Search

The article reconstructs the conditions of hospitality of African poetic works written in Portuguese in 1960s Italy. The aim is to investigate the role of connecting-personalities and/or translators, such as Joyce Lussu, Giuseppe Tavani and Pier Paolo Pasolini and the paratextual and contextual elements of the hosted works. The intellectual intermediation by the Angolan Mário Pinto de Andrade also contributed significantly to the publication of these anticolonial poetry collections.

Contemporary works of African literature often engage in the depiction of a geographical and cultural dislocation inscribed in today’s pattern of global migration. NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013) fits within this framework as a female coming-of-age novel that follows the story of Darling, from the character’s childhood in post-2000 Zimbabwe to the alienating experience of life as a migrant in the United States of America. The peculiarity of the novel lays in Bulawayo’s linguistic choices, in particular the use of irony and the practice of (re)naming, which come to represent the feelings of un-belonging and political disillusionment that define the characters’ geo-cultural displacement. Using the normative theory of literature (Cheah 2016) as a theoretical framework, this paper further analyses the use of such literary devices as tools through which the narrative opens up to alternative worlds of representation. In this sense, this paper argues that Bulawayo’s We Need New Names can be considered as a world-making narrative of cultural and linguistic resistance against the disruption of Zimbabwe’s socio-political situation.

The African literature of Portuguese language corresponds to a relatively recent production, if we take into account the post-independence history of these countries. However, they consist of a vast and rich production from the cultural, identity, aesthetic point of view and the way in which orality is imbricated in the writing. It is in this context that the work of the Angolan Ondjaki is situated, which explores, among so many themes and perspectives, the issue of childhood, the starting point of one of his best-known works, Os da Minha Rua (2007), composed of twenty-two narratives. Among them is the text “No galinheiro, no devagar do tempo”, object of study of this article, which aims to analyze how childhood is presented in this story. For this, we developed a bibliographical research, based, in particular, on the ideas of Bakhtin (2002), Jacoby (2010), Chombart de Lauwe (1991), Lajolo (1997), among others Keywords: Ondjaki; African Literature; Childhood.

In the Sub-Saharan francophone literature, promotion of the African traditional cultures is followed by its tragical disappearance which represents the main dynamic of the narrative. This fact is stressed by total absence of happiness of the main character who is always African. The main character during the plotline feels the paroxysm of positive emotions, caused usually by his future voyage to France, which is almost immediately substituted by the downfall into negativism. He accepted this sudden reversal with the external calm but in his interior he started to understand that this change affects his identity. At the end of the story, the main character pronounces an accusatory discourse against Europe. In this work we will study collective emotions in African milieu and the way the voyage to Europe influences the attitude of the main character to these shared feelings.

La «literatura poscolonial» eurófona constituye una de las corrientes literarias africanas mejor definidas y delimitadas, y una de las más estudiadas en las últimas décadas por su especial creatividad e idiosincrasia. La explosión de publicaciones en lenguas eurófonas ocurrió a mediados del siglo xx y desde aquel entonces no ha parado de evolucionar. En este contexto, si bien las escritoras africanas no han recibido tanta atención como sus congéneres masculinos, su producción literaria ha estado al mismo nivel y ha sido tan dinámica y rompedora como la de ellos. Esta contribución tiene como objetivo trazar una descripción general de la literatura africana, para centrarse a continuación en la escritura femenina colonial y poscolonial, con el fin de ofrecer un acercamiento a las actuales producciones continentales y diaspóricas de estas escritoras contemporáneas que sirva para celebrar las contribuciónes y las producciones de las diferentes generaciones de creadoras en la escena literaria mundial. English Postcolonial African Europhone Literature constitutes probably not only one of the best defined and delimited African literary currents but one of the most studied in recent decades for its special creativity and idiosyncrasy. The explosion of publications in europhone languages happened in the middle of the xx century and since then it has not stopped evolving. While African women writers have not received as much attention as their male counterparts, their literary activity has been at the same level and has been as dynamic and disruptive as theirs. In this sense, this article intends to draw a general description of African literature that will enable us to frame what regards to both colonial and postcolonial feminine writing in order to finally offer an approach to the current continental and diasporic productions by female writers. The aim being celebrating the contribution and productions to the worldwide literary scene of their different generations.

