User talk:Bcaillouet25/Négritude

=Second draft review for User:Bcaillouet25= Thanks for your work on your draft, Bianca! I think it's got a lot of good content, and I offer the suggestions below in a collaborative spirit, intended to help you refine your work before moving it to the mainspace. I'm happy to talk with you about any aspect of my comments or about your article in general.

Influences

 * "Other diverse thinkers..." - This is just a list. Is the claim that these four people influenced the idea of négritude? That's not stated here, and it would be better if we had a citation supporting naming these four people in particular as influences. (The next paragraph is also sort of a list, but it specifies how those writers addressed themes that influenced the idea of Negritude, which is what I think is needed here too. I'd use that paragraph about the Harlem Renaissance as a model for what this paragraph could be.)
 * I think there's a space missing after Langston Hughes's name.

Pre-negritude

 * Is "Pre-negritude" the best title for this section? It sounds like it's not so much about what happened before the concept was established, but rather about the environment in which it was developed. I do think it's a good idea to divide this long section into sub-sections, but maybe this first part should be called "Initial formulation" or "Beginning of the movement" or something else like that? (Alternatively, maybe some of this content could go into the 'influences' section?)
 * "France's colonies and territories," - no comma needed here
 * "by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane"- As we discussed in class, this phrasing makes it sound like the Nardals single-handedly introduced all of the students and scholars to these writers. Additionally, the phrasing right now is ambiguous - it could imply that they actually introduced them to the people, or it could mean they introduced their works to people in Paris.
 * "This Harlem association was..." - What Harlem association? I don't quite follow this sentence.
 * "An important note..." - As we discussed in class, this paragraph departs from the encyclopedic style needed for Wikipedia and adopts an argumentative tone, intended to convince the reader. Also, I note that the Nardal sisters are mentioned in the existing article's lead, so this paragraph is not the first place they're coming up. Finally, I think that this paragraph could benefit from some of your research. I see one of the main sources you used was specifically about the Nardal sisters - what can you modify in this paragraph based on what you've read about them? What needs to be said that isn't here, or how could this paragraph more accurately and evenly represent their contributions?
 * "She even wrote as much... " - Who is she here?
 * "Although each of..." - It's strange to spend a whole paragraph talking about the Nardal sisters and then say his here.
 * Most of the rest of this paragraph could use additional citations. It is also not quite clear to me that it belongs in a section about the inception of the movement. It appears more focused on describing their philosophical tenets, not the history of how it came about. Maybe this should be moved somewhere else.

General comments
I have two broad comments on this section.
 * 1) I think it would be good to add more citations throughout. There are a lot of unsourced claims here, but I realize that a lot of those are things that were already in the text, not what you wrote. That said, here is a place to make a real contribution with your additional sources, or by reviewing the sources they included already and linking each claim to a particular source.
 * 2) I still think this section needs reorganization. I like your idea of separating out the genesis of the movement from the discussion of the main development by the three principal poets, as you did above, but it could still be organized better, and this is again a place that you could make a solid contribution. Right now, it's sort of organized by person, first discussing Césaire, then Senghor, then Damas. You could keep that organization, but make it more explicit, dividing it into sections and making sure that each section was coherent. You could also change it and organize it by theme, which might be slightly harder but could be better. It seems to me that there are three main themes here:
 * 3) The biographies of the principal thinkers (i.e., that Césaire was from Martinique and also a politician, that he studied in France, etc.).
 * 4) The philosophical ideas that form the core of the Négritude philosophy, and how they varied among the three main poets (i.e., that Césaire put an "emphasis on the acceptance of the fact of "blackness" [as] the means by which the "decolonization of the mind" could be achieved", while Damas took a different approach).
 * 5) The history of their publication (i.e., that there were these two poetry anthologies, that one came to be seen as a manifesto, etc.)

You can decide what the best way to approach each of these issues is, but I think this is where most of your remaining work lies. As it stands right now, I notice that you haven't made very many changes from the original, but I think you can really add some quality to this article mainly by improving the citations and the organization.

Specific comments

 * The first paragraph could really use some citations, especially for that quote.
 * "a personal sense of revolt" = A personal sense of revulsion?
 * "Césaire's disgust came as..." - I'm not sure "came as embarassment" or "accused ... as having..." is idiomatic English. I'm also not quite sure what this part is saying and, again, this probably needs a citation.
 * "Damas believed this..." - I thought we were talking about Césaire, not Damas?
 * "Césaire was a poet..." - Again, all of this paragraph needs citations.
 * "Césaire called for ..." - This sentence needs a few fixes. First, the substantive question is what this law did and how it supported the political assimilation of Martinique. I'd suggest including that as a simple subordinate clause inside this sentence. My suggested insertion point is the blank space below. Second, there's a style question. I'd recommend styling it like this:

Césaire called for France's political assimilation of Martinique via the loi de départementalisation (the Departmentalization Law), which proposed/established _______ but did not entail an abandonment of Martinique's distinct culture.


 * "Négritude would, according to Senghor..." - ideally this quote would have a citation.
 * "Poet and..."- "A poet and..."
 * "black qualities" - why is this in italic in addition to quotes?
 * "Two particular..." - This seems to be the start of a new idea and should probably be a separate paragraph from the information about Demas.
 * "Though it would be..." - This sentence should be a clause of the preceding sentence, not a standalone sentence: "...eventually took that role, though it would be..."
 * "Indochina" - Do you mean specifically the French colony called French Indochina until 1954, or does this simply refer to that part of the world? If it's the former, I'd suggest linking it like I did here. If it's the latter, I'm not sure that's the best term.

Additional comments

 * You should decide how the word negritude is going to be styled and make it the same everywhere. Does it get the accent or not? Should it be capitalized? Should it be in italics or not? It should match through the whole article.
 * Citations should generally come after punctuation.
 * It looks like citations 1 and 4 are the same, and that citations 2 and 3 are the same. They should each be merged into one more complete citation, with the formatting of each corrected. Please also don't forget that the expectation was to add five citations.

Bradhoot (talk) 16:26, 27 May 2022 (UTC)