Do Africa and the Caribbean need Francophonie?

The last decades have shown a clear discrepancy between Francophonie and African and the Caribbean intellectuals. Whereas the institutional Francophonie is becoming a politico-economic enterprise, African and Caribbean do not recognize the founding principles of Francophonie. All goes from there. It would be interesting to look at this internal and genuine conflict from a historical perspective. The divide is obvious throughout the time.

The movement of Negritude worked in common collaboration with Francophonie’s principle. Léopold Senghor who coined the concept of “Francité” almost meaning the same as Francophonie was among the most important supporter of this movement, which triggered the bases for Francophonie, as it is know now. With Edouard Glissant started the movement called “Antillanité“, the quality of being “Antillean” or “Caribbean”. Then came the “Créolité” movement coined by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphael Confiant. This group insists on the creation of a genuine Creole literature stemming from within the Creole heartbeat. The last trend is “Littérature-monde”, a concept inspired by Edouard Glissant to embody the search or quest for a literature, which proclaims the end of Francophonie.

The main issue of this debate is nothing else but language, the French language. In developing the colonial policy of Assimilation, France has kept French language as an element of its being as a nation. According to the 19^th century definition of a nation, language, culture, race are the main components of a nation.

Therefore, if Negritude was in line with Francophonie, what I call Post-Negritude is definitely not in agreement with the philosophy of Francophonie. The Caribbean have made their way freeing themselves from the links of Africa by re-defining their “Self” or identity as a diverse entity, by freeing themselves from France in terms of language and culture. Africans and Caribbean have joined in the movement of Littérature-monde to challenge the fundaments of Francophonie. The philosophical trend clearly moved from sameness to diversity, in the framework of the Postcolonial Theory.