ALA 2015

Glissants schloarship is often presented as a major shift in the evolution of Afro-caribbean discourses on identity from the essentialist theory of a return to the source developed by Negritude scholars to a reflection on diversality. A careful analysis of Senghors and Glissants similar political projects, namely their critiques of the modern universalist subject, shows however, that despite the traditional understanding of African and Caribbean thought as the evolution from an essentialist theory of roots to a more sophisticated theory of diversality, their intellectual projects are particularly different. One is an ontology and an epistemology of simplicity that asks the question of the ultimate nature of being and the modes of apprehending truth; the other is a theory of chaos interested in the conditions of creation of meaning rather than the ultimate nature of things. The difference between Glissants and Senghors philosophies is illustrated, I claim, in their theories of orality and writing.

Senghors philosophy of simplicity, illustrated by his theory of orality and writing, is fundamentally an attempt to define the ultimate nature of things, an ontology, and a reflection on the modes of defining and reaching the immediate data of consciousness. No needs to say, thus, that as most ontologies, it leads to an epistemology. Before we delve deep into Senghors ontology through his theory of orality, let us, first, join Souleymane Bachir Diagne, as he invites us to follow Pablo Picassos first visit at the muse du Trocadero, a year after he finished his Portrait de Gertrude Stein. This digression will, in turn, allow us to better understand Senghors ontology, which, I claim, constitutes the basis of his theory of orality.

Its 1907, Picasso had completed, a year earlier, the portrait of Gertrude Stein. This portrait determines an important moment in his oeuvre as it marks the end of his rose period and foreshadows his adoption of cubism. Picasso does not paint clearly defined portraits anymore. Rather, he substitutes them with mask-like figures as if he wants to exorcise the demon that stops him from seeing the very nature of things buried under simple decipherable traits. But why does he paint like this? He does not know yet. Yet, he, nonetheless, has the intuition that these masks say more than they hide. When, however, he arrives at the muse de Trocadro, in June 1907, the veil that had been blurring his intuition was miraculously lifted. Bachir Diagne reminds us Picassos own memories of this moment thirty seven years later, as he was finishing Guernica:When I set foot in Trocadro, Picasso tells his friend Andr Malraux, it was disgusting. The flee market. The smell. I was all by myself. I wanted to leave. Yet, I was not budging. I stayed. And stayed. I understood that what was happening to me \ was very important. The masks, they were not like other sculptures. Not at all. They were magical. [] We did not notice. Primitives, but not magical. Negroes, they were intercessors, it is then that I learned the word in French. [] I understood what their sculptures were for. Why sculpt this way and not otherwise. [footnoteRef:1] [1: Picasso, Oeuvres completes III, pp 696-697 Diagne, 42]

Why sculpt this way and not otherwise? Senghors answer to this question proposes a less simplistic response. Negroes paint like this and not otherwise, the theoretician of Negritude contends, because their particular relations to the world leads to a completely different understanding of being as force. To understand this being, for Senghor, it is logical that Negroes create a mode of relation to the object of knowledge that sets the conditions to be one with it. This mode of sculpting is therefore, for the Senegalese scholar, representative of a Negro epistemology rooted in an ontology of force. It is founded on a conscious attempt to reach the immediate data of consciousness. As Senghors answer suggests, African art is less the mark of a primitive culture indicating the childhood of humanity than it is illustrative of a certain degree of maturity. (that is precisely why Diagne argues that) The aesthetics of the African mask denotes, for Senghor, the rhythm of life that constitutes the vitalist essence of things.

If I have spent such a long time explaining the importance of African painting as essential to Senghors philosophy, it is because the definition of this je ne sais quoi constitutive of African art that Picasso presents naively and paternalistically as the mark of primitive art is precisely what Senghor has attempted to present in his entire philosophy. It is, as Diagne argues, the very manifestation of African philosophy. 43-44 In other words, Negritude is, through a rhythmic attitude, constitutive of African art as ontology, a philosophy of being.

