From pain to uncanny madness: Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa's "The Unexpected Death"

Abstract

This article aims to deconstruct a history that has been written unilaterally in the abyssal north of the Atlantic for centuries. Through the analysis of the diegesis “The Unexpected Death”, integrated in Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa’s “Orgy of the Deranged”, we intend to perceive the reality of a young post-colonial Mozambique shrouded in a well determined historical, social and cultural context. Through the vigorous portrait of the 1980s and 1990s that the diegesis portrays, we will examine the pain that drove the Mozambican people to madness and diagnose the cause of their mad psychic condition. Madness, which is elevated here to the utmost expression of the uncanny, exposes the urgent need to reclaim the forgotten collective unconscious of Mozambicans, who now live alongside a fragile modernity brought by the Portuguese. Finally, we will briefly attend to the systematic presence of Negritude.