Disencounters with Africa in the Portuguese language: Postcolonial literature and theory in the Portuguese postempire

The imaginary of the Portuguese empire in Africa has been strongly present in the narratives of Portuguese national identity. With the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and the recognition of the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa in 1975, the Portuguese language became the trope whereby the empire was given continuity in the narratives of Portuguese national identity. The imagination of Portuguese colonialism as a harmonious encounter served as the basis for the construction of a language community embracing former metropolis and former colonies (Lusofonia). This construct typifies Portuguese imperial exceptionality, which still has a strong hold on the national imagination. Postcolonial literature and theory on Portuguese colonialism and its aftermath attempt to question this narrative while harbouring their own reflections on/around the trope of language. This research entails a critical analysis of narratives of the Portuguese language as a site of encounter with Africa in the canon of postcolonial theory and literature in Portugal, which I term the postempire. The analysis of postcolonial theory develops new insights based on the work of renowned Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos and explores an array of reflections from other salient postcolonial scholars. The analyses of postcolonial literature of high currency in Portugal focuses on three novels and commentary by the Mozambican Mia Couto, the Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa, and the Portuguese António Lobo Antunes, respectively. I scrutinise the main tropes and metaphors adopted by these theorists and authors to reflect on the Portuguese language vis-à-vis the empire. I look in particular for the (dis)continuous exoticisation of Africa and Africans, their (in)visibilization, and the rhetorical habit of approaching Portuguese colonialism without mentioning its gendered and racialised violent foundations. Finally these tropes and metaphors are associated with the narrative of Portuguese imperial exceptionality and the scholars’ and authors’ canonical location within the postempire to forward an understanding of how their writing overcomes and/or asserts the Portuguese empire at current times, with creativity, wit and pain. This critical analysis sheds light on the colonial phantom of race that is the female black other—Africa—and identifies emergences in theory and literature that give her protagonism. I conclude by proposing that the postcolonial field foregrounds the analysis of race in Portuguese colonialism and in the afterlife of slavery, and that it gives room and prominence to the agency, analysis, and literary and further artistic intervention of the gendered and racialised subjects of Portuguese coloniality, in dialogue with the African diaspora—and beyond the Portuguese language