Agostinho Neto and Biographical Historiography

Abstract

In this study, the practices of the biographical writing on Agostinho Neto are scrutinized. The analytical apparatus used shows that this historiography was hegemonised over a long period of time by celebratory and hagiographic narrative, not based on research and featuring both an internationalist school and an exclusively Portuguese-speaking nationalistic school, which are both made up of non-academic and literary academic intellectuals connected to political activism. It also reveals a recent and non-academic trend for writing critical historical biographies, more focused on sources but driven by a political agenda and not by the historiographic debate, which gives a teratographic bias. Other solutions are suggested in the final sections and it is argued that the recent evolution of the academic biographical historiography in Southern Africa shows that the parallel path of Hagiography with Diabolization is not inevitable.