Cultural Representations of Massacre

Reinterpretations of the Mutiny of Senegal

Sabrina Parent

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137274960
• eBook ISBN: 9781137274977
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

In this book, Parent puts together a history of representations of the 1944 mutiny in Senegal. Combining firsthand analysis of the works and their intertextual interactions as well an external perspective, Parent engages with history, literature, film, poetics, and politics and highlights the importance of remembering the past.

PART 1

Representations of Thiaroye in Colonial Times

“Tyaroye” by Léopold Sédar Senghor and “Aube africaine” by Fodeba Keita

Published in 1948, Léopold Sédar Senghor’s “Tyaroye” was in fact written in December 1944, according to the inscription to the poem itself, only a few days or weeks after the events. Fodeba Keita’s “Aube africaine” was first published in 1949, but since it is a performed poem, it was most probably well known before publication. Textual and contextual analyses demonstrate how each author captured and interpreted the event in ways corresponding to their drastically different (political) views. I argue that for Senghor, the final purpose was to insert the event into France’s collective memory, whereas for Keita, it was necessary to make Thiaroye a significant event in Africa’s collective memory.

Chapter 2

Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Thiaroye

The Prototype of Sacrifice

Of all the authors of the corpus, Léopold Sédar Senghor is probably the one who achieved the greatest fame. His international reputation is established not only in poetry but also in politics. In 1983, the French Academy opened its doors to him, welcoming poetic works including Chants d’ombre (Shadow Songs, 1945), Hosties noires (Black Hosts, 1948), Éthiopiques (1956), Nocturnes (1961), Lettres d’hivernage (Letters in the Season of Hivernage, 1972), and Élégies majeures (Major Elegies, 1979). The 2007 publication of his complete works of poetry by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research; CNRS) contributed to his integration into the pantheon of French authors.

Senghor also had an impressive political career. After leading Senegal to independence, he was its president for twenty years (1960–80). His political legacy has generated much criticism but also much praise. Doumbi-Fakoly, one of the authors studied in this essay, is one of Senghor’s harsh critics. For Doumbi-Fakoly, Senghor’s politics in Senegal epistomized his deep cultural alienation (“Nicolas Sarkozy est revenu nous insulter sur nos terres” 9), given that he ruled the country with the help of French advisors. However, Senghor is also the one who is, as his biographer Janet Vaillant claims, “largely responsible for what has been called ‘the Senegalese exception’ in an Africa torn by autocratic policies and civil conflicts” (20). To better understand Senghor’s political position, one must certainly take into account his poetic vision of the world, itself rooted in the philosophical concept of Négritude.

The concept was created and developed in the 1930s, in the circle of African intellectuals living in Paris, particularly among poets Aimé Césaire, from Martinique, and Léon-Gontran Damas, from French Guiana. Initially, the Negritude movement aimed to promote African characteristics and values in reaction against the colonial imposition of French and Western culture. Yet, as Souleymane Bachir Diagne upholds, searching for a “Negro” essence led Senghor to deeply believe in the virtue of métissage (crossbreeding): “After all, he is the philosopher of métissage, at least as much as of Negritude. And when he praises the métis, he does not see them as derived beings, as the sheer effect of the meeting between already constituted essences but as the first, primal affirmation of the freedom to create which is culture itself. For Senghor, indeed, any truly alive culture is métisse and the métis is a creator of culture” (50). Reconciliation was certainly Senghor’s main priority, in poetry as in politics, at a personal as well as a social level. Having reconciliation and métissage in mind will prove useful in understanding the poetic and political issues at stake in the poem “Tyaroye.”

Contextualizing the Poem “Tyaroye”

“Tyaroye”1 belongs to the second collection of poems by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Hosties noires. Written between 1936 and 1945—the poems are often dated and, except for the first one, appear in chronological order—the collection was only published in 1948. Senghor’s first collection of poems, Chants d’ombre, was published a few years earlier in 1945. Although poems from both collections were probably written during the same period, scholars have noticed a radical difference in tone between the two collections. For Janice Spleth, for instance, “Hosties noires constitutes a departure from the characteristically personal poetry of Chants d’ombre” (Léopold Sédar Senghor 72), whereas the poems from Hosties noires are often referred to as “the most committed and the most politically inspired of all his poems” (Ojo 52). Okechukwu Mezu (qtd. in Pageard 290) suggests that the delay in the publication of Hosties noires is certainly due to some politically oriented changes that Senghor introduced in the draft. In fact, Senghor wanted to accomplish the very delicate task of criticizing France, and the Western world in general, “not out of hatred, but out of love, like a mother pointing out with firmness and if necessary chastisement, the mistakes of her beloved child” (Mezu 30). Senghor achieved this feat, finding most of the time the appropriate words to maintain the equilibrium.2 Evidence of this mastery clearly appears in the poem “Tyaroye.”

