Mensagem, Présence Africaine, Black Orpheus

African epistemes, international networks, and the renovation of the literary environment (1960s)*

Abstract

This article dwells on reviews such as Mensagem (Lisbon), Présence Africaine (Dakar and Paris) and Black Orpheus (Ibadan) and on the transcontinental connections and international networks they established. While literature often
tends to be considered, by the European tradition, as an individual practice, this contribution will focus on the collective editorial works that generations of young African intellectuals, strongly committed to the anticolonial movements and/or to Pan-African ideals, built through transnational connections in the 1960’s. The circulation of texts, authors, and translations between those reviews was deeply connected to a conception of art committed to the dislocation of the idea of center. Those projects addressed oral tradition, visual arts and claimed the dignity of these forms of knowledge. Despite often using the “Metropoles” as intellectual hubs, African epistemes, and their diffusion in and outside Africa, were central to the reflections of the above-mentioned editorial projects.