I have readConceição Lima, A dolorosa raiz do micondó (2006)
Conceição Lima, O país de Akendenguê (2011) |
Vertical Divider
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I have writtenCollective awareness and lyrical poetry. The emergence of Creole literary culture in the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe
A tradição épica na hora da "lusofonia horizontal" |
decolonial chronologies
The archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe, located in the the Gulf of Guinea near the western coast of Central Africa is one of the smallest states of the continent. It is also the smallest member of the Portuguese-speaking community. Nonetheless, I believe it can be treated as a sort of model example to speak about the topic proposed in this conference, i.e. the importance of the lyrical factor in the formation of literary cultures. I also hope that it will give me an opportunity to ask some methodological questions that apply not only to this tiny literature.
The archipelago is small, but covered with a luxurious vegetation. This is why it could have a very prosperous future in the colonial period thanks to advantageous culture of coffee and cocoa. It does not have an ancient history, just a colonial history, since the islands were uninhabited till the arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century.
This is why, apparently, the literature of S. Tome is very easy to present, because it is so small and presumably so short. Already when I was a student at the University of Lisbon in the 1990s, there were supposed to be a very clear and very consistent sort of narration concerning the birth of the literature of S. Tome. At the time, the great novelty was a discipline called “Literaturas de expressão portuguesa”- The literatures of Portuguese expression, based on a specific reception of postcolonial studies in Portugal – I say specific reception, because the Portuguese culture was still in a deep identity crisis after the loss of its colonial empire in 1975 and its recent reorientation and re-inscription in the European framework; in 1986 Portugal entered the European Economic Community as one of smaller and weaker countries; this is why there was quite a pungent sensation of loss of status as it was no longer a great colonial empire, and this fact had a impact on the vision of emergent Lusophone literatures as they were conceptualised in Lisbon.
According to this narration, the first poet of S. Tome was Francisco José Tenreiro (1921-1966), and the foundational text of this new literary system was his volume of poetry Ilha do Nome Santo that appeared in 1942. In his poetry, Tenreiro criticized the local Creole society that appreciated, in an exaggerated way, the things brought from Europe, such as a German piano of which he speaks about in one of his poems, a piano that is useless in the local conditions, because it constantly gets out of tune in the hot and humid climate. From the beginning of the 1950s. the lyrical expression of Tenreiro became the fullest Portuguese-speaking expression of negritude. This association between Tenreiro and such writers as Senghor and Césaire was conceptualised by the metropolitan critics such as Mário de Andrade, Alfredo Margarido and Salvato Trigo in the 1950., 1960. i 1970. Nonetheless, most probably Tenreiro never read Césaire and the coincidence of his poetry with the global negritude movement had only an intuitive character.
On the other hand, there was also a presupposition that all those local literary systems of various Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa emerged essentially in Lisbon. Each of them did not arise locally, on the contrary, they were inscribed in a larger reality of the Portuguese colonial empire. This often repeated scholarly narration concerning the emergence of Lusophone African literatures accentuated the importance of a single institution, Casa dos Estudantes do Império in Lisbon (1944-1965). The essential aim of this institution, created by the Salazarian regime, was to control the students coming from various parts of the Portuguese colonial empire. In reality, it contributed, quite to the contrary, to the dissemination of decolonial ideas, i.e. the political and social ideas concerning the decolonizing process. This left-wing ideology also implied certain paradigms of literary expression that should accompany those processes – basically the so called neo-realism, considered as a Portuguese version of social realism that became something different in the Soviet Union; but the influence came explicitly from the Eastern Block. Those ideas were essentially shared between the left-wing Portuguese, i.e. the opposition against the Salazar regime in the colonial metropolis, and the African intellectuals that were strongly under their influence, sort of catechumens of that left-wing thought. This explains why the poetical volume of Tenreiro was published in the famous series “Novo Cancioneiro” together with the Portuguese metropolitan neo-realists. The forms of postcolonial literary expression were presumably derived from the creative logic of Portuguese literature, and constituted a continuation of the peculiar forms of neorealism in Portuguese poetry and prose.
