Senegalese poet, philosopher, and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor, together with Aimé Césaire and others, developed the influential and perennially relevant negritude movement – a Black artistic, philosophical, and political expression of Black presence in the modern colonial world. The Essential Senghor provides a new opportunity for English-language readers to engage with Senghor’s critical and philosophical writings spanning from 1937 to 1985. This collection includes Senghor’s key philosophical interventions in discourses on freedom, Blackness and being, humanism, history, and more. It portrays Senghor as a pivotal intellectual in the fields of African and Black studies whose work engages a wide range of disciplines, including literature, linguistics, anthropology, religion, and art history. The Essential Senghor invites readers not only to reflect on negritude and its importance for our political present, but also to reconsider intellectual genealogies of decolonial thought, Black liberation, and African philosophy.
By:
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Edited by:
Doyle D. Calhoun,
Alioune Fall,
Cheikh Thiam
Translated by:
Doyle D. Calhoun
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 572g
ISBN: 9781478033677
ISBN 10: 1478033673
Pages: 406
Publication Date: 14 April 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Translators’ Note vii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. “Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001): A Reintroduction” / Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall, and Cheikh Thiam 1 Part 1. Negritude: A Humanism for the Twentieth (and Twenty-First) Century 1. Constitutive Elements of a Civilization of Negro-American Inspiration 27 2. Negritude Is a Humanism of the Twentieth Century 63 3. Negritude and Modernity:, or, Negritude Is a Humanism of the Twentieth Century 75 4. Concerning Negritude 105 5. Negritude, as the Culture of Black Peoples, Shall Not Be Eclipsed 129 6. For a Modern and Negro-African Philosophy 145 7. As Manatees Go to Drink from the Source 175 Part 2. Negritude, Aesthetics, and Philosophy 8. What the Black Man Offers 189 9. The Contributions of Negro Poetry to the First Half of the Century 209 10. Negro-African Aesthetics 225 11. The Function and Meaning of the First World of Negro Arts 241 12. For a Negro Criticism 247 13. From French Poetry to Francophone Poetry; or, The Contributions of Negroes to Francophone Poetry 251 14. Oral Tradition and Modernity 271 Part 3. Negritude, MÉtissage, and the Dialogue of Cultures 15. The Problem of Culture in French West Africa 281 16. Perspectives on Black Africa; or, To Assimilate, Not Be Assimilated 295 17. Why an Indo-African Department of the University of Dakar? 329 18. Negritude and Mediterranean Civilization 343 19. French and African Languages 355 20. The Dialogue of Cultures 373 Index
Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was a poet, philosopher, and the first president of Senegal. Doyle D. Calhoun is University Assistant Professor of Francophone Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. Alioune Fall is Assistant Professor of Black Studies and French at Providence College. Cheikh Thiam is Department Chair of English and Professor of Black Studies at Amherst College.
Reviews for The Essential Senghor: African Philosophy and Black Aesthetics
“Among canonical Black thinkers, there may be no figure who is as influential as Senghor, yet so little or carefully read. This long-overdue volume, including a careful translation, outstanding introduction, and rich annotations, will help correct this scandal. The translators rightly underscore that Senghor should be read as a thinker of Black liberation who refuses Manichean binaries. This work offers an invaluable approach for decolonizing thought and politics today.”--Gary Wilder, author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World “This invaluable reader makes Senghor’s thought directly available to an English-language audience, offering a very good overview of his philosophy, perfectly capturing his original text, and assembling selections with precision and care. It will become a touchstone for those in African studies, philosophy, art, and beyond.”—Souleymane Bachir Diagne, author of African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of Negritude
