Adriaan Van Klinken: Thank you so much, David, for giving us such a rich and thought-provoking book in Senghor’s Eucharist. You present this book as a response to the call, made by Jesse Mugambi in the early 1990s, for African theologians to engage seriously with African literary writing, and rightly describe it as the first extensive engagement with poetry in contemporary African Christian theology. What does African literature in general, in your view, offer to African theology that necessitates such an engagement, and is there something distinct or unique about poetry as a genre that makes it a particularly valuable resource for theological reflection?
David: Thank you, Adriaan, for raising this important question that lies at the heart of Senghor’s Eucharist. The book is based on the bet that theological engagement with African literature may open vistas for thinking about Africa and its place in the modern world that may not be accessible through other disciplines. Since I wrote the book, I have become increasingly convinced that literature is central to this process because it seems to have a kin relationship with religious and theological studies. Literature, like religion and theology, seems to be rooted in a complex imagination that seeks to create alternative futures out of the debris of an equally complex past and present. Thus, the call to engage literature in theological and religious studies in Africa is not just an academic one. African studies is an academic field that not only fosters vigorous academic activity but also focuses on how academic activity impacts the lives of people. Inasmuch as literature is a discipline that explores central questions of what it means to be human, it is always a ripe site for religious and theological studies. This is so especially in a postcolonial Africa where much literature has grown out of different forms of dehumanization.
While African literature is rich in literary genres, I believe poetry is especially valuable for theological reflection because it seems to be rooted in a primal language—the language of awe, passion, and even power. It speaks as if it seeks to call things into being that do not yet exist. That is perhaps why Senghor’s poetry collection, Black Hosts, on which the book is based, raised questions that had not yet been asked at the time he wrote it. Black Hosts was written between 1938 and 1945 but published in 1948. Like Senghor’s Eucharist, Black Hosts raises questions of forgiveness and reconciliation in the wake of Africa’s experience of slavery and colonialism in the modern world. While it is possible to raise these questions in prose, the evocative nature of the poetic rendition and the rethinking of a central Christian ritual (the Eucharist) seems to capture the urgency of the questions.
Adriaan: Thanks, David, you’ve captured that beautifully: poetry as an attempt to call things into being. Your mention of Senghor, and his collection Black Hosts, leads me to the next question. Many readers will probably never have heard of this writer, let alone be familiar with his poetry. Could you briefly introduce Senghor and the poems found in Black Hosts, and explain your choice to focus on this single writer and text specifically? In addition, could you also elucidate the argument you make in the book, that Senghor should be claimed as a “profound” African theologian?
David Tonghou Ngong: Perhaps I should begin by saying that Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was one of the most consequential figures in African, and perhaps global politics and letters in the twentieth century. Born in Senegal and educated in Senegal and France, he became a noted anticolonialist and the first president of Senegal. His life was, however, marked by his relationship to the idea of negritude, which may be roughly translated as Blackness, of which he was one of the founders. For Senghor, negritude meant reclaiming the history and cultures of the Black world for the promotion of Black dignity and universal humanity. To read Senghor’s corpus is to become familiar not only with much of the intellectual ferment of the twentieth-century Francophone Africa but also with much of Western thought, especially French intellectual thought. While Senghor wrote essays, some of which have just now been translated into English, poetry was his main form of literary expression. He wrote five essay collections under the title Liberté (Freedom) and seven poetry collections. Like his essays, his poetry is steeped in what may be called an African atmosphere, especially what he saw as African cosmology and ontology. He sought to capture what he saw as the African imagination in a global context. And religion has a central place within this framework—especially African Indigenous religions and Christianity. Senghor was a Catholic who sought to marry his Catholicism with African Indigenous traditions. This marrying of different traditions is what is now called inculturation, but Senghor had a different name for it—métissage, that is, the coming together of different worlds.
