Glob/blob/symbiont.
From Comparative Literature to an organic vision of World Literature
Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny w Krakowie, 24.05.2025.
Glob/blob/symbiont. Od literatury porównawczej do organicznej wizji literatury świata
Wychodząc od przypomnienia genezy metafory „bloba” (amerykański horror z 1958 roku), postawię pytanie o to, w jaki sposób wcześniejsze paradygmaty literaturoznawcze (literatury narodowe, literatury zdeterminowane przez język, tzw. „...fonie”) mogą zrosnąć się w nową wizję literatury powszechnej (literatury świata, World Literature), rozważanej i opisywanej jako jedna całość.
Przypomnę definicje literatury powszechnej, m.in. Davida Damroscha (z 2003 oraz z 2023 roku – z jego rosnącym naciskiem na kategorię „ultraminor” – „literatur najmniejszych”).
Następnie postawię własne postulaty dotyczące organicznej wizji literatury świata. Czy jest to blob zalewający planetę niczym gigantyczna ameba składająca się z jednorodnej mazi pozbawionej ciekawszych jakości, monstrualna hybryda, w której poszczególne części walczą o przetrwanie pasożytując na sobie nawzajem, czy raczej organizm o nowej fizjologii, w którym elementy radykalnie odmienne zrastają się w symbiont, organizm o wyższej złożoności, zachowujący w wysokim stopniu heterogeniczny charakter swoich części składowych i różnice skali pomiędzy nimi, a zyskujący jednocześnie nową witalność?
Wychodząc od przypomnienia genezy metafory „bloba” (amerykański horror z 1958 roku), postawię pytanie o to, w jaki sposób wcześniejsze paradygmaty literaturoznawcze (literatury narodowe, literatury zdeterminowane przez język, tzw. „...fonie”) mogą zrosnąć się w nową wizję literatury powszechnej (literatury świata, World Literature), rozważanej i opisywanej jako jedna całość.
Przypomnę definicje literatury powszechnej, m.in. Davida Damroscha (z 2003 oraz z 2023 roku – z jego rosnącym naciskiem na kategorię „ultraminor” – „literatur najmniejszych”).
Następnie postawię własne postulaty dotyczące organicznej wizji literatury świata. Czy jest to blob zalewający planetę niczym gigantyczna ameba składająca się z jednorodnej mazi pozbawionej ciekawszych jakości, monstrualna hybryda, w której poszczególne części walczą o przetrwanie pasożytując na sobie nawzajem, czy raczej organizm o nowej fizjologii, w którym elementy radykalnie odmienne zrastają się w symbiont, organizm o wyższej złożoności, zachowujący w wysokim stopniu heterogeniczny charakter swoich części składowych i różnice skali pomiędzy nimi, a zyskujący jednocześnie nową witalność?
Metaphors of 'totality'. Renaissance sources of the globalization: a Portuguese perspective
Class I: Philology, Polish Academy of Learning, 25th October, 2024.
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My first lecture in Portuguese in 17 years (sic!). That's a big event, the opening of the Centro Paulina Chiziane at the University of Warsaw. A good moment to speak about the passage between the bashful self-definition of the Portuguese culture as "a filha ilegítima da cultura universal" (Eduardo Lourenço) and the blossoming of its self-aware worlding. And of course, few things are as prone to get worlded as Portuguese studies. Especially, because of that long-lived awareness of being marginal, peripheral, minor.
My narration recapitulates the evolution going roughly from the 1960s, glosing on Jorge de Sena's Metamorfoses as an attempt at worlding the Portuguese culture that stood up as an alternative to the Salazarian conception of the "Portuguese world". In the fire of the polemics between José Régio and Eduardo Lourenço, all the discomfort of feeling minor and excluded from the circle of "great" European literatures comes to the fore. What could be done about it? There are solutions. One of them is precisely the attitude of glorious self-isolation in the little "world" made up by Portugal and her colonies. The project of Lusophony formalised in the 1990s, can be situated in the same line. Another solution is the confrontation with the "great" world of "major" literatures. The inclusion of the chapter on Fernando Pessoa in Harold Bloom's Western Canon might be seen as the recognition that the generation of Régio and Lourenço was striving for. Yet the canon, and much less the Western canon, was not to last. The new millennium brought the wave of hybrid, transcultural, plural, and transgressive literatures. The Portuguese culture so centred on its self-definition and identity problems, was once again ill-prepared to face the change of the tide. Nonetheless, there is a transcolonial dimension to be found - perhaps quite surprisingly, in José Saramago's late novel, Caim. I read it as a closure of the early-modern, Adamic period in which the idea of a unique, unified humanity was the starting and final point. Caim deconstructs the biblical narration of unique creation, making Adam just one among mankind's forefathers. As a consequence, the first men, and the first Portuguese, leave their paradise not as entitled conquerors and settlers of the world, but as the first refugees. They don't occupy the earth, they are mere nomads. This is, after all, a very pertinent definition of the Portuguese historical destiny. As yet another poet, Manuel Alegre, has said: Porque o mar tiveste / Nada tiveste. The Portuguese empire, at least as the Estado da Índia, was a chimera. And Alegre, the combatant of the colonial war, did not mean just India... Finally, when the early-modern chimeras are exorcised, Portuguese literature is ready for a new worlding, quite different from the old concept of Mundanus ready to inhabit the totality of the earth in one of Padre Vieira's sermons.
