NO "DIA DA MULHER ANGOLANA"... [R]*

Pela estrada desce a noite...
Mãe-Negra, desce com ela...

Nem buganvilias vermelhas,
nem vestidinhos de folhos,
nem brincadeiras de guisos,
nas suas mãos apertadas.

Só duas lágrimas grossas,
em duas faces cansadas.

Mãe-Negra tem voz de vento,
voz de silêncio batendo
nas folhas do cajueiro...

Tem voz de noite, descendo,
de mansinho, pela estrada...
Que é feito desses meninos
que gostava de embalar?...

Que é feito desses meninos
que ela ajudou a criar?...

Quem ouve agora as histórias
que costumava contar?...

Mãe-Negra não sabe nada...

Mas ai de quem sabe tudo,
como eu sei tudo Mãe-Negra!

Os teus meninos cresceram,
e esqueceram as histórias
que costumavas contar...

Muitos partiram p'ra longe,
quem sabe se hão-de voltar!...

Só tu ficaste esperando,
mãos cruzadas no regaço,
bem quieta, bem calada.

É tua a voz deste vento,
desta saudade descendo,
de mansinho pela estrada

Alda Lara

( ... Ha' quem continue a "saber tudo" e quem continue a "nao saber nada"... a questao e': "quem e' quem e quem sabe o que sobre o que"...)

Ngongo ya Biluka (Lourdes Van Dunem)

(NB: a cancao da saudosa Lourdes Van Dunem que eu queria realmente colocar aqui era o Monami. Mas, como nao a tenho, podera' ouvi-la no Kurikutela)

(Foto daqui)




*[Postado inicialmente a 02/03/2007]

Post Relacionado:

Ainda Sobre o Dia da Mulher Angolana

Pela estrada desce a noite...
Mãe-Negra, desce com ela...

Nem buganvilias vermelhas,
nem vestidinhos de folhos,
nem brincadeiras de guisos,
nas suas mãos apertadas.

Só duas lágrimas grossas,
em duas faces cansadas.

Mãe-Negra tem voz de vento,
voz de silêncio batendo
nas folhas do cajueiro...

Tem voz de noite, descendo,
de mansinho, pela estrada...
Que é feito desses meninos
que gostava de embalar?...

Que é feito desses meninos
que ela ajudou a criar?...

Quem ouve agora as histórias
que costumava contar?...

Mãe-Negra não sabe nada...

Mas ai de quem sabe tudo,
como eu sei tudo Mãe-Negra!

Os teus meninos cresceram,
e esqueceram as histórias
que costumavas contar...

Muitos partiram p'ra longe,
quem sabe se hão-de voltar!...

Só tu ficaste esperando,
mãos cruzadas no regaço,
bem quieta, bem calada.

É tua a voz deste vento,
desta saudade descendo,
de mansinho pela estrada

Alda Lara

( ... Ha' quem continue a "saber tudo" e quem continue a "nao saber nada"... a questao e': "quem e' quem e quem sabe o que sobre o que"...)

Ngongo ya Biluka (Lourdes Van Dunem)

(NB: a cancao da saudosa Lourdes Van Dunem que eu queria realmente colocar aqui era o Monami. Mas, como nao a tenho, podera' ouvi-la no Kurikutela)

(Foto daqui)




*[Postado inicialmente a 02/03/2007]

Post Relacionado:

Ainda Sobre o Dia da Mulher Angolana

Portugal’s Colonial Complex ...

... From Colonial Lusotropicalism to Postcolonial Lusophony


[Miguel Vale de Almeida]


Lusotropicalism was the invention of a Brazilian author, Gilberto Freyre. Although he is widely known as the author of Casa Grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves, in the English translation), he did not explicitly use the concept in that major work of his, written in the 1930s. The underlying notions – that the Portuguese, due to historical and cultural reasons had an inclination towards adaptation and miscegenation – were there, but the term was not branded until the 1950s in books that he wrote on the aftermath of his journeys throughout the Portuguese colonial empire.

It is therefore significant to note that we are dealing with a theory that has a complex colonial and postcolonial history: a Brazilian author, involved in the intellectual struggles about the representations of the national identity of his country (independent since the 19th century) proposes an historical interpretation of Brazil’s formation in which the Portuguese play a major role; he is then invited to visit the Portuguese colonies in Africa and India and, by means of comparison and analogy between Brazil and Africa, he develops the notion of Lusotropicalism as a special kind of inclination or capacity for miscegenation that the Portuguese were supposed to have; this interpretation is then used by the Portuguese colonial regime to legitimize its claims in Africa against growing anticolonial pressure as of the late 1950s and until the demise of the colonial and dictatorial regime in the early 1970s.

[...]

Portugal had no economic, military or demographic power – after the demise of the first and second empires, respectively in India and the East in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in Brazil in the 17th and 18th centuries – to effectively occupy its historical territories in Africa. It was not until Salazar’s regime that an actual colonial enterprise in Africa was set up (that is, a colonial regime, with proper institutions and knowledge systems). Portugal lived under a dictatorship from 1926 to 1974 and throughout this period the African colonies were to occupy a major and central role not only in the economy but also in the official representations of national identity. How was this done?

[...]

That is probably why the effective occupation of the African colonies, which took place as of the 1940s and 1950s was done on the basis of different “Constitutions” – i.e., sets of rules for politically administering the populations, based on specific representations of difference and sameness. One the one hand, some territories were classified as not quite colonies. Cape Verde and India were seen as products of an on-going miscegenation, for different reasons. Cape Verde was the outcome of a mix between Portuguese colonials and slaves from the African mainland imported to a deserted archipelago. And India was seen as a civilization in its own right, a civilization that had met another, that of European Christianity.

Cape Verdean culture was classified as regional, not as colonial, and its population – its elites – had special rights, one of which was their recruitment as colonial middlemen in the African mainland. Other colonies, like Angola and Mozambique, were clearly seen as African and there a different “constitution” was established. With an economy based on forced labor, people were divided into three legal categories: citizens, i.e. the Portuguese; indigenous or native; and “assimilated”. The assimilated were indigenous people who had to undergo a probation period and exams in order to prove that they were Christian, that they dressed in European fashion, that they were monogamous, and that they spoke Portuguese (bear this in mind). They never amounted to more than 1% of the colonial population.

[...]

It was at that juncture that, in the 1950s, Freyre was invited by the Minister of the Overseas to visit and write on the colonies. His ideas were already being received and discussed in the stifling intellectual circles of Lisbon. They fitted nicely with the vague humanistic perspectives of the traditional Left, but they fit even more nicely with the regime’s growing strategy toward presenting the Portuguese empire as a multiracial and multi-continental nation.

[...]

Both the Portuguese state and the population had their representations challenged by the flux of migrants that started in the late 1980s and is still going on. These were initially (and still are) from ex-colonies in Africa and then from Brazil and Eastern European countries. The immigration of Africans faced the Portuguese with their own representations of colonial miscegenation, tolerance and exceptionalism.

This resulted in a cognitive tension that social scientists have identified in studies on blatant and covert racism: statements on the non-racist character of Portuguese society are hegemonic and are usually justified with the example of Portuguese expansion and colonialism as exceptionally tolerant, in what could be labeled as a form of popular lusotropicalism (and an evidence of how hegemonic that discourse became); but they are confronted with the social exclusion of immigrants, their geographical ascription to the worse neighborhoods, the exploitation of their labor and the difficulties they face when applying for citizenship or to access rights of all sorts.

[...]

This I call postlusotropicalism, playing with the similarity with the notion of post
colonialism, as the study of colonial continuations in the present. That is also why one cannot just denounce the colonial in the postcolonial. One should also acknowledge that, for better or worse, the colonial experience did create a common world of reference for many people. What we should do is work on this basic statement and set out to identify the intricate relations between power and emancipation, violence and pleasure in which such a forced commonality became a lived commonality.

It is as if we were all still caught in Freyre’s erotically charged vignette (because terrifying and pleasurable) describing sexual relations between a Portuguese male slave owner and his female black slave in 16th century Northeastern Brazil. This image still haunts us today, with its contradictions of power and intimacy, connecting the ambiguities of Lusotropicalism with those of Lusophony. That is why I have used the expression “Complex” in the title: both in the sense of “intricate” or “complicated”, and in the psychoanalytical sense.


[Extracts from here]


Related posts:


"Complexo de Colonizado"

Parafraseando

Feminismo Negro Brasileiro

Lusofonia e Antropologia

Lusofonia: Cultura ou Ideologia?

Conferencia Internacional sobre Cultura Tchokwe'

... From Colonial Lusotropicalism to Postcolonial Lusophony


[Miguel Vale de Almeida]


Lusotropicalism was the invention of a Brazilian author, Gilberto Freyre. Although he is widely known as the author of Casa Grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves, in the English translation), he did not explicitly use the concept in that major work of his, written in the 1930s. The underlying notions – that the Portuguese, due to historical and cultural reasons had an inclination towards adaptation and miscegenation – were there, but the term was not branded until the 1950s in books that he wrote on the aftermath of his journeys throughout the Portuguese colonial empire.

It is therefore significant to note that we are dealing with a theory that has a complex colonial and postcolonial history: a Brazilian author, involved in the intellectual struggles about the representations of the national identity of his country (independent since the 19th century) proposes an historical interpretation of Brazil’s formation in which the Portuguese play a major role; he is then invited to visit the Portuguese colonies in Africa and India and, by means of comparison and analogy between Brazil and Africa, he develops the notion of Lusotropicalism as a special kind of inclination or capacity for miscegenation that the Portuguese were supposed to have; this interpretation is then used by the Portuguese colonial regime to legitimize its claims in Africa against growing anticolonial pressure as of the late 1950s and until the demise of the colonial and dictatorial regime in the early 1970s.

[...]

