Zitationsvorschlag

Shilliam, Robbie et al.: Transcontinental Waters: The Anti-postcolonial Tide in Angolan Fiction and Film, in Chatterjee, Sukla et al. (Hrsg.): Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions, Heterogeneities, Knowledges, Materialities, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2023 (Anglophone Postcolonial Studies, Band 1), S. 305–326. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1046.c17316

Identifier (Buch)

ISBN 978-3-96822-158-8 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-159-5 (Hardcover)

Veröffentlicht

09.11.2023

Autor/innen

Stephen Henighan

Transcontinental Waters

The Anti-postcolonial Tide in Angolan Fiction and Film

ABSTRACT This article assesses the historical roots of resistance to postco­lonial interpretations of Angolan history and culture, tracing this reluctance to Angola’s distinctive history, particularly the rise of the Creole class, which ran the slave trade, served as a nascent national bourgeoisie, was deprived of its privileges by the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship, then regained them on independence in 1975. The neo-Creole national imaginary, as funnelled through images of salt water, is explored in three Angolan artis­tic works: Pepetela’s novel A Gloriosa Família (1997), which describes the consolidation of Creole identity during the Dutch occupation of Luanda in 1641–1648, Maria João Ganga’s film Na Cidade Vazia (2004), about a young war refugee’s friendship with a fisherman in 1991 Luanda, and Ondjaki’s novel AvóDezanove e o Secreto do Soviético (2008), in which identities formed by the ocean assist children who are fighting a construction project that threatens to destroy their homes.

KEYWORDS Angola, postcolonialism, Pepetela, Ondjaki, Ganga