Mia Couto: Representation and subalternity in Women of Ashes

Authors

  • José Paulo Cruz Pereira Universidade do Algarve

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37508/rcl.2021.n45a426

Keywords:

Representation, Subalternity, Heterogeneity, suspension, neuter, to bear witness

Abstract

My reading focus on: a) the representation of subalternity in Women of Ashes; b) the semantic, as well as political and ethical implications of the complex process of the narrator’s voice and name – the narrative voice that crosses the entire plot that intersects all the three different novels of The Sands of the Emperor. It starts, for that purpose, by pondering the twofold meaning of ‘representation’, in Can the Subaltern Speak?, by Gayatri C. Spivak, examining: a) the intersection of both Karl Marx’s 18th of Brumair of Louis Bonaparte and Antonio Gramsci’s The Southern Question, in her description of the concept of the subaltern; b) the way it is possible to project the characteristic features of the subaltern as an excluded subject in Women of Ashes. It performs this by uncovering both the instance of the neuter as Blanchot defines it – in L’entretien infinit – and the instance of singularity, as Spivak also unfolds it, in An Aesthetic Eductation in the Era of Globalization – reading them in one of the fables with which Mia Couto allegorizes them.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

José Paulo Cruz Pereira, Universidade do Algarve

José Paulo Cruz Pereira nasceu na Ilha de Moçambique. Licenciou-se em Línguas e Literaturas Modernas pela Universidade Clássica de Lisboa, onde defendeu, em 1996, uma tese de Mestrado em Literatura Comparada, mais tarde publicada com o título Uma Cartografia transtornada: a Guernica de Carlos de Oliveira. Doutorou-se em 2004, também em Literatura Comparada, pela Universidade do Algarve, onde leciona as disciplinas de Literaturas Estrangeiras de Língua Portuguesa II e Comunicação na Contemporaneidade e tem ensinado em diversos mestrados – nas áreas dos Estudos Pós-coloniais e dos Estudos Culturais, as quais investiga, como membro do grupo 7 do Centro de Literaturas e Culturas Lusófonas e Europeias.

References

BARTHES, Roland. Le neutre – cours au Collège de France (1997-1978). Paris: Seuil, 2002.

BLANCHOT, Maurice. La voix narrative (le ‘il’, le neuter). L’entretien infinit. Paris: Gallimard, 1969a, pp. 556-567.

BLANCHOT, Maurice. René Char et la pensée du neutre. L’entretien infinit. Paris: Gallimard, 1969b, pp. 439-450.

COUTO, Mia. Mulheres de Cinza. Lisboa: Caminho, 2015.

COUTO, Mia. A Espada e a Azagaia. Lisboa: Caminho, 2016.

COUTO, Mia. O Bebedor de Horizontes. Lisboa: Caminho, 2017.

DERRIDA, Jacques. La double séance. Dissémination. Paris: Seuil, 1972.

DERRIDA, Jacques. Poétique et politique du témoignage. Paris: L’Hèrne, 2005.

DERRIDA, Jacques. La violence de la lettre: de Lévi-Strauss à Rousseau. De la grammatologie. Paris: Minuit, 1967, pp. 149-202.

GIL, José. Caos e Ritmo. Lisboa: Relógio d’Água, 2018.

GRAMSCI, A. Quaderni del carcere. Torino: Eunaudi, 1975.

LIGUORI, Guido. Subalterno e subalterni nei “Quaderni del carcere”. International Gramsci Journal, 2(1), 2016, 89-125. Acessível em: https://ro.uow.edu.au/gramsci/vol2/iss1/24/

LYOTARD, Jean-François. Le différend. Paris: Minuit, 1983.

MARX, Karl. O 18 do Brumário de Louis Bonaparte. Trad. de José Barata-Moura e Eduardo Chitas. In Obras Escolhidas I. Lisboa: Edições Avante, 2008, pp. 430-534. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1522/030145289

SPIVAK, Gayatri C. Quem Reivindica a Alteridade? Trad. de Patricia Silveira de Farias. In HOLLANDA, Heloísa Buarque de. Tendências e Impasses: o feminismo como crítica da cultura. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1994, pp. 187-205.

SPIVAK, Gayatri C. Mapping the present: interview with Gayatri Spivak. New Formations - 45: The Rendez-vous of Conquest (Winter), 2001, pp. 9-23.

SPIVAK, Gayatri C. Can the Subaltern Speak? In MORRIS, Rosalind C. (ed.) Can the Subaltern Speak? –Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia UP, 2010, pp. 21-78.

SPIVAK, Gayatri C. Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular. Na Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge / Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2013, pp. 429-442. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n1bsfh.24

Downloads

Published

2021-06-30

How to Cite

Cruz Pereira, J. P. (2021). Mia Couto: Representation and subalternity in Women of Ashes. Converência Lusíada, 32(45), 32–63. https://doi.org/10.37508/rcl.2021.n45a426

Issue

Vol. 32 No. 45 (2021): Family Structures and Subalternities

Section

DOSSIER

License

Authors who publish in Convergência Lusíada agree with the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Licença Creative Commons
Revista Convergência Lusíada is licensed under a Creative Commons - Atribuição-NãoComercial 4.0 Internacional.