This “centralised” vision of the birth of Lusophone literatures necessarily presupposes their synchronisation with metropolitan and global time, the syncronisation of the emergence of the literature in S. Tome and such movements as negritude and neo-realism. It was in those terms that the early researchers in the African “literatures of Portuguese expression” tried to conceptualise them, paying little attention to local idiosyncrasies and striving for conclusions that would put in the limelight the unity of the literary system in spite of the fragmentation of the colonial empire. Lusophone literature was to redeem the fiasco of the colonial project, providing a sort of post hoc justification to the Portuguese.
But in my opinion, there is quite a different question that should be raised in the first place. According to the optics issued from the early postcolonial studies as they were understood in Portugal, the literature of São Tomé was inscribed in a shallow, colonial/decolonial chronology.
One of the methodological problems that should be addressed on this occasion is the presupposition of the shallow time scale of this process of formation of the local literary culture. It is the usual point of view introduced by the postcolonial studies: we suppose that the literature of São Tomé is born with the decolonisation. The chronology of global literary studies is still dominated by the supposedly crucial importance of the colonial fact: first of all, the arrival of the Europeans regarded as the auroral moment introducing the seeds of new cultural reality, and then the sequence of decolonial emancipation, postcolonial becoming and literary flourishing. The persistent tendency of ignoring local deep time, and privileging the shallow time established by the colonization and its consequences constitutes an ever-present shadow of European symbolic dominance. This is why many people believe that formation of literary culture on São Tomé is a recent process.
Nonetheless, I believe that there is a possibility of introducing a correction here, and the chronology of emergence of the literary culture may be presented in a less Eurocentric way, delving deeper into the human reality of the archipelago and contemplating the relation between collective awareness and the emergence of literature rather than transplanting the birth of the literary system to the metropolis and its institutions such as Casa dos Estudantes do Império. The ethnic origin of the population inhabiting the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe is complex. There are several groups, such as the descendants of West African slaves, called Angolars, as well as the so-called Forros, descendants of the Portuguese and some privileged Africans, often independent slave traders. Each of these groups differs by its linguistic expression and collective memory, partially transmitted orally (mostly in the case of Angolars). Another group, that emerged during the colonial period are the so-called Tongas, the descendants of resettled workers brought by the Portuguese administration in order to foster profitable agriculture based on coffee and cocoa. Already during the colonial period, the dominant group of Creole forros, together with some Portuguese settlers, had the ambition of creating an autonomous literary culture expressing the character of the archipelago. It is here that Tenreiro could be included, with his criticism of the imported German piano that epitomizes the ambitions of this Creole class and resumes its aspirations of civilisation and progress. But his poetry is just one fragment of the puzzle.
In fact, what remains to be done is a meticulous reconstruction of multiple layers and chains of maritime events. The case of two archipelagos situated on the opposite sides of the African continent might be illustrative of how intricate and complex those maritime histories actually are. The colonial cycle of São Tomé and Príncipe starts in the second half of the fifteenth century. Following their exploration in the 1470s, the Portuguese decide that the islands in the Gulf of Guinea would be an excellent place for a slave emporium connected with African mainland. Later on, the colonial history of the islands, adapted for the intensive cultivation of coffee and cocoa, leads to the advent of a local Creole middle class that inherits the archipelago after the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1975. The archipelago seems to epitomize the shallow, yet almost perfectly synchronised time of the colonized world.
Arguably, this richness of writing and the awareness of local time depth must be seen as contrasting with apparently much more modest and shallow time scale of São Tomé and Príncipe. After all, at the moment of its discovery by the Portuguese sailors João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar in 1470-1471, the archipelago was uninhabited. Nonetheless, also in this case the dominant colonial history covers a plurality of origins and narrations of navigation, that do not coincide with Eurocentric perspective. The oldest literary patrimony of the islands is constituted by oral poems and narrations recording the origin of Angolars – the Africans who survived various catastrophes of slave trading ships. One of those narrations, recorded by Donald Burness, speaks of the Portuguese ship Misericórdia, sailing in 1532 from south Angola with a cargo of Umbundu slaves. As a consequence of their revolt, the Portuguese traders were put into a pinnace, while the main ship, adrift with sea currents, crushed on the Sete Pedras, dangerous rocky islets at the distance of 4.6 km off the south-east end of the Island of São Tomé. Other narrations vary, as far as the names of ships and the exact circumstances are concerned; the place, Sete Pedras, remains the same, probably due not only to its value as a symbol resuming various shipwrecking scenarios, but also due to geographic and hydrological conditions making the shipwrecks happen at the same spot over and over again. In any case, those maritime narrations create a consolidated vision of the origin of Angolar community, that maintains a recognizable identity till the present day (according to various estimations, it forms a minority of several thousand up to 30,000 people). The Angolars live a modest life in the margin of the dominant Forro group, the Creoles that are at least partially the biological descendants of the Portuguese and the successors of their rule on the archipelago. Nonetheless, Angolar villages and towns, such as Santa Cruz (Anguéné) in the southern part of São Tomé, with their own “kings”, remained autonomous till the second half of the nineteenth century, when they suffered pacification and were definitely submitted to the control of colonial administration. Be that as it may, it is fully legitimate to speak, in the case of the Angolars, about a continuity of time depth awareness, expressed in oral poetry that survived to our times and that is independent in relation to the dominant, colonial and Creole one. It is a poetry that creates a wider time perspective, since it preserves the memory of an origin and points at the African mainland as the root of Angolar identity. Such a poetry inscribes them in a time horizon that is larger than the colonial history and the circumstances of their coming to the archipelago.
