Death of Beninese intellectual Stanislas Spero Adotevi
Benin still loses and mourns one of its intellectuals, Professor Stanislas Spero Adotevi. Writer, philosopher, former Minister of Culture and Information, he died this Wednesday, February 7 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso at the age of 90. He was one of the writers who were very critical of the poet president Léopold Sédar Senghor and his negritude. A senior international civil servant, he is the author of the famous work “Negritude and Négrologues”, released in 1972.
Stanislas Spero Kpakpovi Adotevi was a Beninese philosopher and politician. © Garitan/wikimedia.org
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With our correspondent in Cotonou,
Jean-Luc Aplogan
It was his attacks on Léopold Sédar Senghor in the literary field that made him famous. In 1972, he published “Negritude and Negrologists”, a pamphlet against the concept of negritude of the poet-president. When Senghor writes "
emotion is Negro
", Stanislas Adotevi protests and responds with his pen "
it is to reduce us to emotional beings
".
In this fight against Senghor, he found an ally, the Congolese Henri Lopès who would preface a second version of “Négritudes et Négrologues”. Stanislas Adotevi is the author of “N'Krumah or the waking dream”. Confidences report that the late Thomas Sankara was admiring of his articles and reflections on Africa.
Many tributes
The Beninese directed the University of Mutants in Gorée in Senegal with his friend Cheik Hamidou Kane, the author of “The Ambiguous Adventure”. He taught philosophy at the University of Paris VII. Twice minister in Benin in the 1960s Stanislas Adotevi settled in Ouagadougou after a long career as regional director of Unicef.
Tributes are as numerous in Dakar, Ouagadougou as in Cotonou.
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