition of the West, in the New Black Thought.

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[1] . Cf: From aesthetic thought in W.E.B. Du Bois and the Harlem Renaissance, in From the Niagara Crossing to the New Black Thought, Kindle 2021.

[2] . Here the problem subjacent is the inability to separate the verb “To be”, as “being” and “be”, like in the romance languages; in which “To be” could mean “to be something” or “to be somewhere” or “in some way”.

On the mystical and recurrent ghost of Duvalierianism

One of the most incomprehensible and strange phenomena of Haitian political culture, is the recurrence of voodoo; as an example, by Western standards, of the primitivism of this culture, whit repercussions on its social backwardness. In the first place, the problem would be that Haitian political culture does not respond to these parameters of the West; not being able to materialize as such since its emergence as a country, product of the same Western political crisis.

In this sense, and beyond its historical references, Haitian political tradition and culture is hard broken in its periods; without a connection between these, allowing the consolidation of any residual tradition, to be used as a reference. The first problem here is in the French pressure, posing the economic debt that prevents this organization; not only in that conflict of the nineteenth century, but also in the present, with the American interests, throughout the twentieth century.

It should be remembered the creation of the Haitian central bank, transferring the debt to the United States; and the occupation of the country for two decades, creating the imbalance that conditions any attempt at restructuring. In this context, Duvalier's rise to power —like that of Batista in Cuba— responds to this structural deficit; which is of a sufficient political tradition, and dates to the destabilization caused by the Petion-Boyer’s republic.

This instability is not due to the brutal tribalism of Dessalines and Christopher, with their monarchical pretensions; but precisely to the idealistic pretensions about a democratic republic, without the economic resources to do it. Due to the early stage of modern humanism, the incomprehension of this is easy to understand, as with any development; but no the persistence of those pretensions, despite the evidence of this importance, while still not allowing this development.

Strangely, this is what explains the ascendancy of mysticism, as a substitute for an organized political culture; which, not being able to establish itself, subsists in that perpetual —and certainly brutal—contraction of religious functionalism. This is what the monarchism of Dessalines and Christopher meant, legitimizing itself as a revolutionary mysticism; from that Boukman's proclamation to the Bondye, in which the revolution began, to Louverture's struggle with the French recalcitrance.

The answer to the Haitian political problem is thus anthropological, because the problem is first anthropological; emerged from the great crisis that was the French Revolution, as an anthropological disaster of West culture. This does not mean that the alternative to Haiti's political deficiency is Duvalier's violence, but only that it’s deficiency; and its solution would be an emergent development, by which these contradictions are appeased, in a national reconciliation; allowing the weaving —as anthropologic— of economic relations at popular level, no corporate and less still of foreign.

This is the meaning of Haitian gangs, which are also popular and not elitist, as an alternative to interventionism; whose violence is not different from that of the recurrent dictatorships, because it fulfills the same coercive function. In fact, it is not new but the same as the movement that opposed the martyrdom of Charlemagne Peralta to American interventionism; which resurfaces after the same threat of intervention, from the dictatorship —no less brutal— of Raoul Cedras.

No one will ever want to accept this premise, because of the idealistic faith that keeps the whole West in crisis; not just Haiti, which is only the place that lacks a sufficient tradition to assimilate and consume that disaster; but to the entire West, converging in the transitive —even racial— tension, that begins in Haiti and culminates in Cuba. Haiti is then only the extreme expression of that crisis, which by its dimensions resembles the Minoan cataclysm; now reproduced as culture, thus preventing its recovery, as that of Phoenician commerce on Mycenean population.

So spoke the uncle, introductory review to the book

This major catauro by Jean Prince-Mars ispublished by Memories of the Inkwell, explaining its synthesizing function; by which, even with political value, it is in truth an understanding of politics in its anthropological, not ideological, value. This already establishes it as the updating and adaptation of all the references in this regard, from Antenor Firmín, who establishes them as the very principles of humanism, but which Mars applies to Haitian singularity.

At both extremes is the development of that understanding of blackness as a nature, in Blackness as a possibility; which as typical of the West culture, adequate its idealistic excesses, with the realistic practicality of African cosmology. We must be careful with this, because there are many meanings of Realism, most of them of a materialist nature; but here the notion of realism refers to reality —or the real— as the object of reflection, distinct from its transcendent determination. It is from this that this black cosmology is understood as a new pragmatism, but already practical in realism; not idealistic, like that one —lacking the Dasein— of the tradition it opposes, as Western Idealism in general.

Mars begins his treatise asking —without rhetoric— whether the body of Haitian traditions are their own or assimilated; this allows him to establish the measure of consistency and uniqueness of this culture, and therefore its value, if any. The book then proposes an inquiry, which allows this probabilistic development of realism, in its pragmatic approach; avoiding the errors of extreme positivism, which does not differentiate between appearance and reality, or in fact dissolves one into the other.

