Literary Visual and Cultural Studies
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
From Angola to Portugal: Narrating Migration, Memory and Identity in Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s Work
Abstract:
Based on the teoretichal perspetives of Lusophone Postcolonial Studies, in dialogue with other analytic tools from Feminist Studies, this chapter aims to explore the topics of migration, memory and identity through the close reading of two works of fiction by the Portuguese writer of African descent Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (1982), who was born in Angola and grew up in Portugal. In the autofiction That Hair (Tin House, 2020; originally published in Portuguese as Esse Cabelo, 2015), as well as in the novel Lisbon, Luanda, Paradise (Lisboa, Luanda, Paraíso, 2018), the main characters move from Angola to Portugal for personal or family reasons and seek to redefine their identities. They give voice to memories and narratives that involve the relationships between the colonial past and the building of contemporary postcolonial identities. In particular, the chapter analyses the representation of both the place of orign and arrival to portray the complex socio-cultural and migratory identity landscapes that emerged during Portuguese colonialism, as well as following the decolonization in Lusophone Africa (1975). In this regard, incluiding also a brief reading of the most recent novel by Almeida, Maremoto (2018), the chapter pays special attention to the perceptions and experiences of the city of Lisbon by narrators and protagonists who are immigrants, in order to reflect on the contemporary configurations of a postcolonial city on the periphery of Europe.
Citation:
Falconi, Jessica (2024) “From Angola to Portugal: Narrating Migration, Memory and Identity in Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s Work” in S. Gintsburg & R. Breeze (eds) Afriacan Migration: Traversing Hybrid Landscapes. Lanham: Lexington Books, p. 15-35.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666938708/African-Migrations-Traversing-Hybrid-Landscapes
African women’s trajectories and the Casa dos Estudantes do Império, Ethnic and Racial Studies
Abstract:
This article compares the trajectories of different women who crossed the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (CEI), a formal institution created in Lisbon by students from the colonies with the support of the Portuguese dictatorial regime in 1944, that became a platform for anti–colonialism. Due to the role played by the CEI in the political and social paths of the leaders of African national liberation movements, historiography has privileged masculine accounts. In contrast, the roles and lives of women linked to the CEI remain unexplored or approached from a vision of “methodological nationalism”, with few exceptions. Addressing these trajectories from a transnational and “Afro–Iberian” lens and through the scrutiny of several sources allows us to reflect on a diversity of gender, race, class, and political ideology. The final aim is to illuminate some aspects of the Afro–Iberian mosaic from a gendered and postcolonial perspective.
Citation:
Jessica Falconi (2023) African women’s trajectories and the Casa dos Estudantes do Império, Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2023.2289141
Elementos Históricos e Ficcionalidade em Saga d’Ouro
Abstract:
This essay proposes an analysis of Saga d’Ouro (2019) by the Mozambican author Aurelio Furdela. In this Novel, our author skillfully blends historic information with literary art. The narrative takes place in Mwenemutapa, which covers Zimbabwe and a part of the land that is now Mozambique. Through the different stories of the characters, the author portrays the lives of different groups from various perspectives, including political, economic and cultural. Following H.R. Jauss and the Reception theory, the aim of our analysis is to understand the possible intention and critical relationship between past and present, to consider the current state of Mozambican society and its development model to understand the importance of the historical novel in preserving the memory of the past, avoiding the repetition of mistakes in the present.
Quotation:
Zhu, Anqi & Leite, A. M. (2023). “Elementos Históricos e Ficcionalidade em Saga D’Ouro”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79827
Memória e Identidade em Tornado, de Teresa Noronha
Abstract:
This essay proposes a brief study of Tornado (2021), by Teresa Noronha, focusing on the exploration of individual, collective, and post-colonial identities. The methodological framework will rely on a Memory Studies approach, contemplating concepts such as “trauma”, “collective memory”, “feminine countermemory”, and “memory wars”. We aim to recontextualize these conceptual tools beyond Holocaust studies, demonstrating their pertinence for the research put forth here. As such, we present a critical, feminist, and feminine reading of Noronha’s novel focused on its main character.
