Journal of Lusophone Studies

Cinematic Black Territories in São Paulo

Andrew C. Rajca — 2024-10-24

Written and directed by Black filmmaker Viviane Ferreira, the 2014 short film O dia de Jerusa and the 2020 feature film Um dia com Jerusa explore material and symbolic elements of Black culture in São Paulo’s Bixiga neighborhood, a space typically associated with Italian culture in dominant cultural imaginaries. Drawing from work in cinema studies, urban geography, and Black feminist philosophy in Brazil, I examine how Ferreira seeks to recuperate Bixiga as a Black territory in São Paulo by centering the experiences of Black women in ways that challenge the stereotypical representation of Black communities in Brazilian cinema. Through close analysis of the aesthetic differences that change the tone and meaning of scenes adapted from the short film into the feature film, I examine how Ferreira makes visible the shared experiences of Afro-descendant communities creating a cinematic territory articulated through Black subjectivity and film aesthetics.

Solitária, de Eliana Alves Cruz, e o espaço social em disputa

Patricia de Andrade — 2024-10-24

In 2022, Brazilian writer Eliana Alves Cruz published Solitária, a novel that dialogues closely with the contemporary reality of confronting symbolic hierarchies by social groups historically burdened by a colonial and slave-owning past. Through the two protagonists Eunice and her daughter Mabel, the novel makes explicit and questions the apprehension of the common world that naturalizes social distinctions and the power relations that maintain such structures in society even today. This article aims to analyze Solitária with the support of the concepts of symbolic power and habitus, by Pierre Bourdieu. The construction of the characters—the mother, a maid; the daughter, a medical student—is the focus of the proposed analysis and points to a slow and gradual movement of destabilization of the forces that for centuries have determined a place of lesser or greater prestige for Brazilians according to their race.

Silenced Histories

João Marcos Copertino — 2024-10-24

Eça de Queiroz’s short story “Singularidades de uma rapariga loira” represents a breakthrough both in mode of narration and in subject. Distancing himself from idealizations of romantic love, Eça constructed a narrative that attempted to sustain his vision of modernization, colonialism, and their impact on affective life. To my knowledge, readings of “Singularidades” have so far entirely overlooked its allegory of Portugal’s colonialism, and its silencing postures, especially regarding the slave trade. The past of Macário, the story’s protagonist, in the South Atlantic is often dismissed; in my reading, it is an essential aspect of the story’s innovation. Paying attention to Macário’s past also allows one to uncover Eça de Queiroz’s layered storytelling style and opinions on colonialism.

Reforesting Imaginaries

Leila Lehnen — 2024-10-24

This essay examines how the concept of “reforesting” (“reflorestar” Núñez 2021, Krenak 2022) frames the textual/visual/mediatic works by Gustavo Caboco Wapichana,. By foregrounding a phytographic (Vieira 2017) approach to stories/storytelling, these Indigenous artists and authors reforest thought and imagination, creating a fertile terrain from which to rethink and challenge (neo) colonialism and its attendant modes of extractivist monocultures, from the appropriation of “erva mate” by white settlers to the extraction and resistance of Phyto and Indigenous knowledges by and against colonial archives.

Via phytographic germinations, Caboco Wapichana’s creations present a multiplicity of expressivities, subjectivities, knowledges, and creative interventions that invite us to consider different chronologies, geographies, and modes of being and feeling rooted in and/or that converse with other than human existences, thereby effecting a contra-colonial gesture. By affecting this contra-colonial reforestation, these artistic endeavors also offer a way of thinking against the grain of anthropogenic environmental crisis.

Uma lésbica na Bocolândia

Yasmin Zandomenico — 2024-10-24

This article proposes an interpretation of Virgindade inútil: Novela de uma revoltada (1927) by Ercília Nogueira Cobra as a counternarrative of the nation. The novel provides an opportunity for a revisionist reading of Brazilian modernity and modernism based on the author’s radical critique of prescriptive notions of gender and sexuality in the process of articulating the country’s national identity in the early twentieth century. This article demonstrates that Virgindade inútil constitutes a counterpoint to the dominant national ideology, dismantling its foundational formation, the heteropatriarchal family, and inaugurating another order by introducing a familial arrangement composed of two women and their daughter. In Cobra’s narrative, the transgression of established gender roles intersects with the subversion of heteronormative sexual morality, enabling us not only to broaden our understanding of Brazilian modernism but also to imagine another Brazil, in which freedom is born of women.

