Locating Senghor's École De Dakar
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Locating Senghor’s École de Dakar International and Transnational Dimensions to Senegalese Modern Art, c. 1959–1980 Joshua I. Cohen n September of , Léopold Sédar Senghor (- allegiance to any one state). Readers familiar with Négritude but )—poet, philosopher, statesman, and cofounder unfamiliar with the École de Dakar may not be surprised by a wider of the loosely conceived Négritude movement in conceptualization of the École, given that Négritude is well known Paris beginning in the s—became president of the as a pan-African movement aimed at building broad solidarities. newly independent Republic of Senegal. Over the next Nationalist readings have nevertheless been explicit in the two decades, Senghor devoted considerable resources existing literature and are on some levels persuasive. While cura- to the arts, including the creation of a government-supported tor Ima Ebong stressed that “Senegalese art … from its inception, cadreI of modern visual artists known as the École de Dakar. To was incorporated into a national agenda” (: ), art historian date, virtually all who have studied the state-funded École de Joanna Grabski stated more directly that “the visual propositions Dakar, for reasons that are in many ways logical and compelling, of the rst generation of modernists responded to Senghor’s call have read its core fabric as quintessentially nationalist. is read- for a national art” (: ). And in Harney’s thesis, “Senegal’s ing rst became prevalent among critics who faulted Senghor artists have engaged with the histories and practices of modern- for subordinating the École’s production to what they saw as his ism and have participated in attempts to link a new aesthetic Négritude philosophy-cum-nationalist ideology (Pataux , to the project of nation building” (: ). ese readings Samb [], Ebong ). More recently it has been taken all feature Senghor using art to enhance post-independence up by pioneering scholars who argue generally that École artists Senegalese nationality—presumably by encouraging people who preserved their integrity even while relying on state patron- had long identied as Wolof or Serer or Haalpulaar to prioritize age (Sylla , ; Harney , , ; Grabski , national belonging and by showcasing productions of Senegalese , ). Yet the École de Dakar also stands to be explored national culture to the rest of the world. Such readings are log- for its international and transnational dimensions, which con- ical insofar as Senghor is well known to have retrotted black rm art historian Elizabeth Harney’s important observation nationalist Négritude with a Senegalese nationalist function in that Senghor aimed to cultivate “supranational (i.e., pan-Afri- the s (Markovitz , Diouf , Diaw ), and insofar can and humanist) models of community” (: ). Whereas as post colonial African nation-states faced a common challenge nationalist readings suggest a decisive rupture with the French of forging cohesion among disparate cultural groups (cf. Askew and a mandate to build Senegalese identity, I contend that cross- , Hess , Straker , Ivaska , McGovern ). cultural collaboration and worldly participation lay at the core of Yet in considering Négritude as a prelude to the École de Dakar, Senghor’s enterprise. it is important to recall that Senghor’s agenda always included cul- In pursuing this argument, careful distinctions must be drawn tivating an African presence within global modernity and what between, on the one hand, notions of mid-twentieth-century ter- he called Civilisation de l’Universel (Civilization of the Universal) ritorial nationalism in Africa (aiming to transform colonies into (Senghor [], , b: ; Mouralis : ; Edwards independent nation-states), and on the other hand, two closely : –; Jachec ; Diagne ; Wilder : –). related terms: “international” (usually denoting interactions Senghor’s Négritude, in other words, took root in diaspora con- between states), and “transnational” (applying especially to phe- sciousness, but it also aimed to interfere with Eurocentrism on its nomena existing across national borders and/or transcending own terms. Building on this essential but sometimes overlooked aspect of Senghor’s project, I will argue that the École de Dakar was J I. C received his PhD from Columbia University. He is signicantly international: Its core mandate involved facilitating an assistant professor of African art history at e City College of New cultural diplomacy with foreign national governments and soci- York. [email protected] eties. I will also argue that the École was transnational: Many of african arts AUTUMN 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00413 by guest on 27 September 2021 1 Ansoumana Diedhiou Afrique (maquette c. 1976) Gouache and