Portugal had no economic, military or demographic power – after the demise of the first and second empires, respectively in India and the East in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in Brazil in the 17th and 18th centuries – to effectively occupy its historical territories in Africa. It was not until Salazar’s regime that an actual colonial enterprise in Africa was set up (that is, a colonial regime, with proper institutions and knowledge systems). Portugal lived under a dictatorship from 1926 to 1974 and throughout this period the African colonies were to occupy a major and central role not only in the economy but also in the official representations of national identity. How was this done?

[...]

That is probably why the effective occupation of the African colonies, which took place as of the 1940s and 1950s was done on the basis of different “Constitutions” – i.e., sets of rules for politically administering the populations, based on specific representations of difference and sameness. One the one hand, some territories were classified as not quite colonies. Cape Verde and India were seen as products of an on-going miscegenation, for different reasons. Cape Verde was the outcome of a mix between Portuguese colonials and slaves from the African mainland imported to a deserted archipelago. And India was seen as a civilization in its own right, a civilization that had met another, that of European Christianity.

Cape Verdean culture was classified as regional, not as colonial, and its population – its elites – had special rights, one of which was their recruitment as colonial middlemen in the African mainland. Other colonies, like Angola and Mozambique, were clearly seen as African and there a different “constitution” was established. With an economy based on forced labor, people were divided into three legal categories: citizens, i.e. the Portuguese; indigenous or native; and “assimilated”. The assimilated were indigenous people who had to undergo a probation period and exams in order to prove that they were Christian, that they dressed in European fashion, that they were monogamous, and that they spoke Portuguese (bear this in mind). They never amounted to more than 1% of the colonial population.

[...]

It was at that juncture that, in the 1950s, Freyre was invited by the Minister of the Overseas to visit and write on the colonies. His ideas were already being received and discussed in the stifling intellectual circles of Lisbon. They fitted nicely with the vague humanistic perspectives of the traditional Left, but they fit even more nicely with the regime’s growing strategy toward presenting the Portuguese empire as a multiracial and multi-continental nation.

[...]

Both the Portuguese state and the population had their representations challenged by the flux of migrants that started in the late 1980s and is still going on. These were initially (and still are) from ex-colonies in Africa and then from Brazil and Eastern European countries. The immigration of Africans faced the Portuguese with their own representations of colonial miscegenation, tolerance and exceptionalism.

This resulted in a cognitive tension that social scientists have identified in studies on blatant and covert racism: statements on the non-racist character of Portuguese society are hegemonic and are usually justified with the example of Portuguese expansion and colonialism as exceptionally tolerant, in what could be labeled as a form of popular lusotropicalism (and an evidence of how hegemonic that discourse became); but they are confronted with the social exclusion of immigrants, their geographical ascription to the worse neighborhoods, the exploitation of their labor and the difficulties they face when applying for citizenship or to access rights of all sorts.

[...]

This I call postlusotropicalism, playing with the similarity with the notion of post
colonialism, as the study of colonial continuations in the present. That is also why one cannot just denounce the colonial in the postcolonial. One should also acknowledge that, for better or worse, the colonial experience did create a common world of reference for many people. What we should do is work on this basic statement and set out to identify the intricate relations between power and emancipation, violence and pleasure in which such a forced commonality became a lived commonality.

It is as if we were all still caught in Freyre’s erotically charged vignette (because terrifying and pleasurable) describing sexual relations between a Portuguese male slave owner and his female black slave in 16th century Northeastern Brazil. This image still haunts us today, with its contradictions of power and intimacy, connecting the ambiguities of Lusotropicalism with those of Lusophony. That is why I have used the expression “Complex” in the title: both in the sense of “intricate” or “complicated”, and in the psychoanalytical sense.


[Extracts from here]


Related posts:


"Complexo de Colonizado"

Parafraseando

Feminismo Negro Brasileiro

Lusofonia e Antropologia

Lusofonia: Cultura ou Ideologia?

Conferencia Internacional sobre Cultura Tchokwe'

Just Poetry (xxiv) [R]*

A IMPLOSÃO DA MENTIRA OU O EPISÓDIO DO RIOCENTRO

Mentiram-me. Mentiram-me ontem
e hoje mentem novamente. Mentem
de corpo e alma, completamente.
E mentem de maneira tão pungente
que acho que mentem sinceramente.

Mentem, sobretudo, impune/mente.
Não mentem tristes. Alegremente
mentem. Mentem tão nacional/mente
que acham que mentindo história afora
vão enganar a morte eterna/mente.

Mentem. Mentem e calam. Mas suas frases
falam. E desfilam de tal modo nuas
que mesmo um cego pode ver
a verdade em trapos pelas ruas.

Sei que a verdade é difícil
e para alguns é cara e escura.
Mas não se chega à verdade
pela mentira, nem à democracia
pela ditadura.

(…)

E de tanto mentir tão brava/mente
constroem um país
de mentira
-diária/mente.

(…)

Mentem no passado. E no presente
passam a mentira a limpo. E no futuro
mentem novamente.
Mentem fazendo o sol girar
em torno à terra medieval/mente.

(…)

Tanta mentira assim industriada
me faz partir para o deserto
penitente/mente, ou me exilar
com Mozart musical/mente em harpas
e oboés, como um solista vegetal
que absorve a vida indiferente.

(…)

Página branca onde escrevo. Único espaço
de verdade que me resta. Onde transcrevo
o arroubo, a esperança, e onde tarde
ou cedo deposito meu espanto e medo.
Para tanta mentira só mesmo um poema
explosivo-conotativo
onde o advérbio e o adjetivo não mentem
ao substantivo
e a rima rebenta a frase
numa explosão da verdade.

E a mentira repulsiva
se não explode pra fora
pra dentro explode
implosiva.

Extractos de um poema apresentado
por Affonso Romano de Sant'anna (Brasil)
durante um Congresso Internacional de Lusitanistas

[versao integral aqui]

*[First posted 27/05/07] 

A IMPLOSÃO DA MENTIRA OU O EPISÓDIO DO RIOCENTRO

Mentiram-me. Mentiram-me ontem
e hoje mentem novamente. Mentem
de corpo e alma, completamente.
E mentem de maneira tão pungente
que acho que mentem sinceramente.

Mentem, sobretudo, impune/mente.
Não mentem tristes. Alegremente
mentem. Mentem tão nacional/mente
que acham que mentindo história afora
vão enganar a morte eterna/mente.

Mentem. Mentem e calam. Mas suas frases
falam. E desfilam de tal modo nuas
que mesmo um cego pode ver
a verdade em trapos pelas ruas.

Sei que a verdade é difícil
e para alguns é cara e escura.
Mas não se chega à verdade
pela mentira, nem à democracia
pela ditadura.

(…)

E de tanto mentir tão brava/mente
constroem um país
de mentira
-diária/mente.

(…)

Mentem no passado. E no presente
passam a mentira a limpo. E no futuro
mentem novamente.
Mentem fazendo o sol girar
em torno à terra medieval/mente.

(…)

Tanta mentira assim industriada
me faz partir para o deserto
penitente/mente, ou me exilar
com Mozart musical/mente em harpas
e oboés, como um solista vegetal
que absorve a vida indiferente.

(…)

Página branca onde escrevo. Único espaço
de verdade que me resta. Onde transcrevo
o arroubo, a esperança, e onde tarde
ou cedo deposito meu espanto e medo.
Para tanta mentira só mesmo um poema
explosivo-conotativo
onde o advérbio e o adjetivo não mentem
ao substantivo
e a rima rebenta a frase
numa explosão da verdade.

E a mentira repulsiva
se não explode pra fora
pra dentro explode
implosiva.

Extractos de um poema apresentado
por Affonso Romano de Sant'anna (Brasil)
durante um Congresso Internacional de Lusitanistas

[versao integral aqui]

*[First posted 27/05/07] 

LUSOFONIA & ANTROPOLOGIA [R]*

THE STATUS OF RACE IN LUSOPHONE SOCIAL SCIENCE

Ever since Gilberto’s Freyre’s utopic account of racial intimacy in Masters and Slaves, first published in 1933, social science research projects on Portuguese-speaking contexts have largely centered upon positivist queries concerning the existence or absence of racial harmony in Portuguese-speaking settings. The consequence of this approach is that the idea of racial contact – via miscegenation, discrimination and religious syncretisms – has dominated how analysts have shaped questions about the social world in the Lusophone setting.

In fact, the legacy of this trend is so profuse that the researcher concerned with issues of race is often drawn to this setting because of its association with explicit examples of racializing phenomena. More complicating, Lusophone scholarship, for better or for worse, has historically not been in dialogue with conversations occurring in non-Portuguese spaces and is often thus isolated in the social sciences as the field bound to race-centered inquiry.

Today, differently, a curious shift is occurring in the way that social phenomenon is framed in the Lusophone setting. Recent scholarship is de-centering race as the organizational principle for defining the social. This shift, however, is not about a disavowal of race or racism. Instead, questions are shifting to examine their productive capacities, what their presence variably signifies and enables, or how sentiments attached to raciality help interpret emergent social phenomena more broadly.

[Read more here and here]

*****

Das apresentacoes anunciadas para esta Conferencia, a seguinte pareceu-me particularmente interessante por se debrucar sobre um territorio dito lusofono, aparentemente esquecido no mundo da lusotopia:

“Questões de casta: Além do lusotropicalismo de Goa”

Neste trabalho eu invocarei a formulação inicial de Freyre em relação ao lusotropicalismo em Goa, em 1951—durante sua turnê oficial pelas colonias portuguesas. Eu trato a formulação do autor brasileiro como um decodificador dos elementos integrantes de sua teorizações, e como ferramenta analítica do impacto da substância ideológica, consequentemente criada na representação da altamente estratificada sociedade goesa. Mais especificamente, para o nosso debate acerca de lusofonia e antropologia, eu trarei Goa, os goeses e as idéias produzidas sobre Goa, dentro e fora dela, tanto no passado quanto no presente.

