Invertendo a “Passagem Atlântica”1: O “regresso” de Richard Wright a África

Abstract

In this paper, I intend to examine how Richard Wright’s conflictual sense of “return” to Africa in Black Power revolutionizes and subverts the “Middle Passage” on a voluntary voyage to the origins that never really were. His fragmented authorship guides the readers through a personal incursion in the many senses of Modernity and provides us with a valuable insight on the notion of a “common fate”. But any sense of community here is never free of ambiguity for it is closely tied to “race and “identity.” Black Power marks a very significant change in Wright’s literary output as it becomes largely non-fictional. However, this second phase of his career contains a crucial paradox: while Wrights turns himself to the exterior, to a “global” world, he simultaneously tries to inscribe himself as a reference to the place he could never fully escape: Africa. In Black Power, the Duboisian “color line” is given other dimensions.

Keywords

• Richard Wright
• modernity
• race
• identity
• Africa
• slavery