Abstract

This seminar proposes to draft a transnational approach to the so-called African Literatures, considering some of the central questions that guide the critical-theoretical debate within Indian Ocean Studies, facing the Indian Ocean as a comparative and, simultaneously, alternative paradigm to read and situate the literary and cultural proposals that illustrate and fall in what Devleena Ghosh and Stephen Muecke call “transnational imaginative geographies” (2007). Observing the literary proposals of some contemporary authors whose writings summon the symbolic, cultural and geographical space of the Indian Ocean, standout a set of possible counterpoints whose operationalization delivers the attainment of new relationships between contexts and representations, providing the redefinition of issues and epistemologies through which contemporary literary writings are read and located and, thus, introducing the Indian Ocean as a “new paradigm for a transnationalism of the Global South concerning cultural and literary relations”(Hofmeyr, 2007).

Ghosh, Devleena & Muecke, Stephen (eds.) (2007), Cultures of Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Hofmeyr, Isabel (2007), “The Black Atlantic meets The Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms for transnationalism for the Global South. Literary and Cultural Perspectives”, Social Dynamics. A Journal of African Studies, 33 (2), pp. 3-32.

Bio note

Elena Brugioni  holds a PhD in African Literatures of Portuguese Language and is a Researcher at the Centre for Humanistic Studies of the University of Minho (CEHUM). Brugioni’s research interests focus on African Literatures, Indian Ocean Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Since 2010 she is developing the Post-graduate research project “Provincianizando o Cânone. O questionamento das ‘grandes narrativas’ europeias em literaturas homoglotas” [SFRH/BPD/62885/2009]  [Provincializing the Canon. Questioning the 'great European narratives’ in homoglate literatures] funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Human Potential Operational Programme and European Social Fund). She is a member of  GAPS  [Arts, Gender & Postcolonial Studies Research Group] of the Humanistic Studies Centre and professor in the Doctoral Programme in Comparative Modernities (CEHUM/ILCH) of the University of Minho. Among her published works are Mia Couto. Representação, História(s) e Pós-colonialidade  [Mia Couto. Representation, History(s) and Post-coloniality] (Húmus-CEHUM, 2012) and the co-organization of the anthologies: Itinerâncias. Percursos e Representações da Pós-colonialidade [Journeys. Pathways and Representations of Post-coloniality] (Húmus - CEHUM, 2012), Áfricas Contemporâneas [Contemporary Africas] (Húmus - CEHUM, 2010) and the thematic dossier Narrando o Índico [Narrating the Indian], of the journal  Diacrítica-Literatura 27-3 (Húmus-CEHUM, 2013).