AT the HEART of NEGRITUDE: PAULETTE NARDAL’S ROLE IM WEST INDIAN MAGAZINES (1931-1951)

Abstract

In the last two decades, English and French-speaking research has restored the foundational place that Martinican writer and journalist Paulette Nardal (1896-1985) had in the origins of the Negritude movement. This article discusses a less-explored dimension of her legacy: the role played by the magazines she ran as examples of printed transculturation from the point of view of material culture. It examines the transformative impact they had on the cultural horizons of the period, first in Paris, with the prints of black internationalism of the interwar period, and then in Martinique with La femme dans la cité (1945-1951), a magazine that was central to the new Antillean feminism. From this perspective, the study of the printed matter allows us to reconstitute the first steps of the formation of a subaltern Antillean counterpublic.