Of Marxism, Black/African specificities and racism (Leopold Senghor, Ayi Kwei Armah, Senegal, Ghana)

Négritude is a condensed form of Western ideologies; yet it is still the basis for any claim of Black/African specificity. However, that specificity is not unique to Black/Africans, but is, rather, part of a wider universal system. At the same time, because racism is one of the consequences of ignoring of that specificity, it is analysed against the capitalist background which entertains both the affirmation of such a specificity and racism.; Chapter One takes the labyrinth of Leopold Senghor's theory of Négritude, to reveal a chain of concepts covering the ethnological evolutionism, Western philosophical idealism and French spiritualism hidden in it: and to show that, Négritude, thus, is indeed a condensed expression of western ideologies.; Chapter Two shows how the anti-reductionist trend in literary and social criticism—which advocates the existence of new socio-cultural categories—is still very insufficient in its criticism of essentialist theories such as Marxism and Négritude. The chapter looks at Mark Reid's concept of postNégritude as it relates to new Black/African realities and expressed in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments.; Chapter Three discusses what is commonly known as “traditional” Africa, through the anti-ethnophilosophic works of Kwame Appiah, Paulin Hountondji, and Hegel's The philosophy of History. And from Cornel West's position on the specificity of Black oppression, it explores the relations between the Marxist theory and Black/African realities. Chapter four discusses the connection between ideology according to Marx, Althusser and Poulantzas, and racism as an integral part of capitalism.