Thus, even if S. Tome seems such a tiny reality, we should speak of a polycentric literary system in which various strands of tradition are interwoven. After the independence of the country, the integration of those diverse strands seems to take place. The tradition of sophisticated literacy is comparable to that of Cape Verde, another Atlantic Portuguese-speaking archipelago, also fostered by an ambitious Creole middle class, but it is the awareness of the multiplicity of origins that singles out, in my opinion, the contemporary poetry of S. Tome. In this place, I think about the lyrical poetry of Conceição Lima. At the beginning of the 21st century, she gives a critical, yet deeply personal, eminently feminine voice to the history of the islands.
Fragment of my paper read at the 14th International Conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature.
Tartu, 1.11.2021.
The archipelago is small, but covered with a luxurious vegetation. This is why it could have a very prosperous future in the colonial period thanks to advantageous culture of coffee and cocoa. It does not have an ancient history, just a colonial history, since the islands were uninhabited till the arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century.
This is why, apparently, the literature of S. Tome is very easy to present, because it is so small and presumably so short. Already when I was a student at the University of Lisbon in the 1990s, there were supposed to be a very clear and very consistent sort of narration concerning the birth of the literature of S. Tome. At the time, the great novelty was a discipline called “Literaturas de expressão portuguesa”- The literatures of Portuguese expression, based on a specific reception of postcolonial studies in Portugal – I say specific reception, because the Portuguese culture was still in a deep identity crisis after the loss of its colonial empire in 1975 and its recent reorientation and re-inscription in the European framework; in 1986 Portugal entered the European Economic Community as one of smaller and weaker countries; this is why there was quite a pungent sensation of loss of status as it was no longer a great colonial empire, and this fact had a impact on the vision of emergent Lusophone literatures as they were conceptualised in Lisbon.
According to this narration, the first poet of S. Tome was Francisco José Tenreiro (1921-1966), and the foundational text of this new literary system was his volume of poetry Ilha do Nome Santo that appeared in 1942. In his poetry, Tenreiro criticized the local Creole society that appreciated, in an exaggerated way, the things brought from Europe, such as a German piano of which he speaks about in one of his poems, a piano that is useless in the local conditions, because it constantly gets out of tune in the hot and humid climate. From the beginning of the 1950s. the lyrical expression of Tenreiro became the fullest Portuguese-speaking expression of negritude. This association between Tenreiro and such writers as Senghor and Césaire was conceptualised by the metropolitan critics such as Mário de Andrade, Alfredo Margarido and Salvato Trigo in the 1950., 1960. i 1970. Nonetheless, most probably Tenreiro never read Césaire and the coincidence of his poetry with the global negritude movement had only an intuitive character.
