literatures and ethnohistories in Portuguese-speaking Africa:
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What are Lusophone African studies?
Historically speaking, Portugal was the first early-modern maritime empire to explore and colonise Africa. Soon, it suffered fierce competition from other European powers, so that by the time of the Berlin Conference, few territories remained in Portuguese possession. The Portuguese colonial empire was nonetheless one of the last to go; the decolonisation of the African territories happened in 1975, months after the Carnation Revolution in the metropolis. Lusophone literatures of Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde followed the dynamics of the postcolonial wave of writing. Smaller countries, such as the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe, as well as Guinea-Bissau, have gathered literary patrimonies that are often seen as ultraminor. Nonetheless, they also enrich the map of global literature. How do I contribute to this area? I took my first steps in Lusophone African studies at the University of Lisbon from 1993 to 1996. I was a student of Alberto Carvalho, an old-style Portuguese professor who might smoke his cachimbo right in the classroom, teaching the premises of African culture as he saw it. More importantly, I also had classes with Inocência Mata, a São Toméan female scholar who would later become a prominent intellectual figure in the late 1990s, with the advent of Lusophony as an official political project. Overall, I had contact with people who shaped the early landscape of the so-called "literaturas de expressão portuguesa" in Lisbon. This Lusocentric intellectual legacy is the starting point of my current contestation, accentuating the African tribal, regional, and multilingual aspects embedded into the Portuguese linguistic matrix. In my Lusophone African studies, the research on the literature of Guinea-Bissau forms the most prominent group of texts. I started to follow the cultural reality of this tiny country already in the mid-1990s. Also, my employment at the Jagiellonian University coincided with the presence of a Guinean language instructor, sent to Poland by Instituto Camões, eager to put in the limelight the African presence as part of the new Lusophony vogue. Nonetheless, this initiative, and my early interest in Guinea-Bissau, led to ostracism and aggression on behalf of my Polish colleagues who used the Guinean case and the man against me, mobbing me out of the university. A less qualified colleague occupied a distinguished position in the Câtedra Vergílio Ferreira, created under the auspices of Instituto Camões, while I was permanently chased from the local Lusitanist milieu. The Cracovian Lusophone centre became an academically and ethically derailed institution, where scholarship stood no chance against mediocrity. Even after achieving official full professorship in Lusophone literary studies, I did not recover, in the eyes of my illustrious colleagues, the right to teach in my area of expertise (sic!), the fact that ultimately led to my decision to emigrate from Poland. No wonder I was demotivated from engaging in African studies for several years. Although I published some of my papers in Poland, especially due to my participation in a research project financed by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) in 2006-2009, the massive surge of my Africanist publications coincided with my integration into transnational academia, initiated around 2016. The same year, I also travelled to Guinea-Bissau for short-term research. My Africanist output created in last 10 years can be divided into three major topics: 1. the theoretical reflection on transcoloniality as a way of closing the historical cycle initiated with the colonization (presented here on a seperate page dedicated to Transcolonial Studies); 2. comparative approaches to the worlding of Lusophone writing, created mainly by Angolan and Mozambican writers such as Agualusa, Mia Couto, Ondjaki or José Luís Mendonça (gathered under the topic of Global Literary Studies); 3. the aforementioned studies in ultraminor literature of Guinea Bissau, forming a corpus of some two dozen essays written in English, Portuguese (and initially, also Polish), dealing with such authors as Abdulai Sila, Filinto de Barros, Tony Tcheka, Odete Semedo or Né Vaz. Overall, my African research and reflection have been intertwined with other topics, forming a variety of comparativist approaches. I strive to provide West African exemplification for the discussion concerning such topics as the interplay of local and global languages or the impact of minor creators beyond their local cultures. This is why I have often presented it in a World Literature context rather than a typically Africanist one, for instance at the 21st Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association in Vienna (June 2016), where I contributed with a paper on the intertextual relationship of the Mozambican writer Honwana and the Angolan writer Ondjaki (Ondjaki's classmates read Honwana. Towards a transcolonial theory). I also wrote on the emergence of written culture and the figure of transcolonial intellectual in Mia Couto (Mia Couto and his African context: Invention of an origin; Written exercises. Ancestral magic and emergent intellectuals in Mia Couto, Lhoussain Azergui and Dorota Masłowska). My studies on Guinea-Bissau depart from the colonial period, with special relevance given to early ethnographic research and literary representation of Islamicate peoples such as the Fulani, to the latest literary texts dealing with Guinea and Guinean diaspora. I study their impact on the literary life of the former colonial metropolis and how they disrupt the established boundaries of postcolonial theory. As I have already mentioned, my peculiar viewpoint on Guinean literature consists in contemplating it from an Afrocentric rather than a Lusocentric perspective, and making sense of it in the context of global literary studies (Comparative Literature and the quest for global literary theory: exploring a West African margin; (Post)colonial chronopolitics and mapping the depth of local time(s) in global literary studies: an itinerary to Guinea-Bissau; Numa encruzilhada de oralidades, performatividades e literacias: para uma visão plural da emergência da literatura guineense). I have been working with African materials during my recent research stays in Lisbon (2022, 2024-2025), studying the colonial interplay of various cultural factors, such as Islamicate literacy in Western and Eastern parts of Portuguese Africa (Entre o Império do Mali e o «Islão marítimo». O impacto dos legados e das literacias islâmicas na África portuguesa). I have thoroughly studied the forgotten colonial author, Fausto Duarte, and the representation of the Fula and other ethnic groups in his novels, as well as the colonial scholarship trying to establish an outlook of Fulani ethnography and ethnohistory during the final decades of the Portuguese colonial presence in West Africa. As I plan to develop the study of an area that is neither Lusophone nor hemmed in by the borders of contemporary Guinea-Bissau, I have recently created a separate section dedicated to Mandinga & Fulani Studies. Since 2023, I have also worked on transcolonial Afrotopia, collaborating with a project promoted at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and a group of Nigerian / West African scholars (Quest for Afrotopia in Late Postcolonial Lusophone Literature: A focus on Guinea-Bissau). In October 2023, I spoke of my West African findings at the meeting of the Commission on Modern Languages of the Polish Academy of Learning (PAU). I also presented the literature of Guinea-Bissau in a guest lecture at the University of Warsaw (November 2023). I also gave guest lectures on transcoloniality and the construction of democracy in Guinea-Bissau at the Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon (2025). 
