Ana Luísa De Oliveira Gonçalves Pires Presente, Imaginação E Memória

Universidade de Aveiro Departamento de Línguas e Culturas 2010 Ana Luísa de Oliveira Presente, imaginação e memória em Zakes Mda e Gonçalves Pires Mia Couto Present, imagination and memory in Zakes Mda and Mia Couto Universidade de Aveiro Departamento de Línguas e Culturas 2010 Ana Luísa de Oliveira Presente, imaginação e memória em Zakes Mda e Gonçalves Pires Mia Couto Present, imagination and memory in Zakes Mda and Mia Couto Dissertação apresentada à Universidade de Aveiro para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Literatura, realizada sob a orientação científica do Doutor Kenneth David Callahan, Professor Associado do Departamento de Línguas e Culturas da Universidade de Aveiro O júri Presidente Doutor João de Lemos Pinto Professor Catedrático da Universidade de Aveiro Doutora Luísa Maria Rodrigues Flora Professor Associada da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa Doutora Maria Aline Salgueiro de Seabra Ferreira Professora Associada da Universidade de Aveiro Doutor Kenneth David Callahan Professor Associado da Universidade de Aveiro (Orientador) Doutor Bernardo Guido de Vasconcelos Professor Auxiliar do Centro de Competências de Artes e Humanidades da Universidade da Madeira Doutora Elena Brugioni Investigadora Pós-Doutoramento do Centro de Estudos Humanísticos da Universidade do Minho Agradecimentos Em primeiro lugar, gostaria de agradecer ao meu orientador, Professor David Callahan, pelos seus conselhos, apoio e entusiasmo. Agradeço também de forma calorosa o encorajamento,carinho e compreensão transmitidos de forma incondicional pelos meus pais, Adélia e Diamantino. Não poderia deixar de agradecer as palavras de motivação transmitidas por amigos, colegas e familiares que pacientemente me acompanharam neste desafio. Finalmente, agradeço ao Instituto Politécnico de Leiria o apoio concedido através do Programa de Qualificação do Corpo Docente. Palavras-chave Zakes Mda, Mia Couto, literatura Africana pós-colonial contemporânea, história, memória, cultura, identidade. Resumo Apesar de marcadas por contextos históricos e culturais distintos, é possível observar nas obras de dois dos autores mais significativos da África do Sul e de Moçambique, Zakes Mda e Mia Couto respectivamente, perspectivas semelhantes no que diz respeito à recuperação das memórias histórico- culturais e à sua contribuição para a construção e compreensão das identidades pós-coloniais. Através da ficção, Zakes Mda e Mia Couto combinam a ligação da História a factos concretos com a necessidade de revelação associada à memória, criando assim espaços importantes para a discussão de algumas das mais complexas questões colocadas às identidades pós-coloniais. Para além dos contextos políticos, culturais e históricos que caracterizam e distinguem as literaturas sul-africana e moçambicana, tanto Zakes Mda como Mia Couto assumem nas suas obras a necessidade de analisar as identidades pós-coloniais contemporâneas dos dois países através da recuperação das suas memórias históricas. Keywords Zakes Mda, Mia Couto, contemporary African postcolonial literature, history, memory, culture, identity. Abstract In spite of the specificities pertaining to South African and Mozambican history and culture, in the novels of two of the most significant literary representatives of those Southern African nations, Zakes Mda and Mia Couto respectively, it is possible to observe similar perspectives regarding the recovery of cultural memories and histories and their contribution toward the construction, development and understanding of postcolonial identities. Through fiction, Zakes Mda and Mia Couto combine history’s concern with concrete facts and memory’s attachment to disclosure, opening important spaces to debate some of the most complex questions posed to African postcolonial identities. Beyond the distinctive political, cultural and historical contexts that have shaped South African and Mozambican literatures, both Zakes Mda and Mia Couto assume in their novels the need to examine contemporary South African and Mozambican postcolonial identities by resorting to the reclamation of their historical memories. ÍNDICE 1- Introduction 1 2- Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying 49 3- Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness 101 4- Mia Couto’s O Outro Pé da Sereia 161 5- Conclusion 225 Bibliography 235 Chapter 1 Introduction Presente e memória, esse lugar onde também a história se inscreve e permanentemente se (re)faz (…), a condição pós-colonial vive exactamente de um novo modo de se entender o passado e o presente, olhando-os de um modo alternativo, numa revisitação, porventura, incómoda – e, por isso mesmo, tanto mais necessária – de um imaginário assente em circunstâncias materiais concretas, mas que os regimes discursivos também ajudaram a construir. Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Portugal não é um país pequeno , 2006 The conquest and subjugation of African regions and peoples occurred through military action, supported and justified by the circulation of varying types of texts. Penetrating into spaces previously unknown to the Western world, Europeans travelling and exploring the African continent from the fifteenth century recorded through writing the strangeness occasioned by the uncharted territories they came across.1 Manifest in these early writings on 1 This feeling of strangeness ascribed to the African continent persists in contemporary times, even though it may be revealed under completely different guises. In “A ‘Real’ Sci-Fi Flick in Africa?” Oghenetoja Okoh argues that the manner in which Africa and Africans alike are portrayed in Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 hit film District 9 , whose science-fiction action takes place in Johannesburg in the year 2010, continues to betray a colonialist type of perspective: “ The parallels between the Western sci-fi imagination and colonialism are noticeable. Much like astronauts are often portrayed as brave soldiers who leave their home for the deep unknown, Africa has been the darkness into which many intrepid colonial sailors have leapt. The aliens are usually gruesome ( Aliens ), war-like ( Predator ), and individuality is presented as a sacrifice for conformity (the Borg in the Star Trek series)”. Even though Blomkamp’s film has been praised for inserting Africa into mainstream sci-fi discourse, allowing a wider discussion of meaningful sociological issues pertaining to the African continent, its negative and uniform depiction of the Nigerians as engaged in ritual cannibalism, prostitution, crime and traffic has caused a great sense of unease, as it seems to perpetuate colonial ideas about Africa and 1 Africa is a compulsive effort to catalogue the unfamiliar natural and human features encountered, in what is an attempt to interpret those features according to Western conventions, thereby producing a sense of control over them. Examining the connections between early Portuguese writings on Africa and the Portuguese expansionist project in Moorings: Portuguese Expansion and the Writing of Africa , Josiah Blackmore discerns this kind of interpretative, yet controlling potential as extremely common in early texts: writers on Africa make observations on geography, the customs and skin color of natives, and the new natural and human worlds that nautical travel reveals. These observations seek to taxonomize – and therefore contain and control – the spaces and peoples of Africa. The Western observer shapes the world and its inhabitants and infixes them into a schema of observation and knowledge (…) (73). Presumptuously assuming the new African lands as “ terra incognita , as worlds without names, waiting like Eden for words and history to envelop them” (243), as Andrew Smith indicates in “Migrancy, hybridity, and postcolonial literary studies”, this obsession with the description, classification and naming of unfamiliar features so common in official European records limits the recognition of any existent historical, social, and/or cultural contexts in those foreign territories. 2 This European enterprise of mapping and naming foreign Africans: “Unfortunately, this sci-fi flick carried with it the same unimaginative, othering gaze Western media production reserves for primitive, carnal Africa”. 2 This arrogant attitude is perceived by Padre Manuel Antunes in the historical narrative of Mia Couto’s O Outro Pé da Sereia when he reads the official documents describing the journeys, territories and inhabitants across the Eastern coast of Africa: Foi lendo as oficiais escrituras e dando conta dos nomes da viagem e do seu destino. Chamavam de Torna-Viagem a este percurso da Índia para Portugal. E chamavam de Contra-Costa ao Oriente de África. Tudo fora nomeado como se o mundo fosse uma lua: de um só lado visível, de uma só face reconhecível. E os habitantes do mundo oculto nem o original nome de “gentios” mantinham. Designavam-se agora de “cafres”. A palavra fora 2 territories was not restricted to geographic contexts, but encompassed already central political and cultural aspects of the colonialist project as well. A powerful means of asserting European superiority, these written records constitute for many critics one of the earliest exercises of colonial power. European (textual) authority over African territories evidenced by these accounts opened the way and was used as justification for the ensuing physical conquest of those territories, as Smith outlines: it was in and through travel writings and other forms of literature that Europeans learned to think of themselves as fundamentally different from the rest of the world.

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