Em torno do lusotropicalismo: a representação do outro na literatura colonial sobre a Guiné

The article aims to highlight continuities and discontinuities in the representation of the colonial subject in works that won colonial literature prizes between 1926 and 1974. Works focusing on Guinean context will be considered here as illustrative for Portuguese colonial literature as a whole. The Salazar regime’s colonial ideology is reflected in these works, which include fiction, poetry and essays. The theses of Luso-tropicalism were appropriated by official propaganda from the 1950s onwards. This doctrine provides a mystified reading of Portuguese colonial history, celebrating the supposed absence of racial prejudice and conflicts with indigenous populations. The present analysis aims to deconstruct this notion by examining the aesthetic of subalternisation that characterises earlier works and which is progressively obscured by a paternalistic gaze. However, this gaze never fully abandons the representation of the other as inferior.