É difícil descrever Goa atualmente como uma sociedade lusófona. O português não é mais a língua oficial e muito poucos o falam, apesar de sua importância como o idioma dos arquivos coloniais e, durante séculos, o idioma da administração goesa. Contudo, a história de Goa foi registrada não só por escribas portugueses, ou por catedráticos portugueses e goeses pro-Portugal, mas também por muitos outros, de ativistas indianos a catedráticos do período pos-colonial e catedráticos estrangeiros (Boxer, Pearson, Axelrod, Newman, etc.).
Comércio, poder, comunidades, religião e conversão são temas recorrentes das narrativas destes pensadores, ao passo que ferramentas estruturais como raça, gênero e classe, com poucas exceções, encontram-se relativamente ausentes da literatura.*

Inicialmente, minha longa jornada pelos arquivos coloniais de Goa tinha o propósito de analisar práticas médicas durante o regime colonial. Tal jornada terminou por revelar a centralidade dos tópicos mencionados acima, entre outros: raça, racismo, relacões raciais, miscigenação, lei, segregação, gênero, religião, casta, privilégio, status, bem como a sinergia entre eses elementos. A priori, estes tópicos não se fazem notar nos registros históricos. Sua importância se faz presente em modos distintos, tanto nas narrativas de Goa colonial quanto nas representações contemporâneas da história de Goa — as quais, também em modos distintos, contribuem para a dissenção contemporânea, como os arquivos da internet e a recente literatura testificam.

Meu interesse na experiência colonial de Goa, com suas extensões à experiência colonial luso-africana, bem como um interesse no impacto do lusotropicalismo levaram-me a explorar a relação recíproca entre as doutrinas de Gilberto Freyre e as representações de miscigenação e segregação na sociedade e cultura de Goa.

Cristiana Bastos, Instituto de Ciências Sociais – Universidade de Lisboa

*{Cabe-me notar que este tipo de constatacao nao se aplica exclusivamente a literatura existente sobre Goa. A ela faco mencao, com referencia a outros quadrantes lusosfericos e aos seus efeitos reais e praticos no quotidiano socio-cultural, entre outros posts e comentarios neste blog, aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui}

*[First posted 04/04/09]

THE STATUS OF RACE IN LUSOPHONE SOCIAL SCIENCE

Ever since Gilberto’s Freyre’s utopic account of racial intimacy in Masters and Slaves, first published in 1933, social science research projects on Portuguese-speaking contexts have largely centered upon positivist queries concerning the existence or absence of racial harmony in Portuguese-speaking settings. The consequence of this approach is that the idea of racial contact – via miscegenation, discrimination and religious syncretisms – has dominated how analysts have shaped questions about the social world in the Lusophone setting.

In fact, the legacy of this trend is so profuse that the researcher concerned with issues of race is often drawn to this setting because of its association with explicit examples of racializing phenomena. More complicating, Lusophone scholarship, for better or for worse, has historically not been in dialogue with conversations occurring in non-Portuguese spaces and is often thus isolated in the social sciences as the field bound to race-centered inquiry.

Today, differently, a curious shift is occurring in the way that social phenomenon is framed in the Lusophone setting. Recent scholarship is de-centering race as the organizational principle for defining the social. This shift, however, is not about a disavowal of race or racism. Instead, questions are shifting to examine their productive capacities, what their presence variably signifies and enables, or how sentiments attached to raciality help interpret emergent social phenomena more broadly.

[Read more here and here]

*****

Das apresentacoes anunciadas para esta Conferencia, a seguinte pareceu-me particularmente interessante por se debrucar sobre um territorio dito lusofono, aparentemente esquecido no mundo da lusotopia:

“Questões de casta: Além do lusotropicalismo de Goa”

Neste trabalho eu invocarei a formulação inicial de Freyre em relação ao lusotropicalismo em Goa, em 1951—durante sua turnê oficial pelas colonias portuguesas. Eu trato a formulação do autor brasileiro como um decodificador dos elementos integrantes de sua teorizações, e como ferramenta analítica do impacto da substância ideológica, consequentemente criada na representação da altamente estratificada sociedade goesa. Mais especificamente, para o nosso debate acerca de lusofonia e antropologia, eu trarei Goa, os goeses e as idéias produzidas sobre Goa, dentro e fora dela, tanto no passado quanto no presente.

É difícil descrever Goa atualmente como uma sociedade lusófona. O português não é mais a língua oficial e muito poucos o falam, apesar de sua importância como o idioma dos arquivos coloniais e, durante séculos, o idioma da administração goesa. Contudo, a história de Goa foi registrada não só por escribas portugueses, ou por catedráticos portugueses e goeses pro-Portugal, mas também por muitos outros, de ativistas indianos a catedráticos do período pos-colonial e catedráticos estrangeiros (Boxer, Pearson, Axelrod, Newman, etc.).
Comércio, poder, comunidades, religião e conversão são temas recorrentes das narrativas destes pensadores, ao passo que ferramentas estruturais como raça, gênero e classe, com poucas exceções, encontram-se relativamente ausentes da literatura.*

Inicialmente, minha longa jornada pelos arquivos coloniais de Goa tinha o propósito de analisar práticas médicas durante o regime colonial. Tal jornada terminou por revelar a centralidade dos tópicos mencionados acima, entre outros: raça, racismo, relacões raciais, miscigenação, lei, segregação, gênero, religião, casta, privilégio, status, bem como a sinergia entre eses elementos. A priori, estes tópicos não se fazem notar nos registros históricos. Sua importância se faz presente em modos distintos, tanto nas narrativas de Goa colonial quanto nas representações contemporâneas da história de Goa — as quais, também em modos distintos, contribuem para a dissenção contemporânea, como os arquivos da internet e a recente literatura testificam.

Meu interesse na experiência colonial de Goa, com suas extensões à experiência colonial luso-africana, bem como um interesse no impacto do lusotropicalismo levaram-me a explorar a relação recíproca entre as doutrinas de Gilberto Freyre e as representações de miscigenação e segregação na sociedade e cultura de Goa.

Cristiana Bastos, Instituto de Ciências Sociais – Universidade de Lisboa

*{Cabe-me notar que este tipo de constatacao nao se aplica exclusivamente a literatura existente sobre Goa. A ela faco mencao, com referencia a outros quadrantes lusosfericos e aos seus efeitos reais e praticos no quotidiano socio-cultural, entre outros posts e comentarios neste blog, aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui}

*[First posted 04/04/09]

SOBRE A "CULTURA AFRICANA CONTEMPORANEA"

Nao sei se haverao muitas pessoas em Angola (em particular negras) que, como eu (subitamente pintada de "racista" e "complexada" por todos os lados e mais alguns...), possam dizer ter, ou terem tido, tantos amigos, entre homens e mulheres, nao negros... E com "tantos", nao pretendo necessariamente significar "muitos", nem "unicos". Uns, herdados dentre os compadres, amigos, colegas e conhecidos dos pais. Outros, feitos e cultivados individualmente.

Falo de amigos, bem entendido: de se viver junto a noite da Dipanda no 1ro. de Maio; de se receber cestas de frutas e legumes quando estavamos doentes; de se criar junto os filhos; de se apanhar boleia para os mercados ou a praia; de se aprender junto a diversificar os nossos respectivos habitos e gostos alimentares; de se partilhar a lata de leite, o kilo de arroz, o saco de batata, o frango congelado, ou a barra de sabao que na loja do povo nao saia; de se ir junto trocar roupa por comida fora da cidade; de se fazer guitarradas e cantorias em memoraveis noites de tertulia; de conjugar leituras, paixoes, pulsoes, angustias, sonhos, pesadelos e esperancas...

E, tendo ja' aqui falado algures dos meus amigos Alemaes, o mesmo poderia dizer de alguns dos amigos que fiz em, e com quem conheci, Africa para alem das fronteiras fisicas e culturais de Angola: desde os "leoes brancos africanos" educados em Oxbridge e fluentes em kiSwahili e outras linguas africanas comendo sadza e seswa com as maos, passando pelos "gringos" peritos em comida cajun dos bayous de New Orleans e mais entusiastas do que eu da rumba congolesa e do kwassa-kwassa, ou os "nordicos" gourmets em comida marroquina, xais e masalas orientais, aos "boers" de pes descalcos de Stellenbosch mais seus vinhos e biltongs...

Falo de amigos "de vida", portanto - nao de amigos "de ocasiao", ou, como sao designados em Ingles, fair-weather friends ...

[AQUI]

Nao sei se haverao muitas pessoas em Angola (em particular negras) que, como eu (subitamente pintada de "racista" e "complexada" por todos os lados e mais alguns...), possam dizer ter, ou terem tido, tantos amigos, entre homens e mulheres, nao negros... E com "tantos", nao pretendo necessariamente significar "muitos", nem "unicos". Uns, herdados dentre os compadres, amigos, colegas e conhecidos dos pais. Outros, feitos e cultivados individualmente.

Falo de amigos, bem entendido: de se viver junto a noite da Dipanda no 1ro. de Maio; de se receber cestas de frutas e legumes quando estavamos doentes; de se criar junto os filhos; de se apanhar boleia para os mercados ou a praia; de se aprender junto a diversificar os nossos respectivos habitos e gostos alimentares; de se partilhar a lata de leite, o kilo de arroz, o saco de batata, o frango congelado, ou a barra de sabao que na loja do povo nao saia; de se ir junto trocar roupa por comida fora da cidade; de se fazer guitarradas e cantorias em memoraveis noites de tertulia; de conjugar leituras, paixoes, pulsoes, angustias, sonhos, pesadelos e esperancas...

