Deciphering African History, Négritude, Blackness, and more through Wolof Poetry

The Africa Institute hosted Senegalese American poet, translator, and researcher Professor Baba Badji as part of its Faculty Seminar Series on September 26, 2022, at Khalid School – Auditorium. 

Professor Badji, postdoctoral associate at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ presented a talk titled, “The Wolof is an African Language in Ghost Letters: Translation, Form, History and Black Lives Matter” that explores the processing of cultures, people, Négritude, and Blackness at (home and abroad) and how it is mediated using different tongues in his recently published poetry collection, Ghost Letters (2021) that was longlisted for the National Book Award. 

Professor Badji earned his MFA in poetry and translation (Wolof, Diola, and French) at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and a Translation Certificate at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow and Edward A. Bouchet Honor Society Fellow. Last spring, he was the Inaugural James Baldwin Artist and Scholar in Residence at the University of Virginia Department of French.

“It’s a gift to be here, as an emerging scholar to interact with several leading scholars at The Africa Institute. Today, my talk will explore what Négritude means to me, what it means today, and how we should read Négritude,” said Professor Badji opening the conversation.

Professor Badji works on the links between the various forms of postcolonial studies, theory, and practice, with a particular focus on debates about postcolonial translation theory and Négritude in Anglophone and Francophone cultures.

The talk rethinks Négritude to plot its relevance for the enduring Black struggles of today. It dwells for a moment about being a refugee from a little town in Senegal, and the self-discovery and journey from Africa to America at the age of eleven to reconnect with his biological father.

“I argue how in one sense, an African language in my poetry is my way of reaching out to my roots; and I claim that without the Wolof in it, the poem becomes what I call ‘a European poem or an American poem’. In another sense, without the Wolof in a poem that also does not have French, that poem strictly becomes what I call “a Westernized poem”. In turn, if what I call a “diasporic poem” or “a universal poem” must have Wolof, must have English, and must have French together, I maintain that the interventions in Ghost Letters offer generative tools that help me reimagine the identities I embody,” said Professor Badji who speaks English, French also fluent in Wolof, Manding, and Diola.

Professor Badji  discusses the foundation of his first book, Ghost Letters, the ‘first skeletons’ of how it evolved from 2013 to 2021. Inspired by several iconic authors Toni Morrison, Paulette Nardal, Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, Abdoulaye Sadji, Léopold Sédar Senghor among several others, he traces the founders of Négritude and explores how they would think of blackness. He further explores the personal dimensions of the Négritude that debate across time and space, sharing his site of operations in three parts: shifting negritude across time and space; rethinking negritude to plot its relevance for the enduring Black struggles and lastly, translating negritude as a site of Blackness and Anti-Blackness.

“More specifically, this talk establishes an alternative interdisciplinary analysis that includes the interpersonal dynamics animating the relationship between cultures, people, Négritude, and Blackness at (home and abroad) in Ghost Letters. These help me to comprehend the personal dimensions of the Négritude debate across time and space,” he shared.

The session was moderated by Binyam Sisay Mendisu, Associate Professor of African Languages and Linguistics, The Africa Institute.