Quotation:
Aires e Castro, A. & Leite, A. M. (2023). “Memória e Identidade em Tornado, de Teresa Noronha”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79823
Crimes e Violência no Índico Moçambicano Rabhia de Lucílio Manjate e a Ilha dos Mulatos de Sérgio Raimundo
Abstract:
This article focuses on two contemporary Mozambican novels: Rabhia by Lucílio Manjate, published in 2017 and A Ilha dos Mulatos by Sérgio Raimundo, published in 2020. Although with different structures and narrative options, as will be seen throughout the article, both the novels look at contemporary Mozambican society through the prism of crime and mystery, providing a multifaceted portrait of post-coloniality in this African country. As will be seen, in these narratives, postcoloniality emerges marked by conflicting memories and complex gender, racial and inter-generational relations, as the result of the multiple situations of violence experienced by the country during historical, political and economic transitions. On the other hand, in both narratives, the representation of the millenary historical and identity relationship between Mozambique and the universe of the Indian Ocean will be analysed, approaching the topics of migration, racial and cultural miscegenation, as well as the diffusion of Islam as a transnational religious and cultural element.
Quotation:
Falconi, J. (2023). “Crimes e Violência no Índico Moçambicano Rabhia de Lucílio Manjate e a Ilha dos Mulatos de Sérgio Raimundo”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79831
A Categoria de Poético e a Meditação sobre a Escrita em Marizza de Mélio Tinga
Abstract:
This essay presents a brief study on the novel Marizza (2021), by Mélio Tinga, based on the study and conception of the poetic record that the narrative organizes, as well as on its metanarrative organization, of meditation on writing. The recomposition of the myth of Orpheus in the novel, as well as a set of fragmentary intertexts that compose it, allows the reader to understand the reflective, and somewhat philosophical, dimension that the author and narrator make about beauty, love, passion and about literary life as an institution (writing, edition, proofreading, reception and circulation of the book).
Quotation:
Jeremias, R. M. & Leite, A. M. (2023). “A Categoria de Poético e a Meditação sobre a Escrita em Marizza de Mélio Tinga”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79832
Cultura, Cristianismo e Modernidade no Romance Mueda nos Labirintos dos Ritos de Iniciação de Carlos Paradona Rufino Roque
Abstract:
The theme “Culture, Christianity and Modernity in the novel ‘Mueda: nos labirintos dos ritos de iniciação’ by Carlos Paradona Rufino Roque” focuses on the initiation rites of Mozambican culture in the encounter with Christianity and Modernity. Stage of the novel, Mueda is a village in the Cabo Delgado province and the cultural capital of the Makonde people. The aim of the work is to compare the constitutive elements of the initiation rites with the classic myth. Tempering history and fiction, the novel reveals the mysteries of the initiatory liturgy and the syncretic environment of the inhabitants of Mueda, the target of the author’s criticism. The search for the most beautiful young woman through the initiation rites, attracts young people to Mueda. The aim is to conquer the most beautiful woman, which inscribes the novel on the same level as the classical myths such as Paris and Helen or Hippomenes and Atalanta.
Quotation:
Nachivango, P. V. N. & Leite, A. M. (2023). “Cultura, Cristianismo e Modernidade no Romance Mueda nos Labirintos dos Ritos de Iniciação de Carlos Paradona Rufino Roque”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79834
O Recente Cenário Literário de Maputo: Notas de Campo
Abstract:
Using the ethnographic tool of the “Field Diary”, resulting from participant observation and photographic recordings carried out in Maputo, between September and October 2022, the main objective of the text is to articulate the current literary scenario of the city with its geography, analyzing permanencies and transformations that are established in the constant dispute between memory and oblivion.
Quotation:
Gallo, F. (2023). “O Recente Cenário Literário de Maputo: Notas de Campo”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79835
Modelos de Construção do Romance Africano em Nyembête ou As Cores da Lágrima
Abstract:
This study is based on Calane da Silva’s proposal, as an essayist, on the writing of the new African novel for the 21th century, which in my view still needs debate, but which can already be analyzed from the author’s own proposal, in his novel Nyembête ou as cores da lágrima. I demonstrate, with this research, the characteristics that allow us to accept the work as a formation novel, a designation that I borrow from Puga (2016). I argue that it is a narrative with neo-romantic elements, namely polyphony and death with the possibility of return, factually found in the Traditional Bantu Culture and in the Apostolic Catholic Tradition, and I also consider its perspective of a self-fictional novel (Faedrich, 2015), bearer of biographical marks of its author. In developing this research, I do so in the knowledge that it is a different conception of writing than what is usual to find in Calane da Silva – prose writer and short story writer (because he was also a poet). Added to this, in this article I observe that the author takes an approach to spirituality, centered on his studies on Spiritual Anthropology.
Quotation:
Laisse, S. J. (2023). “Modelos de Construção do Romance Africano em Nyembête ou as Cores da Lágrima”, In: A narrativa moçambicana no século XXI. Caderno Seminal Digital (n.º 45). Dialogarts. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/seminal.2023.79833