I was drawn to Black Hosts when I first came across it about ten years ago because of what I thought of as its unique theological move. The poems in the collection were situated in the context of a Eucharistic celebration in which the offering was inverted. Instead of the offering of Christ, Africa was being offered. I had read Latin American and African theologies that spoke of crucified peoples, but I had not encountered theologies that claimed that this crucifixion takes place within the context of the Mass. Many of the Western and even African theologians I had read were saying that the Eucharist was the site of moral formation for the enactment of a kind of beloved community. Here was Senghor saying that what was happening in the Eucharist was the sacrifice of Africans. By doing this, Senghor was placing Africans at the center of the Christian theological tradition, calling attention to their plight in the modern world. To him, the Eucharist was not yet what it could be. He wanted it to serve as an instrument of universal peace. Given that it was the site of the sacrifice of Africans, it could not yet serve that purpose. In fact, one of the central poems of the collection, “Prayer for Peace,” makes this longing explicit and seems to suggest that such longing could only be attained through forgiveness.
Now, one thing to note about Senghor is that he wanted to become a priest but his differences with the missionaries who were to lead him towards this path led to this option not panning out. So, I read the poems of Black Hosts as Senghor coming full circle by not only becoming in poetry what he could not be in fact, a priest, but also as him reflecting theologically on the relationship between the West and Africa or the Black world. As a priest, he is the one offering a reformed Eucharist that would reclaim a perverted Eucharist. As a priest, he offers the Mass that proclaims universal peace through forgiveness. I describe Senghor as a profound African theologian because his poetry is clearly theological. He is often seen as a theoretician of negritude and a politician. However, if we read his poetic contributions, we can see that he was and continues to be an astute theologian whose work merits focused consideration.
Adriaan: It is indeed a very innovative, profound, and critical move from Senghor to use the sacrament of the Eucharist to generate such deep theological insight into the status of Africa, and Africans, in the world. I found the notion of the Eucharist as witchcraft particularly thought provoking. However, how would you respond to possible criticisms, such as that this line of thinking risks romanticizing or valorizing African suffering? Or that it privileges Christian metaphors at the exclusion of Indigenous and/or Islamic ones, thus not doing justice to the interreligious nature of African realities? Or, more positively framed, why do you think that Senghor’s Eucharistic imagination holds so much meaning, also for the contemporary period?
David: You are right about the problem of the valorization or reification of African suffering. It is a problem I wrestle with in Senghor’s Eucharist, arguing that the suffering of Africans should not be seen as replacing the suffering of Christ. The tendency to see African suffering as somehow playing a salvific role is a common temptation in some reflections on African Christianity. At times, African Christians are portrayed as true believers because they continue to believe amid frequent unspeakable suffering. Here, African Christians are portrayed as important examples to others, especially western Christians, who struggle to believe amid plenty. It is my view that the tendency to see suffering as carrying theological value should be resisted. The grotesque nature of much of African suffering in the modern world calls for theological pause. The point of monstrous suffering such as slavery and the slave trade, colonialism and wars, can hardly be determined. I am even tempted to say that these forms of suffering are quite pointless. They are pointless not only in the sense that they lead nowhere, but also in the sense that they carry no intrinsic value. African death and dying in the modern world, in a sense, is not news. That is why suffering and Africa have come to be synonymous in the modern world.
And here is where I think Senghor’s thinking about African suffering is different. In a context where African suffering does not often make the news, Senghor tried to do something with it. And the way he tried to do this was to root it in a Christian context, which was the context of his own faith and life. He therefore used his life as a literary priest to urge Christians to see the Eucharist as the site where African life in the world is lived, the site where African suffering is enacted. By placing that suffering in the Eucharist, he is protesting the suffering rather than romanticizing it. Rather than romanticizing African suffering, Senghor’s Eucharist seeks to bring it to the fore so that it may be attenuated. That is the vision of universal peace which Senghor imagines.
This brings me to the question of privileging a Christian metaphor in Senghor’s Eucharist. I think that because Senghor was writing from the perspective of a Christian, he could only make use of what he was intimately familiar with. Religious beliefs and practices are such that devotees can only work within their lifeworlds. I also think the Christian metaphor carries purchase in our own time because of the importance of Christianity in Africa and the West, the major audiences of Senghor’s work. While many Africans are Muslims and others practice Indigenous and other traditions, one of the most important ways to address Africans is to use Christian language because, as you argued in your own book, Christianity has become an integral part of the lives of many Africans today. What this means is that, even in an interreligious context, we still need to use metaphors that are specific to certain religious traditions because those metaphors aptly speak to their devotees. A Muslim theologian might also use language specific to Islam to address Muslims. There is no religious language that speaks equally to devotees of all religious traditions, despite some versions of public theology that make claims to the contrary. Using a specific metaphor to address a specific religious audience seems unavoidable. Thus, the metaphor of the Eucharist is not meant to slight other religious metaphors. Its use is meant to clearly identify its audience—a Christian West that does not seem to see the anomaly of its rapacious relationship with Africa, and Africa itself. That metaphor, I think, remains a vibrant one in our own time, when Christianity has in fact gone global.
