Orature in São Tomé and Príncipe: Representations of the Slave Rebellion of 1595

Supervisor/s: Catarina Martins

Doctoral Programme: Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship

Based on the assumption that orature is a body of knowledges, generated in a context of epistemic struggle, I propose with this project the creation of a cartography of orature around the Slave Rebellion of 1595, in São Tomé and Príncipe, from "orature bodies" of São Tomé population - on their performances, memories and post-memories, and on how they represent and reconfigure this historical episode, through archive-bodies and narrative-bodies.

My objective is to identify and analyze knowledges that challenge or make visible the colonial "inheritances" that are established by the multiple identity boundaries and power relations built by colonialism, especially racial, ethnic, gender and class abyssalities that may persist in the country until today.

I depart from Performative Studies, African Sage-Philosophy, Postcolonial Literature and the Epistemologies of the South, as theoretical bases, to focus on the archive research (historical documentation based on literary, dramaturgical, cinematographic, among others texts), on the observation of daily rituals and São Toméan memorialistic manifestations, on the promotion of "orature spaces" and on the collection of testimonials and interviews about this event.

My interest in the Slave Rebellion of 1595 is related to how everyday stories, rumors, anecdotes, proverbs, tales, songs, myths, legends, prayers, hymns, rhymes, laments, riddles and other forms of orature, can carry individual and collective narratives, memories and representations about this event that that tells us a lot about the country's historical seeds of resistance in its intersection with Portugal, Angola and other geographies.