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ongoing research
The invention of musical-literary memory of the Angolan conflicts: José Luís Mendonça’s Metamorfoses do elefante and the decolonial legacy of engaged songs in Lusophone West Africa
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The transdisciplinary inspiration of the journal Memory Studies makes me look at José Luís Mendonça's novel as a composite text of culture that appeals for more tools than just those of standard literary criticism. Each chapter of this book evokes a decolonial Angolan song, such as the haunting Volodia, an elegy on the death of one of the fighters who tombou in defesa do povo angolano, chanted in the fragile voice, with the characteristically softened transatlantic accent, by Santocas.
Mendonça's recent novel invites a broader reflection on the postcolonial popularity and specific, evolving, if not transformative, roles played by decolonial songs in Lusophone West Africa, its ex-metropolis, and broader global milieus, still prone to nurturing leftist nostalgias. On the other hand, his ingenious literary play with the futurum perfectum of a prophetic dream, which had revealed the Angolan history before it happened, helps to euphemise the painful memory and perform the metaphoric closure of a lingering historical chapter, a closure to which those vanishing, old-fashioned melodies greatly contribute. |
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Constructing female biographies in Guinea-Bissau:
a postcolonial and transcolonial perspective
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Guinea-Bissau, one of Africa's poorest countries, is in desperate need of mobilising projects. Those projects are not only broad pictures of economic or political reforms. They can also work on the microscale of an individual human life, contradicting the stagnation and helplessness of the country's inhabitants. This is why shaping the imaginary biographies is one of the major tasks of the country's literature, cinematography, and theatre. More specifically, the female biographies form a crucial field of reflection, often omitted -- or at best minoritarian -- in early postcolonial experimentation. Yet recently, the imaginary lives of women stand at the focus of the literary projects of male and female Guinean authors, such as Abdulai Sila and Né Vaz, provoking a question about the transcolonial, transformative validity of this new strand of reflection.
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From ultraminor to global — and back.
The choice of language, self-translation, and translingual dimension in the poetry of Odete Semedo
The hesitation between the Portuguese and Kriol expression has been present in the poetic work of Odete Semedo since her early collectanea, Entre o ser e o amar (1996). The same dilemma returns in her recent poetic volume, (In)confidências (2023). Yet what prevails over the duality of transcontinental Portuguese and localised Creole language is the will to participate in the sphere of exchange shaped by major, global tongues, such as English and French. This research tracks the less obvious implications of the linguistic choice and a translingual dimension of the poetic diction oscillating between tongues.
A fisiologia feminina nos romances de Fausto Duarte: alteridade e resistência
Literatura colonial portuguesa: além da memória do império, Universidade de Lisboa, 19-21.03.2025.
Fausto Duarte ocupa o lugar na história da literatura colonial da África ocidental como o autor de Auá. Novela negra. Outros romances, tal A Revolta ou O Negro sem alma, permanecem na sombra. O seu estudo académico é relevante, já que esboçam uma representação literária do complexo universo étnico da Guiné Portuguesa. O que chama a atenção n´O Negro sem alma, é a elaboração literária dos rituais e normas de conduta sexual, tal como as regras de endogamia, circuncisão, etc. O que é ainda mais interessante, o escritor colonial observa as táticas e comportamentos específicos de resistência da mulher africana. Para defender-se dos avanços indesejados dos homens colonizadores, ela desenvolve um leque de estratégias, nas quais apela à sua fisiologia, transformando os líquidos corporais (tal o leite do peito) numa espécie de repelente, deliberadamente causando o nojo do agressor masculino que trespassa na sua intimidade. Consegue transformar os “preconceitos de homem civilizado” numa arma com que se defende. Inverte o valor da própria nudez: duma marca de vulnerabilidade passa a ser uma atitude de resistência. Nessas estratégias, como observa Fausto Duarte, frequentemente acaba por ser vencedora, preservando a inviolabilidade do seu corpo. A pintura da fraqueza, incapacidade e frustração do homem colonizador no confronto com a mulher colonizada introduz um aspeto de profundidade no nosso entendimento das relações de género no universo colonial.
