Paper short abstract:

Francisco José Tenreiro is generally regarded as the first Portuguese-speaking poet of Négritude. This paper deals with his intellectual and artistic influences on African post-independence debates of belonging and with his influence on the discussion about a lusophone sense of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

Francisco José Tenreiro (1921-1963) is generally regarded as the first Portuguese-speaking poet of Négritude. Influenced by the black intellectual pioneers of his time, such as Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire, Tenreiro did not distance himself from European influences and always sought bridges between Europe and Africa. In his poems as well as in his essays, he thus became a pioneer of conceptual concepts of mestizo and cultural encounter. By explicitly referring to his blackness and simultaneously declaring his poetic work as "lusophone" work, Tenreiro breaks down the boundary between colonial exclusion and intellectual assimilation. Through this approach he is not only a figure of resistance against the dictatorship and colonialism of his time, but already offers perspectives for the later African struggle about the question of (non-)affiliation to the lusophone space and the handling of the colonial heritage. This paper deals with Tenreiro's intellectual and artistic influences on this debate of belonging and asks to what extent Tenreiro's thinking still has an influence on the today's discussion about a lusophone sense of belonging.