Agostinho Neto e a Historiografia Biográfica.

Abstract

In this study the practices of the biographical writing on Agostinho Neto are scrutinized. The analytical scheme reveals that the elaboration of this historiography was during a long period hegemonized by a hagiographic and celebratory narrative, not research-based and carried out by an "internationalist" school as well as by a Lusophone nationalist-exclusive school, which are both made up of non-academic and literary academic intellectuals connected with political activism. It also reveals a recent and unacademic trend for the writing of critical historical biography, more sources-oriented but drived by political controversy and not by the historiographic debate, which gives it a teratographic bias. Other solutions are suggested in the final sections and it is argued that the recent evolution of academic biographical historiography in Southern Africa shows that the parallel path between Hagiography and Diabolization is not inevitable.