Who is written? The Representation of the Other in Rewriting Experiments during the Portuguese Colonial War and the Mozambican Liberation Struggle

Abstract

The article analyses the poetical experiences of soldiers during the Mozambican colonial war as deconstruction and reconstruction of ideological representations of identity and alterity. Texts from the narrative production of members of the Portuguese colonial army and the guerilleros of the FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique) are examined. In both instances the performative dynamics in relation to pedagogical statements of state power are emphasised. These dynamics create fissures within a seemingly homogenous social and esthetical tissue. As such, they express a work of political subjectivation through writing in a theatre of a war opposing both men and national subjects.