Hosties noires is a transitory book. The period spent in writing the collection corresponds to Senghor’s own transition from his intellectual period, embodied in the concept of Negritude that he helped develop in the 1930s, to more pragmatic and concrete approach to taking action in the world. This pragmatism corresponds to Senghor’s adopting a political career in 1945 when, along with Lamine Guèye, he was elected deputy at the French constituent assembly. This was really a time of excitement and hope for overseas deputies. Included among the various proposals (universal suffrage, free education, social and economic measures, etc.) suggested by the provisional government of the immediate afterwar period was an interest in extending “political, social and economic rights . . . to native and colonial populations” (Vaillant 195). Unfortunately, in October 1946, when the second draft of the constitution was accepted by referendum, many of the liberal attempts to change the political status of the colonies failed due to pressure from the conservative “colonial lobby” (Vaillant 208). However, when Senghor was writing Hosties noires, he envisioned not an independent Senegal but “a French Union based on equality and free consent” (Vaillant 206) and dreamt of a France that would be willing to grant citizenship to the native populations of its overseas territories on the basis that they actively participated in the war effort. Of course, when Hosties noires was published, his expectations had mostly been unfulfilled. Yet, this never prevented him from believing in the necessity of maintaining cordial diplomatic relations with France.

Hosties noires was partly directed toward a French intellectual audience,3 whom Senghor wanted to convince of the worthiness of his political ideas. Needless to say, this goal was difficult to achieve in 1948, in the aftermath of liberation, when the main, even exclusive, discourse that prevailed was that which promoted the merits of the Resistance network. In “Hosties noires entre mémoire et reconnaissance” (“Black Hosts between memory and gratitude”), Marc Michel has argued that the poems in the collection subtly set up the tirailleurs sénégalais as figures of the Resistance in order to insert them into the collective memory of the French people. To achieve this goal, Senghor, focusing on the topic of sacrifice, made French citizens aware of the fact that African soldiers fought along with the French in order to protect French territory. As such, they deserved to be treated as heroes and benefit from certain rights. It would have been outrageous to prevent them from obtaining their share once the authorities decided to reward the fighters. For Senghor, no matter the circumstances, the infantrymen had always been the “Empire’s black watchdogs” (The Collected Poetry 72), and as such, they deserved to be acknowledged and rewarded by France. The English translation of the French phrase “dogues noirs de l’Empire” (Hosties noires 84) emphasizes the fact that dogues refers to mastiffs or bulldogs, dog breeds that are known to ferociously defend their master’s property.

Even the title of the collection, Hosties noires, provides information about Senghor’s incentives. “Hosties” refers to the consecrated bread of the Eucharist. According to Christian liturgy, the host symbolizes Christ’s body and its absorption is a sacrament—that is, a rite that helps believers receive divine grace. Senghor’s reference to the host, besides being one sign among many of the Catholic tones of the collection, indicates a process of positive transformation. Black soldiers are “black victims in a white war, but their sacrifice is viewed as being meaningful, and for the good not only of France but of mankind” (Mezu 29). Hosties noires praises the contribution of African soldiers from French colonies but also from the United States—“Aux soldats négro-américains” (“To the Black American Troops”) is the title of one poem—to Western wars, particularly World Wars I and II. The poet pays tribute to the men who sacrificed themselves in many different ways, through battles, imprisonment, injuries, suffering, and death. “Africa, became black host,”4 writes Senghor in the poem titled “Au Gouverneur Éboué” (“Governor Éboué”). For Senghor, the sacrifice of black soldiers was meaningful in that it contributed to the advent of a new world that would not be based on the opposition of black and white races but on their collaboration on the basis of the white people’s acknowledgement of the value and contribution of black civilization. As Janice Spleth puts it, “the future he [Senghor] envisions is one where Africa’s role will be vastly different, where men will be equal, and where values of Negritude will counterbalance the faults of the materialistic, technological civilization of the West” (Léopold Sédar Senghor 73). The title of the collection itself suggests the fusion of opposite colors, black and white (the host is white), via the implicit red color of blood, representing the sacrificial ritual.

In Hosties noires, Senghor is the representative of the community of soldiers of African origins who participated in Western conflicts. His role as spokesman is legitimate in many ways. He himself experienced the life of a soldier in the colonial infantry, between 1939 and June 1940, and the life of a POW in different camps in France (Romilly, Troyes, Amiens, Poitiers, and Bordeaux), between June 1940 and 1942 (Ojo 52 and Roche 41). Senghor can thus speak as a victim but also as a witness, both directly and indirectly. He is a direct witness when his poems evoke the lives of people with whom he was acquainted: Taga de Mbaye Dyob, for instance, is a friend whom Senghor celebrates in an eponymous poem. Senghor is an indirect or a secondary witness when his poetry refers to people whom he has heard of—for example, the soldier who committed suicide in the poem titled “Désespoir d’un volontaire libre” (“The Enlisted Man’s Despair”).

