Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean and the Portuguese-Speaking World: Literary and Cultural Intersections
Abstract:
Working from the premise that the Indian Ocean shapes new transnational imaginative geographies, this volume analyses how visual and written narratives from Lusophone, or rather «Lusotopic», spaces – Portugal, Mozambique, East Timor and Goa – point to productive critical dialogues with existing theories in Indian Ocean studies. The conceptual and epistemological revision presented in the book allows for the emergence of different theoretical constellations that are not solely based on the opposition between coloniality and the postcolonial condition, nor grounded upon the concept of linguistic or national identity, pointing to a set of original critical developments within the area of Indian Ocean studies.
Cite this book:
Leite, A., M., Brugioni, E., Falconi, J., Banasiak, M. (2025). The Indian Ocean and the Portuguese-Speaking World. Literary and Cultural Intersections. Oxford, United Kingdom: Peter Lang Verlag. Retrieved Dec 13, 2024, from 10.3726/b17729
Working Paper 199/2024: Literatura e Ecologia: Representações da água em romances angolanos e moçambicanos
Abstract:
This article offers a brief cartography of the narrative role of water in Angolan and Mozambican literature, through a comparative reading of four novels: O desejo de Kianda (1995) by the Angolan Pepetela; De Rios Velhos e Guerrilheiros. I. O Livro dos Rios (2006) by Luandino Vieira; Água. Uma novela rural (2016) and Ponta Gea (2017) both by the Mozambican João Paulo Borges Coelho.
The introduction places the proposed cartography within the framework of ecocritical studies, whose various paradigms offer useful tools and concepts for reading the selected literary works. The thematic and comparative methodological approach highlights experiences and imaginaries common to two post-colonial contexts, despite the difference in scenarios, themes, aesthetic choices and narrative strategies. The analysis aims to demonstrate that water is a crucial element in narrating post-colonial Angolan and Mozambican societies.
Cite this Working Paper:
Falconi, Jessica (2024). “Literatura e Ecologia: Representações da água em romances angolanos e moçambicanos”. CEsA/CGS – Documentos de trabalho nº 199/2024
Os Ismailis Lusófonos, os Aga Khan e Portugal: mais de um século de história (Sec xix-xxi)
Abstract:
The commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the rise to the Imamate of Aga Khan IV, His Highness Prince Karim al Husseini, is a moment of particular significance for Ismailis worldwide, especially for those living in Portugal and Spain. While it is important to underline the recent and highly significant developments with regards to the relations between the current Imam and the Portuguese state, much can be gained from providing an historical perspective on this matter. This paper aims to contribute to such endeavour, by analysing both the stablishment of ties between Aga Khans III and IV and the Portuguese Empire on both sides of the Indian Ocean, as well as by examining the history of the Ismaili community then installed in Mozambique.
Quotation:
Nicole Khouri y Joana Pereira Leite, «Os Ismailis Lusófonos, os Aga Khan e Portugal: mais de um século de história (Sec xix-xxi)», Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez [En línea], 53-2 | 2023, Publicado el 24 noviembre 2023, consultado el 07 diciembre 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/mcv/20283; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/mcv.20283
O Oriente é um bordado oculto na história de Moçambique: Entrevista com Ana Mafalda Leite
In this interview, Ana Mafalda Leite discusses the Indian Ocean and the East, as well as their meanings for Mozambican literature and for her poetic and academic trajectory.
