Literary and Sociopolitical Writings of the Black Diaspora in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Simeon-Jones Kersuze;

Author:Simeon-Jones, Kersuze; [Simeon-Jones, Kersuze]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Jean Price-Mars: Indigénisme and the Formulae of Social Transformation

Si l’éducation est une tentative de modeler l’homme selon un idéal déterminé, il me semble que tout système de pédagogie doit d’abord connaître le tempérament du peuple auquel on se propose de l’appliquer. C’est la première considération, je suis tenté d’affirmer que c’est la considération essentielle qui doit dominer une entreprise d’éducation collective.

If education is an attempt to shape the human based on a well-defined ideal, it seems to me that a pedagogical system must first know the personality of the people that it proposes to educate. That is the first consideration. I am tempted to affirm that it is the essential consideration that must take precedence in a collective educational system.

—Jean Price-Mars1

The concepts of the Mouvement Indigéniste, similar to Pan-Africanism and the Harlem Renaissance, were shaped and formulated as a response to particular social conditions, and transformed in time to meet the nuances of Haitian society. On manifold levels, Haitian scholars and activists of the early twentieth century addressed the stages to social reformation. One, the examination of the state of education as it was particularly expounded by Jean Price-Mars; two, the assertion of a literature that is original and particular to the Haitian experience and thought; three, the valorization of African heritage on the island—which included the influence of African philosophy, history, and religion within Haiti’s collective consciousness and practice; four, the reconstruction of political structures, and the re-evaluation of policies—with greater consideration for the needs of the masses; and five, the re-thinking and re-negotiating of foreign policies for regulations founded on fairness.

The Indigéniste movement, which emerged in 1925, grew out and evolved from Haiti’s literary works of the 1830s. Though the literature of the 1830s were variants of the French literary traditions that were then prevalent, writers gradually sought to introduce a certain level of Haiti’s language and culture. By the end of the 1830s, the writings of members of the Cénacle constituted the first stage of Haitian literature.2 The Cénacle, which was founded in 1836, included writers such as the Nau brothers and the Ardouin and Lespinasse brothers. For members of the Cénacle the national literature of Haiti should reveal certain particularities of the writer’s period, as well as the realities of the country. The Nau brothers suggested a Haitian literature that is not limited to the use of standard French, to “le français de la France” (“the French of France”), as Frantz Fanon would later theorize in Peau noire, masques blancs (Black skin, white masks).3 Rather, the Haitian writer should incorporate regional French language, with its local and familiar expressions. “Et peut-être” affirms Nau, “La France ne lirait pas sans plaisir sa langue brunie sous les Tropiques” (“And perhaps France would not read with displeasure, its language bronzed in the tropics”).4 Though the literary proposition of the Cénacle announced the formation of a Haitian literature, it is important to bear in mind that the nineteenth-century concept of Haitian literature—as the writers of the Cénacle perceived it— remained, by and large, aesthetically French.

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