''Présence Africaine'' (French for ''African Presence'') is a

pan-African Pan-Africanism is a nationalist movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples and diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the Trans-Sa ...

quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in

Paris, France Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, and founded by Alioune Diop in 1947. In 1949, ''Présence Africaine'' expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on rue des Écoles in the

Latin Quarter The Latin Quarter of Paris (, ) is an urban university campus in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne. Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistros, t ...

of Paris. The journal was highly influential in the Pan-Africanist movement, the

decolonisation Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby Imperialism, imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholar ...

struggle of former

French colonies From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire existed mainly in the Americas and Asia. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the second French colonial empire existed mainly in Africa and Asia. France had about 80 colonie ...

, and the birth of the

Négritude ''Négritude'' (from French "nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, mainly developed by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians in the Africa ...

movement.

Magazine

The magazine published its first issue in November 1947, founded by Alioune Diop a

Senegal Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is the westernmost country in West Africa, situated on the Atlantic Ocean coastline. It borders Mauritania to Mauritania–Senegal border, the north, Mali to Mali–Senegal border, the east, Guinea t ...

-born professor of philosophy, along with a cast of African, European, and American intellectuals, writers, and social scientists, including

Aimé Césaire Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He ...

Léopold Sédar Senghor Léopold Sédar Senghor ( , , ; 9 October 1906 – 20 December 2001) was a Senegalese politician, cultural theorist and poet who served as the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980. Ideologically an African socialist, Senghor was one ...

Alioune Sarr Alioune Sarr (September 1, 1908 – July 12, 2001 ) was a Senegalese historian, author and politician whose family gained prominence in the Serer precolonial Kingdom of Sine and Saloum around the 14th century. They also made up the ''"sulbalƃ ...

, Richard Wright,

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his begi ...

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

, Théodore Monod, Georges Balandier and

Michel Leiris Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901, Paris – 30 September 1990, Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with Geor ...

. 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 in 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'Étudiant noir , subtitled (roughly translated as "The Black Student, Monthly Journal of the Association of Martinique Students in France"), is a journal created by the Martinican Aimé Césaire in 1935 in Paris. The Guyanese Léon-Gontran Damas published h ...

''), 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 The Congress of Black Writers and Artists ( French: ''Congrès des écrivains et artistes noirs''; originally called the Congress of Negro Writers and Artists) was a meeting of leading black intellectuals for the purpose of addressing the issues o ...

(''1er Congrès international des écrivains et artistes noirs'') in Paris, which included Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor,

Jacques Rabemananjara Jacques Rabemananjara (23 June 1913 – 2 April 2005) was a Madagascar, Malagasy politician, playwright and poet. He served as a government minister, rising to Vice President of Madagascar. Rabemananjara was said to be the most prolific write ...

Cheikh Anta Diop Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923 – 7 February 1986) was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. Diop's work is considered foundational to the the ...

, Richard Wright,

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961) was a French West Indian psychiatrist, political philosopher, and Marxist from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have become influential in the ...

, and Jean Price-Mars, and for which

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

designed a poster. Although there have occasionally been English-language pieces and English-language abstracts in the magazine since its start, French has always been the main language. Between 1955 and January 1961, the magazine also published an English edition (also entitled ''Présence Africaine''), which ran to 60 issues. Through the leadership of Aimé Césaire, ''Présence Africaine'' was an anti-colonialist magazine as well. Its articles were a direct involvement with the anti-colonialist struggle and together, the writers and thinkers strove to denounce colonial racism through their foundational texts. Although Césaire's most famous text ''Discours sur le Colonialisme'' is constantly being republished and translated (and scholars such as Robin D. G. Kelley have added their contributions, including "A Poetics of Anticolonialism"), Césaire's original text was published as ''Discours sur le Colonialisme'' by Présence Africaine in 1955. The essay had previously been published in 1950 by Editions Redame, and a revised version was published in Présance Africaine in 1955. Works from Présence Africaine were also used in other anti-colonialist literature. For example, Frantz Fanon used excerpts from Présence Africaine in his anti-colonialist text ''Black Skin, White Masks'', citing the work of Aimé Césaire, Michel Salomon, Abdoulaye Sadji, George Moulin, and countless other essential thinkers in order to strengthen his claims about denouncing colonial racism. Présence Africaine operated a bookstore in the

of Paris. In 1962, this bookstore was the target of a

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

attack by the far-right ''

Organisation armée secrète The ''Organisation armée secrète'' (OAS, "Secret Army Organisation") was a far-right dissident French paramilitary and terrorist organisation during the Algerian War, founded in 1961 by Raoul Salan, Pierre Lagaillarde and Jean-Jacques S ...

'', carried out with plastic explosives.