During Apartheid, South African censorship became the main legal instrument for the control and cultural tutelage of society. Censors decided which literary works could be read. Thousands of books were withdrawn from circulation, but the censorship did not achieve total success in curtailing the circulation of ideas. One novel, in particular, was released despite being not only very political, but also representing events that were – as J. M Coetzee puts it – in the minds and hearts of people of conscience during Apartheid: torture and fake reports issued by the South African police. Through documental and critical analysis, this article aims to answer one question: why Waiting for the barbarians, novel by J. M Coetzee published in 1980, was never banned? We will bring information and reflections on how the use of literary strategies, a political strategy and the exercise of censorship by a peculiar censor were crucial for the system’s circumvention.

The thirties of twentieth century were marked by the emergence of the Negritude Movement, articulated by black students, inside and outside Africa, who proposed to rethink the place and value of black culture in the world, through a critical writing of a social, philosophical and political nature. Responsible for the publication of the journals Légitime Défense (1932), L’Étudiant Noir (1934) e Présence Africaine (1947-1968), these thinkers “intend to be united by the affirmation of the black culture, to the black's awareness of his own condition” (SANTILLI, 1985, p. 174). Among the many researchers of African Portuguese-language Literature, it is important to consider the impact of the new ways of looking at the historical development and the cultural significance of the black population, in Africa and in the diaspora, which culminated in the French-speaking Negritude Movement and its rereading, about the construction of an authentically African literature in the Portuguese colonies. The poetry, especially, from the late of the fortieths of twentieth century, claims the possibility of bringing to its center both the drama of colonized black people and the valorization of their culture.

Among the South African writers, Vladislavic’s interest in the Fine Arts and the Visual Arts leads him both to relate literature to photography and to cooperate with artists in various projects. His well-known Double Negative 2012 (2010), a novel accompanying the photographic album by David Goldblatt, TJ. Johannesburg Photographs 1948-2010, has already attracted the attention of another writer/photographer, the New York based Nigerian novelist Teju Cole, and several comments by South African critics, among them Johan Jacobs and Stephen Clingman. It is an extremely interesting example of an attempt at creating a dialogue between the complementary arts of poiesis and images. Double Negative and TJ create a double-bind dynamics of reading/gazing through two works, two media, two languages, two semiotic and rhetorical systems that also guide the reader through the History of South Africa between pre- and post-apartheid, up to the threshold of the digital era. The aim of this contribution is to position ourselves along the horizon of the interpreters of the photographic art (with Benjamin, Barthes, Sontag) and to detect the various possible intermedial interrelations (Debord, W.J.T. Mitchell) between the “fictional” narrative and the “real” photos, between the ethical and the aesthetic vision of two major contemporary South African artists.

As shown by the analysis of the narrative perspective, the texts of French-language African women writers reveal a gradual move towards ever more complex expressive forms. Focusing almost exclusively on the narrator, early-written stories tend to present events as a whole already filtered by conscience, thus conveying the memory of an experience. However, the monological interpretation of the past is later replaced by a polymodal representation where memory grows richer through an overall processing of past experiences, which we dub the experience of memory.

El presente trabajo parte de la idea de que el estudio de los géneros literarios exige considerar no solo los rasgos formales del texto, sino también las diferentes modalidades contractuales susceptibles de aparecer en su recepción. Dicho de otro modo, un texto solo se integra en un género de escritura concreto cuando es reconocido como tal por parte del destinatario, operación que, aunque comporta ciertos conocimientos teóricos, es de carácter pragmático. El lector será quien, de manera individual, y apoyándose en todos los datos que tiene a su alcance, decida el modo de lectura que le resulta más apropiado. En este trabajo intentaremos ilustrar este proceso analizando un corpus de textos autobiográficos pertenecientes a la primera generación de escritoras africanas de expresión francesa, elección que pretende satisfacer al mismo tiempo los criterios de cohesión (todas las escritoras comparten un mismo contexto socio-histórico) y de representatividad, pues pensamos que nuestras conclusiones son trasladables a otros corpus similares, en particular a los que se derivan de las denominadas “literaturas emergentes”. This paper is based on the idea that the study of literary genres needs to take into consideration not only the formal features of the text but also the different contractual modalities which might appear in their reception. In other words, a text is only part of a specific writing genre when it is recognized as such by the addressee, operation which, although entailing certain theoretical knowledge, has a pragmatic character. It will be the reader who, individually and relying on all the data at his disposal, will decide the reading process which he finds more appropriate. In this paper we will try to show this process by analysing a corpus of autobiographical texts written by the first generation of African French-speaking female writers, a choice which aims to meet at the same time the criteria of cohesion (all the writers share the same social-historical context) and of representation, as we think that our conclusions are transferable to similar corpora, in particular to those which derive from the so called “emerging literatures”.

