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To-A-Nacao-With-Love-The-Politics-Of To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry Argus-a Artes & Humanidades / Arts & Humanities © Robert Simon To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry On the cover, photo of the 4th of April bridge over the Catumbela river, Lobito, Republic of Angola Author: Augusto Pombo Owner: INEA – Instituto de Estradas de Angola (Angolan Roads Authority) Designer: ARMANDO RITO ENGENHARIA, SA Contractor: JV MOTA-ENGIL / SOARES DA COSTA Supervision: ISQ ISBN 978-987-45717-7-9 Editorial Argus-a ISSN: 1853-9904 Indizada: Modern Language Association (MLA) y Latindex Buenos Aires – Argentina / Los Angeles- USA 1ª edición on line Abril 2017 publicada por Argus-a Artes y Humanidades Diseño: Mabel Cepeda Editorial Argus-a Artes y Humanidades Director: Gustavo Geirola Web: argus-a.com.ar E-mail: [email protected] 16944 Colchester Way, Hacienda Heights, California 91745 - U.S.A. Calle 77 Nº 1976 Dto. C - San Martín - (1650) - Buenos Aires - Argentina Todos los derechos reservados. Bajo las sanciones establecidas en las leyes, queda rigurosamente prohibida sin autorización escrita de la Editorial Argus-a Artes & Humanidades la reproducción y venta, ya sea total o parcial de To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry corporales por cualquier medio o procedimiento, comprendidos la reprografía y el tratamiento informático, así como la copia y distribución de ejemplares con fines comerciales. Propósito Argus-a Artes & Humanidades / Arts & Humanities es una publicación digital dirigida a investigadores, catedráticos, docentes, profesionales y estudiantes relacionados con las Artes y las Humanidades, que enfatiza cuestiones teóricas ligadas a la diversidad cultural y la marginalización socio-económica, con aproximaciones interdisciplinarias relacionadas con el feminismo, los estudios culturales y subalternos, la teoría queer, los estudios postcoloniales y la cultura popular y de masas. Editorial Argus-a es un proyecto filantrópico cuyo objetivo es difundir, de modo gratuito a través de la red, e-books académicos en castellano, inglés y portugués. Robert Simon Robert Simon serves as Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, and Coordinator of Portuguese, at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA. His research interests include mysticism, paradigm shift theory, notions of cultural and linguistic hybridity, the post-colonial, transnationalism, and the evolution of nationalist discourse via Angolan, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish poetics. For Sophia and Helena, where my heart belongs; for those who will find inspiration within these pages; and for all those who have believed in something greater; agradeço-vos enormemente… Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the following people and sources for their help and support in the creation of this book: The Sturgis Library at Kennesaw State University, and in particular, the Library’s Interlibrary Loan Staff, for your talents at helping me find some pretty inaccessible texts; The Editors and Staff of Argus-a, for your faith in my work; Olaf Berward, the Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Kennesaw State University, who lent his support both in spirit and in action during the composition of this book; Fernando Arenas, for your counsel and wisdom, past, present, and future; Inocência Matta, for the inspiration your prose has given me; Ana Mafalda Leite, for offering a perspective on the Angolan literary experience so similar to my own; Luís Kandjimbo, for sharing your work so openly with me and with the world; and My family, friends, and colleagues who have stood by me all this time. Thank you / Obrigado! Table of Contents Introduction: A Theoretical Framework… 2 Chapter I: A Sociopolitical Background for Angola and Lusophone Africa… 16 Chapter II: History and Poetry in Contemporary Angola… 27 Chapter III: Phase I – the struggle for self and nation... 54 Chapter IV: Phase II – the struggle for nation’s self… 88 Conclusions… 112 Notes... 121 Appendix… 123 Notes… 124 Works Cited.... 137 Robert Simon To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry Argus-a 1 de 143 Robert Simon To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry Introduction: A Theoretical Framework It may be taken as an axiom that countries and nations rely on the authority invested in them in order that they may protect the populace and maintain social order. In most cases this implies that they grant themselves a certain power beyond that which would implicitly fall, and be kept, in the hands of the people. This may include, although are not limited to, the authority to exploit the use of military and / or police force in order that the governing body may impose its brand of control, moving even toward the incentivized and / or forced removal of peoples from one region to another. They also use their power to remove cultures (not necessarily peoples) from their national territories in order that a given regime’s perceived authority may be nurtured without extraneous preoccupation. It may also be taken as an axiom that the people must have a mode of expression which surpasses that of any particular government, in support of that body, in opposition to it, or independent of political concerns. This may take many forms, such as protest, art, music, mass media such as television or film, or (in many cases) a combination / combinations of these. Cultural expression within any given country or nation is the key to understanding its internal workings and the effects of these on the peoples living there. Literature, in many ways, can serve either to help to protect and support that power, or to criticize and (in this postmodern, or even post-postmodern, world) denaturalize it so as to remove the false objectivity with which it may become overreaching or even dangerous. To complicate matters, the politics of language also play an essential role in determining who builds and keeps a power base in a region or country, and what the majority can do to survive, or even flourish, in that context. Again, this may give rise to a confluence between literature and language, in terms of the creation or criticism of cultural hegemonies and / or explicit power structures. When literary arts become limited to a specific language, particularly in a region in which the historical, political, or other actions of people using that language suppress (or at least imply a suppression of) specific groups, then the act of literary creation itself, insofar as it supports the institutional building of a nation where one did not before exist, may be open to criticism. Marginalized peoples may find their own voice; however, it will usually have Argus-a 2 de 143 Robert Simon To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry to come from within the majority language in order that it may be heard. They may also find themselves spoken for by writers of that majority whose representations, both flattering and deceiving, drag them into a sort of undesirable-desired symbolic of a self-contradicting national identity. Such is the situation in Angola. The builders of the current government saw the place of the literary as a way to foment a sense of nation, in large part through the use of a particular language, namely, that of the former colonizer which the new national leaders had adopted as their own. (Whether or not this language combines with other, “indigenous” languages or not will reveal various aspects of the process of appropriation). Poetry, in conjunction with (and at times even above) prose, with its condensed metaphorical significance and unconstrained fluidity and transformed into one of the central artistic genres in expressing two principle social and political trajectories, takes center stage in this unique process. Here the reader will observe two major periods in Angolan poetry in terms of language use and expressions of / reflections on notions of power. The first will be the desire on the part of the soon-to-be new governing body to create a new nation during the war of independence. This nation’s sociopolitical history would place it into a position whereby its forced linguistic simplification and subsequent evolution would serve the soon-to-be ruling party’s discourse of Angolan national identity. The second poetic movement will counter this ideal, taking into account what this brave new world stands to lose in its quest for nationhood. In neither case does the altruistic love of nation become a simple decision of affirmation vs. negation. It is evident that writers in this first “phase” of poetic discourse in nation building express their adoration for their homeland through an exalted sense of oneness; in the second, writers employ techniques in order to criticize through a critical eye the idealism of the first.1 The reason for this book’s creation has to do with the missing, yet vital, piece of the puzzle of attempting to create a relatively unified, Angolan identity, or Angolanidade. No matter how imagined it may seem, the Angolan MPLA-led government has invested time and resources into building an infrastructure in which the dominant language of the elite, Portuguese, has become that of the majority. The mode Argus-a 3 de 143 Robert Simon To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry which this government has used did not surge forth from a position of isolation; rather, it feeds out from a longer and more nuanced process of linguistic dissemination and acculturation
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