1 Jared Sacks 1 January 2017 Nietzsche 13/13: Césaire Against essentialism? Going deeper... 1 One of the themes that emerged from Nietzsche 6/13 on Césaire, Nietzsche, and the Struggle Against Colonialism, is the question of “essentialism”. In popular discourse, responses to anti-black racism often bring forth accusations of ‘counter’ or ‘reverse’ racism. In academia, such a charge tends to be referred to as ‘essentialism’ (or more negatively ‘counter-essentialism’). Like racism, the term essentialism is imbued with a pejorative connotation. This normative judgement is rarely interrogated: to call one’s thinking essentialist tends to be seen as nothing more than an insult. It is with this frame that I wish to interrogate the question of essentialism as it was posed during the proceedings of Nietzsche 6/13. The talk by Daniele Lorenzini, titled Against Essentialism, focused on this issue in relation to the thought of Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor and their philosophy of Négritude. He maintains that, “it was and still is quite common to interpret the Negritude movement as defending a more or less radical form of essentialism – a sort of ‘counter-essentialism’ opposed to the European one, but an essentialism nonetheless” (Lorenzini 2016). Both Lorenzini and Bachir Souleymane Diagne affirmed that the language and formulation of Négritude was essentialist. Yet, embracing this pejorative view, they qualified such a statement. Diagne for instance rationalised that, “at same time, there is something that comes underneath and deconstructs the essentialist language” (Diagne 2016). In other words, there is something about Négritude that “de-essentialises itself”. 1 Published in the Columbia Law School Blog as part of the Nietzsche 13/13 public seminars. See http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/nietzsche1313/jared-sacks-against-essentialism-going-deeper/