O animismo na construção da narrativa de Pepetela e Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

In the present study, we analyze the presence of animism as a resource in writing in the literary works Lueji: the birth of an empire by Pepetela, and in Stories of slight mistakes and similarities by Conceição Evaristo. We seek to understand animist realism as a literary genre, which demands a reflection on the reality staged in African literary enunciation, in a particular and original way, which can be considered as a constituent element of the African worldview. It is intrinsically associated with questions of cultures and identities, which have changed since the colonial period. Therefore, we have divided this thesis into four chapters, in which we resort to studies of African orality, memory, myth, identity, tradition and modernity, symbology, the sacred and the intertwining between ancestry and animism in these works. The presence of religion intervening in the characters’ lives are constant in these narratives. Animist realism is a persistent enchantment of the world, which is related to the way of thinking and living reality, in a context called the animist unconscious. In it, the perception of time is destabilized, where the past and the future meet, disconnecting from the linearity of time. Ancestry and soul are related based on the return to the motherland, where everything mixes to form a single people. This writing resource in the books allows reinvention and enables resistance, which not only disorganize and reorganize the dominant matrices, but also show a way of life, as they are powerful living-writing forms.