Identities in flux: new representations of africanity in the novel Whites Can Dance Too, by Kalaf Epalang

Abstract

The article proposes an analysis of the novel Whites can dance too (2018), by Angolan Kalaf Epalanga, as an artistic-literary product of a historical and identity reflection on truths defined according to a colonial dichotomy between tradition and modernity, autochthonous culture and occidental culture. Kalaf is a representative of an Angolan generation born in times of independence, during a civil war, witness to a disillusionment regarding the project of the nation dreamed of during the period of colonial struggle. It is also – and perhaps for this reason – a generation that resumed contacts with Portugal and the Occident, that also understood itself to be part of a globalist project, especially from the popularization of new digital technologies, and that, once in Lisbon, experienced a face of Lisbon life that is the portrait of a diasporic experience. The novel, being the product of all these reflections and experiences, is a portrait of a new Angolan time and its rethought cultural representations.