E, tendo ja' aqui falado algures dos meus amigos Alemaes, o mesmo poderia dizer de alguns dos amigos que fiz em, e com quem conheci, Africa para alem das fronteiras fisicas e culturais de Angola: desde os "leoes brancos africanos" educados em Oxbridge e fluentes em kiSwahili e outras linguas africanas comendo sadza e seswa com as maos, passando pelos "gringos" peritos em comida cajun dos bayous de New Orleans e mais entusiastas do que eu da rumba congolesa e do kwassa-kwassa, ou os "nordicos" gourmets em comida marroquina, xais e masalas orientais, aos "boers" de pes descalcos de Stellenbosch mais seus vinhos e biltongs...

Falo de amigos "de vida", portanto - nao de amigos "de ocasiao", ou, como sao designados em Ingles, fair-weather friends ...

[AQUI]

Africa Lusofona em Congresso

Programa Aqui

Programa Aqui

UNIFICACAO DA ESCRITA DA LINGUA PORTUGUESA [R]*

“A língua portuguesa vai mudar, para que seja (sic) escrito de uma única forma nos oito países que adotam este idioma. (...) Serão cerca de 40 mudanças, entre elas estão o alfabeto com 26 letras (atualmente são 23), com a inserção do “k”, “w” e “y” (…)."

Extracto do mais recente post do Blog das Causas.

{Querera' isto dizer que ja' posso escrever Koluki, Kwanza, Lwei, Kwando, Kubango, Kongo, Yam, ou Afrika 'a vontade?}

Post relacionado:

Maria Luisa Dolbeth e Costa e "O Portugues K'estamos Kum Ele"

[Ver tambem comentarios a este post]

* [First Posted 03/05/07]

"Repostado" em referencia a este artigo.

“A língua portuguesa vai mudar, para que seja (sic) escrito de uma única forma nos oito países que adotam este idioma. (...) Serão cerca de 40 mudanças, entre elas estão o alfabeto com 26 letras (atualmente são 23), com a inserção do “k”, “w” e “y” (…)."

Extracto do mais recente post do Blog das Causas.

{Querera' isto dizer que ja' posso escrever Koluki, Kwanza, Lwei, Kwando, Kubango, Kongo, Yam, ou Afrika 'a vontade?}

Post relacionado:

Maria Luisa Dolbeth e Costa e "O Portugues K'estamos Kum Ele"

[Ver tambem comentarios a este post]

* [First Posted 03/05/07]

"Repostado" em referencia a este artigo.

MARIA LUISA DOLBETH E COSTA E “O PORTUGUES K’ESTAMOS KUM ELE” (R)*

Se ha’ alguem a quem tenho que pedir desculpas pelos meus pontapes na lingua de Camoes, esse alguem e’ a Professora Maria Luisa Dolbeth e Costa. Ela foi minha professora de Portugues, ainda no tempo colonial, no entao Liceu Feminino D. Guiomar de Lencastre, hoje Nzinga Mbandi, em Luanda. Mas nao e’ para falar dela, ou de mim, que aqui trago a entrevista que ela concedeu recentemente ao Jornal de Angola sobre o Acordo Ortografico da Lingua Portuguesa.

Ou melhor, sobre ela nao posso deixar de dizer o seguinte: num liceu de esmagadora maioria de alunas brancas e de professoras todas brancas, ela apareceu-nos naqueles tempos, pelo menos a mim, salvaguardadas as devidas distancias e proporcoes, como uma especie de Barack Obama...

“Eu gosto de grafar maka com k, para distinguir do vocábulo maca com "c", que nos remete para um instrumento hospitalar. Eu diria, então, que esta maka, com "k", neologismo nosso, deveria ser melhor discutida e reflectida no nosso caso, não apenas por razões económicas.”

"Acordo ortográfico, tudo bem, mas para nos unir na diferença"

A pessoa com quem falámos tem um alto nível de competência técnica para falar, como peixe na água, da Língua Portuguesa, num português fluente. Linguista de formação, a angolana Maria Luísa Dolbeth e Costa dá aulas de português há 36 anos. Antiga aluna de Lindley Cintra, co-autora da Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, Maria Luísa Dolbeth e Costa foi procurada pelo Vida Cultural para uma abordagem à volta do polémico, como ela também considerou, Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa. A entrevistada, pessoa de trato fácil, oferece, ao longo da entrevista, subsídios interessantes sobre o Acordo Ortográfico, sobre o qual afirma, peremptoriamente: "não concordo é com este Acordo nos termos em que ele está feito, porque me permite abrir espaço para dúvidas sobre o grau de subjectividade que terá dominado muitas das suas decisões".

[Aqui]

*(First posted 07/09/08)

Se ha’ alguem a quem tenho que pedir desculpas pelos meus pontapes na lingua de Camoes, esse alguem e’ a Professora Maria Luisa Dolbeth e Costa. Ela foi minha professora de Portugues, ainda no tempo colonial, no entao Liceu Feminino D. Guiomar de Lencastre, hoje Nzinga Mbandi, em Luanda. Mas nao e’ para falar dela, ou de mim, que aqui trago a entrevista que ela concedeu recentemente ao Jornal de Angola sobre o Acordo Ortografico da Lingua Portuguesa.

Ou melhor, sobre ela nao posso deixar de dizer o seguinte: num liceu de esmagadora maioria de alunas brancas e de professoras todas brancas, ela apareceu-nos naqueles tempos, pelo menos a mim, salvaguardadas as devidas distancias e proporcoes, como uma especie de Barack Obama...

“Eu gosto de grafar maka com k, para distinguir do vocábulo maca com "c", que nos remete para um instrumento hospitalar. Eu diria, então, que esta maka, com "k", neologismo nosso, deveria ser melhor discutida e reflectida no nosso caso, não apenas por razões económicas.”

"Acordo ortográfico, tudo bem, mas para nos unir na diferença"

A pessoa com quem falámos tem um alto nível de competência técnica para falar, como peixe na água, da Língua Portuguesa, num português fluente. Linguista de formação, a angolana Maria Luísa Dolbeth e Costa dá aulas de português há 36 anos. Antiga aluna de Lindley Cintra, co-autora da Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, Maria Luísa Dolbeth e Costa foi procurada pelo Vida Cultural para uma abordagem à volta do polémico, como ela também considerou, Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa. A entrevistada, pessoa de trato fácil, oferece, ao longo da entrevista, subsídios interessantes sobre o Acordo Ortográfico, sobre o qual afirma, peremptoriamente: "não concordo é com este Acordo nos termos em que ele está feito, porque me permite abrir espaço para dúvidas sobre o grau de subjectividade que terá dominado muitas das suas decisões".

[Aqui]

*(First posted 07/09/08)

White Negritude

OU "A IDEOLOGIA DOS (PRETENSOS) AFECTOS"

(...)

Transference of cultural practices by close contact allows whites to write "black", a move that, besides the ultimate (albeit one step removed) indigenisation of the Euro-Brazilian, enables another transfer: the disappearance of the black by way of simultaneous incorporation and erasure. Black autonomous authorship (a voice that Freyre perceives as emblematic of US segregationism) is thus disqualified through transfer, together with mixed race authorship, a voice Freyre accuses of being intrinsically incapable of genuinely representing either race: not the manor, not the subaltern periphery, yet alone a synthesis or Brazilian ineffable heterogeneity.

Isfahani-Hammond recognises this dynamic, and sees Freyre situating "himself as a seignorial figure who has equal domain in elite and marginal sites, displacing people of mixed European/African ancestry from the embodiment of hybridization and, therein, from the ability to narrate or speak about national identity" (p. 14). Freyre finally "transfers" the south of Brazil: a site of degenerative modernisation, European immigration and influence, and, ultimately, Americanization. It is an alien and unauthentic locale; a source of foreign and therefore distorting stimuli.

At the end of a succession of discursive transfers, the white master's claim is the last one standing. His proximity to black commodified bodies enables authentic linguistic and spiritual incorporation, something that is denied to everyone else. Only the specific conditions of the northeastern plantation and the intimate contact between masters and slaves could produce Brazil's exceptional "Racial Democracy": "[t]he social history of the plantation manor is the intimate history of almost every Brazilian", Freyre concludes (quoted, p. 134). Casa Grande e Senzala is therefore exactly what the title says it is: a hierarchically organised dyad constituted by seigneural manor plus the contribution that emanates from the slave quarters. Despite their contribution, indeed exactly because of their contribution, the autonomous agency of the slaves and their descendants is effaced, and the seigneural manor remains the unique site of "genuine" Brazilian culture. Once the sequence of transfers is completed, Freyre's "almost every Brazilian", ends up reading like "every Brazilian who happens to be a white male seigneur who grew up in a plantation in the northeast of the country". An exceptionally inclusive tradition is thus recast into an exceptionally selective one.

Freyre ultimately took a conservative turn and his assertion of "Lusotropicalism" and its singularity sustained Portugal's imperialism throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He travelled to the African colonies in 1951 and 1952 where he recognised a number of "little Brazils", which for him was a good thing. The colonial establishment of the Portuguese state took advantage of Freyre's rhetoric and explicit complicity (see p. 163, n. 1). However, as Isfahani-Hammond illustrates, this evolution is actually much less discontinuous than the available literature is willing to acknowledge. While Freyrean notions of "racial Democracy" have been used in various contexts and for different purposes, an underlying continuity should be emphasised: he coherently supported a seigneural subjectivity against all its enemies, while at the same time expropriating and disallowing the cultural voice of Brazilian blackness. He consistently reclaimed a right to do so.

