Strange gods in council: a reading of the short story “Strange birds with open wings”, by Pepetela

Abstract

The article proposes an analysis of Pepetela’s tale, highlighting the sen­se of “strangeness”, based on the ideas of Benjamin and Freud about this concept, facing the occidental tradition that canonize facts and myths of the Portuguese “achievements” in the end of the fifteenth and the early six­teenth century. In addition, proposes also understand the fictional clash between the gods of Olympus, presented by Camões, in Os Lusíadas, as controllers of natural phenomena in the world (including Africa) and the African gods, remembered by the Angolan writer as those that dominate the local territory, even before the “colonization of goddesses” proposal in the Portuguese text.