Présence Africaine
Encyclopedia
Présence africaine is a panafrican
quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris and founded by Alioune Diop
in 1947. In 1949, Présence africaine expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on the rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter of Paris. As a journal, it was highly influential in the Panafricanist
movement, the decolonisation
struggle of former French colonies
, and the birth of the Négritude
movement.
a Senegalese
born professor of Philosophy, along with a cast of African, European, and American intellectuals, writers, and social scientists, including Aimé Césaire
, Léopold Sédar Senghor
, Richard Wright
, Albert Camus
, André Gide
, Jean-Paul Sartre
, Théodore Monod
, Georges Balandier
and Michel Leiris
. While not all authors published in the magazine were from the African diaspora, its subtitle ( Revue Culturelle du Monde Noir/Cultural Review of the Negro World) makes clear that the editors saw themselves engaged it the cultural and political struggles of panafricanism. With the move by Aimé Césaire
and Léopold Sédar Senghor
to PA (from Césaire's own journal "l'etudiant noir"), the magazine became the pre-eminent voice of the Négritude movement.
In 1956, Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine organised the 1st International Congress of Black Writers and Artists
(1er Congrès international des écrivains et artistes noirs) in Paris, which included Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Jacques Rabemananjara
, Cheikh Anta Diop
, Richard Wright, Franz Fanon
, and Jean Price-Mars
, and for which Pablo Picasso
designed a poster.
While there have always been English language abstracts and occasional English language articles in the magazine, the primary language has been French since its inception. Between 1955 and January 1961, the magazine also published an English edition (also titled Présence africaine), which ran to 60 issues.
, Ken Bugul
, Diop Birago, Djibril Tamsir Niane
, Williams Sassine
, Ousmane Sembène
, Léopold Sédar Senghor
; as well as the philosophical works of Cheikh Anta Diop
amongst others. Editions Présence Africaine was also the first imprint to publish French translations of Anglophone writers such as Chinua Achebe
, Wole Soyinka
, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and the panafricanist leaders Kwame Nkrumah
and Julius Nyerere
.
in Paris in 1997, and attended by Daniel Maximin
and Wole Soyinka
amongst others.
As of the end of 2007 Présence africaine has run to 173 issues, with its "Editions Présence Africaine" publishing over 400 works, 322 of which are still in print. Discourse on Colonialism
by Aimé Césaire
, published first in 1955, remains its best-selling work. As well, new African works are published, by novelists like Hamidou Dia or Dieudonné Gnammankou and historians like Aboucrary Moussa Lam.
Présence africaine's current publications director is Romuald Fonkoua, professor of comparative French literature at Université Marc Bloch in Strasbourg
.
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...
quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris and founded by Alioune Diop
Alioune Diop
Alioune Diop was a Senagalese politician who was elected to the French Senate in 1946 .- References :...
in 1947. In 1949, Présence africaine expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on the rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter of Paris. As a journal, it was highly influential in the Panafricanist
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...
movement, the decolonisation
Decolonization
Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...
struggle of former French colonies
French colonial empire
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
, and the birth of the Négritude
Négritude
Négritude is a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politiciansin France in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas.The Négritude...
movement.
Magazine
The magazine published its first issue in November 1947, founded by Alioune DiopAlioune Diop
Alioune Diop was a Senagalese politician who was elected to the French Senate in 1946 .- References :...
a Senegalese
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
born professor of Philosophy, along with a cast of African, European, and American intellectuals, writers, and social scientists, including Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
, Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal . Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. Before independence, he founded the political party called the Senegalese...
, Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Théodore Monod
Théodore Monod
Théodore André Monod was a French naturalist, explorer, and humanist scholar.-Exploration:...
, Georges Balandier
Georges Balandier
Georges Balandier is a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa...
and Michel Leiris
Michel Leiris
Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer.-Biography:...
. While not all authors published in the magazine were from the African diaspora, its subtitle ( Revue Culturelle du Monde Noir/Cultural Review of the Negro World) makes clear that the editors saw themselves engaged it the cultural and political struggles of panafricanism. With the move by Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
and Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal . Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. Before independence, he founded the political party called the Senegalese...
to PA (from Césaire's own journal "l'etudiant noir"), the magazine became the pre-eminent voice of the Négritude movement.