My narration recapitulates the evolution going roughly from the 1960s, glosing on Jorge de Sena's Metamorfoses as an attempt at worlding the Portuguese culture that stood up as an alternative to the Salazarian conception of the "Portuguese world". In the fire of the polemics between José Régio and Eduardo Lourenço, all the discomfort of feeling minor and excluded from the circle of "great" European literatures comes to the fore. What could be done about it? There are solutions. One of them is precisely the attitude of glorious self-isolation in the little "world" made up by Portugal and her colonies. The project of Lusophony formalised in the 1990s, can be situated in the same line. Another solution is the confrontation with the "great" world of "major" literatures. The inclusion of the chapter on Fernando Pessoa in Harold Bloom's Western Canon might be seen as the recognition that the generation of Régio and Lourenço was striving for. Yet the canon, and much less the Western canon, was not to last. The new millennium brought the wave of hybrid, transcultural, plural, and transgressive literatures. The Portuguese culture so centred on its self-definition and identity problems, was once again ill-prepared to face the change of the tide. Nonetheless, there is a transcolonial dimension to be found - perhaps quite surprisingly, in José Saramago's late novel, Caim. I read it as a closure of the early-modern, Adamic period in which the idea of a unique, unified humanity was the starting and final point. Caim deconstructs the biblical narration of unique creation, making Adam just one among mankind's forefathers. As a consequence, the first men, and the first Portuguese, leave their paradise not as entitled conquerors and settlers of the world, but as the first refugees. They don't occupy the earth, they are mere nomads. This is, after all, a very pertinent definition of the Portuguese historical destiny. As yet another poet, Manuel Alegre, has said: Porque o mar tiveste / Nada tiveste. The Portuguese empire, at least as the Estado da Índia, was a chimera. And Alegre, the combatant of the colonial war, did not mean just India... Finally, when the early-modern chimeras are exorcised, Portuguese literature is ready for a new worlding, quite different from the old concept of Mundanus ready to inhabit the totality of the earth in one of Padre Vieira's sermons.
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West African colonial palimpsests:
Fausto Duarte and the Fulani
The history of the Fulas is closely related to that of the Islamic penetration. Islam in West Africa dates back to the 12th-14th centuries and is related to the great Empire of Mali, created by Islamized Mandinka, a people originally from Upper Niger. At the beginning of the 14th century, Emperor Kankou Moussa immortalized himself on a pilgrimage to Mecca in which the caravan that accompanied him carried a quantity of gold that became legendary. In the phase of disintegration of the empire, the warrior Tiramakan Traore emerged, founder of the Kaabunké state on the plains of the High Coast of Guinea. The Fula moved from Bundo to the territory of Kaabú (Gabú) and settled in the Tumaná de Cima's region, accepted by the Mandingas as “guests”. At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, the Mandinka tried to dominate the animistic peoples, populating the banks of the Gambia. At that time, a social division was formed between the upper Islamic classes and the people dedicating themselves to the cult of ancestors. Until the 18th century, the Fula were under the domination of the Mandinga. The situation changed after the conquest of Kansala (1867) and the destruction of the kingdom of Kaabú. In the years 1868-1888, the Fula fought a holy war against the Beafada “infidels”, conquering the territory of Djoladú, renamed Forreá. Around 1885-1890, another important turning point was the conversion imposed on the soninqués, the balantas and the felupes. The holy war declared by the Fula Almamis involved pillage and the enslavement of animist peoples.
