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University of Bayreuth
African Studies
WORKING PAPERS
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
Anticolonial networks and links between the literary reviews
Mensagem, Présence Africaine and Black Orpheus
Alfieri, Noemi, 2024
academy reflects 11
44
University of Bayreuth
African Studies
WORKING PAPERS
Circulations, decolonizations,
unbalances.
Anticolonial networks and links between the literary
reviews Mensagem, Présence Africaine and Black
Orpheus
Noemi Alfieri, 2024
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Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
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University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
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Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
Academy reflects
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Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
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University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
About the Author
Noemi Alfieri is a FCT CEEC Researcher at CHAM, FCSH-UNL (Lisbon), with the project "Mapping
anti-colonial networks through literature. Transnational connections of African thinkers in the
reconfiguration of space and thought (1950s - 70s)”, that she started as a Postdoctoral Visiting
Fellow at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth (October 2022 –
July 2023). This project focuses on the connections between the editorial projects Mensagem
(Lisbon), Présence Africaine (Paris and Dakar) and Black Orpheus (Ibadan). She is the Deputy
Director of CHAM for Graduate Studies and Research, a convenor of the PostDoc Working Group
"Digital Trans*formations in Africa: A Critical Space for Intellectual and Material Capital" at the
AMC (UB) and a member of the Editorial Board of Práticas da História.
In 2022, she was a Post-Doc Fellow of the FCT project “AFROLAB: Building African Literatures.
Institutions and Consecration inside and outside the Portuguese-Language Space (1960-2020)”,
based at CLEPUL (U.Lisbon, 2022). PhD in Portuguese Studies, with specialization in Book History
and Textual Criticism (2021, NOVA-FCSH). Her dissertation “(Re)construir a Identidade através
do Conflito: Uma Abordagem às Literaturas Africanas em Língua Portuguesa (1961-74)” was
entitled an Honorable Mention in the Mário Soares-EDP Foundation Prize (2021). Collaborator
Researcher at CLEPUL; Associate Member of CREPAL (Sorbonne Nouvelle); Member of the group
Áfricas (UERJ-UFRJ). In November 2019, she researched at CEM Eduardo Augusto Kwamba
(ISCED-Luanda). Member of the FCT Projects AFROLAB and WOMENLIT (NOVA-FCSH). She is
interested in the circulation of printed materials, ideas and their agents, and their reception,
through the transnational networks established within Africa, Europe, and Latin America by
negritudinists, Pan-African or anti-colonial writers and intellectuals in those decades.
Noemi.Alfieri@uni-bayreuth.de
n.alfieri@yahoo.it
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Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
Abstract
This working paper looks at the connections between the editorial projects of Mensagem (edited
in Lisbon, by Casa dos Estudantes do Império, 1948 – 1965), Présence Africaine (Paris, France and
Dakar, Senegal, from 1947) and Black Orpheus (Ibadan, Nigeria, 1957 - 1975). It will reflect on the
mobility of objects and ideas through the networks established within Africa and Europe by the
negritudinists, Pan-African, or anticolonial writers and intellectuals discussed in those reviews.
The circulations of texts, authors, and translations between those three literary projects were
connected to a conception of art committed to the dignification of cultures and knowledges
beyond Eurocentric conceptions. While it maps connections, circulations, and translations of
printed material, this working paper also problematizes the dynamics and imbalances that
characterized those publications, related both to intellectual displacement and to the
consequences of colonial rule on the conceptual and socio-political systems.
Keywords: Decolonization; African literatures; anticolonial networks; Mensagem; Présence
Africaine; Black Orpheus
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
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University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
CONTENTS
Institute of African Studies (IAS)
ii
Academy reflects
iii
About the Author
iv
Abstract
v
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances. Anticolonial networks and links between the
literary reviews Mensagem, Présence Africaine and Black Orpheus
1 Preliminary considerations and critical reflections on “decolonizing”
1
2 Archival component of the paper and short introduction to the topic
4
3 Anticolonial literatures in the 1960s: counteracting radical colonial exclusions.
6
4 Three editorial projects and their convergence: the role of the 1956 First International
Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in Paris.
7
5 From Lisbon to Paris: Mensagem and Présence Africaine dislocating the center through African
epistemes.
8
6 Nouvelle somme de poésie du monde noir : a special issue of Présence Africaine
11
7 Portuguese-speaking African writers and artists in Black Orpheus: Agostinho Neto, Luís
Bernardo Honwana, Malangatana
13
8 Conclusions
17
9 References
18
10 Latest Publications in the Academy reflects Working Paper Series
21
Circulations, decolonizations,
unbalances.
Anticolonial networks and links between the literary
reviews Mensagem, Présence Africaine and Black
Orpheus1
Noemi Alfieri
1 Preliminary considerations and critical reflections on “decolonizing”
In The Darker Nations (2007), Vijay Prashad wonders, citing Aimé Césaire, “Why did the French
forget liberté, égalité, fraternité when they went into the tropics?” In the post-Bandung context,
those interrogations spread widely amongst anticolonial activists, freedom fighters, writers, and
intellectuals. This reflection wants, therefore, to dwell on the dissemination of non-western
epistemologies, as well as on the deconstruction of colonial narrations that were carried out in
the 1960s and 1970s through relevant editorial projects. This working paper focuses on
1This article is the outcome of research conducted within the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of
Bayreuth, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany ́s
Excellence Strategy – EXC 2052/1 – 390713894. Therefore, I acknowledge the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and the
Bayreuth Academy for Advanced African Studies, which, through the Fellowship, made this research possible; the Research
Section Knowledges; Dr Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, my host at the Cluster, for the never-ending support and precious exchanges;
Prof Dr Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni for his insightful suggestions; Dr Mário Medeiros for the friendship and the relevant clues on
Damas’ trajectory; Prof Dr Ana Paula Tavares for her patience, guidance, friendship and knowledge. Last, but not least, I thank
Robert Debusmann for his support in the whole process.
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
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University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
transnational anticolonial connections and on how they were manifested in renowned editorial
projects such as Mensagem. Boletim da Casa dos Estudantes do Império (CEI) edited in Lisbon
(1948 – 1965), Présence Africaine (Paris, France and Dakar, Senegal, from 1947) and Black
Orpheus (Ibadan, Nigeria, 1957 - 1975). Particular attention will be given to the mobility of objects
and ideas through the networks established within Africa and Europe by negritudinists, Pan-
African, anticolonial writers and intellectuals reflected in those reviews.