In 1956, Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine organised the 1st International Congress of Black Writers and Artists
Congress of Black Writers and Artists
The Congress of Black Writers and Artists is a meeting of leading black intellectuals for the purpose of addressing the issues of colonialism, slavery, and Négritude...
(1er Congrès international des écrivains et artistes noirs) in Paris, which included Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Jacques Rabemananjara
Jacques Rabemananjara
Jacques Rabemananjara was a Malagasy politician, playwright and poet. He served as a government minister rising to vice President...
, Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...
, Richard Wright, Franz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
, and Jean Price-Mars
Jean Price-Mars
Jean Price-Mars was a Haitian writer. Born in Grande Rivière du Nord, Price-Mars obtained a degree in medicine and worked as a diplomat.-Negritude movement:...
, and for which Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
designed a poster.
While there have always been English language abstracts and occasional English language articles in the magazine, the primary language has been French since its inception. Between 1955 and January 1961, the magazine also published an English edition (also titled Présence africaine), which ran to 60 issues.
Publishing house
Editions Présence Africaine was the first to publish most of the best known Francophone African writers of the 20th century, including the literature of Mongo BetiMongo Beti
Alexandre Biyidi Awala , known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer.- Life :Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country...
, Ken Bugul
Ken Bugul
Ken Bugul is the pen name of a Senegalese Francophone novelist, whose real name is Mariètou Mbaye Biléoma. The name derives from the Wolof language, in which it means "one who is unwanted."...
, Diop Birago, Djibril Tamsir Niane
Djibril Tamsir Niane
Djibril Tamsir Niane is a historian, playwright, and short story writer, born in Conakry, Guinea. His secondary education was in Senegal and his degree from the University of Bordeaux. He is an honorary professor of Howard University and the University of Tokyo...
, Williams Sassine
Williams Sassine
Williams Sassine was a Guinean novelist who wrote in French. His father was Lebanese Christian and his mother was a Guinean of Muslim heritage....
, Ousmane Sembène
Ousmane Sembène
Ousmane Sembène , often credited in the French style as Sembène Ousmane in articles and reference works, was a Senegalese film director, producer and writer...
, Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal . Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. Before independence, he founded the political party called the Senegalese...
; as well as the philosophical works of Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...
amongst others. Editions Présence Africaine was also the first imprint to publish French translations of Anglophone writers such as Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...
, Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and the panafricanist leaders Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana...
and Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
.
Recent history
Alioune Diop remained publisher until his death in 1980, when his wife Christiane Mame Yandé Diop took over. The 50th anniversary of Présence africaine was celebrated at UNESCOUNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
in Paris in 1997, and attended by Daniel Maximin
Daniel Maximin
Daniel Maximin is a Guadeloupean novelist, poet, and essayist. Born in Saint-Claude, his family moved to France when he was thirteen. He studied at the Sorbonne and from 1980 to 1989 served as literary director of the journal Présence africaine. He returned to Guadeloupe in 1989 as Regional...
and Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
amongst others.
As of the end of 2007 Présence africaine has run to 173 issues, with its "Editions Présence Africaine" publishing over 400 works, 322 of which are still in print. Discourse on Colonialism
Discourse on colonialism
Discours sur le colonialisme is a text written by Aimé Césaire and published in 1955. It is a key text of postcolonial literature....
by Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
, published first in 1955, remains its best-selling work. As well, new African works are published, by novelists like Hamidou Dia or Dieudonné Gnammankou and historians like Aboucrary Moussa Lam.
Présence africaine's current publications director is Romuald Fonkoua, professor of comparative French literature at Université Marc Bloch in Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
.
External links
- Présence africaine, "Revue Culturelle du Monde Noir" (Liberation journals Index) "Genèse de la littérature afro-francophone en France entre les années 1940 et 1950" (article de Katharina Städtler dans Mots Pluriels, no. 8, October 1998) La revue Présence africaine avec son Directeur de la rédaction Romuald Fonkoua (en ligne, une émission radiophonique de Canal Académie animation by François-Pierre Nizery, 30' 39) Histoire de la revue sur le site de la maison d'édition "Mère Afrique en Europe: Mme Diop de Présence Africaine" (article by Thomas L. Blair in Chronicle World)