ABSTRACTS OF SOME OF THE ESSAYS PUBLISHED IN THE BOOK NARRATING THE POSTCOLONIAL NATION (MAPPING ANGOLA AND MOZAMBIQUE)
HISTORICAL THEMES
Carmen Lúcia Tindó Secco:The Other Feet of History: A Reading of Choriro by Ungulani Ba Ka Khossa and O Outro Pé da Sereia by Mia Couto
ABSTRACT:Analysis of the novels O outro pé da sereia, by Mia Couto, and Choriro, by Ba Ka Khosa, from the relation between history and literature. The two narratives show that the Mozambican history presents multifarious versions. To rewrite Mozambique, perform an imaginary journey through the waters of the Zambezi river, metaphor of flow of history, where they are present multiple times, voices and identities.
Inocência Mata:The Memory of Colonization and the Sentence of the Future in the Figuration of the Nation
ABSTRACT: Considered the forerunner of modern Angolan fiction, the work of CastroSoromenho, in its second phase(withTerra Morta, 1949, Viragem, 1957, and A Praga, 1970) inauguratedatheme thatwas to be appropriatedduring the following years when combat literature by the so-called “griotsof Luanda”flourished. Among thewriters whotook upthe issue ofcolonization - andnotcolonialism– one may includeLeonelCosme(alsowith his trilogy of novels A Revolta – os Sinais do Futuro,1963, A Revolta – a Terra da Promissão, 1988, and A Revolta – a Hora Final, 1992) and in postcolonial period, Pepetela (Artur Carlos Pestana dos Santos), winner of the Camões Prize in 1997, especially with Yaka (1985). However, in Pepetela’s work, the dialectic of colonization was dissected and confronted with a constructive vision of the future- that is to say, in this context, the vision of the nation. His writing follows a line that goes back to the difficult years of the anticolonial struggle in which the word was a literary vehicle for political protest and (symbolic) nation-building was part of a nationalist claim. In this paper, I intend to confront the two narrative lines traced by Castro Soromenho to Pepetela, and analyze how the latter (Pepetela’s writing) rewrites the other (Castro Soromenho’s), not from a perspective of exclusion, but under a "sacrificial myth" in the Alfredo Bosi’s words when he speaks about the Brazilian romantic historical novel.
THE VOYAGE THEME
Laura Cavalcante Padilha:Novels as Travel Diaries: The Case of Angola
ABSTRACT:The article intends to make a brief analysis of some Angolan novels, perceiving them as aesthetic and symbolic productions that propose a mode of looking in difference, by which – although without enshrouding the occidental matrices that sustain the genre – are retrieved, in an African way, the spatial, identitarian and cultural cartographies, always obliterated by the reductive sight of the European other. We set out, thus, from O segredo da morta by Assis Júnior (1934), aiming to think a contemporary novelesque production which in a conscious and very often sophisticated manner, purposes to face not anymore the inflictions from the named colonial period, but the cunning of the neocoloniality, mark of the history of our times.
Giulia Spinuzza:The Reconfiguration of the Nation in Eduardo White's Janela para Oriente
ABSTRACT: In the book Janela para Oriente Eduardo White’swriting is characterized by poetic prose to express an oneiric and cultural journey into the Indian Ocean, the aim is to meet cultures which are geographically distant. The poet finds his own way to narrate the nation through a journey to the Orient, he is reinventing Mozambique into the Indic cultural space.
Kamila Krakowska:The Voyages of the Postcolonial Nations in Estação das Chuvas and Terra Sonâmbula
ABSTRACT: The article analyzes different formulations of the motif of travel, understood as physical displacement as well as spiritual journey through memory and time, in two post-colonial novels: Estação das Chuvas (Rainy Season) of an Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa and Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land) of a Mozambican author Mia Couto. Both texts bring the theme of the civil war, which took place in Angola and Mozambique after their Independence, in an attempt to reconstruct the history and to rethink national myths. The objective of this study is to seek how travel, as a literary motif, can contribute to the reflexion about post-colonial nation and about formation of their fragmented identities.
Rita Chaves:Ruy Duarte de Carvalho's Desmedida: The Voyage as Synthesis and Invention
ABSTRACT: In a universe in which an intense communication imposes new confrontations for History, Geography also gains a new space, constituted by the power of travel as a formative experience, able to propose new concepts of border and space. The roadmaps and the counterpoints of displacement as the organizing movement of the reading of the world are present in the writing project of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho and reveal diverse ways found by the Angolan narrative to cope with contemporaneity. The focalization of some of the procedures updated by the author guides the article.
DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES
Livia Apa: Nation and Narration: What Does African Cinema Tell Us?
ABSTRACT: This text proposes some guidelines to approach the relation Nation/Narration from the point of view of the African cinematographic production, raising such questions as the very problematics of defining the “African cinema”, its relation to the mostly illiterate public, its propagation and recreation in the Western world, with the special focus on the cinema produced in the Portuguese-speaking countries. In the last part we try to approach the relation writing/image taking as a starting point the cinematographic adaptations of three novels by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto.
Nazir Ahmed Can: A House of Marked Cards: The Public Discourse of the Political Elite in the Novels of João Paulo Borges Coelho
ABSTRACT: With the support of the interdisciplinary studies in discourse analysis, we will analyze the stereotypical components of the public speeches in two novels by João Paulo Borges Coelho (As Visitas do Dr. Valdez, 2004, and Crónica da Rua 513.2, 2006). We will observe how the author, working the pragmatic and political discourse within the fictional discourse, suggests that the sceneries (parades and rallies) created by elites are a fertile field for the exercise of power in the post-colonial period in Mozambique.
Tânia Macedo: Reflection and Aesthetic Development in the Work of Manuel Rui
ABSTRACT: This text examines the fiction author´s Angolan Manuel Rui, with emphasis on texts the have a privileged the space of Luanda. From the constant themes of the texts by the author, we tried to establish a broader panel of Angolan fiction written in our days, focusing especially on what we call “writing Angola” from their narratives.
Jessica Falconi: Some Thoughts around the Invention of the Lusofonia Narratives
ABSTRACT: The essay proposes some reflections on the relation between Angolan and Mozambican literatures, the Portuguese language and the “narrative” of Lusophony, approaching the matter of the circulation and reception of these literatures in the so called “Lusophone space”. The objective is to focus, in the form of a question, some dynamics that regulate both the “Lusophone” market and the universe of criticism and literary studies.
