  In 1966, L.S. Senghor, then the President of Senegal since the country became independent in 1960, organized in Dakar an international event that he obviously intended to be a great moment of celebration of what he had been pursuing his whole life: the World Festival of Black Arts, meant to be the concrete manifestation of black aesthetics in all its dimensions. Aimé Césaire, one of the most celebrated guests of honor at the Festival, was invited to give a “Lecture on African Art” (“Discours sur l’art  africain”).[13] He first insisted on the question of the role and significance of art in general in the modern world, quoting the poet Saint-John Perse: “When mythology falls apart, it is in poetry that the divine finds refuge … it is from poetic imagination that the fierce passion of people seeking light gets its flame” (Thébia-Melsan 2000, 22). What Négritude poets did even if he does not like the word Négritude at all, declares Césaire, and in spite of their failings, was just that: to be light bearers for Africa. Then he proceeded to ask whether African art of the past will be a catalyst for African art in the present and the future the way it had been for European art at the beginning of the twentieth century. That was a way for him of calling the attention on the questions at the core of his thinking about aesthetics (but also politics): how to regain initiative? How to avoid the lack of authenticity of sheer imitation or mimesis: mimesis of Europe as well as mimesis of one’s own artistic tradition.