Charles Sugnet  (University of Minnesota)
La Francophonie in Action: How Senghor Ruled Senegal

The figure of Leopold Sedar Senghor in his tuxedo, inducted into the Academy, constitutes a sort of poster for La Francophonie;. Most Senegalese above a certain age know how highhandedly and brutally he ruled Senegal. However, few North American professors of French, enamored of the idea of a poet-President, know that, despite his bucolic poems about village life, he had unruly peasants sprayed with DDT, or that electrical torture of prisoners was widespread under his government. This differential knowledge is in fact necessary for the existence La Francophonie as a literary and cultural field of study in the West.

I have no intention of refighting the battles of Negritude at the theoretical level; instead, I want to explore the dissonances and contradictions between the image of President Senghor among literary scholars, and the way he in fact governed Senegal. New research on the "coup" of 1961, the imprisonment of Prime Minister Mamadou Dia, the death in prison of activist Omar Blondin Diop, and the reasons for Senghor's departure from office make this a good time to reevaluate his performance as President in relation to his ideas and his literary reputation. Through a deep investigation of Senghor's conduct in office, I expect to shed a disturbing light on the political and ideological origins of Francophonie, and to show why it is not a workable theoretical framework.