The National Revolution in French West Africa: Dakar-Jeunes and the shaping of African opinion

Founded in early 1942 as a conduit for National Revolution propaganda, the publication Dakar-Jeunes would also provide an unexpected forum for far-reaching cultural debates. As part of its investigation of cultural development (l'volution culturelle) in French West Africa, this paper solicited and published a range of articles written by young African elites. It soon became apparent that African contributors to Dakar-Jeunes were staging their own debate, which had little connection to the National Revolution. This article investigates the discursive structure and broader significance of this largely forgotten contest between supporters of cultural mtissage and defenders of African cultural autonomy. Exploring the positions taken by Lopold Senghor, Ousmane Soc, Mamadou Dia and others the author seeks to understand how key intellectual figures debated and imagined the cultural communities of the future. At a moment when political life and discourse were heavily repressed by the colonial state, this debate about culture acquired great symbolic importance and a new explosive potential.