Besides the relevance of those topics for an understanding of the history of publications in the
continent and its Diasporas, with a focus on the period corresponding to the Cold War and its
entanglements - most of the history of those publications still needs to be written and rewritten
under critical lenses - those dynamics have much to teach us about our present(s). This task of
reflection has been led, from an academic point of view, by the Africa Multiple Cluster of
Excellence at the University of Bayreuth, an institution which is currently reflecting on the need
for “reconfiguration” of so-called “African Studies”. In this sense, my Fellowship for the 2022-2023
academic year – with the encounters it made possible - was an opportunity to think, experience
critically, and undo assumptions about the forms of knowledge productions and their dynamics.
It was an opportunity, through discussions and social relationships, to think deeply about the
complexity of different layers of oppression and the consequences of coloniality, both in the
dynamics of the life of the three publications examined here and in contemporary knowledge
production.
The initial project of extensive comparison of the texts published in Mensagem, Présence Africaine,
and Black Orpheus quickly shifted into a deep methodological and theoretical reflection. The
theoretical reflection focused on the differences in three editorial project’s way of production, the
matter of authority in those publications, and the role of translation and critics. European
colonization, with its ideological apparatus, propaganda, and narrations produced to justify
domination over people perceived as “non-western,” fabricated a wide series of cultural myths.
The idea of a civilizing mission and the alleged existence of “universal” values to be disseminated
outside the West were part of this ideological machine, whose consequences still affect cultural
production and the relations between - and inside - continental spaces.
The attempt, led in this in-progress contribution, of problematization of the unbalances that
characterized those publications is, nevertheless, a reflection on the present. It is well known that
strong dynamics of power, resulting in the hierarchization of knowledges and their producers,
rule cultural, artistic, and academic production in the contemporary world. If this has roots in the
capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal culture, people who experience these kinds of oppressions
(Black people, women, neurodiverse and disabled people, religious and political minorities, etc.)
often struggle to find effective solutions to counteract the consequences of those oppressions on
a practical, concrete level. Intellectual speculations on inequalities often lack links to less abstract
issues related to everyday life, such as the consequences that colonial cultures have had on the
mobility of humans towards western spaces. As Nelson Maldonado-Torres puts it:
“Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and
economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power
of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to
long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that
3
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well
beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives
colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance,
in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of
self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern
subjects we breath coloniality all the time and everyday.” (MALDONADO-TORRES,
2007)
How do we produce knowledge? How do we make art? How do we see ourselves when we do not
belong to a place? Which platforms are open, and to whom, and, moreover, what are the
consequences of these dynamics in daily life? If neutral knowledge does not exist, categorizations
of knowledge production still haunt the literary and artistic fields.
For this reason, the example of the literary and artistic work of Angolan, Brazilian, and
Mozambican artists, published in translation in Présence Africaine and Black Orpheus was chosen
as the main core of this contribution. Most of those writers and artists had contact with – and their
work was disseminated through – the environment of Mensagem.
This methodological choice was tied to logistical and time limitations, and not to a supposed
“unity” of those productions. While the Portuguese language was often a common ground, those
artists – coming from different regions - revealed heterogeneity and aesthetic, thematic, and
autonomous networks of sociability. Far from attempting to reproduce a category of unity based
on Portuguese as a colonial language, this contribution is a first effort to map connections,
contradictions, and networks. If this task needs an in-depth critical reflection that is impossible to
be accomplished in a few months, it was set up on critical thinking, starting from the assumption
that thoughts on epistemologies and methods are urgent. As Françoise Vergès recently stated in
her contribution about un-learning and learning, published in The Politics of Time: Imagining
African Becomings (2023):
“Transformation takes place through the revision of the curriculum, through an
attention to forgotten narratives, to methods and knowledge that encourage the
transformation of the self. Transformation means taking an interest in the way in
which the humanities were written, in how they have excluded certain groups and
peoples from their understanding of the human.” (VERGÈS in MBEMBE, SARR, 2023)
This attempt is, therefore, also an exercise in methods and, as any exercise in committed academic
research should be, it is subject to criticism, miscalculations, and route shifts. The critical readings,
the approach to the publications, as well as the occasion to rethink forms in which I had previously
approached conceptions of gender in my research, helped me in considering intersections and
complexities featuring gender representations and different conceptions of gender. Sylvia
Tamale’s work – with references to María Lugones’s reflections on decolonial feminism – was a
key point in seeing how gender constructions were made considering white women as the
opposite, as an inversion of the white bourgeois men, which resulted, consequently, in the de-
humanization and exercise of power on non-white and indigenous people (TAMALE, 2020).
Concerning this last point, and as I will argue throughout the text, those editorial projects ended
(with some remarkable exceptions) in reproducing western logics of gender exclusions or
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
4
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
underrepresentation, despite the prominent role of non-male actors and intellectuals who gave
substantial contributions both to the networks and circulations of literary and artistic pieces, and
to the anticolonial cause.
2 Archival component of the paper and short introduction to the topic
This paper will include a brief overview of the publications Mensagem, Présence Africaine, and
Black Orpheus, considering their points of convergence and differences, as well as a reflection on
the circulations and links between these three literary reviews and the ways in which those
circulations were possible. As consistent bibliographical work has already been done on the
journals themselves, I will complement previous scholarship with some archival research I have
been doing in the last few years in local archives, such as the National Historical Archive of Angola
(AHNA), the National Library of Angola (BNA), the Library of Governo-Provincial of Luanda
(BGPL), the French National Library (BNF), the Parisian Archive of the Prefecture of Police (APP),
the National Library of Portugal (BNP) and National Archive of Torre do Tombo (ANTT-PIDE) and
the Portuguese Historic-Diplomatic Archive (AHD), as well as the Archive of the Mário Soares
Foundation (FMS). That information was complemented during my Fellowship with research in
the library of the University of Bayreuth, which holds, amongst other relevant bibliography, most
of the Black Orpheus issues. While further research in local German archives, such as the
Iwalewahaus archive at the University of Bayreuth, would have been desirable, this was not
possible because of matters of access. In a further step of this project, research at the Iwalewahaus
archive and interviews with contemporaries of Ulli Beier, the founder of Black Orpheus, would be
desirable. In a further phase of this research, which will be mainly developed in a six-year project
undertaken as a CEEC Researcher at the New University of Lisbon (Portugal), it would also be
relevant to complement the research I have been leading so far with archival research to be held
at the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (GStA PK), the Federal
Archives in Berlin, the German Central Archives in Potsdam (DZA, Deutsches Zentralarchiv ), and
the German National Library (DNB). The information held in the archives will also provide
relevant material on the perception of colonial and state power on those very networks and
publications. The revolutionary power and potential of the literary review went further than
strictly political action, and involved cultural and social aspects of anticolonialism: the archival
information will illuminate this further.
These will be followed by case studies regarding the publication, in translation, of poems and
works of art by, among others, Agostinho Neto and Malangatana Valente Ngwenya (known by his
first name, Malangatana) in both Présence Africaine and Black Orpheus, as well as the volume
Nouvelle somme de poésie du monde noir (New Sum of Poetry of the Negro World, Présence
Africaine Éditions, 1964). An additional interesting aspect that brought me to reflections that
should be deepened, is the matter of critics, especially, but not exclusively, in the context of Black
Orpheus, in which Beier’s agency ended up being, under several aspects, and despite the
undoubtable merit of this publication, problematic and multifarious.
Those three literary journals, Mensagem, Présence Africaine and Black Orpheus, were possible
thanks to transcontinental connections and international networks and, in addition, they
contributed to establishing and consolidating them. The journals made a substantial contribution
to the renovation of the literary environment and episteme in Africa and Europe, as well as
5
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
reconfiguring the idea of center. While literature often tends to be considered in the European
tradition as an individual practice, I will here focus on the collective editorial works that
generations of young African intellectuals, strongly committed to the anticolonial movements
and/or to Pan-African ideals, built through transnational connections in the 1960s. As I have
already argued, the circulations of texts, authors, and translations between those three reviews
was deeply connected to a conception of art committed to the dislocation of the idea of center.
Furthermore, those projects addressed oral tradition and visual arts and claimed the dignity of
forms of knowledge other than the western. This was evident in some poetry and the arts
published in the journals: the use of local languages, cultures, and communications codes
challenged existing hierarchies of knowledge, as well as forms of understanding “valuable”
knowledges, as well as cultural and artistic practices. Colonial metropolises were often used by
the groups of people involved in those networks as intellectual hubs. Nevertheless, African
epistemes and their diffusion in and outside Africa were central to the reflections of the above-
mentioned editorial projects.
Mensagem had an unconventional path: the bulletin, initially tied to governmental policies, quickly
became a stage for anticolonial writers and artists. In 1944, when the Casa dos Estudantes do
Império, or House of the Students of the Empire (CEI), was founded, the association received
formal support from the Salazar regime. Its main aim would be to promote an awareness of
belonging among students from occupied territories in Africa, India, and China to the
“multicontinental and multiracial Portuguese country.”2 The Salazar regime, struggling with the
effects of WWII – and later, with the new international configurations after it and the effects of the
Cold War – did not allow universities to be located outside continental Portugal. Despite
censorship and political persecutions, a group of young students, artists, intellectuals, and
militants of the anticolonial movements managed, from 1948 on, to publish their poetry, essays,
and visual art in this small scale, handcrafted bulletin. The repression of Portugal’s political police
(PIDE) would lead to the interruption of CEI’s activities in 1965: Mensagem then also stopped
publication. The most relevant figures in anticolonial movements and independence movements
published in the bulletin, from Agostinho Neto to Alda Lara, from Alda Espírito Santo to Noémia
de Sousa, Amílcar Cabral, Mário Pinto de Andrade, José Craveirinha, etc.
The context of Présence Africaine was dissimilar in terms of editorial conditions, circumstances,
and methods of production: First of all, it was a formally established editorial project since 1947.
Despite political pressures from the French government, tied namely to its possible connections
with Algerian independence movements, the journal soon became an international reference for
Pan-Africanist and negritudinists discussions. Under the direction of its founders Alioune Diop
and Christiane Yandé Diop (who were married), Présence Africaine was conceived, edited, and
discussed in tight collaboration with, amongst others, Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. The
First International Congress of Negro Writers and Artists organized in 1956 by the publishing
house at Sorbonne was, as we will inquire further in this reflection, a landmark in transcontinental
connections. It was there that Beier was inspired to found Black Orpheus, whose editorial direction
would pass, in later stages, to Abiola Irele and J.P. Clark-Bekederemo, opening a new phase for the
2 This was a motto of the official colonial propaganda that was spread in both the European and African continent, in
order to justify the permanence of the Portuguese regime’s colonial occupations.
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
6
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
review (BENSON, 2020, 69).3 As I have stated elsewhere, Black Orpheus aimed to mediate between
different cultures, cross-cutting imperial spaces, and strong ties with Présence Africaine are
evident both thanks to personal connections between editors, writers, and artists, and their
circulations in and outside the continent, as was for the case of Irele (ALFIERI, 2023).
Black Orpheus was, we could say, an historical and cultural product of Nigerian Independence. Its
content, publications, orientation, and even the institutional support the journal received from the
University of Ibadan, were, without a doubt, reflective of a new period of hope, the valorization of
Afro-centered arts and practices, and discussions around the continent and its Diasporas. The
internal tensions and contradictions of the review are worth, as we will argue, further inquiries
and reflections, especially if we tie the local production with the complex, entangled dynamics
linked to deep unbalances inherited by colonization.
3 Anticolonial literatures in the 1960s: counteracting radical colonial
exclusions
When dwelling on the anticolonial literary environment of the 1960s, one is confronted with a
compelling linguistic demarcation, directly associated with the former areas of influence of the
European colonial powers that ruled African territories either at the time or in the preceding
decades. The habit of approaching those productions in “slots” such as African English-speaking,
Francophone, or Lusophone literatures is controversial (ALFIERI, 2023). Although it is undeniable
that one of the consequences of colonial domination was the establishment of cultural connections
through a common language, the choice to look at literary production only within language groups
has the limit of not enlightening properly the transnational cultural, political, and literary ties that
took place beyond the colonial spaces. Significant connections that gathered around ideas such as
négritude, Black literature, or literature of the African and Black Diaspora, as well as around the
Pan-Africanist movement, are relevant to the comprehension of the contexts of the reviews
themselves.
This article therefore aims to be a preliminary study of the connections that were built,
strengthened, and signified both around international conferences and around influential literary
reviews such as Mensagem, Présence Africaine and Black Orpheus. Those literary reviews, by
addressing oral tradition and the visual arts, aimed to dignify forms of knowledge other than the
European and to spread African epistemes, in and outside Africa. Those collective projects aimed
at deconstructing and decolonizing the empire(s) from their core, valorizing and enhancing
subordinated cultures. Those three literary projects counteracted the logics of radical exclusion
of the colonies, aimed at imposing an arbitrary distinction and organization of humankind. The
categories produced by western colonialism resulted in a series of concepts, representations, and
beliefs that served as a theoretical, interiorized library of what Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni defines
as a “metaphysical empire” (NDLOVU-GATSHENI, 2018). As the latter is based on epistemicide, a
serious decolonization task implies epistemic freedom. In the next pages we will, therefore, think
3 Irele and Clark-Bekederemo initially considered transforming Black Orpheus into a poetry section of a new journal,
with the potential name of Mbari Review. The shift in the editorial direction happened, always according to Benson, as
Beier was planning, in 1966, to interrupt the publication of Black Orpheus.
7
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
about the ways in which those collective editorial projects made fundamental steps in
contributing to a certain epistemic freedom. We will focus on their contradictions, imbalances,
and constraints – often caused either by colonial rule, or by privileges and ways of thinking and
imagining society and the collective inherited from the colonial intellectual machine. We will also
set the basis for mapping the intellectual networks established since the early 1950s and
consolidated through political, cultural, and editorial projects, focusing on the three literary
journals we have just mentioned. This is an uneasy task, complicated by the fact that literary
history still tends to consider, in its analysis, the spheres of influence of the colonial languages. We
will underline how, despite being deeply influenced by political repression, neo-colonial, or
colonial situations that impacted the circulation of texts, people, and ideas, those networks
revolutionized the understanding of not only literature and politics, but also representations of
Africa and Europe.
4 Three editorial projects and their convergence: the role of the 1956
First International Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in Paris
The First International Congress of Negro Writers and Artists took place at the Sorbonne, Paris, in
September 1956 under the organization of the review Présence Africaine and its director and
founder Diop, and it is considered a turning point in the literary environment of the post-war
period. The Congress consolidated connections between African intellectuals in the Diaspora,
already established at the beginning of the decade. It enhanced tensions, differences, and,
obviously, an extensive Black awareness. In the opinion of some of its participants (SWAIM, 2006),
however, the Congress also enhanced a certain astonishment and disenchantment: some writers,
artists and intellectuals started recognizing that the colonial borders had led to a feeling of
strangeness between distinct spheres of linguistic and cultural colonial influence in the very
continent.
Discussing this event is not the purpose of our reflection: regardless, we cannot avoid mentioning
that the Congress was an initiative that, reuniting writers and artists of Africa and the Black
Diaspora and taking place in the core of Europe, was a strong symbolic statement. Challenging
ideas of assimilation that, with different nuances, were the leitmotif used by colonial propagandas
to justify slavery in the past and, more recently, brutal repression and inhumane treatment to
colonized people, those intellectuals, starting from the assumption that the latter was
“moralement, spirituellement indéfendable” (lit: “morally, spiritually indefensible”, CÉSAIRE, 1950,
8), were leading the task of dislocating the idea of a central, provincializing Europe
(CHAKRABARTY, 2000). The emergence and consolidation of Pan-Africanist and negritudinist
ideals that had taken place since the end of the nineteenth century, from W.E.B. Du Bois to Sédar
Senghor, now founded a point of conversion, in which contrasts were enhanced thanks to the
interference of state intelligences, as the fact that Du Bois himself was prevented from joining the
Congress demonstrates. After the event, even Diop started being watched by the Préfecture de
Police de Paris for his participation in literary events such as the 1962 Afro-Asian Writers
Conference in Cairo (ANPP- 77 W - 4047/ 413099) and the creation, together with Jean Price-
Mars, Césaire, and Cheikh Anta Diop (among others), of the Society of African Culture (Société
Africaine de la Culture) in December 1956 (ANPP- 77 W - 4047/ 413099, 13 and following).
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
8
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
The Congress was also a spark that led to the creation of the youngest of the editorial projects we
will consider: the literary review Black Orpheus. This review, founded in 1957 by the German,
Nigerian-based Beier, was directly inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s Orphée Noir, preface to 1948’s
Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, (Anthology of the new
Negro and Malagasy Poetry in French) edited by Senghor. Beier initially aimed to publish
translations of African literary works originally written in other languages into English (BENSON,
1986; OKEKE-AGULU, 2014). The first issue, printed in Lagos, Nigeria by the Times press,
underlined the role of the linguistic obstacles:
“One difficulty, of course, has been the one of language; because a great deal of the
best African writing is in French or Portuguese or Spanish. Black Orpheus tries to
break down some of these language barriers by introducing writers from all
territories in translation.” (BEIER, Black Orpheus nº 1, September 1957, p. 4. In:
BENSON 2020, 24)
It became evident that divisions imposed by colonial domination kept fragmenting possibilities of
dialogue, hindering a deep reinforcement of a Pan-African awareness. Black Orpheus was, in this
sense, a review born about a decade after Présence Africaine (1947) and Mensagem (1948). Those
editorial projects were deeply connected and opened to the publications of Black poetry from
Africa and its Diasporas, with special attention on the productions coming from Latin America and
the US.
5 From Lisbon to Paris: Mensagem and Présence Africaine dislocating
the center through African epistemes
The presence of Angolan writers and students in Paris concerned the French police, especially
because of the political networks they could establish with the Algerian liberation movement and
because of their connections with the Soviet Union (USSR) and its position in the direction of the
People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), fighting against Portuguese rule.4 Pinto
de Andrade’s presence in Paris had been tracked since 1954, both because of his collaboration
with Diop’s publishing house Présence Africaine between 1955 and 1958, and because of his
relationship with the young anticolonial filmmaker Sarah Ducados, known as Sarah Maldoror.5 De
Andrade’s cultural agency in the Parisian environment was not limited to Présence Africaine: as
the police indicated, he was a reader of literary works in Portuguese for the publishing houses
4 We shall also consider that, according to the police reports, the PCP – Partido Comunista Português (the Portuguese
Communist Party, which was clandestine and had direct connections with the liberation movements) was banned and
declared illegal in France on 18 December 1957. Marcelino dos Santos - Mozambican poet and founder of the Liberation
Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO)-, was considered to be the main leader of the party in France (ANPP- 77 W -
4959/640898). Pan-Africanism, and Diop’s role as one of its vectors in France and worldwide also happened to be a
great concern for the police.
5 Sarah Maldoror, Guadeloupean and French filmmaker, who became the wife of Mario Pinto de Andrade, was strongly
committed to the anticolonial cause and directed films such as Sambizanga (1972). The movie was filmed with militant
and non-professional actors and based on José Luandino Vieira’s novel A vida verdadeira de Domingos Xavier,
denouncing the repression of the political police in the settlements, or musseques, of Luanda, Angola. It was filmed in
the People’s Republic of the Congo (now Republic of the Congo).
9
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
Éditions du Seuil and Éditions Robert Laffont, in addition to leading a collaboration with François
Maspero’s publishing house (ANPP- 77 W - 5482/660159)6. De Andrade’s texts on Luso-
tropicalism were published from the fourth edition of Présence Africaine under the pseudonym of
Buanga Fele, as well as his interviews with the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, reviews on Basil
Davidson’s work, etc.7 The Angolan intellectual played a significant role in the circulation of texts
from Lisbon to Paris and back again: the Antologia da Poesia Negra de Expressão Portuguesa
(Anthology of Black Poetry in Portuguese), published in 1958 by Pierre Jean Oswald, represented
a landmark in the literary debates on black and anticolonial literature at the time. Poems by
Espírito Santo, Neto, António Jacinto, Francisco José Tenreiro, De Sousa, and Viriato da Cruz were
published in the volume, opened by the poem Son número 6 by Guillén.8
Mensagem, the bulletin of the association CEI, was the main vehicle in the metropolis of the
Portuguese empire for the cultural debate around Blackness and the idea of a Black literature and
consciousness. Inspired by the homonymous Angolan literary review whose short life (1950 – 53)
was interrupted by the repressive action of the Salazarist regime, its continuity between the two
other journals and another relevant literary review, Cultura9, was assured thanks to the
circulation of the work of a group of writers committed to the anticolonial cause in the effort for
decolonization. At that time – and differently from most of other European capitals – Lisbon,
despite having “evolved from a parochial small town into a more cosmopolitan city in the early
1950s,” […] “still felt stifling due to censorship and the omnipresence of state security” (BURTON,
2019, p. 25). What was truly revolutionary in Mensagem was that this homemade, student-led
bulletin was born thanks to the initiative of the Portuguese regime and became one of the main
vehicles for anticolonial, independentist, and negritudinist ideas.
As mentioned earlier, CEI was an academic association that initially aimed at reuniting students
coming from all the different corners of the Portuguese “empire,” reinforcing their feeling of
belonging to a supposed unique, pluricontinental, and multiracial Portuguese nation. Since the
1950s, and thanks to the renewed international context, most of the renowned anticolonial
activists and intellectuals joined the CEI (CASTELO, 1994; MARTINS, 2017). The political police of
the regime, PIDE, was soon concerned with the circulations of opponents, activists, and
intellectuals between CEI and the Clube Marítimo Africano (CMA, African Maritime Club), the latter
mainly frequented by workers. The apprehension of handwritten material by the police is
historical evidence of the international circulation, both in the original language and in translation,
6 Through the police reports it is noticeable how deeply the Cold War’s logics of the two blocs were rooted in countries
like Portugal and France, both facing either armed conflicts or increasing claims for decolonization. In this sense, the
concern with the politization of literature, international networks, and the influence of Marxist, communist ideals and
contacts with the USSR was a leitmotif in the reports.
7 Those texts are searchable through the review Présence Africaine and Mario Pinto de Andrade’s personal archive,
available in the online archive of Mário Soares Foundation: http://casacomum.org/cc/arquivos?set=e_3991
8 It’s worth mentioning that poetry from Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau was excluded on purpose from a 1953 anthology
organized by the same authors, as the country and its cultural products were considered the expression of a creole and
not of an African culture (TENREIRO, ANDRADE, 1953).
9 Printed by the Sociedade Cultural de Angola (Cultural Society of Angola) from November 1957 to Nov. 1960, in 12
volumes.
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
10
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
of the texts written by Black poets such as the Cuban Regino Pedroso or Guillén himself
(ANTT/PT/PIDE/ D-A/003/266854-1). The activities of CEI, increasingly understood by the
regime as a concrete threat to the survival of “national unity,” were abruptly interrupted in 1965,
after a scandal related to the attribution of the Grande Prémio de Novelística of the Portuguese
Society of Writers to Luuanda: Short Stories of Angola, a collection written by MPLA activist and
writer Luandino Vieira, at the time imprisoned in the Tarrafal concentration camp of Chão Bom,
Cape Verde (ALFIERI, 2021).
The Parisian context and the context of the literary journal Présence Africaine were very distinct
from the ones of Lisbon and Mensagem: while French Black writers based in Paris actually
belonged to that place (MOURALIS in MUDIMBE, 1992, p. 5), the condition of the students and
writers collaborating with Mensagem, often based in Portugal, was far more complex. Young
students, activists, and intellectuals passing through Lisbon suffered both because of the colonial
rule and the fascist dictatorship, with the political repression and persecutions it entailed. Colonial
propaganda, representing Portugal as a pluricontinental and multiracial country, was based on
the alleged inferiority of African cultures, as well as on the idea of a civilizing mission and
assimilation. As the liberation movements were getting stronger, the political and cultural
repression was intensified: for this reason, exile - to Paris, Algiers, Dar-Es-Salaam, etc. - was often
the solution. Publishing in a review such as Présence Africaine, whose main goal was to enhance
the comprehension of Africa and of the condition of Africans in Europe, represented an
opportunity for the internationalization of the fight for freedom of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-
Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé e Príncipe. Furthermore, it was a concrete contribution to the
fight to dignify African cultures and Afro-centered knowledge(s) in a wider sense.
What gave a strong symbolic meaning to the literary pieces were aesthetic innovations, as well as
their collectiveness: a whole generation was challenging colonial rule, the subalternation of Black
people and, moreover, a series of representations and cultural assumptions about which cultural
and aesthetic manifestation were worth being considered as such. It is relevant, I think, to
underline that the colonial spaces themselves were challenged by those projects: not just Black
Orpheus would, since 1957, translate African poetry from one language to another, mediating
between different cultures and cross-cutting imperial spaces. After Paris’ First International
Congress of Negro Writers and Artists and the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference in Tashkent,
Uzbekistan in October 1958, the international and transcontinental networks consolidated,
despite political and cultural mis-encounters and disagreements. Présence Africaine’s nº 57 (First
Semester of 1966) was dedicated to a “New sum of poetry from the negro world,” an English
translation of the French expression “monde noir.” The anthology was organized by negritudinist
poet Léon-Gontran Damas, who was married to Marietta Campos Damas: this also granted him
discrete knowledge and contacts of the environment of the Brazilian Black activism,10 a fact that
influenced the choice, for the Southern America section of the literature written in Portuguese and
Spanish, of including just Brazilian writers, namely members of the Associação Cultural do Negro
10 I thank Mário Medeiros for enlightening me on this issue. References to Damas’ agency in the elaboration of nº 57 of
Présence Africaine, as well as the fact that the poets were all members of the ACN, can be found in his article: Fazer
história, fazer sentido: Associação Cultural do Negro (1954- 1964). Lua Nova. São Paulo, 85: 227-273, 2012.