Throughout the colonial period, the Portuguese carried out some research in Guinea. António Carreira's monograph, Mandingas da Guiné Portuguesa, published in 1947, presented not only the Islamized Mandingas, but also the animist peoples: the soninke and the beafada – that is, the djolas according to the name most frequently used in international literature. However, there is a predilection for the Fula. Among the most important monographs, the volume Fulas do Gabú stands out, in which José Mendes Moreira, wanting to be an imitator of Delafosse, Tauxier and Arcin, brought together an attempt at “pullar” grammar, a list of photographs and several observations ethnographic studies on the living conditions and customs of the Fula. The problem of African literacy gains visibility. José Mendes Moreira attests that the Futa-fulas “have a vast written literature consisting of narratives of the heroic deeds and warlike endeavors of the conquerors of Futa-Djalom [...] in addition to translations of the Quran and political precepts. religious and social heritage inherited from the Arab and Arab-Berber” (Moreira, 1948, p. 95). In the part dedicated to material culture, Moreira observes that the Fula write “on sheets of paper or on planed boards with ink prepared by them and a wooden pen sharpened at the end which they call carã-bôl” (Moreira, 1948, p. 170 ). Later, he further clarifies that it is “marabu” paper (Moreira, 1948, p. 247), probably paper produced in West Africa according to traditional procedures of Eastern origin, without the need for import. He also reports several magical rituals related to writing: at the site of the founding of a new village, a piece of paper with a Quranic inscription is buried; to be successful in hunting, the hunter “greaves himself with a mèzina prepared with a herb called goli-goli [...] to which he also adds a piece of paper written with a verse from the Quran” (Moreira, 1948, p. 234). On the other hand, the Portuguese scholar outlines a classification of functions within the literate group that he describes as a “priestly class”: “1st – Ualio (a kind of prophet); 2nd – Karamokodjô (a type of doctor in Koranic theology); 3rd – Almúdo (simple reader of the Quran); 4th – Talibádjô (disciple, assistant)” (Moreira, 1948, pp. 234-235). Finally, Moreira speaks of “some marabou paper books, written in Arabic characters, where the origins of the tribe are narrated, the exploits of illustrious chiefs [...], the battles won [...], the wisdom of the karamokos and the fasts and virtues of the holy Muslim men” (Moreira, 1948, p. 247). However, to access the “tarika” (or "tarih" - history) of the Fulas, he employed a local informant, identified as “Mama N ́gari Djalfó, head of the Kamboré mosque” (Moreira, 1948, p. 264) who translates the text from Arabic to Creole. Only from this Creole version did Moreira write the text included in the monograph, which must therefore hide several errors and omissions. However, the text transmitted is quite curious. The Fulani's achievement, which begins with “the Turuban war” (1284 AH), is preceded by the narration of humanity's achievement since the creation of the world, covering several pre-Adamic generations, of less than a thousand years each (including the period of the primordial king Djimu). Only after a series of such periods does Baba Adaman appear. For a thousand years he lives in a paradisiacal space, until Allah makes him descend to earth in a place called Indi. His wife Auá descends, on the contrary, in Nadjidí, near Mecca. [...]
The scholarly effort to formulate an ethnohistory of West Africa was also led by Avelino Teixeira da Mota, who attempted to compare the information contained in Portuguese 16th century chronicles with the conclusions of French scholars, speaking during a very significant event that was the International Conference of West Africanists. organized in Bissau in 1947. [...]
