Paper short abstract:

African Literatures in Portuguese are a consecrated field in literary studies. However, their position is challenged by new trends in publishing and literary creation, by the problematising of Afrodescendants and by methodological changes. This communication's aim is to tackle these shifts.

Paper long abstract:

African Literatures in Portuguese emerged as a literary archive from the 1950s and as an institutionalized discipline from the 1970s. Nowadays they have a steady presence in the Portuguese-speaking academic world and beyond.

After two surges in publishing and expanding the literary archive and canon – the first one in the years just after the Carnation Revolution, and the second one starting around 1990 and continuing until after the turn of the century –, around 2010 Portuguese main imprints renounced to the role they played in the institution and consecration of these literatures.

In the meanwhile, new ways of reading African literatures emerged, imported in part from the English-speaking world, with a new sight: an epistemological change from “Africa” to “black literature” in Brazil and also in Portugal is currently ongoing. At the same time, no new African author was widely consecrated by Portuguese institutions – the last ones being Ondjaki and Conceição Lima in the 2000s It seems that the circuit of importing literary material from Africa to the benefit of the Portuguese public (and Portuguese and Brazilian and international academia) stopped.

A situation of possible crises emerges, the encroachment in which the discipline is forced to by the absence of new authors stops the flow of new literature. At the same time, many colleagues active in African studies are focussing their interest on Black-European and/or Black-American literature, with a different theoretical approach.

This communications aims at discussing possible disciplinary futures and clashes.