Corpos em movimento, a arte que tece a história: uma leitura de Lueji. O nascimento de um império, de Pepetela

Abstract

This research proposes to investigate, through a reading of the novel Lueji, o nascimento de um império (2015a), by the Angolan writer Pepetela, the manifestation of the body-narrator and the temporal conception addressed in the work. The novel, starring Lueji and Lu, explores the imbrication between the past and the future and stages epistemologies originating from the body. Separated by at least four hundred years, the narrative is structured, in parallel, by two distinct chronological times: the 15th century, in the Lunda empire, and the 20th century, in the capital Luanda. Within this perspective, the concepts of tempo espiralar and oralitura, terms coined by Leda Maria Martins (2002; 2023), are configured as keys to reading the novel. In this context, the research also analyzes the fictional exercise proposed by Pepetela, which seeks to fill the gaps resulting from historical documents about the life of the foundress of the former Lunda Empire, since her trajectory is manifested only in oral tradition. Through a critical reading of the novel, supported by the studies of Walter Benjamin (1984; 1987) and Saidiya Hartman (2020), this research aims to affirm the legitimacy of oral traditions as legitimate forms of knowledge transmission, questioning the erasure of ancestral African epistemologies.