Internationalizing the domestic: The Harlem Renaissance and the Third World anti-colonial movements

Abstract

The historical, social, and economic contexts that led to the birth of the Harlem Renaissance strikingly resemble those in the Third World that led to the anti-colonial, independence movements. It is not the interest of this paper to merely state the similarities between the two movements, but rather to study their effect on each other and how, considering their relationship helps us understand both the Harlem Renaissance and the Third World anti-colonial movements in broader historical contexts. This relationship is by no means unilateral but in many ways bilateral. Three main issues are discussed:

• 1.

  The rise of socialism as a social trend in the Third World and the Harlem Renaissance and its implications in both movements.

• 2.

  Nativism (or primitivism) as an element in reconstructing the pre-colonial national heritage to stand against the hegemony of the colonizer’s culture.

• 3.

  The realization of belonging to two conflicting cultures, hybridity, and the adaptation to this knowledge in both movements.