I argue that one can make the same claim in regards to orality in Senghors philosophy because, the essence of orality is the same as that of African art, that is, rhythm as the ultimate means to reach the very nature of things. Art, in Senghors philosophy, is poetry and the essence of poetry, he believes, is the vibrating rhythm of the oral word. As his comparison of African and European poetry implies, Senghor understands orality as the first manifestation of African ontology. He declares:The first similarity that I found between Claudels language (parole) and that of negro-Africans is that they both are rooted in a total vision of the world, in a Weltanschauung, that is, essentially, an ontology that they express. An ontology, that is, a science of being and a coherent sum of principles and ideas that explain, beyond the nature of things, the sturcture of the world and the relations between beings, and even the elements,. 350

Orality is, in effect, for the Sereer scholar, the foundation of being. This comparison between Claudel, the Christian poet, and Negro African scholarship, reminds us that Senghors respect for Christianity is rooted in what he considers the latters treatment of the verb as constitutive of the essence of the world. As Raymond Ndiaye reminds us, it is the bishop of Hippone (Saint Augustin), that gave him back his soul, his spirituality, by taking him back to his kamito-semitic roots, through the concepts of charity and the creative Word, which both are fundamenrtally african. As And Senghor recalls, as if to illustrate Raymon Ndiayes point:

It is Amma, the uncreated and all-powerful god that created all beings and things. Prior to that moment, these latter were bare ideograms, located in the egg of the world. It is from this egg, fecundated by Ammas word that the first two humans came. The creation of the world is completed, he adds, by Nommo, who descended from the sky on an arch that contained not only the eight first human ancestors, but also all the animals, plants, minerals and elements that inhabit the universe It is to Nommo, that god will give the mastery of the word and the mission to teach it to the be-ings by un-muting them

At the beginning, Senghor tells us, there is the oral word, la parole parle, that had the vital element necessary for the fecundation of man. Orality is thus, for the Senegalese scholar la nature profonde the ultimate nature and the essential manifestation of things as it insufflates being with life. La parole parle, he thinks, is not only that which completes the world, it is also constitutive of its quintessence. If being, Senghor tells us, as he recalls Placide Tempels, is force, then the oral nature of the verb is that which en-forces the world and en-livens the person.

These qualities of orality Senghor believes enable us to escape the epistemic limits of writing. He proceeds, in the same text, to oppose orality, the spoken work, to writing, le graphic sign, because the latter, Negroes say, breaks the rhythm, the essence of the Verb de-forces speech by making it inert. 371 It is important to note that Senghor is a poet and a linguist. The choice of the words and the structure of his sentences matter particularly. The use of the verb, breaks and the neologism de-forces determine the limits of writing as a means to understand the very nature of the world. To break the essence of the verb (for the poet who reminds us, through Claudel, that the very foundation of the Negro ontology is ne impedias musicam, that is, not to break the harmony of the world) is to miss the possibility of understanding its particular manifestation. It is therefore to dforcer, the world, that is, to de-livens it.

Writing functions, thus, in Senghors philosophy as that which separates the object and the subject of knowledge and consequently subtracts its constitutive force, that is, the vital element constitutive of our vibratory world and words. It has, for Senghor, a relation of exteriority with the signified. It is a process of thought that produces meaning through the representation of the object of knowledge. To write is to translate and to miss the very nature of things precisely because while writing fixes things in space and time, the very nature of things is to become in a constantly changing lan. Writing is, for the Senegalese scholar, at best, a descriptive element condemned to miss the vibratory materialization of being, the rhythmic essence of things, that Picasso discovered in the African mask.

It is therefore clear that the hermeneutics of Senghors relation to orality shows that his philosophy is fundamentally an ontology.

In the same vein as Leopold Sedar Senghors, Edouard Glissants philosophy starts from the postulation that the modern universalist paradigm is rooted in a Eurocentric historicity that leads to a hierarchical understanding of world cultures in general and the disenfranchisement of people of African descent in particular. Despite the similarities between the two authors analyses of the centralization of the European subject illustrated by their critiques of writing, however, the same assessments that lead Senghor to consider that the modern European teleology and its ensuing ontology and epistemology determines Africans subhumanities and should therefore be replaced by a better ontology and epistemology, has a different effect on Glissants oeuvre. The Martinican scholar considers rather, that the modern Eurocentric understanding of humanness is an effect rather that a cause of a more important issue: the very conditions of possibility of the modes of definitions of the world that allowed the Eurocentric modern paradigm to thrive. Accordingly, rather than the question of the ultimate nature of being, the resolution of which, Senghor believes, can lead to a better understanding of the diversity constitutive of our world, Glissant is interested in the practices, the narratives, and the discourses that have made possible the invention of History and its corollary the hierarchical representation of world cultures. Thus, rather than propose, as in the case of Senghor, a better ontology as a means to rethink black cultures humanness, Glissant attempts, as he says in the first pages of the Caribbean Discourse, to trace the processes, the vectors, that had woven the web of nothingness in which some people are glued today. P.14 In other words, Glissants interest in the conditions that led to the seemingly uni-versal world in which we live led him to ask a question that is more of interest to me here: What are the discourses, narratives, and practices that led to the uni-versal and generalizing humanist paradigm? What are the cognitive tools that have allowed the invention of a world founded on the universalization of the provincial European subject?

