Name: Vishva Gajjar
Roll no.: 33
Paper: 11 (The Postcolonial Literature)
Submit to: English Department (MKBU)
NEGRITUDE - NADINE GORDIMER'S MAJOR NOVELS
Negritude
was both a literary and ideological movement led by French-speaking black
writers and intellectuals from France’s colonies in Africa and the Caribbean in
the 1930s. The movement is marked by its rejection of European colonization and
its role in the African diaspora, pride in “blackness” and traditional African
values and culture, mixed with an undercurrent of Marxist ideals. Negritude was
born from a shared experience of discrimination and oppression and an attempt
to dispel stereotypes and create a new black consciousness.
The
movement drew its inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance, which was
beginning its decline. The Harlem Renaissance, which was alternatively called
the “New Negro Renaissance,” fostered black artists and leaders who promoted a
sense of pride and advocacy in the black community, and a refusal to submit to
injustices. But as the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance came to an end,
many African American intellectuals of the period moved to France, seeking a
haven against racism and segregation. Among these artists were Langston Hughes,
James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay, who Sengalese poet and
politician Léopold Sedar Senghor praised as the spiritual founder of Negritude.
The
movement’s founders, Aime Cesaire, Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas, met
while studying in Paris in 1931 and began to publish the first journal devoted
to Negritude, L’Étudiant noir (The Black Student), in 1934.
The
term “Negritude” was coined by Cesaire in his ‘Notebook of a Return to the
Native Land’, (1939) and it means, in his words, “The simple recognition of the
fact that one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as
blacks, of our history and culture.” Even in its beginnings Negritude was truly
an international movement—it drew inspiration from the flowering of African
American culture brought about by the Harlem Renaissance and found a
home in the canon of French literature.
In Nadine Gordimer's sympathetic assessment of the black situation
and the black people, the spirit of negritude gets emphatically revealed. In
her novels, she presents Negro characters as noble, more sensitive, more given
to the warmth of life. In the white and the black confrontation, Nadine
Gordimer seems to take the side of the black, as she believes in the black as
being unjustly treated by the white. Nadine Gordimer seems to plead for herself
in Toby's and Steven's case, in the novel A World of Strangers. She has
identified herself so naturally with the South African world that her version
of the black life does not suffer from any European bias or prejudiced
misinterpretation. Though a white writer, her presentation of racial
discrimination nowhere falls short of sincere authenticity.
· A World of Strangers :
Toby Hood comes from England to South Africa on assignment for his
family's publishing house. He divides his time between the townships and white
high society, he feels concerned about the black world of Johannesburg. He
makes friends with Steven Sitole, his kindred black bachelor friend, similarly
apolitical. Steven Sitole is destined to play a major part in Toby's African
experience. Toby's relationship with Steven throughout the novel is a puzzling
one. Steven tries to assert his separate identity in the novel. He talks with
Toby about racial politics, serious art, about Tolstoy. On the other hand,
fascinatedly watching the organ; movement of black dancers a t a party of
Steven's, Toby registers for his own part only the absence of the same capacity
in himself. He understands for the first time, as he puts it, "the fear,
the sense of loss there can be under a white skin." In this connection
Stephen Cling man (1986:53) says: "The possible converse, it appears, of a
moment of white "Negritude', is quite literally one of self
-denigration." As far as the assumptions of the 1950s are concerned, the
novel offers its interracial socializing. For example, Toby remarks on the
pitfalls of a white liberalism in which, 'it became 'an inevitable fashion' to
mix with blacks, or even to have a 'pet African' whose name one could drop in
company'. Some of the more glaring incongruities of this behavior are well
documented in the novel. At one interracial party the white hostess feels so
relieved at the way in which she has been 'accepted' by her guests that she
remarks to Sam and Steven black men, 'I'm going to see if our black brothers in
the kitchen cant rustle up some tinned soup for us'.
Toby has a counterpart in the black world because of his
friendship with Steven, his best friend. Toby has never really had any social
commitment, Steven, however, has rejected his. Having experienced, as a black man,
only bitter frustration in all quarters, Steven instead finds, solace in
reckless living, in a personal refusal to be beaten, in a personal refusal to
care. He is 'sick of feeling half a man': "I don't want to be bothered
with black men's troubles."
Toby's encounters with the African community began with a visit
from Anna Louw, a Legal Aid lawyer. Anna Louw's marriage to an Indian has been
broken up by the pressures of apartheid, and lives in a much harder world than
the liberals. Yet, for all that, the novel shows a deep admire lion for her
courage and clarity, and her unceasing attempt ever to widen the frontier zone
and make it more genuinely habitable. As a black girl,' Anna asserts her
separate identity in the novel. She is a disillusioned ex-communist. She became
a social activist. She had made a trip to Russia in 1950, but she had not
remained in the chronic slate of exhaustion, which prevented any new
commitment. In short A World of Strangers is full of typical scenes and
presents a great variety of South African types: among them She 'liberal, the
Black intellectuals.
