Léopold Senghor in Brazil: Poetics of a Luso-Afro-Atlantic Négritude

A Princeton Brazil LAB Work-in-Progress event

Léopold Senghor in Brazil: Poetics of a Luso-Afro-Atlantic Négritude

By Mauricio Acuña (Department of Spanish and Portuguese)

Discussant: 

Isabel Muci Barradas (Department of Art and Archaeology)

Princeton, November 6th, 2020.

This presentation explores the intertwined histories, poetics, and politics of Léopold Sédar Senghor in the luso-afro-atlantic world, particularly in Brazil, Portugal and the African territories under Portuguese colonialism in the 1960s. The main purpose is to unveil a pivotal dimension of his afropolitanism that has been ignored by a literature centered on the Anglophone and Francophone languages and cultures. A poem published in the book Nocturnes and speeches delivered during travels to Brazil and Portugal as head of state make evident the important relation between Senghor’s poetics and his politics of a third-world alliance. Brazil was at the time an example of racial exceptionalism to many black and white intellectuals in North America and Europe dealing with segregation and decolonization, in part due to the prestigious ideas of sociologist and writer Gilberto Freyre. Freyre’s ideas evolved from a powerful narrative about Brazil as a Racial Democracy and becomes a background to support Portuguese colonialism under the idea of Lusotropicalism. The analysis sheds light on the poetic principles guiding Léopold Senghor’s imagination of the Lusophone world, his readings of Freyre’s ideas, as well as his performative speeches in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. The conclusion considers the complex connections between racial exceptionalism, anti-racism and afropolitanism in the Afro-Atlantic world, emphasizing the multiplicity of aesthetics and political entanglements.

Part I - Presentation

Part II - Discussion