On the other hand, there was also a presupposition that all those local literary systems of various Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa emerged essentially in Lisbon. Each of them did not arise locally, on the contrary, they were inscribed in a larger reality of the Portuguese colonial empire. This often repeated scholarly narration concerning the emergence of Lusophone African literatures accentuated the importance of a single institution, Casa dos Estudantes do Império in Lisbon (1944-1965). The essential aim of this institution, created by the Salazarian regime, was to control the students coming from various parts of the Portuguese colonial empire. In reality, it contributed, quite to the contrary, to the dissemination of decolonial ideas, i.e. the political and social ideas concerning the decolonizing process. This left-wing ideology also implied certain paradigms of literary expression that should accompany those processes – basically the so called neo-realism, considered as a Portuguese version of social realism that became something different in the Soviet Union; but the influence came explicitly from the Eastern Block. Those ideas were essentially shared between the left-wing Portuguese, i.e. the opposition against the Salazar regime in the colonial metropolis, and the African intellectuals that were strongly under their influence, sort of catechumens of that left-wing thought. This explains why the poetical volume of Tenreiro was published in the famous series “Novo Cancioneiro” together with the Portuguese metropolitan neo-realists. The forms of postcolonial literary expression were presumably derived from the creative logic of Portuguese literature, and constituted a continuation of the peculiar forms of neorealism in Portuguese poetry and prose.
This “centralised” vision of the birth of Lusophone literatures necessarily presupposes their synchronisation with metropolitan and global time, the syncronisation of the emergence of the literature in S. Tome and such movements as negritude and neo-realism. It was in those terms that the early researchers in the African “literatures of Portuguese expression” tried to conceptualise them, paying little attention to local idiosyncrasies and striving for conclusions that would put in the limelight the unity of the literary system in spite of the fragmentation of the colonial empire. Lusophone literature was to redeem the fiasco of the colonial project, providing a sort of post hoc justification to the Portuguese.
But in my opinion, there is quite a different question that should be raised in the first place. According to the optics issued from the early postcolonial studies as they were understood in Portugal, the literature of São Tomé was inscribed in a shallow, colonial/decolonial chronology.
One of the methodological problems that should be addressed on this occasion is the presupposition of the shallow time scale of this process of formation of the local literary culture. It is the usual point of view introduced by the postcolonial studies: we suppose that the literature of São Tomé is born with the decolonisation. The chronology of global literary studies is still dominated by the supposedly crucial importance of the colonial fact: first of all, the arrival of the Europeans regarded as the auroral moment introducing the seeds of new cultural reality, and then the sequence of decolonial emancipation, postcolonial becoming and literary flourishing. The persistent tendency of ignoring local deep time, and privileging the shallow time established by the colonization and its consequences constitutes an ever-present shadow of European symbolic dominance. This is why many people believe that formation of literary culture on São Tomé is a recent process.
Nonetheless, I believe that there is a possibility of introducing a correction here, and the chronology of emergence of the literary culture may be presented in a less Eurocentric way, delving deeper into the human reality of the archipelago and contemplating the relation between collective awareness and the emergence of literature rather than transplanting the birth of the literary system to the metropolis and its institutions such as Casa dos Estudantes do Império. The ethnic origin of the population inhabiting the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe is complex. There are several groups, such as the descendants of West African slaves, called Angolars, as well as the so-called Forros, descendants of the Portuguese and some privileged Africans, often independent slave traders. Each of these groups differs by its linguistic expression and collective memory, partially transmitted orally (mostly in the case of Angolars). Another group, that emerged during the colonial period are the so-called Tongas, the descendants of resettled workers brought by the Portuguese administration in order to foster profitable agriculture based on coffee and cocoa. Already during the colonial period, the dominant group of Creole forros, together with some Portuguese settlers, had the ambition of creating an autonomous literary culture expressing the character of the archipelago. It is here that Tenreiro could be included, with his criticism of the imported German piano that epitomizes the ambitions of this Creole class and resumes its aspirations of civilisation and progress. But his poetry is just one fragment of the puzzle.
In fact, what remains to be done is a meticulous reconstruction of multiple layers and chains of maritime events. The case of two archipelagos situated on the opposite sides of the African continent might be illustrative of how intricate and complex those maritime histories actually are. The colonial cycle of São Tomé and Príncipe starts in the second half of the fifteenth century. Following their exploration in the 1470s, the Portuguese decide that the islands in the Gulf of Guinea would be an excellent place for a slave emporium connected with African mainland. Later on, the colonial history of the islands, adapted for the intensive cultivation of coffee and cocoa, leads to the advent of a local Creole middle class that inherits the archipelago after the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1975. The archipelago seems to epitomize the shallow, yet almost perfectly synchronised time of the colonized world.