As legitimate as his role of spokesman was, Senghor did not speak on behalf of the entire community of soldiers of African origins. By promoting reconciliation between the colonized and colonizers, Senghor takes a stand that is radically opposed, for instance, to the French Guianian poet Léon-Gontran Damas, to whom the first poem of Hosties noires is nevertheless dedicated. Damas not only promoted rebellion against French authorities but denounced his own peers as being in the pay of the empire. In the poem titled “Et caetera,” first published in 1937 in the collection Pigments, Damas writes, “To former Senegalese servicemen . . . / I say Shit to them”5 (79). The tone of the poem, dedicated to the Senegalese infantrymen, reveals Damas’s bitterness regarding African soldiers who defended French colonial authorities. Once a fighter himself, Damas nevertheless was impervious to the ideological manipulation and indoctrination of which African infantrymen might have been the victims.

The African intellectual community should not be imagined without tensions. The authors considered in the course of this study precisely represent some of the dissenting opinions existing not only between Africans and Europeans but also within African and European communities, even within a single person. In his poetry, Senghor himself conveys opposing emotions that torment him. Yet Senghor was always driven by an overriding desire for conciliation, for which he sometimes was and continues to be harshly criticized: in Diop’s play, for instance, Senghor’s attitude is interpreted as hypocritical.

Considering the overall tone of Hosties noires, dedicated to praising black soldiers’ heroism, an initial reading of the poem “Tyaroye” may seem out of tune, since in it Senghor praises soldiers who were, from the French perspective, not heroes at all but instead mutineers—that is, rebels to French authority. Yet Senghor managed to transform the infantrymen of Thiaroye into the heroes of a just cause, removing all hesitation and ambiguity regarding the status of the tirailleurs as the “Empire’s watchdogs.” He succeeded in doing so by choosing the form of poetry and hence by evoking, instead of describing, the events that took place.

Evoking Thiaroye

“Tyaroye” is one of the poems in the collection whose place and date of composition are indicated at the end: it was written in Paris during the month of December 1944. Senghor wrote the poem, and wanted his readers to know that he did so, during the course of the month following the massacre—which took place on December 1, at dawn. The inscription of the date is significant in many ways. First, the date confers on the poem a history that is shared by France—the poem is written in Paris—and Senegal—the poem bears the name of the Senegalese village near the place where the events occurred. Second, the date functions as an indication of Senghor’s state of mind: he writes in the grip of the event. And another pain is added to the pain of what happened—namely, the difficulty of writing itself. According to Daniel Leuwers, Senghor’s writing process consisted of three particular periods: inspiration, rough draft, and correction. A certain suffering is associated with the second moment: “The second period is more problematical; it is the time of the first draft qualified as ‘painful’”6 (Leuwers 180). Therefore, by writing down the date at the end of “Tyaroye,” the poet implicitly signified to his readers that his distress was twice as much: he is painfully writing while experiencing the pain of the event, which will certainly show through in the poem.

Except for the place and date, no other relevant details are mentioned in the poem. For readers not already familiar with what happened—like the general French public, for instance—it is impossible to grasp, from the poem only, that Thiaroye is synonymous with rebellion. Strictly speaking, the poem does not represent the massacre. On the contrary, it looks as if Senghor wrote the poem for knowledgeable readers, for whom what occurred in Thiaroye belongs to a “universal knowledge”—that is, the kind of knowledge describing the event in a dictionary or an encyclopedia. Senghor presupposed that these events were and will always be common knowledge. In a way, in doing so, he manifests his hopes that the events will always be part of a collective memory, present for a long period of time in people’s minds.

Moreover, by avoiding a detailed description of the events and by blurring the circumstances, Senghor uses them to create a “prototype”—that is, not a specific event but a category of events with common characteristics to which other events can be associated. According to poetry specialist Marc Dominicy, the evocation of a prototype, to which is opposed the episodic representation created by detailed descriptions, prevails in poetry precisely because the parallelisms found at different levels of the language code (phonemes, syllables, syntax, semantics, etc.) prevent readers from constructing a detailed picture of what happened, conveying instead a prototypical image. Alliterations and assonances, repetitions of words and of syntactical structures, are just some examples of parallelisms that favor, according to Dominicy’s theory, the construction of a prototypical representation of the event, stored in our long-term memory. The use of poetry and of poetic means, such as parallelisms or repetitions, associated with the blurring of circumstances lead to the events of Thiaroye being presented as a prototype of sacrifice, a sacrifice necessary for the transition to a better world. In that perspective, the uprising of Thiaroye can be reinserted into the global economy of ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Representations of Thiaroye in Colonial Times
• Part 2: Representations of Thiaroye in the Postindependence Era
• Part 3: Representations of Thiaroye in a New Era
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography