“THE MOST DESPISED OF PLACES, AFRICA, IS WHAT ENDS UP GUARDING LIFE”: THE SUBVERSION OF STEREOTYPES AND THE FIGURE OF THE ENEMY IN O QUASE FIM DO MUNDO, BY PEPETELA

Abstract

The book O quase fim do mundo (2008), by Pepetela, presents the attempt to exterminate life on Earth through a project architected by a group that considered themselves as “pure” whites and those who did not fit into this category of purity were seen as a threat to the development of humanity. However, the plan does not have the expected result and the only survivors are mostly Africans. From this, the objective of this work is to analyze how Pepetela's book subverts the notion of a “pure race” and the superiority of the West, which rescues colonialist and imperialist conceptions. In addition, we seek to investigate the construction of stereotypes about the African continent and its peoples as inferior and primitive, and how the analyzed narrative deconstructs them. We also propose to explore the construction of the African as an enemy, that is, the “non-similar”, whose communication is not possible or desirable, and how this process relates to power and sovereignty. For the analyses, we considered the works of Leila Leite Hernandez (2005), Stuart Hall (2016), Achille Mbembe (2017, 2018), Ribeiro (2013), among others.