BLACK DIASPORAS IN THE POSTCOLONIAL CONTEXT: DIALOGUES WITH HAITIAN INTELLECTUALS

Abstract

In this article, I approach the issue of the black diasporas in the postcolonial context, focusing on a literature produced from the point of view of black intellectuals (especially Caribbeans and Africans), some of them known and mentioned in the Brazilian racial studies, such as Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Frantz Fanon. In the turn of the 19^th century into the 20^th, there is a literature produced in Haiti through literary and sociopolitical movements – Indigène, Noirisme, Légitime Défense e Les Griots –, rightly questioning the colonial situations. These movements were crucial for the establishment of the bases of the black movement in 1930s, in France and in the Caribbean, and later for the consolidation of the postcolonial literature, but they are not mentioned in the racial studies in Brazil. This literature suggests that the Haitian Vodou and the créole (Haitian language) – two cultural identitarian elements from an African root – are expressions of the Haitian social world and their element of resistance against the colonial power.