Lusophone Africa

Beyond Independence

2010
Author:

Fernando Arenas

Situates the cultures of Portuguese-speaking Africa within the postcolonial global era

Lusophone Africa is a study of the contemporary cultural production of Portuguese-speaking Africa and its critical engagement with globalization in the aftermath of colonialism, especially since the advent of multiparty politics and market-oriented economies. Fernando Arenas puts forth a conceptual framework for understanding, for the first time, recent cultural and historical developments in Portuguese-speaking Africa.

Lusophone Africa is a pioneering, exceedingly well-researched and well-documented study of important aspects of Lusophone African cultural expression in their postcolonial social and political contexts. Along with being a significant scholarly work, because of Fernando Arenas’ numerous visits to the Lusophone African countries, where he has met with many eminent musicians and singers, movie makers, and authors of literary works, this book is also a very captivating memoir.

Russell G. Hamilton, Vanderbilt University

Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence is a study of the contemporary cultural production of Portuguese-speaking Africa and its critical engagement with globalization in the aftermath of colonialism, especially since the advent of multiparty politics and market-oriented economies.

Exploring the evolving relationship of Lusophone Africa with Portugal, its former colonial power, and Brazil, Fernando Arenas situates the countries on the geopolitical map of contemporary global forces. Drawing from popular music, film, literature, cultural history, geopolitics, and critical theory to investigate the postcolonial condition of Portuguese-speaking Africa, Arenas offers an entirely original discussion of world music phenomenon Cesária Évora, as well as the most thorough examination to date of Lusophone African cinema and of Angolan post-civil-war fiction.

Arenas evokes the rich multidimensionality of this community of African nations as a whole and of its individual parts: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe since they gained their independence in the mid-1970s. In doing so, he puts forth a conceptual framework for understanding, for the first time, recent cultural and historical developments in Portuguese-speaking Africa.

Fernando Arenas is professor of Lusophone African, Brazilian, and Portuguese studies at the University of Minnesota.

Lusophone Africa is a pioneering, exceedingly well-researched and well-documented study of important aspects of Lusophone African cultural expression in their postcolonial social and political contexts. Along with being a significant scholarly work, because of Fernando Arenas’ numerous visits to the Lusophone African countries, where he has met with many eminent musicians and singers, movie makers, and authors of literary works, this book is also a very captivating memoir.

Russell G. Hamilton, Vanderbilt University

Beyond offering a creative, novel amalgamation of lusophone African music, cinema, and literature to more seasoned consumers of cultural expression and analysis, the book will expose many other readers to these topics for the first time.

Research in African Literatures

Contents

Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Lusophone Africa Within the Global and the Postcolonial

1. African, Portuguese, and Brazilian Interconnections: The Lusophone Transatlantic Matrix
2. Cesária Évora and the Globalization of Cape Verdean Music
3. Lusophone Africa on Screen: After Utopia and Before the End of Hope
4. Angolan Literature: After Independence and Under the Shadow of War
Conclusion

Permissions
Notes
Works Cited
Index