Dissident Authorship in Mozambique

Abstract Dissident Authorship in Mozambique: The Case of António Quadros is the first monograph on the literary works of the pennames of Portuguese poet and painter António Quadros (1933–1994). The book uses Quadros’s quirky case—a Portuguese who lived in colonial and post-independence Mozambique, where he published poetry and prose under three pennames—to examine the question of what it means to be an author in Mozambique. Quadros’s engagement with the question of authors’ place and function in authoritarian contexts stands as a fruitful counterpoint to the influential essays by Roland Barthes (‘The Death of the Author’, 1968) and Michel Foucault (‘What is an Author?’, 1969), the publication of which coincided with Quadros’s literary début in 1968. Quadros’s interesting and useful contributions to the question of Mozambican authorship are analysed in historical context and read alongside post-colonial and decolonial theory. I deploy Quadros’s grappling with the question of how literature in contexts marked by political authoritarianism and low literacy can make a positive tangible impact on society to reappraise claims that literature has historically functioned to resist authoritarianism in Mozambique and other African contexts. In contrast to much extant scholarship on Mozambican authorship, which has tended to focus on questions related to identity and canonicity, Dissident Authorship addresses these themes as well as those of readership, authority, power, and representation.