Writing Angolan History and the Challenges Posed by Literature

Abstract

This article aims to reflect how Angolan literary production expands the possibilities of rethinking historiography, starting from Pepetela’s novels. During the struggles for independence, literature served as a space for social critique, national struggle, and resistance to colonization. After independence, a movement of criticism of the State emerged, enabling new approaches to Angola beyond a single, unified history. I will mostly focus on the latter. In this sense, literature is understood as a historical document, subject to discursive disputes and fields of power. Individual experiences and the imaginary acquire a renewed perspective, now more attentive to subjectivities, which also directly influence historiographical narratives. The article problematizes the epistemological richness that may arise from the intersection between history and literature, particularly when we regard the latter as a form of writing that represents the real, deeply entangled with history.