The article analyses the space of literary silence as a specific, metaphorical and intelectual space, an idea derived from Pierre Nora’s concept of “space of memory” (1984). In the context of sociocriticism and geopoetics reflexions, we analyse the silence in the literature of Angola and Equatorial Guinea searching the difference between the unspoken due to political and ideological reasons, prohibitions or taboos and the unspoken related to the impossibility to speak about the traumatic experiences suffered by African colective and cultural subject (Edmond Cros). We focus on the unspoken as post-traumatic amnesia in the works of José Eduardo Agualusa and Pepetela from Angola and in the novels and tales of Leoncio Evita Enoy and Donato Ndongo Bidyogo from Equatorial Guinea. The conclusion is that the space of silence in these texts is the result of a post-traumatic disorder caused by trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The essay examines the importance of the so-called forbidden word “nègre”, its history, meanings, significations, and, most importantly, its translations into Czech and English. The essay will examine three Sub-Saharan novels from different eras written in French, and their translations done by different translators, to establish the general conclusion. The essay will explain, through analysis of different extracts, how the translation which is does not take the word in question into consideration is deprived of several semantic nuances.
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