Entre maridos e gênios

Marcela Lemos — 2024-10-24

Este ensaio aborda os escritos de Ana Plácido e Anna Emília Ribeiro e algumas representações populares dessas mulheres, que entraram para a história literária luso-brasileira menos como autoras que como adúlteras. Plácido foi amante e depois esposa de Camilo Castelo Branco. Ribeiro foi esposa de Euclides da Cunha até a morte dele num duelo com o amante dela. Examino o tratamento da escrita, do adultério e da mulher transgressora nas “Meditações” de Plácido e nos diários de Ribeiro, destacando também representações delas em telenovelas do fim do século XX e início do XXI. Proponho que, para as escritoras, o adultério representa uma salvação perante o casamento indesejado e uma insubordinação que liberta um poder criador. Esse poder é, porém, posteriormente reinscrito na ordem patriarcal através da prisão, marginalização e submissão das mulheres aos amantes tornados maridos.

Deus-dará e As doenças do Brasil ou quando o desconforto na memória coletiva não pode ser bestseller

Margarida Rendeiro — 2024-10-24

O presente artigo analisa a receção a Deus-dará, de Alexandra Lucas Coelho, e a As doenças do Brasil, de Valter Hugo Mãe, à luz do conceito “sujeito implicado” de Michael Rothberg. Ao expor os laços genealógicos que unem Portugal e o Brasil no tempo longo da história colonial portuguesa, Deus-dará constrói um olhar implicado sobre as narrativas de memória coletiva. Argumenta-se que, ao contrário da receção académica, a receção não-académica portuguesa reverbera o desconforto coletivo perante a necessidade de nos reconhecermos enquanto sujeitos implicados na história e o estado de negação generalizado em Portugal perante rasuras seletivas nas narrativas de memória. Pelo contrário, a análise da receção não-académica a As doenças do Brasil reflete o acolhimento a uma narrativa que nem compromete o silêncio coletivo face aquelas rasuras seletivas nem o facto de as narrativas de memória colonial estarem assentes em percursos honrados de heróis masculinos.

The Writer’s Craft

Elisa Scaraggi — 2024-10-24

In this article, I use José Luandino Vieira’s Papéis da prisão (2015), a collection of the notebooks that Vieira kept during his incarceration under the Portuguese colonial regime, to read some of the writer’s fictional narratives. Bringing textual examples from Papéis and literary works, I show how the book discloses references to real people and facts hidden in Vieira’s stories, while also constituting a metatextual reflection on them. As it follows the evolution of Vieira’s language, style, and themes from behind the scenes, Papéis emerges as an essential part of the writer’s craft, allowing us to cast a renewed look upon Vieira’s whole literary project. Finally, Papéis reveals the extent to which Vieira’s literature was influenced by the author’s prison experience, an aspect still underexplored to this day.

Retin(t)ose pigmentar

Paulo Dutra — 2024-10-24

Poem by Paulo Dutra - "Retin(t)ose pigmentar"

Quatro poemas

Gabriel Albuquerque — 2024-10-24

Quatro poemas: Um homem velho, Botânico, O Quarto da moça, Aquele moço

Lazarus

Cristhiano Aguiar — 2024-10-24

Translation of a short story.

Gillam, Reighan. Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media. U of Illinois P, 2022.

David M. Mittelman — 2024-10-24

Gillam, Reighan. Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media. U of Illinois P, 2022.

Rezola, Maria Inácia. The Portuguese Revolution of 1974–75: An Unexpected Path to Democracy. Liverpool UP, 2024.

Aurora Almada e Santos — 2024-10-24

Rezola, Maria Inácia. The Portuguese Revolution of 1974–75: An Unexpected Path to Democracy. Liverpool UP, 2024.