11
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
(ACN, standing for Black Cultural Association).11 While Mozambican poet Virgílio de Lemos was
in charge of the introduction to the poetry written in Portuguese, Irele - who would, in the same
year, go back from Paris to Nigeria and become co-editor of Black Orpheus together with Clark-
Bekederemo, opening a new phase for the review (BENSON, 2020, p. 69)12 - wrote his
considerations about the heterogeneity and diversity of the poetical production coming from
English-speaking Africa (Présence Africaine nº 57, pp. 263 – 265). In 1963, the Antillean historian
and writer Léonard Sainville organized, still with Présence Africaine, two volumes of an anthology
of “Romanciers et conteurs négro-africains” (SAINVILLE, 1963) in which, once again, the presence
of texts authored by Brazilian writers such as Carolina Maria de Jesus, Joacquim Maria Machado
de Assis, and Jorge Amado was quite visible.13 If Black Orpheus was the youngest of the three
editorial projects, it had the specificity of being printed in Africa exclusively; it was sold, but also
stolen, redistributed informally, and read in South Africa and other African countries. Beier
himself got to know that by chatting with a staff member of the Drum magazine.14 The study of its
circulation and editorial history, in the connections with other African literatures, is worth being
studied further.
6 Nouvelle somme de Poésie du monde noir : a special issue of Présence
Africaine
Printed in the first half of 1966, the volume Nouvelle somme de poésie du monde noir, a special
issue of Présence Africaine had two forewords: Liminaire by Césaire and an Introduction générale
by Damas. Those were followed by a volume divided in four main sections: “Monde noir
d’expression française” with an introduction by Senegalese poet Lamine Diakhaté, “Monde noir
d’expression anglaise” with an introduction by Irele, “Monde noir d’expression portugaise et
espagnole” with an introduction by De Lemos and, finally “Monde noir d’expression néerlandaise,”
published without any preface or foreword. All those sections had a subdivision organized by
11 Those were: Nataniel Dantas, Eduardo de Oliveira, Carlos de Assumpção, Luiz Paiva de Castro, Oswaldo de Camargo,
and Marta Botelho. The Associação Cultural do Negro hasn’t been accurately studied, despite its relevance and the
influence and contacts members of the association had with both sociologists like Florestan Fernandes and cultural
movements such as the Teatro Experimental do Negro, led by Abdias do Nascimento (MEDEIROS, 2012).
12 In 1966 Beier was, always according to Benson, planning to interrupt the review, considering it was no longer needed
to “defend” African literature – and Black literature in the Diaspora – because of the general attention it had caught.
Irele and Clark-Bekederemo considered transforming Black Orpheus into a poetry section of a new review, with the
potential name of Mbari Review.
13 The relative absence of texts written by African writers in Portuguese (we must mention the publication of two texts
by the Angolan writers Óscar Ribas and Castro Soromenho) is even more interesting if we consider that, always in 1963,
João Alves das Neves organized the volume Poetas e contistas africanos de expressão portuguesa, issued by Brasiliense.
This might have been due to the lack of available translations from Portuguese to French, but the issue should be studied
further.
14 According to BENSON 2020, 23: “Beier never quite knew with any confidence where Black Orpheus was available.
Years later, on a trip to South Africa, Beier would ask a black staff member of the Johannesburg magazine Drum how
much Black Orpheus was selling from there. His would-be informant replied: I don’t know. I always buy a stolen copy.”
The fact that Black Orpheus was stolen could be tied to the journal’s profitability. Even if we do not have sufficient
information at our disposal at this regard, informal distribution and commercialization of printed matters is a clue to
the fact that the review was read and considered as a profitable, valuable product to be sold outside the legal, official
network of circulation.
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
12
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
geographical areas and, in some cases, according to African nations that had recently become
independent, or were fighting for their independence, as was the case of Angola, Cape Verde, and
Mozambique.
The introductory note by Césaire contextualized the relevance poetry had, in his perception and
understanding, for the liberation from colonialism:
“But why poetry? You might ask.
Do we have to look far away?
As a victim of colonial trauma and in search for a new balance, the Black person is
not free yet. All the dreams, desires, accumulated grudges, all unspoken and
somewhat repressed hopes during a century of colonial domination, all this needed
to come out. And when it comes out, and it is expressed, and it spurs out,
indiscriminately carrying the individual and the collective, the conscious and the
unconscious, the lived and the prophetic, it is called poetry. This is to say that, here,
we naturally appeal to this essential language, to this language of the essential which
is Poetry. And that poetry here plays her role of liberating act in full. That the themes
have changed, that the methods have varied, that here the French or English mark
is more perceptible, and that there, on the contrary, the traditionalist aspect
prevails. This is well and good. This evolution and variety only prove one thing: that
négritude extends itself as it renews itself. It is a sign that Négritude continues.15”
(CÉSAIRE, 1967, 1. My translation)
Poetry was, therefore, intended as a tool to overcome colonial traumatism, as it appealed to an
“essential language” that would help to break some barriers and dichotomies that feature in
western logic, such as the dichotomies between the individual and the collective, the conscious
and unconscious, the lived experience and the prophetic. Another interesting point recalls the fact
that Césaire here referred to Anglophone and Francophone Africa (“Afrique francophone” and
“Afrique anglophone”), but then named the Africas of Portuguese and Dutch “expression”, instead
of using the term “Lusophone,” for example. Césaire also recalls the idea of an “Afrique au sens
large,” which would include different Diasporic contexts. The general introduction by Damas was
explicitly committed to establishing a sort of genealogy of Black poetry, from Victor Hugo to W. E.
B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Guillén, Jorge de Lima, Jacques Roumain, Césaire and Senghor.
15 Original version : “Mais pourquoi la poésie? dira-t-on.Faut-il chercher bien loin? Victime du traumatisme colonial et
à la recherche d'un nouvel équilibre, le nègre n'en a pas fini de se libérer. Tous les rêves, tous les désirs, toutes les
rancunes accumulées, toutes les espérances informulées et comme refoulées pendant un siècle de domination
colonialiste, tout cela avait besoin de sortir, et quand cela sort et que cela s'exprime et que cela gicle, charriant
indistinctement l'individuel et le collectif, le conscient et l'inconscient, le vécu et le prophétique, cela s'appelle la poésie.
