Os griots e o papel da oralidade em angola: a formação da memória coletiva em Parábola do Cágado Velho, de Pepetela

Abstract

Postcolonial literature played a crucial role in enabling Angolan writers to narrate their own history—no longer framed through a colonial gaze. Writing became a profoundly important tool of emancipation and resistance. Through it, authors depicted war, hunger, independence, and the local customs that the population continued to cultivate. Among this group of authors, Pepetela stands out. His literary works seek to reclaim the history of his people, suppressed with the advent of colonization, while simultaneously revealing socio-historical and cultural elements that shape the Angolan territory. Marked by a narrative grounded in orality and making extensive use of Kimbundu—one of Angola’s national languages—Pepetela’s writing revives, through collective memory, a time when knowledge was transmitted by the master figure of the griots, ancestral storytellers entrusted with preserving the link between past and present. In the novel Parábola do Cágado Velho (1996), Pepetela reinscribes storytelling through the interplay of speech and writing, assuming a literary commitment to returning to his origins. Drawing on personal experiences, he proposes a symbolic relationship between man and tortoise, in which the animal appears as a bearer of knowledge and is revered as a religious entity. The tortoise is celebrated as a kind of griot, guardian of values, principles, and advice. Through the didactic structure of a parable, the narrator employs this allegory to revisit ancestral practices embedded in the collective memory of society, directly contributing to the preservation of intangible heritage—namely, oral tradition—while recovering identities and reinforcing group cohesion in a potentially transformative way. The relationship between the animal and Ulume symbolizes a communion between tradition and ancestral wisdom, expressing reverence for knowledge-bearing figures. To develop this study—which follows a qualitative approach and draws on bibliographic and documentary sources within an interdisciplinary framework—this work engages with critical reflections by scholars such as Aimé Césaire (1978), Alain Gheerbrant (2007), Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1987), Ana Mafalda Leite (2020; 2022), Chinua Achebe (1989), Frantz Fanon (2005), Edward Said (1995), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2010), Héli Chatelain (1888–89), Homi K. Bhabha (1998), Honorat Aguéssy (1997), Inocência Mata (2010; 2012; 2014), Jan Vansina (1982), Jean Chevalier (2007), Laura Padilha (1995), Leda Maria Martins (2021), Maurice Halbwachs (2003), Michael Pollak (1992), Pierre Nora (1993), Rita Chaves (1999; 2004; 2005), Stuart Hall (2003), and Terry Eagleton (1983).