Transcultural Bodies: a Comparative Approach to Dissident ‘Minor’ Women’s Writings in Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish by Joana de Medeiros Mota Pimentel A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Mediations - Literary Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2018 Joana de Medeiros Mota Pimentel Abstract Postcolonial criticism has been academically defined by an over-reliance on Anglophone texts creating a new type of dominant discourse under which other postcolonial contexts get subsumed. This dissertation is a comparative study of transcultural literary works written by women in Portugal, Spain, and Italy as well as these countries’ former African colonies Mozambique, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Somalia. It brings into conversation Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Italophone texts by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, Isabela Figueiredo, Dulce Maria Cardoso, Paulina Chiziane, Igiaba Scego, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Guillermina Mekuy, and María Nsue Angüe in order to highlight their shared preoccupations with breaching national myths, countering stereotypes, and historical redress. In other words, the aim of my project is to show how these texts contest Eurocentric national representations and propose new ways of belonging, insisting on the plurilingual and multifaceted realities of a world increasingly shaped by migration and diaspora. I use a postcolonial lens in my commitment to dismantling imperial narratives but I also shed light on it by drawing attention to the ‘minority’ status of these less canonical literatures and the silenced voices they bring to light. I follow the ‘minor’ transnational model of Lionnet and Shih to illustrate the productivity and creativity of horizontal transcolonial perspectives. My first approach to demonstrating the common dissident nature of these texts focuses on language. I outline how the writers use particular language-related strategies to resist and decolonize different regimes of authority and carve out rebellious forms of agency and subjectivity. Beyond language, I move on to explain how texts negotiate cultural difference through the category of the ‘racialized’ body marked by gender, race, and social status, specifically analyzing how signifiers of ‘otherness’ such as hair and skin colour both inform and disrupt lingering imperial narratives. Thirdly, by drawing on social history’s attention to common people’s voices, I look at these texts as repositories of national and transnational memory and present their contribution to rewriting historical representations of the South, which refers both to Africa and to the peripheral position of Southern Europe in the West. !ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Catherine Khordoc, for the excellent guidance throughout this journey. I am particularly grateful for her continual confidence in me and in my project, for the thoughtful, inspiring and timely feedback, and for always, always, checking in. I am very thankful to my committee members: Christine Duff, for reading drafts of my chapters, for her thought-provoking insights and questions, and for always welcoming me with a smile; and Sarah Casteel, for the kind words of encouragement, and for the pertinent suggestions and references which offered me new angles to look at postcolonial and memory studies. I am also grateful for the generous and enthusiastic comments of Ana Paula Ferreira, and Pius Adesanmi during my defence. A word of appreciation goes out to professors Mark Phillips, Paul Theberge, Ming Tiampo, Mitchell Frank, and fellow ICSLAC students for the spontaneous corridor conversations that helped me find my sparkle again and again over the years. To Dawn, for the morning coffee and the needed hug. To Tammy, for her support and kindness during the final stages of assembling my examination board and handing in my examination copy. To the best cohort of colleagues and friends, whose friendship I will forever cherish: my dear Lisa, for being there from the first to the last day, and for standing beside me through thick and thin; Jenna, Rachel, David, for creating welcoming spaces to write and think together, including our legendary writing retreats; Johnny, and Pauline, for their positivity and encouragement. To friends and professors scattered around the world, too many to name, who helped me find this transnational project. I am particularly thankful to Carlos Mendes de Sousa, Elena Brugioni, Stefano Colangelo, Burghard Baltrush, Ana Bela Almeida, Manus O’Dwyer, Aina Cabra-Riart, Manuela Vitolo, and Ricardo Brites. I am also indebted to the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia for their generous scholarship (SFRH/BD/76723/2011) and to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for funding my degree. Finally, I would like to thank my family for believing in me on all fronts. Till, not only for always being there for me but also for all the challenging questions about my research raised over the dinner table. Tiago and Thomas, for brightening my days and making me smile, for the privilege of being their mother. My parents, Graça and João, for their ever-present love, pride, and support; my grandparents, avó Céu, avô Daniel, whom I always carry dearly in my heart; avó Joana, who proudly (still) sees it all. Rita, with whom I wrote a dissertation together, daily, despite the thousands of kilometres between Ottawa and Lisbon, and between Math and Literature. Ana and Sílvia, for the continuous words of encouragement and the silly morning jokes. My other family: Renate, Horst, and Jan, for their relentless support and for taking my place when I had to go away to write. A todas e todos, muito obrigada! !iii Table of Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………… ii Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………… iii Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………………… iv Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….…. 1 Chapter 1: Framing the ‘Minor’ in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian ……………………… 16 Chapter 2: Am I What I Speak? Language as a Site of Identity Claim ……………………. 49 Chapter 3: Nation and Citizenship: from Migrant Object to Transnational Subject ……… 107 Chapter 4: A Different Story: Rewriting History, Rewriting the South ….……………….. 152 Conclusion …………………………..……………………………………………………. 206 Works Cited …………………………………………………………….………………… 213 !iv Introduction The broader field of postcolonial literary studies has much to gain in turning to ‘minor’ contexts where languages other than English or French are used. Although fundamental in foregrounding key debates related to power inequalities, racial discrimination, imperial dynamics, “the act of writing back, the appropriation and abrogation of language, the patterns of hyphenation and hybridization of cultural identity, and the question of race and ethnicity as connected to citizenship and belonging” (Ponzanesi, “The Postcolonial” 60), the definitions of the field offered by its foundational texts (Ashcroft et al., Said, Bhabha, Spivak, among others) overlook aspects of colonial relationships and postcolonial rhetoric that distinguish the Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Italophone contexts.1 At the same time, comparative exercises across these ‘minoritized’ postcolonial experiences can also illuminate each other in productive and self-reflexive ways. In Portugal, Spain, and Italy, discourses of national identity and belonging are embedded in benevolent legends that hinder fair assessments of the colonial past and the postcolonial present and future. Notions such as that of italiani brava gente [Italians great people], Portugal as a country of brandos costumes [affable manners], and Spain as the root of a fraternity called hispanidad [Hispanicity] tend to ignore power dynamics and superiority/inferiority complexes inherited from colonial history, the prolonged reign of fascist regimes and Southern Europe’s contemporary peripheral position. The narratives of transnational women writers are countering this alleged homogeneity by exposing creative ways of belonging in and through language, newer and 1 Despite acknowledging that their currency is not always neutral, I am, at least for now, addressing “lusofonia como o espaço cultural dos falantes de português” [lusophony as the cultural space of Portuguese-speaking peoples] (par. 6), following Onésimo Teotónio de Almeida’s suggestion (2015), and transposing this definition to the Spanish- and Italian-speaking contexts. I will come back to this during my discussion. !1 broader definitions of citizenship and homeland, and disruptive representations of both Africa and Europe. This dissertation is a comparative study of transcultural2 works of literature written by women in (or in-between) Portugal, Spain, or Italy, and some of these countries’ former colonies in Africa, particularly Mozambique, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Somalia, and originally produced by Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian publishing industries. The works and life stories of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, Isabela Figueiredo, Dulce Maria Cardoso, Paulina Chiziane, Igiaba Scego, Cristina Ali Farah, Guillermina Mekuy, and María Nsue Angüe are shaped, one way or another, by Lusophone, Hispanophone, or Italophone colonial histories in the African continent. Their texts demonstrate, firstly, the growing heteroglossia and pluriculturality emerging from the fringes of the postcolonial, migrant, diasporic, and increasingly globalized Portuguese-, Spanish-, and Italian-speaking worlds. Secondly, they challenge lingering