Publishing house

Editions Présence Africaine was the first imprint to publish most of the best known Francophone African writers of the 20th century, including the literature of Mongo Beti, Ken Bugul, Birago Diop, Djibril Tamsir Niane, Williams Sassine,

Ousmane Sembène Ousmane Sembène (; 1 January 1923 or 8 January 1923 – 9 June 2007), was a Senegalese film director, producer and writer. The ''Los Angeles Times'' considered him one of the greatest authors of Africa and he has often been called the "father o ...

, as well as the philosophical works of

among others. Editions Présence Africaine was also the first to publish French translations of Anglophone writers such as

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel ''Things Fall Apart'' ( ...

Wole Soyinka Wole Soyinka , (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty five plays and five memoirs. He also wrote two transla ...

, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and the pan-Africanist leaders

Kwame Nkrumah Francis Kwame Nkrumah (, 21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast (British colony), Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained ...

and

Julius Nyerere Julius Kambarage Nyerere (; 13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999) was a Tanzanian politician, anti-colonial activist, and political theorist. He governed Tanganyika (1961–1964), Tanganyika as prime minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as presid ...

Recent history

Alioune Diop remained publisher until his death in 1980, when his wife Christiane Yandé Diop took over. The 50th anniversary of ''Présence Africaine'' was celebrated at

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

in Paris in 1997, and attended by Daniel Maximin and

among others. As of the end of 2007, ''Présence Africaine'' had run to 173 issues, with its Editions Présence Africaine publishing more than 400 works, 322 of which are still in print. '' Discourse on Colonialism'' by

, first published in 1955, remains the company's best-selling work. In addition, new African works are published, by novelists including Hamidou Dia, Antoinette Tidjani Alou and Dieudonné Gnammankou and historians such as Aboucrary Moussa Lam.Tidiane Dioh
Un demi-siècle de Présence africaine
''Jeune Afrique'', 12 September 2000. ''Présence Africaine''′s current publications director is Romuald Fonkoua, professor of comparative French literature at

Université Marc Bloch The University Marc Bloch, also known as Strasbourg II or UMB, was a university in Strasbourg, Alsace, France. As of 2006, it had around 13,000 students. Its name used to be ''Université des Sciences Humaines'' (University of Social Sciences), bu ...

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

References

* Tshitenge Lubaru M. K.
"Soixante ans de Présence"
''Jeune Afrique'', n° 2448, 9 December 2007, p. 108. * Much of this article was translated from the French-language Wikipedia article :fr:Présence africaine (2008-05-23).

Bibliography

* Bennetta Jules-Rosette, ''Black Paris: The African Writer's Landscape'', Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. * Sarah C Dunstan, ''Race, Rights and Reform: Black Activism in the French Empire and the United States from World War I to Cold War'', New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 207–236. * Marga Graf, "Roots of Identity: The National and Cultural Self in 'Présence Africaine, ''Comparative Literature and Culture'', June 2001, 3(2). * Salah D. Hassan, "Inaugural Issues: the cultural politics of the early 'Présence Africaine, ''Research in African Literatures'', 30:2, Summer 1999, pp. 194–221. * Valentin Y. Mudimbe (ed.), ''The Surreptitious Speech: "Présence Africaine" and the Politics of Otherness, 1947–1987'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. * ''Léopold Sédar Senghor et la revue "Présence Africaine"'', Paris: Présence Africaine, 1996, 250 pp. (Collectiion of Senghor's writings in ''PA''). * Jacques Howlett, ''Index alphabétique des auteurs et index des matières de la revue "Présence Africaine"'', Paris: Présence Africaine, 1977, 381 pp. * Micaela Fenoglio, ''"Présence africaine" entre critique et littérature: l'esprit du dialogue'', Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. * Marcella Glisenti (ed.), ''Hommage à Alioune Diop, fondateur de Présence Africaine'', Rome: Éditions des amis italiens de Présence Africaine, 1977. * Lilyan Kesteloot, ''Les Écrivains noirs de langue française: naissance d'une littérature'', Bruxelles: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1965. * Diane T. Simard, ''Théorie et critique littéraires dans la revue "Présence africaine"'', Montréal: Université McGill, 1972 (Thèse M.A.). * 20e Anniversaire: ''Mélanges: réflexions d'hommes de culture, Présence Africaine 1947-1967'', Paris: Présence Africaine, 1969. * ''30e Anniversaire de Présence Africaine. Hommage à Alioune Diop'', Paris: Présence Africaine, 1977. * ''50e Anniversaire de Présence Africaine, 1947-1997: Colloque de Dakar, 25-27 novembre 1997'', Paris: Présence Africaine (special edition), 1999, 385 pp.

External links