Freyre's transferist strategy, however, is not unique. Settlers elsewhere also need to enact physical and discursive transfers against their indigenous and exogenous opponents in order to effectively claim local versions of "genuine" indigenising cultural authenticity. Freyre's "creolization/indigenization", Isfahani-Hammond concludes, "is nationalistic and anticolonial yet grounded in symbolically Africanized, white dominance" (p. 52). Settler indigenisations elsewhere are also nationalistic and anticolonial; settlers need to build independent nations and supersede their dependency on the motherland. Settler indigenisation, of course, is also grounded on an indigenised white dominance that effaces really existing indigenous peoples.

[Here]

Posts Relacionados:

O Dia Em Que o Leao (Nao) Comeu Pela Primeira Vez a Estrela

Jean-Baptiste Debret e a Coloracao da "Nossa" Escravidao no Brasil

"A Razao da Nossa Luta" 50 Anos Depois

OU "A IDEOLOGIA DOS (PRETENSOS) AFECTOS"

(...)

Transference of cultural practices by close contact allows whites to write "black", a move that, besides the ultimate (albeit one step removed) indigenisation of the Euro-Brazilian, enables another transfer: the disappearance of the black by way of simultaneous incorporation and erasure. Black autonomous authorship (a voice that Freyre perceives as emblematic of US segregationism) is thus disqualified through transfer, together with mixed race authorship, a voice Freyre accuses of being intrinsically incapable of genuinely representing either race: not the manor, not the subaltern periphery, yet alone a synthesis or Brazilian ineffable heterogeneity.

Isfahani-Hammond recognises this dynamic, and sees Freyre situating "himself as a seignorial figure who has equal domain in elite and marginal sites, displacing people of mixed European/African ancestry from the embodiment of hybridization and, therein, from the ability to narrate or speak about national identity" (p. 14). Freyre finally "transfers" the south of Brazil: a site of degenerative modernisation, European immigration and influence, and, ultimately, Americanization. It is an alien and unauthentic locale; a source of foreign and therefore distorting stimuli.

At the end of a succession of discursive transfers, the white master's claim is the last one standing. His proximity to black commodified bodies enables authentic linguistic and spiritual incorporation, something that is denied to everyone else. Only the specific conditions of the northeastern plantation and the intimate contact between masters and slaves could produce Brazil's exceptional "Racial Democracy": "[t]he social history of the plantation manor is the intimate history of almost every Brazilian", Freyre concludes (quoted, p. 134). Casa Grande e Senzala is therefore exactly what the title says it is: a hierarchically organised dyad constituted by seigneural manor plus the contribution that emanates from the slave quarters. Despite their contribution, indeed exactly because of their contribution, the autonomous agency of the slaves and their descendants is effaced, and the seigneural manor remains the unique site of "genuine" Brazilian culture. Once the sequence of transfers is completed, Freyre's "almost every Brazilian", ends up reading like "every Brazilian who happens to be a white male seigneur who grew up in a plantation in the northeast of the country". An exceptionally inclusive tradition is thus recast into an exceptionally selective one.

Freyre ultimately took a conservative turn and his assertion of "Lusotropicalism" and its singularity sustained Portugal's imperialism throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He travelled to the African colonies in 1951 and 1952 where he recognised a number of "little Brazils", which for him was a good thing. The colonial establishment of the Portuguese state took advantage of Freyre's rhetoric and explicit complicity (see p. 163, n. 1). However, as Isfahani-Hammond illustrates, this evolution is actually much less discontinuous than the available literature is willing to acknowledge. While Freyrean notions of "racial Democracy" have been used in various contexts and for different purposes, an underlying continuity should be emphasised: he coherently supported a seigneural subjectivity against all its enemies, while at the same time expropriating and disallowing the cultural voice of Brazilian blackness. He consistently reclaimed a right to do so.

Freyre's transferist strategy, however, is not unique. Settlers elsewhere also need to enact physical and discursive transfers against their indigenous and exogenous opponents in order to effectively claim local versions of "genuine" indigenising cultural authenticity. Freyre's "creolization/indigenization", Isfahani-Hammond concludes, "is nationalistic and anticolonial yet grounded in symbolically Africanized, white dominance" (p. 52). Settler indigenisations elsewhere are also nationalistic and anticolonial; settlers need to build independent nations and supersede their dependency on the motherland. Settler indigenisation, of course, is also grounded on an indigenised white dominance that effaces really existing indigenous peoples.

[Here]

Posts Relacionados:

O Dia Em Que o Leao (Nao) Comeu Pela Primeira Vez a Estrela

Jean-Baptiste Debret e a Coloracao da "Nossa" Escravidao no Brasil

"A Razao da Nossa Luta" 50 Anos Depois

AGUALUSA ACUSADO DE PLAGIO

Clique nas imagens para as ampliar

[Informacao daqui]

Clique nas imagens para as ampliar

[Informacao daqui]

CONFERENCIA MUNDIAL CONTRA O RACISMO

As Conferencias Mundiais Contra o Racismo (1978, 1983, 2001 e 2009) teem vindo a ser organizadas regularmente pela UNESCO com o fito de lutar contra ideologias e comportamentos racistas em todo o mundo. O trabalho da UNESCO na luta contra o racismo, incluindo as conferencias mundiais que patroniza sob a egide das Nacoes Unidas, tem sido guiado pelas varias producoes cientificas que vem promovendo sobre a questao, desde a sua fundacao apos o final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, e especialmente pela sua publicacao seminal “A Questao Racial”, datada de 1950.

A Conferencia deste ano, realizada na semana passada em Genebra, Suica, teve em vista a avaliacao do progresso efectuado em direccao aos objectivos tracados pela Declaracao e Programa de Accao de Durban, aprovados durante a “Conferencia Mundial Contra o Racismo, Discriminacao Racial, Xenofobia e decorrente Intolerancia”, realizada em Durban, Africa do Sul, em 2001. A Conferencia de Genebra foi particularmente marcada pelo boicote de varios paises (entre os quais Canada, Israel, EUA, Nova Zelandia, Alemanha, Italia, Suecia, Holanda, Polonia e Australia) e dominada por fortes reaccoes, tanto de apoio quanto de protesto (neste caso, em particular pelos paises membros da Uniao Europeia), a intervencao do Presidente do Irao, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, qualificando Israel como um “estado racista”.

Ao final das suas conturbadas sessoes, ficou-me a ideia de que, pelo menos enquanto a questao do Medio Oriente nao se resolver (se alguma vez se resolver e esperemos que pelo melhor para todas as partes), as questoes do racismo e da intolerancia a ele relacionada noutras partes do mundo, nomeadamente em Africa e, particularmente, na Africa Lusofona, continuarao a nao fazer parte da agenda destes altos foruns internacionais.

[Mais detalhes aqui]

As Conferencias Mundiais Contra o Racismo (1978, 1983, 2001 e 2009) teem vindo a ser organizadas regularmente pela UNESCO com o fito de lutar contra ideologias e comportamentos racistas em todo o mundo. O trabalho da UNESCO na luta contra o racismo, incluindo as conferencias mundiais que patroniza sob a egide das Nacoes Unidas, tem sido guiado pelas varias producoes cientificas que vem promovendo sobre a questao, desde a sua fundacao apos o final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, e especialmente pela sua publicacao seminal “A Questao Racial”, datada de 1950.

A Conferencia deste ano, realizada na semana passada em Genebra, Suica, teve em vista a avaliacao do progresso efectuado em direccao aos objectivos tracados pela Declaracao e Programa de Accao de Durban, aprovados durante a “Conferencia Mundial Contra o Racismo, Discriminacao Racial, Xenofobia e decorrente Intolerancia”, realizada em Durban, Africa do Sul, em 2001. A Conferencia de Genebra foi particularmente marcada pelo boicote de varios paises (entre os quais Canada, Israel, EUA, Nova Zelandia, Alemanha, Italia, Suecia, Holanda, Polonia e Australia) e dominada por fortes reaccoes, tanto de apoio quanto de protesto (neste caso, em particular pelos paises membros da Uniao Europeia), a intervencao do Presidente do Irao, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, qualificando Israel como um “estado racista”.

Ao final das suas conturbadas sessoes, ficou-me a ideia de que, pelo menos enquanto a questao do Medio Oriente nao se resolver (se alguma vez se resolver e esperemos que pelo melhor para todas as partes), as questoes do racismo e da intolerancia a ele relacionada noutras partes do mundo, nomeadamente em Africa e, particularmente, na Africa Lusofona, continuarao a nao fazer parte da agenda destes altos foruns internacionais.

[Mais detalhes aqui]

OS FILHOS DA AFRICA EM PORTUGAL

A Modernização da Exclusão Social

Por Marzia Grassi

O livro é o resultado da tese de doutoramento de Neusa Gusmão, a antropóloga brasileira, investigadora e professora da faculdade de
educação da UNICAMP (Universidade Estadual de Campinas) de São Paulo.
Trata-se de uma pesquisa muito interessante sobre os imigrantes
originários dos PALOP (Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa) em Portugal e os seus filhos. O contexto escolhido pela autora é a cidade de Lisboa e a discussão teórica explora a possibilidade de existirem, na sociedade portuguesa, mecanismos peculiares na construção identitária, individual e colectiva que explicam a presença negra em Portugal. A autora questiona-se quanto ao significado de ser português ou africano em terras lusas, e, ao longo do seu trabalho, discute as características da identidade portuguesa de imigração, as suas auto-percepções e as suas atribuições, quer nos indivíduos oriundos das ex colónias, quer nos seus filhos, nascidos em Portugal ou saídos das terras africanas na infância. O caso da chamada "segunda geração" de imigrantes, mostra com evidência o sobressair da condição étnica como elemento diferenciador, que a autora explora ao longo de todo o trabalho, como uma condição
privilegiada para a percepção das dinâmicas dos conflitos.

