Description
Foreword by Lanie Millar
This book is a collection of essays and speeches by Mário Pinto de Andrade, the Angolan literary critic, cultural theorist and political activist and one of Africa’s most important 20th century intellectuals. His writings think through the task of intellectual emancipation of colonized people, which he saw as predicated on the necessary project of political decolonization. As anti-colonial movements got underway, Andrade wrote extensively about the urgent necessity for Africans to turn away from European cultural and political models, arguing that communities emerging from colonization should focus on voices from within the designated communities, on self-representation, and on horizontal relationships among Black, African, and decolonizing peoples.
Andrade played a key role in theorizing the international reach of the revolutionary 20th century poetry and literature, Black cultural vindication, and African liberation. In his ethical commitment to moving away from focusing solely on the relationship between the colonial occupier and the colonized, he instead promoted ideas and actions that would construct mutual understanding among decolonizing communities. Andrade’s work offers models to rethink race and nation as analytic categories and is particularly relevant not only to scholars of African decolonization movements but to anyone engaged in contemporary conversations about race, belonging, and political community.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword – Lanie Millar
1. Black Poetry Expressed in Portuguese
2. What is Luso tropicalism?
3. Black-African Culture and Assimilation
4. Black Poets of Portuguese Expression
5. Culture and Armed Struggle
6. Reflections on the Cultural Congress of Havana
7. African Poetry Expressed in Portuguese: Evolution and Current Trends
8. New Language in the Angolan Imaginary
9. Culture and National Liberation in Africa.
10. The Armed Song of the Angolan People
11. “Preface” to Thematic Anthology of African Poetry: Songs of Arms
12. The Cultural Dimension in National Liberation Strategy: Identity, Cultural Power, and Democracy
13. Theoretical Production of African Intellectuals: From the Discourse on Race to the Discourse on National Liberation
14. Mário Pinto de Andrade - An Interview
15. Interview with Henda Ducados and Annouchka de Andrade about their father
Notes
Index