In this essay I would like to examine the selection of African tales that Nelson Mandela took care to leave as heritage to the future generations, not only to children, and not only to African children. The fact that a political leader, ex freedom fighter and political prisoner dedicated his time to the collection and editing of stories from all over the African continent to be addressed to new readers as simple entertainment or as educational tools clearly testifies to the great humanity, culture, and open mindedness of one of the most important men of our times. In his most recent autobiographical writing Conversations With Myself, Mandela claimed his double affiliation to both his own indigenous culture as well as to western culture. Moreover, he recalled with affection a dear pastime of his childhood: After supper we would listen enthralled to my mother and sometimes my aunt telling us stories, legends, myths and fables which have come down from countless generations, and all of which tended to stimulate the imagination and contained some valuable moral lesson. (p. 10) Thus, it is not surprising that such a charismatic public figure, as Mandela has been, was also interested in- and worried about- the future survival of a cluster of traditional folktales with their lively, specific and “valuable moral lesson”. It is my intention to verify if there might be a dialogue between the western tradition of folktales where animals are protagonists and speak as anthropomorphic figures and the facets of the African traditions and cultures from which Mandela draws inspiration. Among the critical tools on this topic, Tess Cosslett’s Talking Animals in British Children’s Fiction (2006) seems to provide a useful starting point, together with the latest studies in the volume Dall’ABC a Harry Potter (2011), among others. Moreover, aspects of “orature” will be discussed with reference to the stories chosen by Nelson Mandela. Finally, an attempt will be made to connect these types of animal tales to works of figurative art, particularly paintings, by African artists, which might share the same moral message and which might trigger similar narratives.

This essay will link African women’s writing to culture, including literary culture and the politics of literature. It describes how African women’s literature can act as a mirror, reflecting African cultures to Africans, and how it can serve as a window and a door, revealing African cultures to those outside of them in whole or in part. It ends with a description of “communal agency,” an example of how scholarly writing can act as a door for both those who are and are not a part of a literature’s culture.

The development of postcolonial studies has provided a new interpretative framework to think the literary production of countries that have undergone colonialism. In this context, the African novel has changed and new poetic elements have appeared after independence. I have chosen to analyze three novels from three distinct national and literary inspirations to carry out a comparative analysis of different types of violence. Despite the differences found between the colonization and independence processes, I noticed that the issues related to violence are often repeated. My aim has been to study the experience of violence through Mia Couto’s, Sony Labou Tansi’s and J. M. Coetzee’s narrative work, analyzing for instance, the abuse of power, the construction of stereotypes and oppression to show the richness of this literature that aims at unsettling the established order and offering a new version of past events; and also on the structural level, humor or linguistic creations reveal the desire to translate and hybridize cultures.

In “Memory is of the Future: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Novels of the African Diaspora” I explore comparative possibilities among examples of the contemporary novel of the African diaspora – Toni Morrison (USA) and Maryse Condé (Guadaloupe); and African novels written in Portuguese by Pepetela (Angola), and Mia Couto (Mozambique). I attempt to understand the way writers position themselves towards the past and the future of their communities and nations. As their common paradigm is colonial, the discussion of tradition versus modernity, as well as the relation between memory and history gain a special relevance. To foster my discussion I shall be using a postcolonial theoretical framework resorting mainly to Enrique Dussel, Édouard Glissant, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos.