Fausto Duarte ocupa o lugar na história da literatura colonial da África ocidental como o autor de Auá. Novela negra. Outros romances, tal A Revolta ou O Negro sem alma, permanecem na sombra. O seu estudo académico é relevante, já que esboçam uma representação literária do complexo universo étnico da Guiné Portuguesa. O que chama a atenção n´O Negro sem alma, é a elaboração literária dos rituais e normas de conduta sexual, tal como as regras de endogamia, circuncisão, etc. O que é ainda mais interessante, o escritor colonial observa as táticas e comportamentos específicos de resistência da mulher africana. Para defender-se dos avanços indesejados dos homens colonizadores, ela desenvolve um leque de estratégias, nas quais apela à sua fisiologia, transformando os líquidos corporais (tal o leite do peito) numa espécie de repelente, deliberadamente causando o nojo do agressor masculino que trespassa na sua intimidade. Consegue transformar os “preconceitos de homem civilizado” numa arma com que se defende. Inverte o valor da própria nudez: duma marca de vulnerabilidade passa a ser uma atitude de resistência. Nessas estratégias, como observa Fausto Duarte, frequentemente acaba por ser vencedora, preservando a inviolabilidade do seu corpo. A pintura da fraqueza, incapacidade e frustração do homem colonizador no confronto com a mulher colonizada introduz um aspeto de profundidade no nosso entendimento das relações de género no universo colonial.
Numa encruzilhada de oralidades, performatividades e literacias: para uma visão plural da emergência da literatura guineense
Via Atlantica, 2026: "Literaturas Africanas de Língua Portuguesa no século XIX e início do XX: Aspectos Formativos"
The literature of Guinea-Bissau emerged several decades later than in other parts of the Lusophone world and was initially described as an “empty space.” To understand the reasons for this peculiarity, it is essential to examine its formative period from an Afrocentric rather than a Lusocentric perspective, emphasizing non-colonial legacies, orality, and literacy radiating from Islamic centers of written culture, cultivated by the Fulani. On the margins of Lusophony, the Creole intermediary class developed its own language, Kriol, which gained literary status during the decolonial struggle and became a key element of the trans-tribal Guinendadi identity fostered in the early postcolonial decades. As a result, Guinea-Bissau’s literature emerged as a plurisystem with various interdependent elements and regional connections. To this day, the country remains the locus of an ongoing ultraminor Kriol-speaking literary project at the margins of the Lusophone world, parallel to its transcontinental literary expression in Portuguese.
The literature of Guinea-Bissau emerged several decades later than in other parts of the Lusophone world and was initially described as an “empty space.” To understand the reasons for this peculiarity, it is essential to examine its formative period from an Afrocentric rather than a Lusocentric perspective, emphasizing non-colonial legacies, orality, and literacy radiating from Islamic centers of written culture, cultivated by the Fulani. On the margins of Lusophony, the Creole intermediary class developed its own language, Kriol, which gained literary status during the decolonial struggle and became a key element of the trans-tribal Guinendadi identity fostered in the early postcolonial decades. As a result, Guinea-Bissau’s literature emerged as a plurisystem with various interdependent elements and regional connections. To this day, the country remains the locus of an ongoing ultraminor Kriol-speaking literary project at the margins of the Lusophone world, parallel to its transcontinental literary expression in Portuguese.
Em busca dum idioma ausente.
O projeto literário inacabado de Fausto Duarte
[in progress]
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Fausto Duarte é um autor ausente do cânone da literatura lusófona, por vezes mencionado apenas como um antenato esquecido da literatura da Guiné Bissau. A sua obra, não reeditada, foi lida e estudada muito raramente. Não é de estranhar. Fausto Duarte não foi um escritor decolonial. Antes pelo contrário, foi um escritor colonial declarado, convencido até ao fim de que o projeto ao qual dedicou praticamente toda a sua vida professional foi essencialmente necessário e justo. No entanto, foram decoloniais as atitudes e astucias dos colonizados e das colonizadas que observou e transmitiu com veracidade suficiente para justificar uma leitura. Certamente, os seus romances de temática guineense, Auá, A Revolta e O Negro sem alma, são muito marcados pelo seu tempo e devem ser tomadas cum grano salis. Por outro lado, devem ser vistos como fragmentos dum projeto literário inacabado, em que o escritor tentava inventar um idioma ausente na literatura lusófona do seu tempo.