· Occasion for Loving :
Nadine Gordimer's presentation of Negro characters in her novels
as noble, more sensitive is quite truly reflected in the novel Occasion for
Loving. In the novel, a white female character gets attracted towards a black
man because of his noble qualities. The novel focuses on a cross-racial affair
between the black artist and the young white English woman. Ann Davis is an
opportunistic girl, who has come to South Africa with her husband Boaz. She
gets attracted towards Gideon Shibalo, who was an African painter, and teacher
with 'the moody lace of a man who pleases everybody but himself. Gideon takes
her to the boxing matches and to other colorful affairs, and to parties at the
homes of his friends, both white and black. Gideon was the man whose painting
had attracted attention overseas and won him a scholarship to work in Italy. He
was known and welcomed everywhere. Ann takes pride in his interest in her,
recognizes and welcomes her sexual power, and likes showing other men that she
finds a black man interesting, he had his own status and dignity in the
society. Gideon has no contact with [he African musical heritage but he tries
to acquire a lot of knowledge about it by asking the seminal questions to Boaz,
who works on the African musical heritage. He had painted Ann's several
portraits very beautifully. These paintings refer also to the creative energy
she inspires in him. She is so much interested in the picture that she is
frequently drawn to look at it, though she finds 'no surface likeness to
provide reassurance', though "she knew i t was the likeness of what he
found her to be', Gideon glorifies of everything i.e. African tradition and
culture, African musical heritage etc. A brilliant dancer, Ann is increasingly
drawn to Gideon through an attraction described as having 'the rhythm of a
dance'. While describing their interracial relationship, Gideon remarks, 'every
contact with whites was touched with intimacy was always easier —to have a
love-affair than a friendship'. Throughout the novel Gideon Shibalo is presented
as a tolerant, intellectual painter, who becomes very sensitive after the
failure of their love relationship.
· A Sport of Nature :
In A Sport of Nature, Gordimer describes the total dedication of
blacks to the Liberation Movement. Whaila Kgomani, a black revolutionary, was a
noble African. In the novel, a white Jewish girl, Hillela gets attracted
towards Whaila because of his noble qualities. He is repeatedly described as
godlike, 'the disguised god from the sea', 'the obsidian god from the waves'.
He first meets Hillela in the sea, appearing from the waves to bring news of an
assassination to Arnold, the commander in exile. Due to his inspiration for the
revolutionary activities, Hillela undergoes a transformation, Hillela,
constantly questions Whaila about his plans for South Africa.
When Hillela marries him, she seeks to find ' a sign in her
marriage. She refuses merely to accept their different skin colors. Whaila is
surprised to see the change in her mind. He is a very sensitive man. When she shows
keen interest in his work, he tries to acknowledge his identity, he says: 'What
am I to you, that you transform yourself?' Her love for Whaila leads her to
become interested in his revolutionary work.
· My Son's Story:
In the novel My Son's Story, Gordimer portrays a character of
colored school teacher who later becomes a revolutionary activist. Here a young
white women named Hannah Plowman gets attracted towards a colored man because
of his noble qualities. Sonny is the 'pride of his people as he is the first
person in his family to gain formal education. Initially he is not interested
in joining the black struggle. Put, later on he participates in the-rally and
he is banned from teaching. He leads a hectic life as a revolutionary. Amongst
his several admires, Hannah is one of them. Sonny and Hannah first become
acquainted with each other during his prison term when she writes encouraging
letters to him. Their love for the cause draws them closer. She admires the
courage of the prisoners. To Hannah the struggle against injustice is of prime
importance. At the end of the novel, when Hannah leaves Sonny, not out of
feeling of anger but simply because of her passion to serve the needy Africans,
Sonny accepts her departure easily because he likes her temperament, her urge
in working for the oppressed Africans. He is large-hearted man. As a colored
man, his courage and hope for his people are remarkable which asserts his
identity. His prominence as an orator and a revolutionary leader. He is, by all
accounts, a good man who lives by his political convictions.
If we talk about other writers: Birago Diop from Senegal,
whose poems explore the mystique of African life; David Diop, writer of revolutionary protest poetry; Jacques
Rabemananjara, whose poems and plays glorify the
history and culture of Madagascar; Cameroonians Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono, who wrote anti-colonialist novels; and the Congolese
poet Tchicaya U Tam’si, whose extremely
personal poetry does not neglect the sufferings of the African peoples. The
movement largely faded in the early 1960s when its political and cultural
objectives had been achieved in most African countries.
