Journal of Lusophone Studies

I Am Embedded in a History of Imposed Silences

2024-04-28T21:05:33-07:00

O dossiê temático I Am Embedded in a History of Imposed Silences:1 Práticas literárias e artísticas decoloniais luso-africanas reúne trabalhos críticos e artísticos de autoras(es) africanas(os), portuguesas(es) e afro-portuguesas(es) que se dedicam, a partir da escrita tradicional ou intermedial, à produção (diaspórica ou não) de narrativas coloniais, pós-coloniais e anticoloniais sobre renegociações identitárias, políticas da identidade e do corpo, natureza, espaço/lugar, memória e história, resistência e reparação.

"The Real Tragedy of Historical Contingency”

2024-04-28T21:05:27-07:00

I analyze two agit-prop plays produced in Angola during the social revolutionary phase immediately after independence (1975-1986). Arguably, this period’s literary and cultural production was governed by a liberation script grounded on a largely “mythic” account of the armed struggle that afforded a monopoly of explanation of the decolonization process to the ruling party. In my examination of this modality of political or pedagogic theatre, I seek to explore the extent to which the political praxis mobilized by these collective productions risked lapsing into an imposed orthodoxy or a form of censorship, which is, in the last instance disavowed. I suggest that the fissures and divisions against which these plays strive to educate their audiences and participants are as much external to the political pedagogics they seek to activate (arising from social, ethnic and racial conflicts and rivalries) as they are internal to, and constitutive of it.

O devir no feminino em José Craveirinha

2023-10-17T13:20:55-07:00

This essay seeks to explore the plurality and diversity of dimensions and roles that women assume in José Craveirinha’s literary imagination. The powerful and appealing social and cultural panel formed there stems from the experiences and irreverence of the author, which we propose to revisit here. Craveirinha’s writing showcases female presences pontificating in a universe that tends to be phallocratic, when not tainted by prejudice against women. Hence, we not only are able to regard images in which women appear centralized, valued, and desired, but can also see Craveirinha’s writing denouncing how women are wronged, marginalized, and dehumanized.

“A lança que o vento lascivo trilhou”

2024-04-28T21:05:22-07:00

Luís Carlos Patraquim’s poetry often explores how bodily sensations blend with those of the natural world as they move throughout Mozambique, particularly the urban city of Maputo and the separate, rural Island of Mozambique. Rough winds breeze through both urban and rural spaces of the eastern coast of Africa, offering a fruitful area for atmospheric considerations of the poet’s work. Wind is an irregular and transformative part of the natural, urban, and poetic worlds. In Tonino Griffero’s conception, it is a “quasi-thing”: an affect challenging to apprehend that has often been a peripheral object of desire, capture, and exploitation. Using wind to trace representations of Mozambique and Maputo in the postrevolutionary and postcolonial contexts of Patraquim’s poetic oeuvre, I seek to elucidate how nature—wind in particular—broadens sensations within the body as it moves through Patraquim’s depiction of Mozambique and its cities as poetic sites of sensory appreciation and ancestral experience.

Rearticulating Women’s Silence in Paulina Chiziane’s Niketche and in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes

2024-04-28T21:05:16-07:00

This essay begins with a comparison of Gayatri Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) and Eni Puccinelli Orlandi’s As formas do silêncio (2007). Through a contrastive analysis of these works, I aim to rephrase our critical understanding of the meaning and significance of “silence.” From a cumbersomely imposed entity with fixed limits, and a means to dominate and oppress, I suggest that silence is a powerful and illusive passive instrument of microresistance. Subsequently, I locate the operation of these theoretical processes in two works of contemporary African female-authored fiction, Niketche: Uma história de poligamia (2002), by Paulina Chiziane, and Changes: A Love Story (1991), by Ama Ata Aidoo. Ultimately, I draw attention to how these works unpack and
enhance our understanding of the representation of silence, which could be read as an effective tool toward contesting annihilation, assimilation, and appropriation.

A linguagem das flores

2024-04-28T21:03:59-07:00

Esse texto pretende tecer alguns comentários sobre o filme Virgem Margarida (2012), do diretor Licínio Azevedo. O objetivo é mostrar que, ao recuperar a história das mulheres enviadas para os campos de reeducação e de alguns símbolos da revolução, Licínio Azevedo faz de seu filme um aparato de corte e de crítica: ele corta o corpo/conceito de nação que se deseja único, estabelecendo e identificando as contradições do movimento de pós-independência de Moçambique. Por um lado, havia a ideologia do projeto nacional socialista (FRELIMO) que libertava o povo da colonização, mas que, por outro, instituía campos de reeducação para “libertar” a mente colonizada. Assim, pretendo mostrar, seguindo considerações de Georges Didi-Huberman, que, para estabelecer esse corte, essa crítica, há uma espécie de desmonumentalização dos símbolos e um movimento de cores e superfícies.

