Literature and identity: the plural and the hybrid in the novel The Whistler, by Ondjaki

Abstract

The Angolan writer Ondjaki, in his novel The Whistler presents the reader with an experience full of magical and unusual elements, whose understanding permeates the concepts civilization and representation of reality presented by Sigmund Freud in works such as The Malaise in our Civilization and Totem and Taboo. This essay aims to contribute with the applicability of a set of measures and actions developed by the Brazilian federal Government whose main goal is to correct injustices, eliminate discrimination, promote social inclusion and citizenship; more precisely through the applicability of law 10.639/2003 which makes compulsory the teaching of Afro-Brazilian culture in various disciplines of primary and secondary education. From the historical fact that most Africans who contributed to the formation of the culture of the Brazilian people have been from Mozambican and Angolan origin, our studies focus on texts produced in this region. Recognizing in literature not just a "conscious instrument of debunking" as defined by Antônio Candido (1995), in the essay The Right to Literature, but an instrument of self-knowledge essential for the formation of the individual in its complexity. We intend to parse through the novel The Whistler, by Angolan writer Ondjaki, fragments representing the positioning of modern man before tradition.