C'est dire que le recours est fait ici naturellement à ce langage essentiel, à ce langage de l'essentiel qu'est la Poésie, et
que la poésie joue ici à plein son rôle d'acte libérateur. Que les thèmes aient changé, que les moyens aient varié, qu'ici
la marque française ou anglaise soit plus sensible, que là au contraire l'aspect traditionnaliste prévale, cela est bien.
Cette évolution et cette variété ne prouvent qu'une chose : c'est que la négritude s'étend, comme elle se renouvelle.
Signe que la Négritude continue.”
13
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
According to Damas, this poetry featured a combative attitude, also reflective in specific formal
and stylistic choices applied to the colonial languages.
It is also interesting to see the differences between Diakhaté’s and Irele’s presentation of the
anthology and the one made by De Lemos. While the first two referred to a new generation of
poets, De Lemos mainly focused on colonial repression, underlining the colonizer’s opposition to
literary projects that were born in Angola and Mozambique, such as the cultural movement Vamos
Descobrir Angola (lit: Let’s Discover Angola) or the initiative of João Albasini and his brother, José
Albasini, in the Mozambican periodical press. It is still relevant to notice that both Irele and De
Lemos mentioned significant women poets such as Christina Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana) and De Sousa
(Mozambique). De Sousa is described by De Lemos as “the first poet who sang the problems of the
African majority of her country and the whole continent” (De Lemos, 433). Another strong allusion
in the text is the one to exiles and prisons of poets from Angola, Cape Verde, and Mozambique,
while there is an explicit reference to the fact that there were no African poets writing in
Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau. The introduction to this section has extensive literary references to
Italian neo-realism, barely mentioning relevant works of Brazilian neo-realism that had a strong
influence, at least on the Atlantic side and on the Angolan novels of that decade. This habit of
interpreting African literatures under a Eurocentric lens was a common habit in the Portuguese-
speaking context of the time: it was both related to structural education (lack of local universities
and education books) and to deep unbalances tied to institutionalized hierarchies of knowledge
(what was worth citing or mentioning).
7 Portuguese-speaking African writers and artists in Black Orpheus:
Agostinho Neto, Luís Bernardo Honwana, Malangatana
When looking at the literary and artistic production coming from countries speaking Portuguese
in Black Orpheus, one notices a big difference related to Présence Africaine. According to the
general orientation of the review, prominence was given either to traditional poetry or to visual
arts. As we stated before, one of the objectives of the reviews was the one of publishing African
literatures in English translation and to make these literatures circulate on the continent and
beyond. When we get to the texts written in Portuguese, however, we see a substantial
underrepresentation. Considering the first series, we find authors from Angola, Brazil, and
Mozambique in only seven out of the 22 issues (see Table 1).
Volume
Editorial
Project
/
Printed by
Year
Organizer
/ Editor
Authors
Nouvelle Somme de Poésie du Monde
Noir
Présence Africaine
(nº
57,
special
edition)
1967
Léon-Gontran
Damas
Nataniel Dantas, Eduardo de Oliveira, Carlos de Assumpção, Luiz Paiva
de Castro, Oswaldo de Camargo and Marta Botelho.
Members of ACN – Associação Cultural do Negro (see Mario Medeiro’s
research)
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
14
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
--
--
--
Virgílio
de
Lemos
António Cardoso, António Jacinto, Luandino Vieira, Mário Pinto de
Andrade, Mário António, Viriato Da Cruz (Angola)
Gabriel Mariano, Mário Fonseca, Onésimo Silveira, Terêncio Anahory
(Cape Verde)
Malangatana, Marcelino dos Santos, Noémia de Sousa, José
Craveirinha, Rui Nogar, Virgílio de Lemos (Mozambique)
Alda Espírito Santo (São Tomé and Príncipe)
Romanciers
et
Conteurs
Négro-
Africains
Présence Africaine
1963
Léonard
Sainville
Óscar Bento Ribas, Castro Soromenho (Angola)
Machado de Assis, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Jorge Amado (Brazil)
Black Orpheus
Black
Orpheus
/
University of Ibadan
Various
numbers
Ulli Beier
Omidiji Aragbabalu on Goan-born artist Francisco Newton Souza (nº 7,
June 1960)
Gerald Moore on Wilson Tibério (nº 9, June 1961, Julian Beinart on
Malangatana (nº 10, 1962)
Ulli Beier on Agnaldo dos Santos (nº 16, November 1963)
Malangatana: translation of a short autobiographical text of his
authorship, translated by Dorothy Guedes and Philippa Rumsey. Poems:
“Woman” and “To the anxious mother” associated to some of the
paintings included on his first solo exhibition (1961)
Agostinho Neto: poems “African poem,” “Friend Mussunda,”
“Kinaxixi” (Black Orpheus, nº 15, August 1964)
Luís Bernardo Honwana, “The hands of the Blacks,” (Black Orpheus, nº
17, June 1965)
Pedro Guedes (eight-year-old’s son of Pancho Guedes) drawings, (Black
Orpheus nº 16 October 1964)
In most of the cases, we notice that many of the works published were critical reviews on the work
of visual artists: Omidiji Aragbabalu on Goan-born artist Francisco Newton Souza (nº 7, June
1960), Gerald Moore on Wilson Tibério (nº 9, June 1961, Julian Beinart on Malangatana (nº 10,
1962), Beier on Agnaldo dos Santos (nº 16, November 1963). In the case of Malangatana, a
translation of a short autobiographical text of his authorship, translated by Dorothy Guedes
(Pancho Guedes’s wife) and Philippa Rumsey were included in the volume, as well as the poems
Woman and To the anxious mother and some of the paintings that were included in his first solo
exhibition (1961). Concerning poetry, three poems by Neto were published in Black Orpheus (nº
15, August 1964): African poem, Friend Mussunda, and Kinaxixi. Concerning prose, only The hands
of the Blacks by Luís Bernardo Honwana was published (nº 17, June 1965). However, it is curious
to note how some paintings created by Pancho Guedes’s eight-year-old son, Pedro Guedes, were
included in nº 16 (October 1964).