Adriaan: Thanks, David, for making these points so clearly. It is indeed fascinating to see how Senghor’s Catholic faith is situated within the colonial and postcolonial histories of Senegal and Francophone Africa. You also demonstrate insightfully how his poetry contributes to a postcolonial imagination of Christianity as a truly global, majority world, religion. This leads me to a final question, about your argument that Senghor is an example of decolonization, at a time that this term has become so commonly used that it’s losing meaning. Could you briefly reflect on the significance of Senghor’s thought in the light of current debates about decolonization?
David: I should say that since I wrote Senghor’s Eucharist, I have become wary of the idea of decolonization because it seems to lack conceptual clarity. Ideas of decolonization that appear to be rooted in separatist concepts of delinking and the creation of apparently unrelated centers of culture and power appear to be unhelpful. At least, this is not how Senghor understood the idea of decolonization. If I were to summarize Senghor’s conception of decolonization, I would describe it as the creation of internal and external relations of mutuality and cooperation characterized by relations of non-domination. Two things may be said about this. The first deals with the question of national independence as the central dynamic of decolonization. One way to think about decolonization is to see it as the call for national independence characterized by the creation of new nation-states. It should by now be clear that this was not always the understanding of decolonization that shaped anticolonial movements in Africa. Many of these movements, as has now been amply demonstrated, only came to the idea of national independence late. This is especially the case with Senghor. Senghor began with the idea of a French federation in which African colonies were part of France, as Caribbean countries such as Martinique are. It was only when it became clear to Senghor that France was not interested in such mutuality that he began to call for national independence. This idea of African countries as part of France is found in his poetry collection Black Hosts, where, in the poem “Prayer of the Senegalese Soldiers,” Senghor speaks of children of Confederate France walking together. Senghor could say this because the Senegalese soldiers who fought for France in the Second World War were defending what was thought of at the time as Greater France, not Senegal. What Senghor was fighting for at this point was not separation from France but mutuality and non-dominating relations among peoples. This was Senghor’s initial idea of decolonization which, in a sense, he never really abandoned. I believe he always thought of himself as French, which is why his most authoritative biographer describes him as Black, African, and French.
A second point that needs to be made about Senghor’s idea of decolonization is cultural. One of the chapters of Senghor’s Eucharist is titled “Negritude Beyond Negritude.” The chapter deals with the apparent contradiction that negritude, which for Senghor was about the cultures of the Black world, was not just about the Black world. It was a way of thinking about the world as a whole. This way of thinking was common in Black intellectual thought at the time, especially in the thought of people such as Alexander Crummell and W. E. B. Du Bois. It was a way of thinking that suggested different races have different ways of contributing to human life. This was why these writers were focused on the contributions of Black people to the world. From this perspective, focusing on black culture was not intended to separate Black people from others or draw solely from Indigenous thought, as seems to be the case in some versions of decolonization. Instead, Senghor viewed this cultural grounding as a vital means of connecting to the the rest of the world. Senghor’s idea of decolonization is therefore about rethinking one’s identity from the perspective of one’s culture and in terms of the relationship between one’s culture and other cultures. This identity, Senghor saw, was not rooted only in one culture, given that in a colonial context people of different cultures have, for better or worse, already encountered each other. The purpose of reclaiming the Indigenous, for him, was to participate with confidence in what he described as the Civilization of the Universal. The Civilization of the Universal, I note in the book, is different from a universal civilization. A universal civilization is one where one culture arrogates to itself the title of universal civilization. That culture becomes the culture that everyone must follow. That is how colonizing cultures have presented themselves. The Civilization of the Universal, as Senghor conceives it, is a mélange of different cultures, a métissage, to use Senghor’s word. This new civilization is a mixture of different civilizations. So, for Senghor, decolonization is not a neat phenomenon that simply calls for subtractions. It is quite a complex process. For him, decolonization spells a manner of relating to others that is bereft of domination.
