Stefan Helgesson is professor of English at Stockholm University. His research interests include southern African literature in English and Portuguese, Brazilian literature, postcolonial theory, translation theory and theories of world literature.
Literary Distance in Southern African Journals: The Case of Charrua
Often short-lived, literary journals proliferated in twentieth century in southern Africa. The differences in ideology, aesthetic approach and readership between, say, Voorslag (1926-1927), The Purple Renoster (in the 1960s), Staffrider (1970s and 80s), Caliban (1971-1972) and Charrua (1980s) confirm the fragmented nature of the region’s literature. Yet, not only has the journal as form prevailed across periods of
acute conflict – it has also maintained a malleable imaginary of the literary as a cosmopolitan realm beside and beyond the strictures of local power relations.
Drawing on a larger diachronic investigation of these journals, this paper will outline the general argument by way of the Mozambican journal Charrua. My claim is that the printed little magazine as form was for a period a strategic locus of world-making in southern Africa that not only confounded various state attempts at regimenting print culture, but also challenged the strictures of the world republic of letters. I suggest that the term “literary distance” can help us to grasp the dialectic of the vernacular and the cosmopolitan that shaped Charrua, a postcolonial avantgarde publication that appeared in the midst of the Mozambican civil war. In hindsight, we can see that Charrua had a foundational impact on Mozambican literature. In its early issues, however, the appeal to a cosmopolitan realm of “pure literature”
seemed strangely disconnected from the urgencies of a society in crisis. This is, however, only an apparent paradox: as I intend to show, literary distance was an essential factor in Charrua’s bid to reboot the literature of independent Mozambique.
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