Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narrative (review)

Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narrative, by Phyllis Peres. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1997. x + 132 pp. ISBN 0-8130-1492-1 cloth.

Phyllis Peres has written the first critical work in any language devoted solely to contemporary Angolan literature. This most welcome and necessary scholarly contribution focuses on a modern literary tradition that is little known outside the Portuguese-speaking world. Until Peres's work, book-length studies that focus on the literary production of Portuguese-speaking Africa have been primarily historical in nature, and have included the literatures of all five lusophone African countries (Angola, Cape-Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Principe). Most of these exhaustive and pioneering works of literary history and criticism focus on pre-independence and independence time periods (see the works of Russell Hamilton and Manuel Ferreira, and the recent co-edited volume by Patrick Chabal). Peres's study, on the other hand, concentrates on the fictional works of four prominent contemporary Angolan writers (Luandino Vieira, Uanhenga Xitu, Pepetela, and Manuel Rui) who, for the most part, have been active from the beginning of the wars for independence (early 1960s) until the postindependence period (mid-1990s).

The most original contribution of Peres's work, however, lies in her theoretical framework. In Transculturation and Resistance, Peres brings to bear the insights of postcolonial and postmodern theory as they pertain to the textualization of Angola as an imagined nation-space. According to Peres, through various ideological, linguistic, and narratological strategies, as well as thematic approach, these authors present multiple "mappings of nationness." They propose a "liminal" location from which to think Angolan national identity--i.e., identity as heterogeneous, nonmonolithic, in constant tension, and, all in all, "hybrid." Peres also introduces the concept of "transculturation" as a key strategy utilized by these authors in order to construct postcolonial narratives of nationhood. "Transculturation" would describe "the process through which oppressed, colonized, or peripheral cultures transform imposed metropolitan or dominant cultural practices and elements" (10). It is a strategy that these authors have utilized to overcome the dichotomy between indigenous and metropolitan cultural discourses, particularly in societies as "hybrid," multicultural, and multiracial as Angola. Peres ultimately explores fundamental questions such as the role of contemporary fiction in a war-torn nation such as Angola; the meaning of independence and "postcoloniality"; and the possibility of constructing a viable nation-state out of profound and often intractable ideological, racial, ethnic, and regional differences.

Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narrative is not only written in a fluid and elegant manner, but it also clearly maps out its central arguments, and provides new and useful critical tools through which to understand the vastly complex and multifaceted reality of contemporary Angolan society. Transculturation and Resistance will be particularly useful for scholars of African studies, Portuguese-speaking cultures and literatures, (post)colonialism, comparative literature, and nationhood and nationalisms.

Fernando Arenas

Fernando Arenas is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus.

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