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.