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(in progress:) "Ser homem na Guiné Portuguesa. O retrato das masculinidades coloniais nos romances de Fausto Duarte
A apreciação crítica da obra de Fausto Duarte traça uma inevitável controvérsia acerca da sua escrita, também relacionada, sem dúvida, com a mudança dos critérios e paradigmas ao longo do tempo. Em 1984, Russell Hamilton estava prestes a reconhecer as boas intenções do autor que, apesar da sua inscrição colonial evidente, tentou presentar as culturas africanas sob uma luz favorável. Em 2007, Moema Parente Augel confessou, em tom muito mais crítico e desiludido: “Considero bastante sintomáticas as referências estereotipadas e reducionistas de Fausto Duarte às diferentes etnias”. Por isso não hesitava em incluí-lo na categoria de autores de literatura colonial, “quase sempre funcionários da administração portuguesa, ou militares ou missionários, todos marcados logicamente pela convicção da missão civilizatória do branco”. Certamente, este juízo não carece de fundamentação. No entanto, a escrita de Fausto Duarte, tomada com o benefício da sua inscrição colonial, revela um questionamento da condição masculina, da virilidade que não se reafirma nas condições de supremacia colonial, mas que, antes pelo contrário, depara com novas fontes de incerteza, hesitação, depreciação, amargura. É esta qualidade de questionador da codificação ibérica da masculinidade que mais me surpreende e que justifica um retorno a Fausto Duarte no presente ensaio.
A apreciação crítica da obra de Fausto Duarte traça uma inevitável controvérsia acerca da sua escrita, também relacionada, sem dúvida, com a mudança dos critérios e paradigmas ao longo do tempo. Em 1984, Russell Hamilton estava prestes a reconhecer as boas intenções do autor que, apesar da sua inscrição colonial evidente, tentou presentar as culturas africanas sob uma luz favorável. Em 2007, Moema Parente Augel confessou, em tom muito mais crítico e desiludido: “Considero bastante sintomáticas as referências estereotipadas e reducionistas de Fausto Duarte às diferentes etnias”. Por isso não hesitava em incluí-lo na categoria de autores de literatura colonial, “quase sempre funcionários da administração portuguesa, ou militares ou missionários, todos marcados logicamente pela convicção da missão civilizatória do branco”. Certamente, este juízo não carece de fundamentação. No entanto, a escrita de Fausto Duarte, tomada com o benefício da sua inscrição colonial, revela um questionamento da condição masculina, da virilidade que não se reafirma nas condições de supremacia colonial, mas que, antes pelo contrário, depara com novas fontes de incerteza, hesitação, depreciação, amargura. É esta qualidade de questionador da codificação ibérica da masculinidade que mais me surpreende e que justifica um retorno a Fausto Duarte no presente ensaio.
selected papers & chapters
Na sombra do omi matchu.
A nova escrita feminina da Guiné-Bissau
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[in progress]
This new paper focuses on two novels written by a young voice in Guinean literature, Né Vaz. Both of them deal explicitly with topics of sexuality, including such aspects as paedophilia, prostitution, and promiscuity. Also, Né Vaz deals with economic abuse of women in society, while she also puts in the limelight their retrograde aspiration of receiving money and gifts from men that perpetuates their enslavement. Overall, this new strand of writing drifts away from the typical themes of Guinean literature, hitherto centred on the male gender conundrum and the figures of decolonial combatants. At the same time, it contributes to the universalisation of this literature and its harmonious inscription in the mainstream of global letters. |
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The anatomy of failure.
Transcolonial approaches to (not quite) decolonial past
from Filinto de Barros’ Kikia matcho to Tony Tcheka’s Quando os cravos vermelhos cruzaram o Geba
(in progress)
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There seems to be a new lease of life in Guinean literature, that few years ago might seem somehow in suspension after the decades of political upheaval and economic misery. Certainly, Guinea-Bissau is still a land of frustration. Half of a century of independence did not bring its people to economic prosperity, true liberty or unhindered democracy. As the first enthusiasm of the decolonial victory vanished, bitter disappointment came quickly to the fore. What is more, the memory of the glorious fight of decolonial liberation was made obsolete by more recent, quite inglorious conflicts that reiterated up to the civil conflict of 1998 and beyond. No wonder that the Guinean literature was born bitter and seemed to grow bitterer and bitterer along the last quarter of a century. Filinto de Barros’ novel Kikia Matcho was an important point that may resume the beginning of this process. Published in 1997, it marked, together with Abdulai Sila’s trilogy Mistida, the auroral moments of Guinean novel, even if those early texts did not prevail over the vein of Kriol- and Portuguese-speaking poetry that predominates in the country’s emergent literature. Be that as it may, Barros’ text, bearing, in its Portuguese edition in 1999, the subtitle “o desalento do combatente” (the combatant’s dismay), marked the postcolonial era with the seeds of subsequent interrogation concerning the ways of definitely closing the cycle of colonial--decolonial--postcolonial becoming. The novel shows the former decolonial revolutionaries suffering a poignant personal failure in spite of the apparent victory of their cause. The male owl that appears in the title marks the return of the spirit of the dead that fails to bring a new lease of hope; the illumination it brings concerns rather the state of failure, its dimensions, and its reasons. Certainly, this new awareness is an important step on the way toward a difficult maturation; in fact, the Kriol expression campu quenti that reappears as a leitmotiv of the text, means precisely ‘difficulties’. The cycle cannot thus be closed; new forms of life fail to emerge, and more, the soul of the dead cannot find its proper way to the afterlife. Bogged in campu quenti (literally, a ‘warm field’), the Guinean affairs are suspended in a state of economic, social, and moral misery. Almost a quarter of a century after this pessimistic diagnosis, in 2020, Tony Tcheka’s sequence of four short stories, Quando os cravos vermelhos cruzaram o Geba, explores quite similar topics, throwing light onto various aspects of the post-independence conundrum, yet differs from Barros’ inaugural novel by its generally humorous tone and, as we will see, the bitter-sweet ending that I interpret, nonetheless, as a positive conclusion bringing cautious hope that was missing in Kikia Matcho.
