Prelude

This prelude focuses on the role played by international organizations such as the United Nations and UNESCO to manage political decolonization in the immediate post-World War II era and envisage the basis for cultural emancipation in the ‘non-self-governing’ and ‘trust’ territories controlled by European empires. In France, this period coincided with attempts to explore African cultures and understand their development in the context of late colonialism. In 1948, Madeleine Rousseau and Cheikh Anta Diop edited a special issue of Le Musée vivant entitled ‘1848 Abolition de l’esclavage - 1948 Evidence de la culture nègre’. This publication, which included contributions by Michel Leiris and Jacques Howlett but also by lesser known figures such as Olivier Le Corneur and the Belgian literary critic Auguste Verbeken, examined the factors behind a possible ‘African renaissance’ (C.A Diop) in literature and the arts. The views defended here capture the mood of a period torn between an allegiance to existentialism and the ontological tenets of the Bantu philosophy as expounded by Placide Tempels.