Surreambulando, de João Tala: memória e autópsia do passado-presente angolano

Abstract

The theme of this dissertation is based on the interface between literature, history and memory, for an investigation around the work Surreambulando, by the Angolan writer João Tala, published in 2006. The scope of the research is to investigate, in the work under study, the relationships between literature, history and memory constituted in its narratives. As for the critical reading of the research corpus, we resorted to postcolonial studies to address themes such as identity, war, trauma, rubble, violence, memory and others that are directly linked to colonialism. For this, we resorted to Said (2011); Mbembe (2018); Fanon (2022); Brugioni (2022); Hall (2023), among others. As we read through the narratives, we observe critical social reflections on a violent past experienced by the Angolan people, set against the backdrop of the Civil War, but there is also reference to the final years of colonialism and its consequences, such as the struggle for independence and the post-independence period, in a series of events that culminated in armed conflict. This aspect places the reader before a scenario of rubble and destruction. From this perspective, we enter an Angola completely fragmented with the end of these events that haunted that country and left its population close to collapse. We observe that the author combines, in the narratives of Surreambulando, critical consciousness and different aesthetics, to deal with and carry out an autopsy of radically violent events that sound surreal and continue to reverberate in the present, in different layers of society.