ink on paper, 57.5 cm x 40.5 cm Wool tapestry produced in eight editions at Manufactures Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs (MSAD), Thiès, 1976–1979. Reprinted from Manufactures sénégalaises des arts décoratifs (Dakar; Abidjan: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, 1977), 17. its members laid claim to multiple (oen French and Senegalese) were most relevant to the École de Dakar during decolonization. To cultural elements and artistic traditions—if not by birth, then by paint this picture in broad strokes: Senghor in the s championed education, travel abroad, or appropriated forms and techniques. francophone West African federation as preferable to fracturing To ground this claim visually, let us briey consider Afrique the region into disparate independent territories; Dakar’s national (Africa, c. , Fig. ), a tapestry composition by the École de art school was established under the Mali Federation (–), Dakar artist Ansoumana Diédhiou (–s). Although Senegal’s short-lived union with French Sudan (now Mali); many Diédhiou hailed from Senegal’s lush southern Casamance region inuential gures at the national art school in the s and s (Merceron : ) and may have been meditating on that land- either received training in France or were themselves French; and scape here, it is clear that his totalizing title, along with the works by École artists oen circulated through channels devised by depicted jungle ora, could easily evoke exotica for audiences Senghor’s culture ministries for the purpose of reaching audiences viewing the continent from afar. Meanwhile, the composition’s of diverse national backgrounds and to oer signature gis of state geometric patterns, strong lines, extreme atness, sleek aesthetic, to foreign dignitaries. Overall, Senghor sponsored modernism in and bright colors link it to an international visual language of his country not so much to galvanize the Senegalese as to project modernist abstraction. Diedhiou’s artistic strategies in these ways the image of a sophisticated and fully modern Africa around the both belonged to, and exceeded the scope of, Senegalese culture. world. e École was arguably conceived to reimagine, through By taking Diedhiou’s Afrique as a point of reference, layers of art, Senghor’s longstanding yet ultimately thwarted political dream internationalism and transnationalism can be seen embedded in of an African federation existing within multiple global communi- the discourses, institutional histories, and artistic practices that ties wherein black cultural contributions would be highly valued. VOL. 51, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2018 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00413 by guest on 27 September 2021 | With these words, Senghor highlighted the importance of cre- ative expression to decolonization. And yet, for Senghor in , decolonization did not, in an ideal scenario, equate to replac- ing the colonial territory with the independent nation-state. Beginning with the work of Ruth Schachter Morgenthau (), some historians of French West Africa have shown that the nar- rative of an inexorable and instantaneous national independence at the territorial level is one that has become dominant only in retrospect (Foltz , Chafer , Schmidt , Cooper , Wilder ). In a recent landmark study, Frederick Cooper notes how nearly every major political player native to the region through at least the mid-s sought to transform the colonial empire into one or another mode of federation or confederation of African states linked, in Senghor’s terminology, both “hori- zontally” to one another and “vertically” to France (: ). In –, federal nationality remained a clear option for Senegal and French Sudan in the form of the Mali Federation until a complex concatenation of events drove each territory Following especially on Frantz Fanon’s ( []) well- toward its own, isolated independence. known critique of Négritude as elitist and ineectual, scholars Other statements by Senghor serve to throw processes and critics have tended to disparage Senghor for his longstand- of decolonization into further relief. As quoted by Cooper, ing ties to France and have oen framed African modernism in Senghor’s worries about the prospects for maintaining the relation to the postcolonial national cultures that Fanon champi- French Community of the edgling Fih Republic led him to oned. While in certain ways justied, these positions, as applied write, in October : “Nationalism, I acknowledge, is an illness. to Senegal, miss the pragmatism in Senghor’s elite-driven cul- It conquered Europe in the nineteenth century, Asia in the rst tural politics, whereby modern art was envisioned to build half of the twentieth century; it now gnaws at Africa” (Cooper international bridges through high-prole channels.