Messianic Failure: Angolan Literature, Magical Realism, and the Form of Critique

Abstract

This article reads the turn toward the fantastic and the supernatural in postindependence Angolan literature as a critical registration of the trajectory of neoliberal politics in the country. After positing a homology between the corruption of "ideal-type" realism in 1960s Latin America and similar experiments in post-independence Angola, I argue that the fiction of Ndalu de Almeida (Ondjaki) should be understood as a continuation of the social commitment of earlier Angolan writers, as it deploys a set of non-realist aesthetic devices in order to challenge the entrenchment of political orthodoxies in the post-socialist Angolan state. To this end, I offer a reading of Ondjaki's 2012 novel Os Transparentes, which marks a rupture in the author's own intellectual development while also dovetailing with the recent wave of anti-governmental protests in Angola. Although the central fantastical motif of the novel—a man who is in the process of becoming transparent—has been read by critics as a critique of social inequality and kleptocratic governance, I suggest that it should rather be understood as an ambivalent registration of the encroaching feelings of disillusionment precipitated by the onset of Angola's neoliberal era. With reference to Jacques Lacan's concept of "the act," I read this ambivalence as a specifically ethical dilemma and draw attention to problems of communication and narrative in radical political movements.