Neusa Gusmão mostra no seu livro como a condição étnica é vivenciada pelos jovens no meio em que estão inseridos, discutindo esta questão em dois lugares de socialização, a escola e o bairro. Utilizando uma metodologia de observação directa dos contextos e de entrevistas aos jovens, protagonistas do estudo, e aos observadores privilegiados, a autora mostra a escola e o bairro como os lugares mais importantes, os contextos onde a socialização dos jovens depende da capacidade de negociação identitária que eles conseguem no contacto com o "outro" português.

[Continue lendo aqui]

A Modernização da Exclusão Social

Por Marzia Grassi

O livro é o resultado da tese de doutoramento de Neusa Gusmão, a antropóloga brasileira, investigadora e professora da faculdade de
educação da UNICAMP (Universidade Estadual de Campinas) de São Paulo.
Trata-se de uma pesquisa muito interessante sobre os imigrantes
originários dos PALOP (Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa) em Portugal e os seus filhos. O contexto escolhido pela autora é a cidade de Lisboa e a discussão teórica explora a possibilidade de existirem, na sociedade portuguesa, mecanismos peculiares na construção identitária, individual e colectiva que explicam a presença negra em Portugal. A autora questiona-se quanto ao significado de ser português ou africano em terras lusas, e, ao longo do seu trabalho, discute as características da identidade portuguesa de imigração, as suas auto-percepções e as suas atribuições, quer nos indivíduos oriundos das ex colónias, quer nos seus filhos, nascidos em Portugal ou saídos das terras africanas na infância. O caso da chamada "segunda geração" de imigrantes, mostra com evidência o sobressair da condição étnica como elemento diferenciador, que a autora explora ao longo de todo o trabalho, como uma condição
privilegiada para a percepção das dinâmicas dos conflitos.

Neusa Gusmão mostra no seu livro como a condição étnica é vivenciada pelos jovens no meio em que estão inseridos, discutindo esta questão em dois lugares de socialização, a escola e o bairro. Utilizando uma metodologia de observação directa dos contextos e de entrevistas aos jovens, protagonistas do estudo, e aos observadores privilegiados, a autora mostra a escola e o bairro como os lugares mais importantes, os contextos onde a socialização dos jovens depende da capacidade de negociação identitária que eles conseguem no contacto com o "outro" português.

[Continue lendo aqui]

INTERROGATING THE BLOGOSPHERE (II)

In the previous post, I raised, among others, the following questions:

Firstly, what is exactly the “mainstream media”? Does it include the same type of outlets in New York, Lisbon, Luanda, Boston, Porto, Brazilia, Maputo, London, Praia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Rio, Lubango or Dili? Secondly, to what extent can a blogger based in Portugal, USA, UK or Cabo Verde accurately reflect the voices of communities and individual citizens in N’Dalatando, Quelimane or Principe, whose concerns might not be heard online? Can such a blogger in any case reflect them better than another one based closer to those communities, unless he visits them regularly or has close family, friendship, or professional ties with them? Thirdly, who gets to determine, and under whose criteria, which are “the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world”, as per the GVO “Primary Goals”?

Trying to find some answers, I took a close look at the GVO coverage of “Portuguese-speaking African countries” in the last six months*:

The most striking observation from this graph is that OC appears not only, as we have seen before, as the “undisputed champion” of GVO reporting about the “Angolan blogosphere”, but also as the “champion” (only “disputed” by Carlos Serra, one of the bloggers I covered for GVO) of their “Lusophone” Sub-Saharan Africa reporting. A second interesting observation is that less than one third of the bloggers covered are actually based in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Another, not less interesting, observation is that we get, just to give an example, issues and events about Angola or Sao Tome & Principe covered by East-Timorese or Portuguese blogs – which perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that some of these blogs are, to put it mildly, “highly influenced” (at least judging from the prominence of his picture on them) by none other than OC, who also appears as the presumable overseer of a “blog production line” (Fabrica de Blogues) spreading from Portugal to Timor. It’s also interesting to observe how OC manages to appear in the coverage of an event in Mozambique, which was being thoroughly covered by Mozambican bloggers in situ.

At first sight, one might be tempted to conclude that these trends reflect a lack of diversity of African-based blogs written in Portuguese. However, as it can be gathered from this list (where, incidentally, my blog doesn’t figure and, by their own admission, is “manipulated” by… exactly, OC), or from this one (where my blog is also not listed) that is not the case.

It is abundantly clear that the GVO “Portuguese-speaking Africa” editorial line is inspired by the concept of “lusofonia”. However, this raises a number of issues, starting with this: just imagine that you are a South African blogger systematically seeing events happening at your doorstep, and that you also blogged about, reported at GVO by British, Nigerian or American bloggers simply because they too are English-speaking and read about it in the conventional mainstream media, or in your own blog? Or that you are a Maurician or Malgache Creole-speaking citizen who finds your local issues covered at GVO by Gabonese, Algerian or Haitian bloggers, in French, just because their countries are also former French colonies? And this kind of examples could go on and on.

But perhaps the most problematic implication of that approach is that the concept of “lusofonia” itself is a highly contentious one and is far from reuniting consensus in all countries involved – not least because, on the one end, the majority of the African populations in those countries are primarily speakers of their own national languages and, on the other, the concept is highly reminiscent of the Portuguese colonial state’s imperial ideology, according to which there was a single “cultural unit” from Minho (extreme North of Portugal) to Timor - as reflected by the spread of the "OC blogging empire"...

The controversy generated by that approach can be gathered, for instance, from this article by a Mozambican professor of African Literatures at a Portuguese University, or from an article by a Brazilian writer and senior government official, whose link can be found on this post, or from another article by the Mozambican author Joao Craveirinha, whose link can be found on this post. However, these ponderous critical perspectives are unceremoniously dismissed as “gritaria” by the Portuguese language editorial team at GVO, which happens to be exclusively integrated by Brazilian citizens.

Now, on the question of who gets to determine, and under whose criteria, which are “the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world”, as per the GVO “Primary Goals”?, let’s just look at some examples taken at random:

- How is it decided that this criticism of the publication for the first time in the Portuguese market of a magazine directed at African women is “more interesting” than, say, the criticisms arising from this, or this?

- How is it decided that this treatment of the “Miss Landmine Angola Pageant” is “more interesting” than, say, this one?

- How is it decided that this presentation of an Angolan music/dance genre is “more interesting” than, say, this one (where the main message is that “Angola is good for everybody except for Angolans”), or any of these (where the rising voices and social consciousness of a new generation of Angolan musicians appear loud and clear)?

- How is it decided that this tribute to Ian Smith is “more interesting”, than, say, something like this?

- How is it decided that this anonymous email message is credible and "more interesting" than any other possible account of the reality on the ground, such as these, or any of these?

- How is it decided that this account of the EU-Africa Summit is "more interesting than, say, this one?

- How is it decided that an event like this “is not interesting”?

Finally, how can GVO’s “loud silence” about this event be explained? The same GVO whose mission includes things like, “shining light on places and people other media often ignore (…) to make sense of it all, and to highlight things that bloggers are saying which mainstream media may not be reporting (…) to help people speak out in places where powerful forces would prevent them from doing so (…) and to enable more people whose voices and views are not heard to speak out online.”

The same GVO where articles like this, for example, can be read?

*N.B.: To be accurate, in all 6 instances where my blog appears on GVO links during the period under analysis, it was not on the initiative of the Portuguese-language editorial team. So, they shouldn't be included in this graph because, for all intents and purposes, this blog was excluded from their reporting in the last six months.

In the previous post, I raised, among others, the following questions:

Firstly, what is exactly the “mainstream media”? Does it include the same type of outlets in New York, Lisbon, Luanda, Boston, Porto, Brazilia, Maputo, London, Praia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Rio, Lubango or Dili? Secondly, to what extent can a blogger based in Portugal, USA, UK or Cabo Verde accurately reflect the voices of communities and individual citizens in N’Dalatando, Quelimane or Principe, whose concerns might not be heard online? Can such a blogger in any case reflect them better than another one based closer to those communities, unless he visits them regularly or has close family, friendship, or professional ties with them? Thirdly, who gets to determine, and under whose criteria, which are “the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world”, as per the GVO “Primary Goals”?

Trying to find some answers, I took a close look at the GVO coverage of “Portuguese-speaking African countries” in the last six months*:

The most striking observation from this graph is that OC appears not only, as we have seen before, as the “undisputed champion” of GVO reporting about the “Angolan blogosphere”, but also as the “champion” (only “disputed” by Carlos Serra, one of the bloggers I covered for GVO) of their “Lusophone” Sub-Saharan Africa reporting. A second interesting observation is that less than one third of the bloggers covered are actually based in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Another, not less interesting, observation is that we get, just to give an example, issues and events about Angola or Sao Tome & Principe covered by East-Timorese or Portuguese blogs – which perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that some of these blogs are, to put it mildly, “highly influenced” (at least judging from the prominence of his picture on them) by none other than OC, who also appears as the presumable overseer of a “blog production line” (Fabrica de Blogues) spreading from Portugal to Timor. It’s also interesting to observe how OC manages to appear in the coverage of an event in Mozambique, which was being thoroughly covered by Mozambican bloggers in situ.

At first sight, one might be tempted to conclude that these trends reflect a lack of diversity of African-based blogs written in Portuguese. However, as it can be gathered from this list (where, incidentally, my blog doesn’t figure and, by their own admission, is “manipulated” by… exactly, OC), or from this one (where my blog is also not listed) that is not the case.

It is abundantly clear that the GVO “Portuguese-speaking Africa” editorial line is inspired by the concept of “lusofonia”. However, this raises a number of issues, starting with this: just imagine that you are a South African blogger systematically seeing events happening at your doorstep, and that you also blogged about, reported at GVO by British, Nigerian or American bloggers simply because they too are English-speaking and read about it in the conventional mainstream media, or in your own blog? Or that you are a Maurician or Malgache Creole-speaking citizen who finds your local issues covered at GVO by Gabonese, Algerian or Haitian bloggers, in French, just because their countries are also former French colonies? And this kind of examples could go on and on.