Resenha De Janela Para O Índico. Poesia Incompleta (1984-2019), De Ana Mafalda Leite
Abstract:
Resenha de Janela para o Índico. Poesia Incompleta (1984-2019) focuses on the most recent poetic anthology by Ana Mafalda Leite, published in Portugal by the Cape Verdean/Portuguese publishing house Rosa de Porcelana. We cannot fail to point out that the book appeared on the publishing scene in 2020, that is, in the year dramatically marked by the global pandemic of the new coronavirus, so the window mentioned in the title acquired an even more suggestive sense of freedom and openness. The anthology is organised into nine sections, which correspond to the books previously published by the author, from which a wide and careful selection was made, and a section with two unpublished texts. Thus, this Window witnesses a path of thirty-five years of poetic writing. A journey that is parallel to an equally long and consolidated career as a teacher and scholar of literature and cinema from the five Portuguese-speaking African countries. It is worth mentioning that Ana Mafalda Leite’s poetic writing has been the object of growing appreciation and recognition by the critics and the public. Her poetic texts have been included in various academic publications – in addition to anthologies and literary magazines – such as Itinerâncias and Vozes femininas de África, among others. In 2015 she was awarded the Femina1 prize for her poetic production, and in 2011 her poems were translated into English and published in the volume Stained Glass. Poetry from the Land of Mozambique, organized by Luís Rafael Mitras. It should also be noted that a selection of poems, from Janela para o Índico, will soon be published in Italian translation, on the initiative of Roberto Francavilla.
Quotation:
Falconi, J. (2021). Resenha De Janela Para O Índico. Poesia Incompleta (1984-2019), De Ana Mafalda Leite, Caderno Seminal 38.1, p. 418-443
Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean
Abstract:
Portuguese Studies is a biannual multi-disciplinary journal dedicated to research on the cultures, literatures, history, and societies of the Lusophone world. Ana Mafalda Leite, Elena Brugioni, and Jessica Falconi were the organizers of this issue of the journal, Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean. The president of the Editorial Board for 2021 is Catarina Fouto, and the Journals editor is Emanuelle Rodrigues Dos Santos. The journal is published by the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA), an international organization with members in all parts of the world. The aim of the Association is to encourage and promote advanced study and research in the field of modern humanities. It is concerned to break down barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization. The present volume results frorn the scholarly work conducted by members of the research project NILUS — Narratives Ofthe Indian Ocean in the Lusophone Space. The main purpose of the project consisted in establishing a theoretical and disciplinary connection between Lusophone Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies and the transdisciplinary field Of Indian Ocean Studies. The project on the written and visual narratives hailing from, or related to, the territories formerly colonized by Portugal along the Indian Ocean, specifically Mozambique, Goa, and East Timor. This volume, therefore, constitutes an attempt to bridge a significant critical and disciplinary gap, motivated by an almost total lack of dialogue among the above-mentioned fields of study. This lack of dialogue becomes ever more apparent if we bear in mind the increasingly central role played by historical, anthropological, literary, and cultural studies of the Atlantic Ocean in addressing colonial and postcolonial cultural and identity-related outputs and relations from the territories that Out Of Portuguese colonial rule. Consider, for instance, the influence of the notion of Brown Atlantic (Atlântico Pardo), de,’eloped by the anthropologist Miguel Vale de Almeida as a counterpoint to Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, or the use of the Portugal -Brazil-Angola triangulation in comparative and transnational- oriented literary and cultural studies.4
Quotation:
Leite, A.M.; Brugioni, E. & Falconi, J. (2021) (eds). “Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean”, Portuguese Studies 37.2.
Enchanted Things to Narrate the Oceans: João Paulo Borges Coelho and Luís Cardoso
Abstract:
Enchanted Things to Narrate the Oceans: João Paulo Borges Coelho and Luís Cardoso stems from the research developed under the NILUS project and, in particular, falls within the research strand that explored the role of material culture and materiality in contemporary narratives of the Lusophone Indian Ocean. The paper focuses on the short story ‘O Pano Encantado’ (2005) by João Paulo Borges Coelho and the novel Requiem para o Navegador Solitário (2007) by Luís Cardoso – two narratives set in island spaces, the small island of Mozambique and the island of Timor, respectively. It aims to validate the hypothesis that the appeal to material culture and materiality offers a way of narrating and remembering (in) the Indian Ocean from different shores of its range. The article was produced for the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA), an international organization with members in all parts of the world. The aim of the Association is to encourage and promote advanced study and research in the field of modern humanities. It is concerned to break down barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization.
