Dossier 49, African Literatures in Portuguese in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Formative Aspects

2024-09-27

PROPOSAL
In the past, Manuel Ferreira analyzed the literary production of African intellectuals involved in the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (1944-1965) and, in a text entitled “Metamorphosis and premonition”, he states that the period 1947-1955 is responsible for establishing a panorama that “from Luanda to Lourenço Marques, passing through Lisbon and Coimbra, through cultural and literary dynamism, reveals, from the African point of view, the experience of a specific cultural period: that of the assumption of Africanness, of national consciousness, a maturation of national identity and collective consciousness” (1982, p. XX). Inevitably intertwined with this dynamic, the construction of studies of African literatures soon realised the importance of the nationalist inflection for the very constitution of its corpus.

In this movement, however, the vast African literary production in Portuguese from the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century (before 1947), with its multiple meanings, dynamics, proposals and efforts, was often positioned from a perspective that always emphasized its weakness in relation to subsequent nationalism. This vast and polysemic production is usually framed as “protonationalist” (in the words of M. P. de Andrade), assimilated, “Euro-African” (in the terminology of M. Ferreira), and does not yet reveal an expression of the “deep roots of national social reality” (M. Ferreira, 1989, p. 33), leading analyses to focus only on epigones that outline a narrative of historical becoming whose vanishing point (and end) are the independence and historical protagonism of the party elites responsible for the political emancipation of African countries. Critic César Braga Pinto, in his analysis of the production of O brado africano, argues that reading the works of the period as “protonationalist” constitutes a “post-independenceist” viewpoint, which “teleologically emphasizes the sovereignty of the post-colonial nation-state, and runs the risk of obscuring some contradictions and dilemmas experienced by African intellectuals, especially in the first half of the 20th century” (2015, p. 12).
On the other hand, there are very diverse testimonies that point to the circulation of prolific African writings in the Portuguese language, of which there are examples, among many others, in Angola, such as José da Silva Maia Ferreira, Pedro Félix Machado, Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta; in Mozambique, such as Campos de Oliveira, Arthur Serrano and all the intellectuals around O brado africano (1908-1975); in São Tomé and Príncipe, with Caetano Costa Alegre and Marcelo da Veiga; in Cape Verde, José Evaristo d’Almeida, Guilherme da Cunha Dantas, Eugénio Tavares, or even the case of the Almanach de memórias luso-brasileiro (with a variable name), whose publication between 1851 and 1932 brought writers closer to the global space of the Portuguese language in a way that is still incomparable today.

For this dossier of the Via Atlântica journal, therefore, we hope to receive revealing contributions of objects of study and innovative methodologies, which seek to look beyond the binarisms established by the bonds of the Euro-Western paradigm, focused on the circulation of literary texts in the Portuguese language between the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, before the period of 1947-1955, responsible for the great nationalist inflection. Who are the writers and writings and lines of force most representative of those periods? What are the theoretical and methodological adjustments necessary to observe these productions? Under what paradigms and conceptual assumptions can such productions be analyzed? What are the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary contributions needed for its study and understanding?

REFERENCES
ANDRADE, Mário P. Origins of African nationalism: continuity and rupture in the unitary movements emerging from the struggle against Portuguese colonial domination, 1911-1961. Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 1997.
FERREIRA, Manuel. Discourse on the African journey. Lisbon: Plátano, 1989.
FERREIRA, Manuel. African literatures in Portuguese. Lisbon: Institute of Culture and Portuguese Language, 1986. p. 13-46.
FERREIRA, Manuel. Metamorphosis and premonition. In: TENREIRO, Francisco José; ANDRADE, Mário P. (org.). Black poetry in Portuguese. Lisbon: África, 1982. p. 9-46.
PINTO, César Braga. José Francisco Albasini and health in the Mozambican corpus. In: ALBASINI, José. In search of health: chronicles of a sick person. Maputo: Alcance, 2015. p. 9-26.

THEMATIC AXES

  • Challenges to textual criticism of African literature in Portuguese in the 19th century: editions and variations;
  • In search of the corpus: African authors and works in Portuguese published between the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th;
  • The periodical press and African literature in Portuguese in the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th: means of editing and publication;
  • Literary conventions, patterns and aesthetic ruptures in African literature in Portuguese in the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th.

ORGANIZATION
Ubiratã Souza (University of São Paulo, Brazil); César Braga Pinto (Northwestern University, United States of America); Helena Wakim Moreno (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

OTHER TEXTS SECTION
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