Of course, none of this is possible ignoring that dense extension of the Haitian enlightenment, crowned by Mars; especially if it is based on a conditioned approach such as that of René Depestre, who precisely says goodbye to Negritude. But that does not have the fatality of the oracle either, since Depestre is only an ideological and not a philosophical wall; beyond him, the rainbow of communism dissolves his optical illusion into Haitian reality, and this is narrated by Mars, not by him.

Mars's analysis is acute, he uses a principle of discrimination instead of infinite sum to organize this body; starting from a demand for idealist rationality (Leibniz), which guarantees him the right understanding of reality. This is the kind of subtleties that culturalism resolves as a practical realism, in its reflexive pragmatism; Mars's contribution is thus philosophical, with the adequacy of transcendental pragmatism (Peirce) in Du Bois; which is here immanentialist, and thus more efficient in its probabilism, as the realistic basis of black thought.

By rationalizing this body of traditions as folklore, Mars distinguishes the analysis of the masses from that of the elites; obviously opting for the popular, which in its pragmatism extracts the desideratum from all traditions, even those of others; appropriate in their practicality and not because of their apparent necessity, in a function that is then existential rather than political. Blackness is important here, because it is that African cosmology —not western philosophy— what allows this realism; which survives in tradition, and not —Mars clarifies— as a vestige of the past, but actualizing the functional principles of the social structure, as a culture.

The Western defect is to ignore this cultural nature, solving its structure in its political expression as a determination; thus provoking the crisis of modern humanism, from its origin in medieval Christianity, which inverted that order. The Haitian enlightenment —as of blackness— is the effort to reverse this disorder, which is the entropy of the West culture; renewing its structure, with that contraction to the functional principles in which it organizes, through the reflexivity of African cosmology.

Welcome Back to Blackness

The conflict that Captain General O'Donnell faced in Cuba was not one of effective rebellion, but of cultural blackening; as a danger emanating from the recent Haitian republic, providing a paradigm political for black Cubans. This does not translate into dangerous uprisings, which the geography of the country would have allowed to control easily; but the formation of an enlightened focus in Santiago de Cuba, which would hinder the primacy of the white sacrocracy.

It is no coincidence that the Independents of Color rose up in Santiago, nor the Haitian ascendancy of their leaders; nor that this was also the ascendancy of Rómulo Lachatañeré, the black anthropologist who questioned Ortiz. Santiago de Cuba was undoubtedly a focus of new hermeneutics, arising from the conflicts between Haitians and Dominicans; who landed there with their problems, even of identity, immersed themselves in their discussions, foreign to Havana.

The reference is strong, with an Antenor Firmin who challenges the founder of French anthropology in France; and a Joseph Janvier who rescues the discipline to its own value on humanity, from its ethnological reductions. Black tension is strong in Cuba, with the West threatened on two fronts, not only the one at the East; there is also that of the trade with Louisiana, to where fled Haitians and French, mixed in their disagreements.

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Meanwhile in Cuba, the most that can be done is to launch that dove of intellectual flight of miscegenation; which is postulated as pure logical necessity, but of difficult reality in this fiction of political syncretism. In short, miscegenation is not only an abstract and conventional category, but also conditioned by its subordination; while people behave like blacks or whites —no emulates— relatively but also firmly.

Mestizaje cannot access the intricacies of politics, which reacts angrily every time the rule is broken; that is what the bourgeoisie did not forgive Batista, justifying the violence against him as revolutionary. Behind Batista was the broad wing of black conservatism, which had bourgeois aspirations in its proletarian character; and that was unthinkable, like that constant threat emanating from the Caribbean, until the revolution was able to control it.

That is what René Depestre's work consists of, with a title as illustrative as Welcome and Goodbye to Negritude; but so meticulous that it collects and organizes even his own political shortcomings, with which he dissolves the movement. This book by Depestre emulates the dissolution of the Niagara Movement, by W.E.B. Du Bois, in North America; subordinating all possible American blackness to the political strategy of liberalism, which is ideological and white.

Depestre's critique focuses on the culturalism of the movement, as a futile effort to establish a new ontology; not seeing that it was a matter of recovering the original ontology of black ancestry, adequating the defects of the Western one. He could not understand it —as it cannot yet be understood— because the problem is not only ontological; it is in fact hermeneutical, because that dependence of Marxism on the Idealist tradition from which it evolves, even as its expression; and whose transcendentalism derives to the historical, trying to resolve some immanentism for its lacks, but unsuccessfully.

Blackness still offers that capacity for renewal for the whole of the West, which stubbornly refuses to do so; not because it is perverse but childish in its stubbornness, given that insufficiency in which it cannot understand its shortcoming. The New Black Thought, by reorganizing the phenomenon, can make up for this lack, which is hermeneutical; and that due to the enlightened excess of modernity, has precipitated its entire civilization into entropy; which is not serious, if after all there is Haiti, ready with its own enlightenment, welcoming Negritude again.