The issue of motherhood in African women’s writings has transcended the façade of binary oppositions created by radical “Western” feminists who pitch women against men in their campaign for gender equality or, worse still, belittle or show disdain for the men-folk. The approach of African women writers takes issue with the collapse of social inequalities and its potentially disastrous implications. This essay examines the representations of African women in their struggle against the divisive impact of single parenthood in the present economic crisis and their lack of power to cope with the challenges that this crisis poses. By means of a critical and evaluative textual analysis, the essay looks at how contemporary fictional writing succeeds in representing this diffuse social reality.

Este trabajo estudia las representaciones de las geografías urbanas y sus problemáticas en la literatura africana de expresión castellana. Para tal efecto propone la representación de las realidades urbanas como espacios de experiencias de vida heterogéneas, ya sean culturales, políticas o de renegociación de identidad. Igualmente examina cómo esa geografía urbana se configura como espacio que se presta a la articulación de una multitud de discursos y reinterpretaciones de la realidad urbana y urbanística, que obligan en este caso al sujeto migrante africano a embarcarse en un proceso de reterritorialización desde la transterritorialidad del desplazamiento, como estrategia de supervivencia en ese espacio ajeno y dislocado que es la ciudad.This study explores the representations of urban geography and its problematic in African literature in Spanish. It intends to examinate the representation of urban realities as spaces of heterogeneous experiences, be they cultural, political, or renegociation of identity. Along those lines, this study will discuss how urban geography becomes a space that allows a multitude of negociations, as well as the articulation of a variety of discourses and reinterpretations of urban and urbanistic reality that oblige the African migrant subject, in this case, to engage in a process of reterritorialization from the transterritoriality of displacement, as a strategy for survival in an alien and dislocated space such as the City.

The community of destinies, as well as the varied historical meetings along the time between notable Spanish representatives and representatives of the African continent have exercised a profound influence over several aspects of the Hispanic-African cultural confluences. Unfortunately, these aspects have retained the critics' attention just for a little while, despite the numerous documents that exist in Spain about African black people. These last ones were already writing in Spanish, following the example of the Ethiopian Juan de Baltasar Abissino, starting right with the 17th century. The present article sets itself to explore a few ways of investigating the Hispanic Negro-African Literature from the 17th century.

This text seeks to rethink the relationship between literature and citizenship or, more generally, identity. It does so by analysing two recent South-African novels, i.e. J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) and Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat (2006). Both Disgrace and Agaat are examples of how the singularity of great literary works needs an interdisciplinary approach that does justice to the way in which a novel is part of, and simultaneously co-constructs, the discourses on history, identity and citizenship.

Neste artigo, analisa-se o romance The famished road (1991) de Ben Okri, um autor nigeriano que vive e publica suas obras na Inglaterra. O objetivo é demonstrar que é uma obra híbrida entre concepções de mundo e formas de narrar diferentes, características de diversas tradições literárias e orais. A análise é baseada nos conceitos de hibridismo, tradução cultural e cosmopolitismo vernáculo de Bhabha (1990 e 2000), além de textos teóricos sobre a cultura iorubá e a literatura africana, como Soyinka (1990), Okpewho (1983) e Quayson (2002), entre outros. Também são apresentadas as especificidades dorealismo mágico africano, um modo narrativo que reúne, em si, estratégias e técnicas distintas, com a discussão de autores como Cooper (2004), Slemon (1988) e Walter (1993).This article analyzes The famished road (1991) by Ben Okri, a Nigerian author who lives and publishes his works in England. Its main goal is to demonstrate that it is a hybrid work among different worldviews and narrative forms, characteristic of diverse literary andoral traditions. The analysis is based on concepts of hybridity, cultural translation and vernacular cosmopolitanism by Bhabha (1990 and 2000), as well as on theoretical texts about Yoruba culture and African literature, such as Soyinka (1990), Okpewho (1983), andQuayson (2002), among others. Specificities of African magical realism, a narrative mode that combines distinct strategies and techniques, are also presented with the discussion of authors, such as Cooper (2004), Slemon (1988), and Walter (1993).

This article shows one of the most important aspects of the mozambicam writer Mia Couto: the fusion of the cultural and linguistic portuguese element with the african one. His literature is a mix between portuguese language and specific terms used by different mozambican people around the country; Mia Couto knows, in his novels, how to achieve a wise mix between african essence and his portuguese roots.