Table 1 - List of Angolan, Brazilian, Mozambican and Goan writers and artists published in Black Orpheus and in special issues of Présence Africaine
15
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
According to the Index to Black Orpheus 1-21, published in Volume 2, nº 5 - 6 and compiled by
Bernth Lindfors (pp. 77 – 89, see Figure 1), in which we find a deep categorization of the type of
contribution to all those issues, we can also notice that Beier’s output - and I am here just
considering the articles published under his name and not the ones under a pseudonym – was
impressive if we look at the number of articles he published. Even not being the scope of this
communication, it is worth considering that, unlike publications like Mensagem - which were self-
produced as collaborative projects and that did not have a structure like the one of the University
of Ibadan or the Mbari Club16 -, Black Orpheus seemed to be much more person-centered. Some of
the links with other linguistic spheres, such as the ones involving the writers and artists from
Angola, Brazil, and Mozambique, seemed to be tied to personal connections rather than to a
network. Many of the articles published in the first phase of the review also refer to ideas of
universality. This was the case, for example, of Julian Beinart’s critiques on Malangatana’s work,
or Aragbabalu’s on Souza. When we relate to the idea of translations, especially about translations
from indigenous languages to European languages, one of the questions I think we should address
is to which extent are the translations appropriate, and to which extent might there be a sort of
westernization of knowledges and cosmologies?
16 Among recent works that explore the connections between the Mbari Club and Black Orpheus, it is worth mentioning:
AAVV. The Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan. Bayreuth: Iwalewahaus books, 2018; and GANT, Kimberly;
EZELUOMBA, Ndubuisi (org). Black Orpheus, Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2022, edited in occasion of the exposition exploring connections between the African American artist Jacob Lawrence
and contemporary artists of him based in West Africa through his presence on the publication.
Figure 1 - Bernth Lindfors, “Index to Black Orpheus 1-21”. Black Orpheus.Volume 2, nº 5-6, pagg. 77 – 89.
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
16
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
Black Orpheus was a cultural mark in the fight for the dignification, spread, and valorization of
Nigerian arts and, more widely, the arts of the continent and Black arts. In depth-analysis of Black
Orpheus and, in general, of Beier’s agency have been conducted since the foundation of the review
(IRELE, 1965; BENSON, 1986; WON-GU KIM, 2007; OKEKE-AGULU, 2014; LONG, 2020; GREVEN,
202117).
Nevertheless, some scholars have been, in the last two decades, underlining some imbalances,
with a focus on the first editorial phase of the review. Critiques of the trajectories of both Black
Orpheus and Transition have been addressed, for example, by Akin Adesokan (2000). More
recently, Maebh Long has established a connection between Beier’s agency in Black Orpheus and
his cultural conduct in Papa New Guinea and his activity in local newspapers such as Papua Pocket
Poets (1968 - 1970), Kovave (the country’s first literary magazine) and Gigibori: A Magazine of
Papua New Guinea Cultures (LONG, 2020). In her criticism, Maebh addressed the “permissibility”
of white anticolonial men in non-European contexts, in which – even if actively committed and
engaged in decolonizing causes – they were privileged. In different framings, both authors
underline how problematic, in their opinion, the regular use Beier made of pseudonyms
(Sangodare Akanji, Obotunde Ijimere, M. Lovori, amongst others) is. Beier’s practice was complex,
and the editor’s practice was addressed critically, even in the pages of Black Orpheus. We could
just highlight, as an example, the renowned Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo who, in an
interview in 1963, criticized the literary project itself “for wanting to perpetuate the 'black'
mystique” (ADESOKAN, 2000, 51), despite being one of its collaborators and published authors.
17 Greven’s work, which extensively reflects on Beier’s agency in the artistic field, is unfortunately only available in
German, which I am unable to read in depth.
17
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
8 Conclusions
When mentioning the transits of editors and outlining individual interventions that granted the
connections between those three projects, the main danger is, we consider, overexposing
individual roles in those processes. In this sense, and considering interrogations about the
concrete possibility of a decolonial conceptual history of literature (HELGESSON, 2022), our
purpose was to demonstrate how individual agencies were linked to a common project, and a
common effort for an epistemological shift towards the decolonization of knowledge. This did not
imply the absence, in those contexts, of mechanisms of power reproducing disparities or marked
by colonial unbalances: the complexity of the social, cultural, and symbolic systems was
reproduced in artistic representations. In the 1960s we can see, however, and in the context of
African literatures, an explicit commitment to a collective cause: If this was clearly marked by the
political contexts and social demands, this phenomenon in the intellectual and editorial scene
must be analyzed in their historical complexity, with special attention to the processes that
involved the circulation of ideas and their transformation and adaptation to different contexts.
The practice of consolidating networks, carrying printed matters often clandestinely, as well as
the relevance of women’s active participation (in writing, drawing and designing covers, granting
connections, organizing the editions, etc.) were, moreover, challenging the individualistic patterns
and frames of a strictly western conception of literature. The main challenge in mapping women’s
agency in those processes lies in the fact that archival sources, police reports, and the history of
the movements tend to suppress or minimize women’s action. When we address the question,
then, most of the sources lead us back to relevant male historical actors whose path has been
reconstructed. Alda do Espírito Santo’s role in antifascism and anticolonialism, and in Mensagem’s
environment, is known but not yet as deeply studied as, for example, Yandé Diop’s role in the
direction of Présence Africaine or of Susanne Wenger and Georgina Betts (Beier’s first and second
wives, respectively) in the elaboration of the graphic look of Black Orpheus. African women had
an active role and, mainly through translation and correspondence, made a significant
contribution (OYĚWÙMÍ, 2003) to the transnational – and transcontinental - circulation of printed
material outside the colonial space, so that in a decolonial history of the intellectual backgrounds
of the period we are dwelling on, one cannot dispense with the reconstruction of such experiences.
The role of Présence Africaine in this process of epistemological shift, towards what Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong'o would later define as decolonization of the mind (THIONG’ O, 1986), has widely been
studied: The Surreptitious Speech: Présence Africaine and the Politics of Otherness 1947- 1987,
organized by V. Y. Mudimbe (1992), explored the connections, contradictions, and power
unbalances caused by the cultural consequences of colonization and by the inequalities in the
circulation of knowledge. In this sense, the call of the editorial projects Présence Africaine,
Mensagem, and Black Orpheus for an “Africanization” of knowledge, for the pride in being Black,
and the common acknowledgement of the specificity and value of African cultures, was but a first
step in the process of radical change in the dismantling of the structures of coloniality. Those
projects contributed both to the task of provincializing Europe and in taking Africa to the core of
the discussion through to the spread of a Pan-African consciousness.
Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
18
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers (XLIV)
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Circulations, decolonizations, unbalances.
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