Portuguese colonial literature and its postcolonial reconfigurations

Abstract

This article examines the literary production fostered by the Colonial (1926) and Overseas (1954) Literature Competitions, analyzing their role in the construction of a Portuguese imperial imaginary and their subsequent erasure after the 25th of April Revolution. The rationale lies in the need to critically revisit this corpus, often excluded from metropolitan canons but reinterpreted in African literary systems. The overall objective is to unders-tand how these narratives, initially linked to Lusotropicalism and colonial propaganda, were later assimilated or rejected in emerging national literatures. The methodology used combines discursive analysis of works awarded in these competitions (corpus) with a postcolonial theoretical approach (Said, 1993; Bhabha, 1994) and studies on coloniality (Quijano, 2000). The results indicate that Portuguese colonial literature operates as an ambiguous archive, simultaneously an instrument of domination and raw material for African counter-narratives. The conclusion is that its contemporary reinterpretation requires a critical dialogue with the epistemologies of the South (Santos, 2018), capable of revealing both its symbolic violence and its cultural resilience.