Arguably, this richness of writing and the awareness of local time depth must be seen as contrasting with apparently much more modest and shallow time scale of São Tomé and Príncipe. After all, at the moment of its discovery by the Portuguese sailors João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar in 1470-1471, the archipelago was uninhabited. Nonetheless, also in this case the dominant colonial history covers a plurality of origins and narrations of navigation, that do not coincide with Eurocentric perspective. The oldest literary patrimony of the islands is constituted by oral poems and narrations recording the origin of Angolars – the Africans who survived various catastrophes of slave trading ships. One of those narrations, recorded by Donald Burness, speaks of the Portuguese ship Misericórdia, sailing in 1532 from south Angola with a cargo of Umbundu slaves. As a consequence of their revolt, the Portuguese traders were put into a pinnace, while the main ship, adrift with sea currents, crushed on the Sete Pedras, dangerous rocky islets at the distance of 4.6 km off the south-east end of the Island of São Tomé. Other narrations vary, as far as the names of ships and the exact circumstances are concerned; the place, Sete Pedras, remains the same, probably due not only to its value as a symbol resuming various shipwrecking scenarios, but also due to geographic and hydrological conditions making the shipwrecks happen at the same spot over and over again. In any case, those maritime narrations create a consolidated vision of the origin of Angolar community, that maintains a recognizable identity till the present day (according to various estimations, it forms a minority of several thousand up to 30,000 people). The Angolars live a modest life in the margin of the dominant Forro group, the Creoles that are at least partially the biological descendants of the Portuguese and the successors of their rule on the archipelago. Nonetheless, Angolar villages and towns, such as Santa Cruz (Anguéné) in the southern part of São Tomé, with their own “kings”, remained autonomous till the second half of the nineteenth century, when they suffered pacification and were definitely submitted to the control of colonial administration. Be that as it may, it is fully legitimate to speak, in the case of the Angolars, about a continuity of time depth awareness, expressed in oral poetry that survived to our times and that is independent in relation to the dominant, colonial and Creole one. It is a poetry that creates a wider time perspective, since it preserves the memory of an origin and points at the African mainland as the root of Angolar identity. Such a poetry inscribes them in a time horizon that is larger than the colonial history and the circumstances of their coming to the archipelago.
Thus, even if S. Tome seems such a tiny reality, we should speak of a polycentric literary system in which various strands of tradition are interwoven. After the independence of the country, the integration of those diverse strands seems to take place. The tradition of sophisticated literacy is comparable to that of Cape Verde, another Atlantic Portuguese-speaking archipelago, also fostered by an ambitious Creole middle class, but it is the awareness of the multiplicity of origins that singles out, in my opinion, the contemporary poetry of S. Tome. In this place, I think about the lyrical poetry of Conceição Lima. At the beginning of the 21st century, she gives a critical, yet deeply personal, eminently feminine voice to the history of the islands.
Fragment of my paper read at the 14th International Conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature.
Tartu, 1.11.2021.
anti-epopeia
Do recanto do Atlântico, a voz poética de Conceição Lima traça mais uma “Anti-epopeia”, parte da coletânea A dolorosa raiz do micondó:
Aquele que na rotação dos astros
e no oráculo dos sábios
buscou de sua lei e mandamento
a razão, a anuência, o fundamento
(...)
Aquele a quem a voz da tribo ungiu
chamou rei, de poderes investiu
Por panos, por espelhos, por missangas
por ganância, avidez, bugigangas
as portes da corte abriu
de povo seu reino exauriu (p. 20).
Neste regresso ao tom épico, distante, pela sua seriedade, do projeto essencialmente irónico de Gonçalo M. Tavares, a poetisa de São Tomé estabelece um novo campo de renegociação que já se diferencia do tipicamente pós-colonial. É um retorno crítico à questão da participação africana no comércio escravagista promovido pelos europeus, já que a figura mencionada no poema poderia ser identificada, por exemplo, com o Mansa de Kaabú, o maior fornecedor dos escravos nas feitorias portuguesas da África ocidental. O poema soa como um eco de Sá de Miranda que no século XVI criticava as opções comerciais e expansionistas tomadas pelos portugueses na carta poética dirigida “A António Pereira, senhor de Basto”:
(…) temo-me de Lisboa
Que ao cheiro desta canela
O reino nos despovoa.
