1944: (The Césaire Effect and LFAS Women’s Intellectual World — Almost Two Years Before the 1946 Assembly Aimé Césaire Famously Pronouncing That Haiti Was th…

1944: (The Césaire Effect and LFAS Women’s Intellectual World — Almost Two Years Before the 1946 Assembly Aimé Césaire Famously Pronouncing That Haiti Was the Place Where Négritude First Stood Up, Césaire and His Wife Suzanne Visiting Haiti for a Monthlong Lecture Series for the Congrès de la Connaissance in 1944, LFAS Member Jeanne Sylvain Writing to Her Siblings That the “Martinican Poet or Guadeloupean?” Was Coming, by October Sylvain Having Attended the Lectures and Reporting That Césaire Speaks Literature So Marvelously and That She Learned There Were More Haitian Philosophers Than She Knew, Sylvain’s Uncertainty About Césaire’s Nationality Revealing That Radical Politics Were Not Preformulated or Philosophically Solidified Even as They Influenced Global Movements): Almost two years before the 1946 assembly, the Martinican poet and activist Aimé Césaire famously pronounced that Haiti was the place where négritude first stood up — inspired by the work of Haitian Pan-Africanist Anténor Firmin and indigéniste Jean Price-Mars, referencing the 1804 Haitian Revolution. He made this statement shortly after he and his wife, Suzanne Césaire, visited Haiti for a monthlong lecture series for the Congrès de la Connaissance in 1944. In advance of Césaire’s arrival, LFAS member and La Voix des Femmes coeditor Jeanne Sylvain wrote to her siblings that the “Martinican poet (or Guadeloupean?)” was coming that September. By October she had attended the lectures and reported that Césaire “speaks literature so marvelously” and that she “learned that there were more Haitian philosophers than I knew.” Sanders Johnson intentionally cites Sylvain’s uncertainty about Césaire’s nationality — not to suggest she did not know who Césaire was (she and her sisters studied and worked extensively with Césaire’s contemporary Price-Mars) but to account for the subtlety of and possibility in uncertainty, not knowing, forgetfulness, and ambivalence in the midst of historically dynamic political and rhetorical shifts. Sylvain’s letters reveal that radical politics, even those that influenced other global movements, were not preformulated, overdetermining, or even philosophically solidified. The “Césaire effect” that followed the 1944 lectures inspired surrealist thinking and a jolt to the post-US occupation political awakening that was ultimately reflected in the 1946 revolution.