Leaving the South: Frantz Fanon, Modern Jazz and the Rejection of Négritude
Leaving the South: Frantz Fanon, Modern Jazz and the Rejection of Négritude
This chapter discusses Frantz Fanon's interest in jazz music, a prominent manifestation of creolized American culture. It argues that Fanon's biographer David Macey misunderstands and underestimates the importance of Fanon's allusions to jazz. It calls into question Françoise Vergès's critique of Fanon's ‘disavowal’ of the ‘reality’ of his Creole identity in favour of a reinvention of his ‘filiation’ and ‘symbolic ancestry in Algeria’. Fanon's allusions to jazz form an integral part of his critique of Léopold Sedar Senghor's conception of négritude. Senghor had presented jazz as an important expression of an essentialized négre identity rooted in the unchanging rhythms of an organic rural community.
Keywords: Frantz Fanon, jazz, David Macey, Françoise Vergès, Algeria, Léopold Sedar Senghor, négritude
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