O duplo despovoamento, o causado pelo impulso expansionista e o do comércio negreiro devastador, certamente não pode ser reduzido ao denominador comum em termos vivenciais; não formou destinos paralelos. No entanto, forma uma horizontalidade do retorno não a um passado histórico – em que a distribuição dos papeis entre os comerciantes e os que foram reduzidos ao objeto da troca comercial não se pode equiparar –, mas sim à esfera simbólica que admite intertextualidades cruzadas e permite situa-las em plano de igualdade.
No livro mais recente, O país de Akendenguê, a dicção poética de Conceição Lima ficou mais condensada, elíptica, como se afirmasse a sua vocação para o silêncio. Em “Erosão”, este é o termo de todos os impérios:
Como o silêncio corrói as pedras da fortaleza
assim o sussurro infiltra as paredes
e adensa os semblantes (p. 54).
Também é o termo da “Circum-navegação”, em que o momento do regresso dos barcos é apenas celebrado pelo silenciamento de todas as coisas:
Adormecem os grilos.
Uma criança escuta a concavidade de um búzio (p. 106).
No ruído branco do interior desse búzio poder-se-ia escutar o mutismo final do império, carregado de vozes silenciadas, que já não encontraram a sua expressão na lusofonia, “um legado / de híbridas palavras” deixado nas ilhas, que Conceição Lima menciona em “Afroinsularidade” (p. 39). Ao mesmo tempo, abre-se um novo campo da palavra para a busca duma expressão “horizontal”, sem diferenciar o estatuto dos participantes da mesma maneira que os estatutos foram diferenciados na História e continuam diferenciados no porvir económico e político.
Fragment of my article published in the Brazilian review Scripta, 2020.
Aquele que na rotação dos astros
e no oráculo dos sábios
buscou de sua lei e mandamento
a razão, a anuência, o fundamento
(...)
Aquele a quem a voz da tribo ungiu
chamou rei, de poderes investiu
Por panos, por espelhos, por missangas
por ganância, avidez, bugigangas
as portes da corte abriu
de povo seu reino exauriu (p. 20).
Neste regresso ao tom épico, distante, pela sua seriedade, do projeto essencialmente irónico de Gonçalo M. Tavares, a poetisa de São Tomé estabelece um novo campo de renegociação que já se diferencia do tipicamente pós-colonial. É um retorno crítico à questão da participação africana no comércio escravagista promovido pelos europeus, já que a figura mencionada no poema poderia ser identificada, por exemplo, com o Mansa de Kaabú, o maior fornecedor dos escravos nas feitorias portuguesas da África ocidental. O poema soa como um eco de Sá de Miranda que no século XVI criticava as opções comerciais e expansionistas tomadas pelos portugueses na carta poética dirigida “A António Pereira, senhor de Basto”:
(…) temo-me de Lisboa
Que ao cheiro desta canela
O reino nos despovoa.
O duplo despovoamento, o causado pelo impulso expansionista e o do comércio negreiro devastador, certamente não pode ser reduzido ao denominador comum em termos vivenciais; não formou destinos paralelos. No entanto, forma uma horizontalidade do retorno não a um passado histórico – em que a distribuição dos papeis entre os comerciantes e os que foram reduzidos ao objeto da troca comercial não se pode equiparar –, mas sim à esfera simbólica que admite intertextualidades cruzadas e permite situa-las em plano de igualdade.
No livro mais recente, O país de Akendenguê, a dicção poética de Conceição Lima ficou mais condensada, elíptica, como se afirmasse a sua vocação para o silêncio. Em “Erosão”, este é o termo de todos os impérios:
Como o silêncio corrói as pedras da fortaleza
assim o sussurro infiltra as paredes
e adensa os semblantes (p. 54).
Também é o termo da “Circum-navegação”, em que o momento do regresso dos barcos é apenas celebrado pelo silenciamento de todas as coisas:
Adormecem os grilos.
Uma criança escuta a concavidade de um búzio (p. 106).
No ruído branco do interior desse búzio poder-se-ia escutar o mutismo final do império, carregado de vozes silenciadas, que já não encontraram a sua expressão na lusofonia, “um legado / de híbridas palavras” deixado nas ilhas, que Conceição Lima menciona em “Afroinsularidade” (p. 39). Ao mesmo tempo, abre-se um novo campo da palavra para a busca duma expressão “horizontal”, sem diferenciar o estatuto dos participantes da mesma maneira que os estatutos foram diferenciados na História e continuam diferenciados no porvir económico e político.
Fragment of my article published in the Brazilian review Scripta, 2020.