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The idea of democracy in Guinea-Bissau:
from decolonial poetry to transcolonial reinvention of identity
"By the People, For the People”: Global Perspectives on Democracy in the 21st Century,
Regina Queiroz (ed.), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025.
(in progress)
The chapter focuses on the difficult implementation of the political ideal of democracy in the local imagery and discursive horizon of Guinea-Bissau. The problem is seen through the lens of the country’s emergent literature. Independently of tribal legacies that might include certain egalitarian, consultative, and representative structures, the concept of democracy was a novelty introduced by the decolonial movements. Nonetheless, the early decades of independence, when the country was ruled by a single party, were lost to the cause of pluralism. The long process of appropriating the new ideal and the initial lack of clarity in apprehending it found its reflection in emergent Guinean literature, including narrative genres such as passadas, poetry, novels, and theatre. The times of turmoil (the civil war of 1998-1999, various subsequent military coups) led to the frequently voiced disillusion and scepticism concerning the viability of the democratic ideal in Guinea-Bissau. The imagery of democracy acquired a painful, bitter inflection under the pen of Tony Tcheka and other poets writing in Portuguese and Kriol. Nonetheless, the development of the imagery of democracy continues up to the present day. It is translated and integrated into the indigenous networks of concepts. Poetry, theatre, and other forms of literature (in the broad sense encompassing oral and written expression) have been instrumental in the transformation of the multiethnic, tribal society. The evolution goes in the direction of overcoming not only the mental sequels of both colonial and postcolonial oppression but even more importantly, the legacy of the postcolonial conception of one-party politics under the auspices of a ‘great leader’ rooted in the gender construct of matchundadi. The transcolonial reinvention of identity creates an ample, pluralistic space for the recognition of cultural backgrounds and tribal legacies, creating a more fertile ground for a stable democratic structure.
Collective awareness and lyrical poetry.
The emergence of Creole literary culture in the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe
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Interlitteraria, vol. 28, No. 2 (2023). ISSN 1406-0701 (print), ISSN 2228-4729 (online)
ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/IL/article/view/23520 The problem discussed in the article is the emergence of the autonomous literary system on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, a former Portuguese slave emporium, as well as coffee and cocoa producing colony. Several concurrent narrations concerning the emergence of the Santomense literary system are presented. One of them accentuates the groundbreaking role of a particular institution, Casa dos Estudantes do Império; other narrations inscribe the literature of the tiny archipelago in a larger system of Portuguese-speaking literature (Lusophony). The author of the present article postulates a radical enlargement of the chronological and cultural perspective, including the legacy of the Angolars (rebellious slaves) and their collective awareness in the genesis of the local literary tradition, in parity with such elements as the legacy of the Portuguese colonizers and free Creole social groups (Forros). It could be a way of overcoming the Eurocentric “chronopolitics” that remained valid also in the postcolonial studies, associating the decolonial processes not only with the metropolis as a place where the decolonial thought took shape but also with the chronology and rhythms of its literary evolution. |
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Entre o Império do Mali e o «Islão marítimo».