But perhaps the most problematic implication of that approach is that the concept of “lusofonia” itself is a highly contentious one and is far from reuniting consensus in all countries involved – not least because, on the one end, the majority of the African populations in those countries are primarily speakers of their own national languages and, on the other, the concept is highly reminiscent of the Portuguese colonial state’s imperial ideology, according to which there was a single “cultural unit” from Minho (extreme North of Portugal) to Timor - as reflected by the spread of the "OC blogging empire"...

The controversy generated by that approach can be gathered, for instance, from this article by a Mozambican professor of African Literatures at a Portuguese University, or from an article by a Brazilian writer and senior government official, whose link can be found on this post, or from another article by the Mozambican author Joao Craveirinha, whose link can be found on this post. However, these ponderous critical perspectives are unceremoniously dismissed as “gritaria” by the Portuguese language editorial team at GVO, which happens to be exclusively integrated by Brazilian citizens.

Now, on the question of who gets to determine, and under whose criteria, which are “the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world”, as per the GVO “Primary Goals”?, let’s just look at some examples taken at random:

- How is it decided that this criticism of the publication for the first time in the Portuguese market of a magazine directed at African women is “more interesting” than, say, the criticisms arising from this, or this?

- How is it decided that this treatment of the “Miss Landmine Angola Pageant” is “more interesting” than, say, this one?

- How is it decided that this presentation of an Angolan music/dance genre is “more interesting” than, say, this one (where the main message is that “Angola is good for everybody except for Angolans”), or any of these (where the rising voices and social consciousness of a new generation of Angolan musicians appear loud and clear)?

- How is it decided that this tribute to Ian Smith is “more interesting”, than, say, something like this?

- How is it decided that this anonymous email message is credible and "more interesting" than any other possible account of the reality on the ground, such as these, or any of these?

- How is it decided that this account of the EU-Africa Summit is "more interesting than, say, this one?

- How is it decided that an event like this “is not interesting”?

Finally, how can GVO’s “loud silence” about this event be explained? The same GVO whose mission includes things like, “shining light on places and people other media often ignore (…) to make sense of it all, and to highlight things that bloggers are saying which mainstream media may not be reporting (…) to help people speak out in places where powerful forces would prevent them from doing so (…) and to enable more people whose voices and views are not heard to speak out online.”

The same GVO where articles like this, for example, can be read?

*N.B.: To be accurate, in all 6 instances where my blog appears on GVO links during the period under analysis, it was not on the initiative of the Portuguese-language editorial team. So, they shouldn't be included in this graph because, for all intents and purposes, this blog was excluded from their reporting in the last six months.

INTERROGATING THE BLOGOSPHERE (I)

Six months have passed since my last post in what turned out to be a very brief voluntary collaboration with GVO. So, I saw it fit to initiate this series of reflections on my life in the blogosphere so far with that experience.

When I started this journey in the blogosphere just over a year ago, I knew virtually nothing about it. I had accidentally come across one or two blogs before and that was it. So, when I was invited by the Sub-Saharan Africa editor of GVO to collaborate with them, covering the "Portuguese-speaking African countries", it took me a while to accept it but I eventually decided to take on the challenge – and how I knew from the beginning how much of a challenge it would be! I took it mainly as an opportunity to, as I gradually got to know the “lusosphere”, report about it, in English, to the global online community. So, to me it was all about “juntar o util ao agradavel”.

I set out without any particular agenda whatsoever, if not just because I didn’t know at all what I was about to find. But I had a very clear idea, guided by the GVO Manifesto and Mission Statement, that my work would be aimed at “shining light on places and people other media often ignore (…) to make sense of it all, and to highlight things that bloggers are saying which mainstream media may not be reporting (…) to help people speak out in places where powerful forces would prevent them from doing so (…) and to enable more people whose voices and views are not heard to speak out online.”

Well, I may have arrived at the blogosphere as naïve as a nun straight out of a convent, but I was (am) all but naïve about the real world. A real world where I have seen so many organisations, projects and people theoretically motivated by some of the most noble of principles, aims and objectives but, given the opportunities created by lack of transparency and accountability, the pursuit of individual agendas, or other factors such as ignorance, short-sightedness, personal insecurities and lack of professionalism, in practice easily turn into arrogant, megalomaniac, insensitive monsters practicing the exact opposite of what they claim to profess.

More to the point: even though, at the start of my “mission” with GVO, I had gone through a very rough path of conflicts with pornographic, racist and extreme-right sectors of the “lusosphere” who seemed not to have any other purpose in life than to attempt by all means necessary to harass me and tarnish my reputation in the blogosphere, both in mine and other blogs, I had no intention of, on my reporting for GVO, sidelining anyone who might have sided with them, by words, deeds or omissions, provided that their blog posts met the GVO principles and objectives – and this much I clearly stated in the introduction to my first post for GVO.

So, I started with a blog based in Portugal through which the global world, using its comprehensive blogroll, could access virtually the entire “lusosphere”. Thereafter, my main concern was to give utmost priority to bloggers based in the countries I was supposed to cover. This led me to follow up my reporting with the first blog I found in the Mozambican blogosphere, and then with one of the few blogs reporting from inside Angola. My reporting took the form of “bloggers profiles” mainly because of the relatively fewer number of blogs in those countries and their geographical and thematic dispersion. In my choices, there were no considerations of race, gender, politico-ideological orientation or any other subjective factors. There was, however, a clear concern with whether the issues they were blogging about were of the kind that may not be reported by the mainstream media, either in the respective countries or abroad.

And this is where things got complicated. Firstly, what is exactly the “mainstream media”? Does it include the same type of outlets in New York, Lisbon, Luanda, Boston, Porto, Brazilia, Maputo, London, Praia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Rio, Lubango or Dili? Secondly, to what extent can a blogger based in Portugal, USA, UK or Cabo Verde accurately reflect the voices of communities and individual citizens in N’Dalatando, Quelimane or Principe, whose concerns might not be heard online? Can such a blogger in any case reflect them better than another one based closer to those communities, unless he visits them regularly or has close family, friendship, or professional ties with them? Thirdly, who gets to determine, and under whose criteria, which are “the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world”, as per the GVO “Primary Goals”?

Before attempting to answer any of these questions, let me talk about the reactions to my third, and eventually last, post for GVO. It was attacked, or rather, I was attacked because of it, on that blog by a group of lusophone bloggers led by one certain Orlando Castro (OC) and including the first blogger I had covered for GVO, on the absolutely groundless and personally insulting libel that “unlike the author of that blog, I had fled Angola without thinking!” Well, this is someone I don’t know and doesn’t know me personally apart from the blogosphere (the same applying to all the bloggers I’ve come across so far) and with whom, I must stress, I never had exchanged any comments or dialogues, directly or indirectly (in fact, I only got to properly know his blog after taking that blow on the stomach from him completely out of the blue) and I might even, as I went on with my work, if allowed to, at some point cover his and his group’s blogs.

The origin of that totally unprovoked and absurd libellous attack about my alleged “flight” from Angola, with or without thinking, is well determined in the “lusosphere”, as are the motivations of its author, and I had it thrown at my face before by the people who have been keeping me under siege in the blogosphere and have forced me to temporarily restrict access to my blog and implement comment moderation on it (costing me a considerable number of visitors, commentators, friends and contributors) and also forced me to get an interview I had given to the blog Szavanna about Angolan music withdrawn.

However, to this day I struggle to understand what led OC to come up with it at that particular blog I covered for GVO. “Is it because I is black?”, as Ali G would ask, or was it because, unlike the previous two bloggers I had covered, the owner of that blog happens to be black? Or was it because I am a woman? Was it because that was the first Angolan-based blog I covered? Or did he think that his blog should have been the first to be covered? Or was it something to do with the subject matter of the post covered itself? I honestly don’t know.

What I have no doubts about is that OC and his followers descended there like a tonne of bricks upon me mainly to personally profit in one way or another from the exposure that blog would gain as a result of its appearance on GVO – interestingly enough, even before I started volunteering for GVO, I had made a comment on that blog (although only to get back a cold shoulder from its author, which I totally failed to understand at the time) and had at some stage linked it on my blog; however I don’t remember ever seeing there before a comment by OC or his friends, or the blog in question figuring in their blogrolls, or vice-versa.

However, the most disturbing of it all for me was that, as if I were carelessly poking a cobra with a very short stick, the supposed potential beneficiary of my voluntary time, effort and attention in that particular instance, in a fit of irrational hatred that I can only understand as the result of the most explosive mixture of ignorance, bad manners, inferiority and subaltern complexes and inversed racism, sided with OC against me, thus effectively behaving like a “turkey voting for Christmas”. This surely caught the attention of someone, somewhere, at GVO, who found in my attackers “the courage of their convictions”! The result?*

Still had any doubts that crime (in this case, opportunism, racism, bullying, intrigue, slander, defamation and libel) actually does pay? So, who is this “suppa duppa dude”, who, clearly as a reward for acting as a deranged sniper bent on forcing me out of my work with GVO and ultimately drive me offline, for allegedly “having fled my country of origin”, all of a sudden started to appear on GVO (I don’t recall his blog ever being mentioned there before) as the “undisputed champion” of blogging about Angola, while continuing undeterred with his vicious, venomous attacks, open or veiled, against me in association with his allies?

For all I know, he is a “professional journalist” (or at least he displays his Portuguese Journalists’ Union card number on his blog profile) who, together with other two bloggers who form among themselves an “exclusive and closed mutual appreciation society” of sorts, works for the mainstream online media outlet “Noticias Lusofonas”, based in Portugal. So, how likely is it that whatever issues he blogs about might not be reported by mainstream media? He is based in an interior locality of Portugal, Vila Nova de Gaia, not even in the capital, Lisboa, or any of the other major cities in the country, such as Porto, Setubal, Faro or Coimbra, where he could have some exposure to and direct contact with the African communities whose majority is based in those centres. So, how reliable can his blog be to reflect the voices of those citizens and of their families in Africa to the global world?