As in the case of Senghor, a hermeneutics of Glissants critique of History and his theory of opacity through a particular analysis of his understanding of the dialectics of writing and orality shows that, for him, the generalizing understanding of the world constitutive of modern humanism is rooted in a particular poetics of writing. It is, he claims, the very aesthetic and political nature of writing that enables the invention of the European enlightenments universalist subject.

In fact, while Senghors philosophy is fundamentally a theory of intelligibility based on the possibility to understand the ultimate data of consciousness, Glissants work functions as a critique of intelligibility through a theory of opacity. This is precisely why, while Senghor attempts to find the possibility to reach the ultimate nature of being, Glissant is interested in an utterly different question. The difference between Senghors theory of intelligibility and Glissants philosophy of opacity is most visible in the latters understanding of the limits of writing. Writing is essentially, for Glissant, the promise of transparency. It is, he says, linked to a transcendental philosophy of being that, today, should be invested and relayed by a problematic of relation 410. Writing is, in other words, the language of Being in a becoming world. It is that which fixes, on a particular space, the evanescent reality of things. Writing, he says, supposes the absence of movement. 404 Writing functions, thus, as the materialization of what Bergson calls the snapshots constitutive of intellectual relations to the world in what Glissant considers an ultimately opaque world characterized by the un-penetrable difference constitutive of the very nature of things.

Orality, on the other hand, has, for Glissant, the ability to continue the necessary relation with the other, while keeping its essential otherness. As opposed to writing, orality is intrinsically the promise of chaos in a global world. It sets the conditions for an aesthetics of diversity that does not search for the possibility of universal understanding. It proposes rather an evanescent aesthetics of change, as its truth is bound to be relayed and related Orality consecrates, thus, the possibility of a discussion and yet acknowledges the opacity constitutive of our existences. While despite its revolutionary potential, the postcolonial tradition (who?) falls too often in the impossible situation of theorizing the impossibility of truth in a discourse centered in the Western intellectual tradition, the condition of peripherality characteristic of a language rooted in orality offers the possibility of a non-generalizing condition of existence in its particularly vanishing nature. That is precisely why Celia Britton says that Glissants opaque subject is different and more positive than Homi Bhabhas pessimistic subaltern. In fact for Bhabha the subalterns position makes him unable to master the discourse of the elite and is therefore condemned to subalternity. Glissant is more radical than Bhabha as he questions the seeming necessity of intelligibility in a world based on an ethics of equality. His theory of orality, based on the ultimate acknowledgement of the others irreducible otherness, guarantees the collapses of all centers and foregrounds the destruction of the very possibility of subalterneity. It offers therefore the means to go beyond the aporetic condition of the postcolonial subject that is, the impossibility to speak the codified language of the other without repeating its domination and the impossible to speak any other language(p.30 Brit, 237 DA)

The comparative analysis of Senghors and Glissants works shows that both authors have, to a great extent, a similar political project. They, along with most anti-colonial and postcolonial schoalrs, attempt to debunk modern humanist universalist understanding of the world . They both attempt to uncover the darker side of modernity and offer possibilities to think of otherness and other modes of relations to the world and of being human. Yet, their epistemic projects cannot simply be presented as different moments of the development of Africana studies from an essentialism of identity (Senghor) to a more complex postcolonial philosophy of diversity (Glissant). Rather, despite their similar political projects, their epistemic projects are fundamentally different even if they are both rooted in a critique of writing and a praise of orality. One is an ontological reflection on the limits of the modern subject based on the promise of intelligibility. It is a theory of simplicity. The other is an epistemology founded on a critique of teleology and a praise of opacity, and otherness. It is a theory of chaos.