Quotation:
Falconi, J. (2021). Enchanted Things to Narrate the Oceans: João Paulo Borges Coelho and Luís Cardoso. Portuguese Studies, 37(2), 224–241. https://doi.org/10.5699/portstudies.37.2.0224
Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures
Abstract:
In the last two decades, Portuguese-speaking African literature, as a field of critical inquiry and object of academic study,1 has been undergoing a great expansion, with numerous dissertations, monographs, conference proceedings, special issues of journals, and articles produced in several countries. The article Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures traces the evolution of the national perspective in the studies of Lusophone African Literatures from the 1980s to the present. Based on a selection of collective and individual publications, as well as highlighting impor tant academic events for the area, the article seeks to identify lines of continuity and moments of rupture in the approach of these literatures based on the idea of Nation as a critical category and unity of analysis, from the consolidation of the link between literature and national independence affirmed after decolonization until the reception of post-colonial theories which occurred in the mid-1990s. Also, the article looks at the theoretical and disciplinary articulations between African Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Indian Ocean Studies and Comparative Litera tures, to provide a possible mapping of the most recent approaches that seek to build new critical cartographies for the studies of these literatures.
Quotation:
Falconi, J. (2021). Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures. Abriu: Estudos De Textualidade Do Brasil, Galicia E Portugal, (10), 9–38. https://doi.org/10.1344/abriu2021.10.1
East Timorese Literary Narratives (Twenty-First Century): Indian Ocean Crossings and Littoral Encounters
Abstract:
The aim of East Timorese Literary Narratives (Twenty-First Century): Indian Ocean Crossings and Littoral Encounters is to analyze the book Requiem para o Navegador Solitário (2007) [Requiem for the Lonely Sailor] by Luís Cardoso considering the maritime elements that emerge in the novel and combining Indian Ocean Studies with Gender Studies. Pointing to the Timorese imaginary and the female protagonist’s perspective, we will focus on the elements related to the island’s coast, such as the shore, the sea, ships, sailors, and the interconnection with other islands and territories during the colonial period. In fact, we believe that these elements integrate not only the geographical space of the narrative, but also the literary imaginary, as is the case, for example, of the metaphorical resources and the construction of the main character, Catarina. Considering that East Timor is located at the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean and taking into account the theoretical theory of Indian Ocean Studics, we intend to demonstrate that in this novel the ocean constitutes a visual and metaphorical transcontinental repertoire that relates to the Timorese cultural imaginary itself. We will analyze the connection between the existential trajectory of Catarina, the novel’s female protagonist, the history of East Timor and the Indian Ocean crossings. This text, written in Portuguese by a Timorese author, portrays the complex history of this territory during World War II and offers a unique perspective on Timorese history.
Quotation:
Spinuzza, G. (2021). East Timorese Literary Narratives (Twenty-First Century): Indian Ocean Crossings and Littoral Encounters. Portuguese Studies 37(2), 242-255. doi:10.1353/port.2021.0017.
A poesia de Glória de Sant’anna: um roteiro de leitura dos primeiros livros
Abstract:
Through in-depth analysis of thematic aspects of the work of Glória de Sant’Anna, a poet of Portuguese origin who lived for over two decades in Mozambique, we will analyze in A poesia de Glória de Sant’Anna: um roteiro de leitura dos primeiros livros the poetic imaginary based on natural elements, especially aquatic, which are resumed by the generation of post-independence poets. Through the articulation of thematic elements identifiable with water, we intend to contribute to the definition of a thematic core built around the imaginary of the Indian Ocean, which has been asserting itself since the colonial period and which constitutes one of the key thematic cores for understanding Mozambican poetry. In this essay, we intend to demonstrate that in the most intimate texts, the poet metaphorically reworks the oceanic imaginary, turning it into a universal space of identification between the lyric self and the vastness of the Indian Ocean horizon. This work is financed by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the NILUS-Narratives of the Indian Ocean in the Lusophone Space Project (PTDC/CPC-ELT/4868/2014). This text reworks an essay that will be published in a collection of texts in tribute to Glória de Sant’Anna (in press) and is the result of the research of the PhD thesis defended in 2017.
Quotation:
“Spinuzza, Giulia. A poesia de Glória de Sant’Anna: um roteiro de leitura dos primeiros livros. Mulemba, UFRJ, Brasil, vol. 11, n. 21, Dezembro 2019, p. 136 https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/mulemba/issue/view/1302/showToc”
