Pepetela e a história angolana na longa duração: a releitura do passado diante do corpo-presente

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of Pepetela’s works, especially of the novels that reenact the distant colonial past – Lueji, o nascimento de um império (1989); A gloriosa família: o tempo dos flamengos (1997); A sul. O sombreiro (2011). With a large body of work, Pepetela’s novels move between facing the present and visiting a distant past, not to rewrite a version of History, but to propose forms of reading the nation, since its formation – from colonialism to the independence – to the contemporary times. Thus, among works such as Mayombe (1979), A geração da utopia (1992), Predadores (2005) and the most recent Sua Excelência, de corpo presente (2018), Pepetela dedicated himself to thinking about the nation from a deep dive into its past, proposing another reading on the construction of Angola that does not present a mere blaming of the colonizers, but rethinks the agents of movements and actions that seem to be quite present in the current ruling class. Therefore, Fernand Braudel’s concept of “long duration” is used to think about the dialogue proposed by Pepetela with documentary sources from the colonial period not only to recreate them in a parodic sense, but as a way of thinking about the nation as a result of a long process that cannot be undone.