Keywords
the unspoken
post-traumatic amnesia
African literatures
Angola
Equatorial Guinea
How to Cite
Abstract
The article analyses the space of literary silence as a specific, metaphorical and intelectual space, an idea derived from Pierre Nora’s concept of “space of memory” (1984). In the context of sociocriticism and geopoetics reflexions, we analyse the silence in the literature of Angola and Equatorial Guinea searching the difference between the unspoken due to political and ideological reasons, prohibitions or taboos and the unspoken related to the impossibility to speak about the traumatic experiences suffered by African colective and cultural subject (Edmond Cros). We focus on the unspoken as post-traumatic amnesia in the works of José Eduardo Agualusa and Pepetela from Angola and in the novels and tales of Leoncio Evita Enoy and Donato Ndongo Bidyogo from Equatorial Guinea. The conclusion is that the space of silence in these texts is the result of a post-traumatic disorder caused by trans-Atlantic slave trade.
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