Throughout the colonial period, the Portuguese carried out some research in Guinea. António Carreira's monograph, Mandingas da Guiné Portuguesa, published in 1947, presented not only the Islamized Mandingas, but also the animist peoples: the soninke and the beafada – that is, the djolas according to the name most frequently used in international literature. However, there is a predilection for the Fula. Among the most important monographs, the volume Fulas do Gabú stands out, in which José Mendes Moreira, wanting to be an imitator of Delafosse, Tauxier and Arcin, brought together an attempt at “pullar” grammar, a list of photographs and several observations ethnographic studies on the living conditions and customs of the Fula. The problem of African literacy gains visibility. José Mendes Moreira attests that the Futa-fulas “have a vast written literature consisting of narratives of the heroic deeds and warlike endeavors of the conquerors of Futa-Djalom [...] in addition to translations of the Quran and political precepts. religious and social heritage inherited from the Arab and Arab-Berber” (Moreira, 1948, p. 95). In the part dedicated to material culture, Moreira observes that the Fula write “on sheets of paper or on planed boards with ink prepared by them and a wooden pen sharpened at the end which they call carã-bôl” (Moreira, 1948, p. 170 ). Later, he further clarifies that it is “marabu” paper (Moreira, 1948, p. 247), probably paper produced in West Africa according to traditional procedures of Eastern origin, without the need for import. He also reports several magical rituals related to writing: at the site of the founding of a new village, a piece of paper with a Quranic inscription is buried; to be successful in hunting, the hunter “greaves himself with a mèzina prepared with a herb called goli-goli [...] to which he also adds a piece of paper written with a verse from the Quran” (Moreira, 1948, p. 234). On the other hand, the Portuguese scholar outlines a classification of functions within the literate group that he describes as a “priestly class”: “1st – Ualio (a kind of prophet); 2nd – Karamokodjô (a type of doctor in Koranic theology); 3rd – Almúdo (simple reader of the Quran); 4th – Talibádjô (disciple, assistant)” (Moreira, 1948, pp. 234-235). Finally, Moreira speaks of “some marabou paper books, written in Arabic characters, where the origins of the tribe are narrated, the exploits of illustrious chiefs [...], the battles won [...], the wisdom of the karamokos and the fasts and virtues of the holy Muslim men” (Moreira, 1948, p. 247). However, to access the “tarika” (or "tarih" - history) of the Fulas, he employed a local informant, identified as “Mama N ́gari Djalfó, head of the Kamboré mosque” (Moreira, 1948, p. 264) who translates the text from Arabic to Creole. Only from this Creole version did Moreira write the text included in the monograph, which must therefore hide several errors and omissions. However, the text transmitted is quite curious. The Fulani's achievement, which begins with “the Turuban war” (1284 AH), is preceded by the narration of humanity's achievement since the creation of the world, covering several pre-Adamic generations, of less than a thousand years each (including the period of the primordial king Djimu). Only after a series of such periods does Baba Adaman appear. For a thousand years he lives in a paradisiacal space, until Allah makes him descend to earth in a place called Indi. His wife Auá descends, on the contrary, in Nadjidí, near Mecca. [...]
The scholarly effort to formulate an ethnohistory of West Africa was also led by Avelino Teixeira da Mota, who attempted to compare the information contained in Portuguese 16th century chronicles with the conclusions of French scholars, speaking during a very significant event that was the International Conference of West Africanists. organized in Bissau in 1947. [...]
The Fula were also portrayed in the novelistic works of Fausto Duarte, Auá and A Revolta. Although Fausto Duarte was born in the Cape Verde Islands, he spent almost his entire professional career in Portuguese Guinea, or today's Guinea-Bissau, as a colonial administrator. Due to these professional circumstances, he was able to observe the lives of different ethnic groups and tried to turn it into literature based essentially on the patterns of Portuguese realistic-naturalistic school. On the other hand, he tried to refresh this somewhat outdated literary formula referring to the French models of the time, that he perceived as a fashion for "Negritude" ("Paris adorou os negros, e as glórias apontadas pela metrópole francesa são cobiçadas pelo mundo civilizado" (Duarte, 1934b, p. 8) - I apologize for this politically incorrect expression, but Duarte, as a colonial author, is thoroughly politically incorrect at almost every step).
As a Caboverdian, he wished to be considered, in a sense, as the Portuguese René Maran - the first black writer to win the Goncourt Prize in France (in 1921). This Martinique-born writer was a French colonial administrator employed in what was then French Equatorial Africa - Fausto Duarte may have felt that this biography - birth on the islands, later service in colonial structures - resembled his own, so tried to imitate Maran's path to literary success. And indeed, in 1934, Fausto Duarte also won at least what was available in his native metropolis, i.e. the first prize in the colonial literature competition for his novel titled Auá ("Eve"). [...]
At the time when Fausto Duarte was trying to forge his vision of African literature and was writing his own African novel (Auá is subtitled "novela negra"), the content, scope and message of Fula writing were still unknown. However, it was fascinating to discover that they wrote at all, that they were so interested in writing, that they had their own historical memory. This was a revelation at the time. And perhaps it was under the impact of this revelation that Fausto Duarte made the construction of the native hero in Auá completely different from the colonial paradigm. Malam is presented as an active, self-standing and self-aware protagonist, rather than acolyte of any white figure [...].
