Universalism, that definition of the human subject as culturally homogenous and politically equal, particular to French history since 1789 and before, has commonly been linked to the absence of racism on France's shores. Universalism and race would seem to be mutually exclusive: a universal definition of human subjectivity would prevent the division of that broadly construed humanity into races, tribes, or ghettoes. Racial definition and hierarchization, however, has been demonstrated by postcolonial and francophone critics to be central to French history, not only with the marginalization of the Algerian diaspora in contemporary France but also in its centuries-old history of colonial empire, currently under renewed scrutiny by academics and scholars.

At the same time, it has been noted by some that universalism's expansive scope, while destructive as the ideology driving France's Civilizing Mission in Africa and Asia, has also been enormously constructive for minority communities' self-organization. Colonized and racialized intellectuals from French West Africa to the Jim Crow South used universalist principles to build a social and intellectual body of resistance to colonialism and cultural assimilation. Léopold Sédar Senghor's Négritude movement was one of the first coherent intellectual programs to mobilize universalist principles in favor of black cultural emancipation.

Universalism and race, far from incompatible, in fact cohabited without friction at certain moments in French history. One such moment was the crucible for Senghor's Négritude: the 1930s, the moment of ethnography, colonial expeditions and expositions, Surrealism, the Popular Front, the rise of Fascism and in general a fascination with race unmatched prior to France's present concerns of immigration, integration and 'le droit à la difference.' Ethnography in particular was the discipline which combined universalism and notions of racial difference in easy harmony, and it greatly influenced Senghor's Négritude. In this paper I will read Senghor's L'esthétique négro-africaine next to Michel Leiris' diary of the 1931 Mission Dakar-Djibouti L'Afrique fantôme. In both texts I will explore the stakes of defining humanity as racelessly universal, racially distinct, or in the process of becoming 'other.' I will also examine the role Surrealism had to play in both writer's Africanist vision, and establish the contribution of these texts and the circumstances of their production to our present-day understanding of issues of race and universalism at work in French history and culture.