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Essay: Shifting Fields: Imagining Literary Renewal in Itiner�rio and Drum

2007; Indiana University Press; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/ral.2007.38.2.206

1527-2044

Stefan Helgesson,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

This article looks at the beginnings of anti-apartheid/anticolonial literary cultures in Johannesburg and Maputo (then Lourenco Marques) after the Second World War. It pays specific attention to the ways in which they attempted to harness aesthetics of newness. By focusing on the influential journals Drum (1951–) and Itinerario (1941–1955), I argue that both journals tapped into transnational intellectual currents such as Harlem Renaissance writing, but that the discrete discursive networks of English and Portuguese contributed to a differentiation of their aesthetic approaches. Itinerario acted out an avantgarde-like resistance to bourgeois/colonial culture. Drum was market-driven and achieved in its early phase a compromise between a racially circumscribed mass-cultural appeal and the literate ideals of mission-educated South African blacks. These differences can then be factored into an analysis of persistent differences between the literatures of South Africa and Mozambique.