O impacto dos legados e das literacias islâmicas na África portuguesa
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Studia Romanica Posnaniensia, 50 (2)/2023.
pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/srp/article/view/39605/33490 The article presents the impact of the Islamicate populations and literacies in Portuguese colonial literature and scholarship. The main ethnic group that focused the attention of the colonisers were the aggressive, dominant Fulani portrayed in the novels of Fausto Duarte, Auá and A Revolta. Their usages and traditions were studied by the first Portuguese ethnographers and ethnohistorians with almost satisfactory results. On the other hand, Islam in the oriental part of the Portuguese colonial empire (Mozambique) was much less understood. The Portuguese paid greater attention to the aggressive, jihadist movements in West Africa than to the relatively less conspicuous Sufi movements that developed in the port cities and islands along the East African coast. Overall, the process of Islamicization of the territories controlled by the Portuguese went on unhindered or even accelerated during the colonial period. |
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Aparentemente, as populações nativas do império colonial português viviam imersas numa existência exclusivamente local, a que faltava a consciência de inscrição numa geografia cultural mais vasta do que o horizonte tribal dumas poucas aldeias comunicadas por uma rede de santuários animistas, e numa cronologia mal estruturada, sem o sentido da história e sem projetos mobilizadores do porvir. No entanto, o Islão constituía, na vida das populações colonizadas, um fator significativo que a historiografia colonial menosprezava ou silenciava, seja por ignorância, seja deliberadamente, já que uma dimensão cultural alternativa não favorecia a “missão civilizadora” dos portugueses. A presença muçulmana possuía várias características ausentes no animismo, tal como uma forte dimensão translocal (estruturada pela importância do santuário global, a Meca), o potencial duma literacia alternativa à escrita do colonizador, uma consciência duma dimensão temporal bem estruturada e o sentido do porvir histórico, os projetos mobilizadores para uma ação militar coordenada (a guerra santa). Por isso constituía uma forma de mobilização garantindo uma sobrevivência cultural autónoma ao longo do período colonial, desenvolvendo-se e, paradoxalmente, florescendo na sombra do cristianíssimo império português.
Por isso vale a pena esboçar o caráter e as formas dessa literacia cultural alternativa em relação ao projeto civilizacional português, inscrevendo as populações nativas nas redes translocais e transcoloniais. O artigo presenta a diversidade das inspirações presentes em vários pontos da África que os portugueses tentavam controlar, na segunda metade do século XIX e no início do século XX. Nomeadamente, fala-se dos Mandinga e dos Fula enquanto povos islamizados, do impacto dos movimentos jihadistas na região de Futa Djalom na Guiné Portuguesa e, por outro lado, do chamado «islam maritime» em Moçambique (as confrarias sufís de inspiração ibadita, tal a Uwaysiyya, islamizando as populações bantu a partir da ilha de Zanzibar, dos portos, etc.). É igualmente interessante de observar em que forma essas realidades culturais e legados históricos foram refletidas e|ou silenciadas na literatura colonial, tal como Auá e A Revolta de Fausto Duarte.
(Post)colonial chronopolitics and mapping the depth of local time(s) in global literary studies: an itinerary to Guinea-Bissau
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Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, no 7.2/2021, p. 69-83. ISSN 2457-8827.
https://www.metacriticjournal.com/article/203/postcolonial-chronopolitics-and-mapping-the-depth-of-local-times-in-global-literary-studies-an-itinerary-to-guinea-bissau This article is an attempt at deconstructing the chronopolitics inherent to the (post)colonial way of thinking about the world. As it is argued, what should replace it is a vision of multiple, overlying temporalities and forms of time awareness, reaching deeper than a literary history reduced to the cycle of colonisation – decolonisation – postcolonial becoming, originating from just a single maritime event: the European exploration and conquest of the world. The essay brings forth a choice of interwoven examples illustrating the variability of local time depths, associated with a plurality of origins, narrations, forms of awareness and cultivation of cultural belonging. It shows the lack of coincidence between the dominant and non-dominant perceptions of the past in such places as the archipelagos of São Tomé and Príncipe, Maldives, the Gambia, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Their ways of living the global time, as well as embodying significant texts (rather than simply preserving them) stretch far beyond the frameworks created by competing colonial empires, such as the Portuguese or the British one. |
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Mia Couto and his African context:
Invention of an origin
The Worlds of Mia Couto, Kristian Van Haesendonck (ed.), Oxford – Bern – Berlin – Bruxelles – New York – Wien, Peter Lang, 2020, p. 41-59. ISBN 978-1-78874-594-9
The main line of argumentation in this chapter traces the process of “invention of an origin” performed by a white, blue-eyed descendant of the colonisers. In response to the criticism voiced by his African interlocutors at the moment of the publication of Vozes Anoitecidas (1986), Mia Couto legitimises his existence as a forerunner of a genuinely African intellectual, whose advent is announced in Um rio chamado tempo, uma casa chamada terra (2002). The literary construction of autochthonism brings him close to other Lusophone writers such as Pepetela, facing the same racial situation as descendants of the colonisers rather than the colonised. This process involves a creative redefinition of the notions of kinship, paternity and transmission, as well as the work on the Portuguese language. Mia Couto tries to rebuild it in such a way that it might render the African vision of the reality, creating a highly peculiar and recognisable style, implying a translingual dimension of the text. At the same time, this endeavour is interpreted as an echo of the centuries-old Portuguese millenarianist vision of the recuperation of the ideal, pre-Babelian speech of man. Nonetheless, the chapter's conclusion focuses on the paradoxical outcome of Couto's struggle for “Africanization”, putting in the limelight precisely the lowly, maculate origin of language and community.
