Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence is a study of the contemporary cultural production of Portuguese-speaking Africa and its critical engagement with globalization in the aftermath of colonialism, especially since the advent of multiparty politics and market-oriented economies. Exploring the evolving relationship of Lusophone Africa with Portugal, its former colonial power, and Brazil, Fernando Arenas situates the countries on the geopolitical map of contemporary global forces. Drawing from popular music, film, literature, cultural history, geopolitics, and critical theory to investigate the postcolonial condition of Portuguese-speaking Africa, Arenas offers an entirely original discussion of world music phenomenon Cesaria Evora, as well as the most thorough examination to date of Lusophone African cinema and of Angolan post-civil-war fiction. Throughout, Arenas evokes the rich multidimensionality of this community of African nations as a whole and of its individual parts: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe since they gained their independence in the mid-1970s. In doing so, he puts forth a conceptual framework for understanding, for the first time, recent cultural and historical developments in Portuguese-speaking Africa.

Forges a new understanding of how these two Lusophone nations are connected. The closely entwined histories of Portugal and Brazil remain key references for understanding developments--past and present--in either country. Accordingly, Fernando Arenas considers Portugal and Brazil in relation to one another in this exploration of changing definitions of nationhood, subjectivity, and utopias in both cultures. Examining the two nations' shared language and histories as well as their cultural, social, and political points of divergence, Arenas pursues these definitive changes through the realms of literature, intellectual thought, popular culture, and political discourse. Both Brazil and Portugal are subject to the economic, political, and cultural forces of postmodern globalization. Arenas analyzes responses to these trends in contemporary writers including Jose Saramago, Caio Fernando Abreu, Maria Isabel Barreno, Vergilio Ferreira, Clarice Lispector, and Maria Gabriela Llansol. Ultimately, Utopias of Otherness shows how these writers have redefined the concept of nationhood, not only through their investment in utopian or emancipatory causes such as Marxist revolution, women's liberation, or sexual revolution but also by shifting their attention to alternative modes of conceiving the ethical and political realms.