ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to show the place of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Marxism with regard to his thoughts and analysis on imperialism and all its variants—colonialism, neo-colonialism, and his announcement of the stage that was emerging out of decolonization, namely globalization. It discusses Sartre’s Black Orpheus, his first major analysis of race and colonialism. Sartre begins the essay by challenging the white readers’ paternalistic expectation of exoticism, as he preemptively calls out their surprise at the content of the poems as a form of privilege. The chapter also discusses Sartre’s and Frantz Fanon’s mutual influence on one another. The connection between Sartre and Fanon at first may seem paradoxical because of Fanon’s oft-cited criticism of Sartre’s Hegelian dialectic in Black Orpheus in his Black Skin, White Masks. Sartre refers to Lenin’s theory of imperialism to assess and explain France’s involvement in Algeria.