The main line of argumentation in this chapter traces the process of “invention of an origin” performed by a white, blue-eyed descendant of the colonisers. In response to the criticism voiced by his African interlocutors at the moment of the publication of Vozes Anoitecidas (1986), Mia Couto legitimises his existence as a forerunner of a genuinely African intellectual, whose advent is announced in Um rio chamado tempo, uma casa chamada terra (2002). The literary construction of autochthonism brings him close to other Lusophone writers such as Pepetela, facing the same racial situation as descendants of the colonisers rather than the colonised. This process involves a creative redefinition of the notions of kinship, paternity and transmission, as well as the work on the Portuguese language. Mia Couto tries to rebuild it in such a way that it might render the African vision of the reality, creating a highly peculiar and recognisable style, implying a translingual dimension of the text. At the same time, this endeavour is interpreted as an echo of the centuries-old Portuguese millenarianist vision of the recuperation of the ideal, pre-Babelian speech of man. Nonetheless, the chapter's conclusion focuses on the paradoxical outcome of Couto's struggle for “Africanization”, putting in the limelight precisely the lowly, maculate origin of language and community.
Amargas mistidas. O desalento africano em Desesperança no chão de medo e dor de Tony Tcheka
Bitter mistidas. The African despair in Desesperança no chão de medo e dor of Tony Tcheka, Studia Romanica Posnaniensia, no 46(3)/2019, p. 7-18.
The essay focuses on selected poems from the volume Desesperança no chão de medo e dor published in 2015. Tony Tcheka offers a bitter comment on the reality of his native Guinea-Bissau that, for analytical sake, is confronted with other voices of the country. The topics discussed are: the crisis of collective identity, as well as such values as freedom and solidarity; the deficient status of Kriol as a supposed "national" language; sexuality and gender issues, such as promiscuity and insufficiency of male role models; the status of traditional beliefs and tribal identifications.
The essay focuses on selected poems from the volume Desesperança no chão de medo e dor published in 2015. Tony Tcheka offers a bitter comment on the reality of his native Guinea-Bissau that, for analytical sake, is confronted with other voices of the country. The topics discussed are: the crisis of collective identity, as well as such values as freedom and solidarity; the deficient status of Kriol as a supposed "national" language; sexuality and gender issues, such as promiscuity and insufficiency of male role models; the status of traditional beliefs and tribal identifications.
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Writers of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau
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The aim of the project is to study the ways how the aporia of untranslatability of a specific culture and the necessity of appealing to the global reader's comprehension is solved at the level of the writers' strategies implied in the literary texts. Contemporary authors belonging to the minor linguistic and cultural context of the former Portuguese West Africa wish to engage the global readership and build up diverse approaches to the problem of auto-translating their idiosyncratic message. These strategies go from the incrustation of some key terms taken from the minor (Kriol, as well as any of the native African tongues) into the framework of the dominant speech (Portuguese) to the authorial translation of the entire text from the minor into the major language. On the other hand, the phenomenon of translingualism in the literary communication is present both in terms of the literary writing across the languages with which the author is familiar and in terms of the competence of the ideal reader implied in the text. As I claim, translingual texts build up their own audience, transmitting to the readers a certain degree of familiarity with the cultural key notions expressed in minor languages that the writers represent and strive to bring to the limelight of global awareness. The stake of such a literary practice is the formation of a common sphere of literary communication characterised by a non-hegemonic universalism, differing qualitatively from the often criticised, falsified universalisation of the Europocentric values.