As a Caboverdian, he wished to be considered, in a sense, as the Portuguese René Maran - the first black writer to win the Goncourt Prize in France (in 1921). This Martinique-born writer was a French colonial administrator employed in what was then French Equatorial Africa - Fausto Duarte may have felt that this biography - birth on the islands, later service in colonial structures - resembled his own, so tried to imitate Maran's path to literary success. And indeed, in 1934, Fausto Duarte also won at least what was available in his native metropolis, i.e. the first prize in the colonial literature competition for his novel titled Auá ("Eve"). [...]
At the time when Fausto Duarte was trying to forge his vision of African literature and was writing his own African novel (Auá is subtitled "novela negra"), the content, scope and message of Fula writing were still unknown. However, it was fascinating to discover that they wrote at all, that they were so interested in writing, that they had their own historical memory. This was a revelation at the time. And perhaps it was under the impact of this revelation that Fausto Duarte made the construction of the native hero in Auá completely different from the colonial paradigm. Malam is presented as an active, self-standing and self-aware protagonist, rather than acolyte of any white figure [...].
What is the literature of Guinea-Bissau?
Guest lecture, Institute of Iberian and Iberoamerican Studies,
University of Warsaw.
Nov. 6th, 2023.
Starting with a rapid glance on the post-structural and post-modern state-of-the-art concerning the ways of defining 'literature', my presentation aims to show the broad, plural picture of Guinea-Bissau in a regional and global context of interweaving histories, identities, languages, and strands of oral and written tradition. To sketch this fractal picture, that breaks down into tiny ethnic groups, several rough strands are identified: the Mandinga culture, Fula culture, the colonial presence of the Portuguese, and the synthetic category of "animists" that serves, however awkwardly, to deal with the plural legacies of Balanta, Mandjaco, Pepel, Nalu, and other ethnic groups that remained alien to and marginalized by the Islamicate pressure of Mandinga and Fula. At a given stage of colonial history, Kriol as a new language as well as Creole identity emerge. Parallel to the decolonial process, the search for the trans-tribal category of 'Guinean-ness' (Guinendadi) continues.
In my presentation, I stress that colonial literacy is far from being a revelation of writing or the idea of literature in the region. It coexisted, since the beginning of the colonial era, with Islamic literacy, writing in Arabic as well as writing in vernacular languages such as Fula using Arabic script. This literacy that started to thrive in the 18th century and went parallel to colonial dominance is a phenomenon that relativizes the importance of colonial literacies. Overall, the memory of Mandinga griots, the historical writings of the Fula, and the emergent Kriol identity make plural roots of the literary system that cannot be presented uniquely in the shallow time of postcolonial writing. The Kriol and Lusophone poetry as well as Lusophone novels written in the 1990s are not just incipient forms of literature, but results of a long maturation of the superposed layers and plural strands of cultural awareness.
exploring the continuity
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The aim of this conference was to create a space of discussion concerning the transcultural dimension of the Mediterranean understood as a region defined, in the first place, by the phenomena of exchange and circulation of ideas. The Mediterranean crossroad between Europe, Middle East and Africa, fully established already at the end of Antiquity, takes a new shape at the brink of late Middle Ages and early Modernity. The proposed approach is to identify the spheres of interference between the Islamic and Christian worlds (contemplated in their plurality and mutual inter-penetrability). Tracing a relation between culturally locatable origins and the hypothetical transcultural consequences of such processes of interference, we might come to important conclusions, valid not only for the history of ideas as an academic discipline, but also for the contemporary perception of the shared Mediterranean heritage.
The transcultural hypothesis the organizers would like to propose as a discussion topic deals with the aspiration of transcending the cultural and confessional division, undoubtedly predominating in the Mediterranean world during the contemplated period (that may be taken as broadly as going from the 11th to the 17th century). Many European and Mediterranean figures, such as Ibn Arabi, Ramon Llull, Guillaume Postel or John Dee appear to have fallen in the temptation of moving into the interstices between the culturally established and delimited orthodoxies. By what spiritual and intellectual means did they attempt to inhabit those unstable zones? Did they leave behind any blueprint of a non-hegemonic universalism that might be recuperated in our times, helping to build a harmonious future of the region? Is there a diagram of transgressive relationships across the plurality of cultures, denominations and intellectual traditions to be read in the variegated Mediterranean heritage? “U źródeł śródziemnomorskich uniwersalizmów. Sprawozdanie z sesji „Transcultural Mediterranean: in search of non-orthodox and non-hegemonic universalism(s)”, Tours, 30-31 maja 2018”, Kultura – Historia – Globalizacja, no 23/2018, p. 181-185. ISSN 1898-7265
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