Figurações da imagem

2024-04-28T21:04:46-07:00

O livro Caderno de memórias coloniais (2018), da escritora portuguesa Isabela Figueiredo, potencializa um exemplo da escrita como matriz estranha, pois sua gênese passa por uma construção digital, a partir do formato do blogue, até sua edição impressa no ano de 2009 pela editora portuguesa Angelus Novus. Trata-se de um caderno-romance que narra, por meio de técnicas ficcionais, a experiência da infância e parte da adolescência da escritora no passado colonial moçambicano. O objetivo deste artigo é propor maneiras de leitura que atravessem a categoria de caderno como inacabamento. À obra se adicionam fotografias e capítulos em edições posteriores, criando gestos que reforçam a narrativa das imagens como representação do passado colonial. Assim sendo, no avanço da curadoria editorial, as fotografias vão tomando existência material na história como elementos
ficcionais, permitindo um ludismo metarreflexivo e metanarrativo.

An Enduring Paradigm of Resistance

2024-04-28T21:04:35-07:00

While Negritude is certainly the major ideological underpinning that inspired poetry of Black intellectuals opposing racial subjugation in the twentieth century, its relevance in postcolonial times has been a subject of contention. The reasons for this include harsh criticisms of its essentialist character in the latter part of the twentieth-century, and the presupposition of an improved reality for Blacks globally with the conclusion of colonialism. However, I argue in this article that considering the unfavorable racial experiences of Blacks in the white-dominated Portuguese society, Negritude-informed tropes have seen a resurgence in contemporary Black Portuguese poetry—even though its perspective has changed from strict focus on an essentialized Africa to an assertion of African identity within the space of the former metropole. Analyzing Djidiu: A herança do ouvido(2017), I demonstrate the reappearance and overlap of themes of older-generation Negritude to confirm that the Negritude ethos continues to inspire contemporary Black Portuguese poetry.

Reclaiming Legitimacy through Performance

2024-04-28T21:04:40-07:00

Grada Kilomba’s performance-installation O barco/The Boat (2021) is a denunciation of the legacies of colonialism, racism, and social injustices in contemporary society. In these times of perpetual crises, race crimes, discrimination, and the mediation of collective trauma, this study understands how the performance of Blackness, centered around an ever-present past evoked by a slave ship hold in Grada Kilomba’s multidimensional art installation, constructs a forum to confront the silences inherent in the inequalities of power and privilege in Portuguese history. I examine how performance “in the wake” (Sharpe) is a powerful tool to address these perpetuated silences, feelings of loss and vulnerability, and the aftermath of colonial violence. I discuss the way in which performance can be a powerful tool to celebrate, verbalize, and embody racial difference and expose the normalization of racism while forging a new conceptualization of the Black Atlantic.

Reassessing the Portuguese Imperial Past

2024-04-28T21:05:10-07:00

This article provides an overview of the advancements in discussions surrounding Portugal’s imperial history. It begins by introducing the scholarly developments of recent decades, both during and after Salazar’s dictatorship, highlighting their areas of focus and their impact on the perception of Portugal’s imperial past. The subsequent section explores a series of civic engagement initiatives that challenged the commemorations of the imperial past, specifically addressing recent public events and the resulting controversies. Finally, the concluding section reflects on the evolving and current understandings of the Portuguese Empire, while advocating for a more critical dialogue regarding Portugal’s history within academic circles and society as a whole.

It Was Photography That Discovered Me

2024-04-28T21:04:29-07:00

Dário Pequeno Paraíso (Lisbon, 1991) is a Portuguese visual artist born to
Santomean parents. In 2014 he moved to São Tomé and Príncipe and created the
“Dário Pequeno Paraíso” brand. Aside from featuring his work in commercial
projects, Dário has shown his photographs in group and solo exhibitions in São
Tomé and Príncipe, Portugal and Guinea-Bissau and produced several
documentaries. He is currently working on projects that address the legacy of
colonialism portraying the people, stories and spaces forgotten by the Portuguese
empire.

Salão Nobre | Salão Pobre

2024-04-28T21:04:23-07:00

Salão Nobre | Salão Pobre [Noble Hall, Poor Hall] is an image-memory aimed at unleashing the imagination and encapsulate a potentiality: what is yet not but could otherwise.1 It is a visual intervention into Portugal’s colonial archive, understood here as the law determining what can and cannot be represented.2 Such intervention is born out of a need to examine colonial “visuality” without reproducing its effects and eternalizing its spell in the present. It is part of a larger project of mine—a “visual archaeology”—a methodological critique, in which the image levies itself as the very object of its own deconstruction (Barreiros 2018).

Two Poems

2024-04-28T21:05:04-07:00

Two Poems

2024-04-28T21:04:17-07:00

Logout

2024-04-28T21:04:05-07:00

Metrópolis

2024-04-28T21:04:11-07:00

Metrópolis, Biru, 2023

I won’t remain anonymous

2024-04-28T21:04:58-07:00

Six Poems

2024-04-28T21:04:52-07:00

Leminski, Paulo. All Poetry. Translated by Charles A. Perrone and Ivan Justen Santana, New London Librarium, 2022.

2024-04-28T21:05:39-07:00