Reescrevendo a Nação Bissau-Guineense: cultura, política e sociedade no romance Kikia Matcho, de Filinto de Barros

Abstract

In this dissertation, we sought to analyze and discuss the narration of the nation- state in Guinea-Bissau and the formation of national identity, through cultural hybridisms, from a post-colonial perspective, based on the novel Kikia Matcho, by Filinto de Barros. The work is configured as a foundation novel because it allows us to understand the post-independence dynamics in the country and its political, social, and cultural organization. It is a text written by an intellectual who actively participated in the function of the largest party in Guinea-Bissau - the PAIGC, was present in the struggle and occupied several political positions, making the novel a space for confessions and narrative of a version of history that the official historiography omitted and made invisible. To support the analysis of the literary text, we searched for theorists, such as Augel (2005), Candido (2006, 2011), Hall (2006) Jorge Otinta (2011), Ricardo Agnelo Cá (2021) who helped in the discussion about Guinean literature, the political-social aspects of the work and in cultural studies. In the absence of more consolidated and consistent historical records, it is Literature, which, even not intending to replace History, becomes a record of the official narrative of the nation. Guinean literature as well as other African literatures are intrinsically linked to the process of post-colonial nation formation. The novel Kikia Matcho is one of these narratives that dissonates the many voices of Guinea-Bissau: the intellectual elites, the less favored layers, the different religious segments and their interactions in the same geographical, cultural and political space, besides proposing the rewriting of history from a counter-hegemonic and decolonial perspective.