O LUGAR DA POESIA DE AGOSTINHO NETO NA FORMACAO DA CONSCIENCIA PATRIOTICA

One of the fundamental purposes of poetry is to challenge established models, often unveiling the contradictions of society. It suggests alternative perspectives on given realities, inviting a critical reappraisal. In the context of Angolas struggle for independence, Agostinho Neto resorted to poetry as a means of raising the political consciousness of native populations and encouraging adherence to the liberation movement. Netos poetic corpus is vast; however, this study focuses on three poems whose thematic concerns revolve around revolution. His engaged poetry reflects the diversification of forms of struggle. Although written in Portuguese, it is important to highlight the use of African anthroponyms and toponyms, which function as semiotic codes announcing a cultural patriotism.Thus, Netos poems conveyed messages grounded in the apprehension of the surrounding reality: the existential condition of the poor native in contrast with the bourgeois settler. These texts also enabled the recognition of the self and the construction of identity. The formation of patriotic consciousness, therefore, involves the deconstruction of dominant ideology and the formulation of new ideas based on lived experience, an active process that surpasses passivity by replacing it with reflective awareness. Netos poetics resists the colonial project of epic construction. Likewise, the engaged poetry produced by other African authors, as referenced in this study, bears witness to the dismantling of colonial ideals of glorification.