The literature of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde is a neglected reality, even in the studies dealing with the West-African context, in which French and English postcolonial expression is predominant. Both countries not only gained their independence relatively late, as the outcome of a devastating colonial war and the Portuguese Carnation Revolution (1975), but also developed their original literary voice only in the recent decades. Even if the beginnings of literary activity in Cape Verde may be related to the review “Claridade” (1936), the statement is valid especially for Guinea-Bissau. Fully articulated literary system arguably appeared in this country as late as the last decade of the 20th century, with the novelistic work of Abdulá Silá and Filinto de Barros. The literary projects of both countries build up a tension between the search for the idiosyncratic expression in local Kriol languages (similar, yet divergent in the archipelago and in the mainland Guinea-Bissau) and the integration in a larger Portuguese-speaking world. While the development of Kriol played an important role in the nationalistic projects of the early postcolonial period, the return to Portuguese – paradoxically or not – is to be observed in the first decades of the 21st century; a constant oscillation between the local dimension of Kriol and the globalising standard Portuguese is visible. Strategies of auto-translation are typical for such authors as Odete Costa Semedo or Tony Tcheka. While the former published the parallel versions of her poems simultaneously, in a bilingual volume, the latter often creates them across years and decades of his literary evolution, rather as creative rewriting than literal translations. A subtle modulation of the poetic voice is to be observed, as the author does not say exactly the same in both linguistic versions. This procedure gives thus a large margin for critical interpretation of the interplay between both tongues of literary expression, as well as their relation to the “silent” African languages. Especially in the case of Guinea-Bissau, this background is very reach, as the country is a hot-spot of linguistic diversity, with more than 20 native tongues attested. Although virtually no written literature has ever been published in any of these (except samples of oral literature collected by the Portuguese in the beginning of the 20th century), their presence manifests itself through key terms invoking crucial culture-specific meanings, encrusted in both Portuguese and Kriol texts. The analysis of the creative ways of granting their understandability for non-local readers will be inspired by the methodological contribution of global native literary studies (cf. Allen 2012). As I claim, the recent literary creation, tending to adopt standard Portuguese expression at least as the main framework enabling translingual experimentation, is not – or not exclusively – addressed to the former colonial metropolis and transcends the boundaries of the Lusophone project that has been promoted by Portugal since the late nineties. It appeals to new literary circuits, sometimes designated as “Atlantic convergence” (“convergência atlântica”), exploiting the historical routes of dislocation and resettlement across the Atlantic, both those of the West-African slaves and the colonial deportations from Guinea-Bissau and the archipelago of Cape Verde to the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. At the same time, Cape-Verdean writers such as Filinto Elísio aspire to unhindered participation in World Literature as a limitless, universalistic sphere of global exchange. The scholarly context in which this research is inscribed has been determined by the influential criticism of Gayatri Spivak (2003), accentuating the divergence between, on the one hand, the exhaustive study and interpretation of cultures in the so called Area Studies and, on the other hand, the universalistic domain of Comparative Literature, forgetful of cultural singularity and specificity. What seems to be derived is a vision of the global literary space as built up by the scholarly discipline alone. In other words, Comparative Literature may appear as constructing its own object of studies (World Literature abusively taken for an organic whole, while the only reality is the pattern of specific local literatures embedded in mutually untranslatable cultures). Spivak's seminal book has inspired a new paradigm of Comparative Literature focusing on radical specificity and untranslatability, based on the claim that one culture “cannot access another directly and with a guarantee” (Spivak 2003: 30); it seems to over-accentuate the particularism of literatures inscribed in local conditions, as well as idiosyncrasy of languages beyond any perspective of full translatability (cf. Apter 2011). Nonetheless, these approaches overlook the effort of developing an intra-textual dimension of translatability, performed by the writers representing non-dominant languages and cultures. Even if, as Spivak admits, there is no “guaranteed accessibility” or automatic mutual comprehension between cultures, I claim that a consistent effort of building a common sphere of literary communication is promoted by the writers. It is through their original creation that the non-hegemonic universalism of World Literature comes true; a global literary system is a reality in which even radically marginalized writers such as those of Guinea-Bissau are embedded. Those minor global writers overcome the specificity of their backgrounds in a constant creative effort of transmitting precisely the most unexpected and idiosyncratic aspects of their cultural origins. Addressing the major questions of this scholarly debate through the lens of a novel, little studied exemplification that is usually out of the scope of the mainstream criticism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Chadwick, Trans-indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Apter, Emily, Against World Literature. On the Politics of Intranslatability, London – New York, Verso, 2013. Augel, Moema Parente, A nova literatura da Guiné-Bissau, Bissau: INEP, 1998. Augel, Moema Parente, O desafio do escombro. Nação, identidade e pós-colonialismo na literatura da Guiné-Bissau, Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2007. Elisio, Filinto, Zen Limites, Lisboa: Rosa de Porcelana Editora, 2016. Elisio, Filinto, Das Hespérides, Lisboa: Caminho, 2005. Elisio, Filinto, Li Cores & Ad Vinhos, Lisboa: Letras Várias, 2009. Barros, Filinto de, Kikia Matcho, Lisboa, Caminho, 1999. Damrosch, David, What is World Literature?, Princeton – Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. Gomes, Simone Caputo, Cabo Verde: Literatura em Chão de Cultura, Praia: Instituto da Biblioteca e do Livro, 2008. Kellman, Steven G., Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Ribeiro, Margarida Calafate, Semedo, Odete Costa (ed.), Literaturas da Guiné-Bissau. Cantando os escritos da história, Porto: Afrontamento, 2011. Semedo, Odete Costa, Entre o Ser e o Amar, Bissau: INEP, 1996. Semedo, Rui Jorge, Sem intenção. Poesia e crítica literária, S.l.: Corubal, 2013. Silá, Abudulai, Mistida, Bissau: Ku Si Mon, 1997. Spivak, Gayatri, Death of a Discipline, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Tavares, Eugène, Littératures lusophones des archipels atlantiques : Açores, Madère, Cap-Vert, São Tomé e Príncipe, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009. Tcheka, Tony, Desesperança no chão de medo e dor, S.l.: Corubal, 2015. Tcheka, Tony, Guiné sabura que dói, São Tomé e Príncipe: UNEAS, 2008. Tcheka, Tony, Noites de insónia na terra adormecida, Bissau: INEP, 1996. |