I also happen to know that OC is part of a group of former Portuguese settlers (colonos) who, in 1974, joined UNITA, because its president, Jonas Savimbi, backed by apartheid South Africa, presented himself to them as “the real and only safeguard of white interests in Angola”, while allegedly saying the exact opposite in his speeches in his mother tongue, Umbundu, which most of the white population couldn’t understand (yes, so much for the ‘lusofonia’…). However, he was not among the few whites who stayed in the country after independence in 1975, either fighting Savimbi’s battles on the ground, or on the other side enduring the effects of the long fratricide war, directly or indirectly, as my family and I did, together with the vast majority of Angolans. He fled the country.

Exactly, with or without thinking, he fled Angola in 1975 and never went back! Along the last 30 years, most of Savimbi’s white supporters, inside or outside the country, abandoned his ranks and some are now amongst his main detractors, having become stern defenders of the idea (right or wrong, that’s not what I’m discussing here) that if white interests were ever safeguarded in Angola by any political force, it was by the ruling party, MPLA, and that only they themselves could have done better. However, through his writings, it becomes apparent that he might go back only when “they themselves are in a position of power to do it, because they do it better!” In the meantime, and unlike even some of the most deeply-rooted UNITA militants, he continues to this day to refer to Savimbi as “My President”! So, that’s OC for you.

Most of his and his closest allies’ blog posts about African issues reflect the mentality of those around the world who attribute all African problems exclusively to the “innate incapability” of Africans – to whom he often refers indiscriminately as “monkeys who keep falling from trees because they have to take off one of their shoes in order to be able to count to 12…” – and pretend to pass themselves as “the voices of the voiceless” with an unmistakable, if hidden, ideological agenda: that of advancing, by hook, by crook, or by fluke, the cause of “recolonisation”. His blogging about Angola is all mainly based on reports by the mainstream media in Angola or Portugal and, as a result of that, his opinions are at best secondary and derivative and at worst little more than fabrications of a “fertile imagination”.

He seldom, if ever, reveals “his sources” on the ground, either for the texts or the pictures, (in fact, at least once he used one of my exclusive pictures but, unlike his closest friend, didn't acknowledge it), he publishes about Angola, most of which are not real illustrations of the “facts” and locations he purports to talk about, but selectively chosen to depict the worst possible images of Africa, all invariably reminiscent of the great draught and famine in the Ethiopia of the ‘80s, widely published by the western mainstream media and continually disseminated throughout certain sectors in the blogosphere as the “trademark” image of all countries in Africa, all the time. So, is “citizen’s media” according to GVO based on facts lived and observed in loco, or on second or third-hand, recycled opinion, and clichés produced at a long and safe geographical, cultural and temporal distance?

Now, before I proceed to attempt to find answers to the questions I have been posing, let me say that I am not fighting my causes, whatever they may be, through this. I’ve been fighting my causes, some worthy, others less so, throughout my life by a variety of legitimate means, and achieving whatever goals I might have set to myself in the blogosphere is not dependent on the ‘good will’ of anyone – certainly not anyone at GVO. So, you might ask why am I then making such a fuss about all this, particularly having said at the time that I would rather not elaborate on the reasons for my decision to end my collaboration with GVO? Isn’t this going to generate even more gratuitous publicity and “popular support” for the villains in this story? Shouldn’t I know better, for my blog and my own’s sake, than “messing with the big guys”?

My answer is very simple: because, my dear friends, this is my blog! This is the space where I’m supposed to freely talk about the things that affect me, my life, my family and friends in Africa and the society(ies), real or virtual, geographically close or distant, that I happen to live in, whenever I feel it necessary and appropriate to do so, without fear of persecution, backlash, personal vendettas or any other kind of retaliation.

Ultimately, I believe that it is my right and my duty to interrogate, and hopefully unveil, some of the processes through which certain “powers that be” actually “come to be” to begin with… before some of us start issuing “calls for recolonisation”! Otherwise, what would the blogosphere be for, or is all about, after all?

And, actually, things have reached a point where I have nothing to lose…

*N.B.: To be accurate, in all 6 instances where my blog appears on GVO links during the period under analysis, it was not on the initiative of the Portuguese-language editorial team. So, they shouldn't be included in this graph because, for all intents and purposes, this blog was excluded from their reporting in the last six months.

Six months have passed since my last post in what turned out to be a very brief voluntary collaboration with GVO. So, I saw it fit to initiate this series of reflections on my life in the blogosphere so far with that experience.

When I started this journey in the blogosphere just over a year ago, I knew virtually nothing about it. I had accidentally come across one or two blogs before and that was it. So, when I was invited by the Sub-Saharan Africa editor of GVO to collaborate with them, covering the "Portuguese-speaking African countries", it took me a while to accept it but I eventually decided to take on the challenge – and how I knew from the beginning how much of a challenge it would be! I took it mainly as an opportunity to, as I gradually got to know the “lusosphere”, report about it, in English, to the global online community. So, to me it was all about “juntar o util ao agradavel”.

I set out without any particular agenda whatsoever, if not just because I didn’t know at all what I was about to find. But I had a very clear idea, guided by the GVO Manifesto and Mission Statement, that my work would be aimed at “shining light on places and people other media often ignore (…) to make sense of it all, and to highlight things that bloggers are saying which mainstream media may not be reporting (…) to help people speak out in places where powerful forces would prevent them from doing so (…) and to enable more people whose voices and views are not heard to speak out online.”

Well, I may have arrived at the blogosphere as naïve as a nun straight out of a convent, but I was (am) all but naïve about the real world. A real world where I have seen so many organisations, projects and people theoretically motivated by some of the most noble of principles, aims and objectives but, given the opportunities created by lack of transparency and accountability, the pursuit of individual agendas, or other factors such as ignorance, short-sightedness, personal insecurities and lack of professionalism, in practice easily turn into arrogant, megalomaniac, insensitive monsters practicing the exact opposite of what they claim to profess.

More to the point: even though, at the start of my “mission” with GVO, I had gone through a very rough path of conflicts with pornographic, racist and extreme-right sectors of the “lusosphere” who seemed not to have any other purpose in life than to attempt by all means necessary to harass me and tarnish my reputation in the blogosphere, both in mine and other blogs, I had no intention of, on my reporting for GVO, sidelining anyone who might have sided with them, by words, deeds or omissions, provided that their blog posts met the GVO principles and objectives – and this much I clearly stated in the introduction to my first post for GVO.

So, I started with a blog based in Portugal through which the global world, using its comprehensive blogroll, could access virtually the entire “lusosphere”. Thereafter, my main concern was to give utmost priority to bloggers based in the countries I was supposed to cover. This led me to follow up my reporting with the first blog I found in the Mozambican blogosphere, and then with one of the few blogs reporting from inside Angola. My reporting took the form of “bloggers profiles” mainly because of the relatively fewer number of blogs in those countries and their geographical and thematic dispersion. In my choices, there were no considerations of race, gender, politico-ideological orientation or any other subjective factors. There was, however, a clear concern with whether the issues they were blogging about were of the kind that may not be reported by the mainstream media, either in the respective countries or abroad.

And this is where things got complicated. Firstly, what is exactly the “mainstream media”? Does it include the same type of outlets in New York, Lisbon, Luanda, Boston, Porto, Brazilia, Maputo, London, Praia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Rio, Lubango or Dili? Secondly, to what extent can a blogger based in Portugal, USA, UK or Cabo Verde accurately reflect the voices of communities and individual citizens in N’Dalatando, Quelimane or Principe, whose concerns might not be heard online? Can such a blogger in any case reflect them better than another one based closer to those communities, unless he visits them regularly or has close family, friendship, or professional ties with them? Thirdly, who gets to determine, and under whose criteria, which are “the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world”, as per the GVO “Primary Goals”?

Before attempting to answer any of these questions, let me talk about the reactions to my third, and eventually last, post for GVO. It was attacked, or rather, I was attacked because of it, on that blog by a group of lusophone bloggers led by one certain Orlando Castro (OC) and including the first blogger I had covered for GVO, on the absolutely groundless and personally insulting libel that “unlike the author of that blog, I had fled Angola without thinking!” Well, this is someone I don’t know and doesn’t know me personally apart from the blogosphere (the same applying to all the bloggers I’ve come across so far) and with whom, I must stress, I never had exchanged any comments or dialogues, directly or indirectly (in fact, I only got to properly know his blog after taking that blow on the stomach from him completely out of the blue) and I might even, as I went on with my work, if allowed to, at some point cover his and his group’s blogs.

The origin of that totally unprovoked and absurd libellous attack about my alleged “flight” from Angola, with or without thinking, is well determined in the “lusosphere”, as are the motivations of its author, and I had it thrown at my face before by the people who have been keeping me under siege in the blogosphere and have forced me to temporarily restrict access to my blog and implement comment moderation on it (costing me a considerable number of visitors, commentators, friends and contributors) and also forced me to get an interview I had given to the blog Szavanna about Angolan music withdrawn.

However, to this day I struggle to understand what led OC to come up with it at that particular blog I covered for GVO. “Is it because I is black?”, as Ali G would ask, or was it because, unlike the previous two bloggers I had covered, the owner of that blog happens to be black? Or was it because I am a woman? Was it because that was the first Angolan-based blog I covered? Or did he think that his blog should have been the first to be covered? Or was it something to do with the subject matter of the post covered itself? I honestly don’t know.

What I have no doubts about is that OC and his followers descended there like a tonne of bricks upon me mainly to personally profit in one way or another from the exposure that blog would gain as a result of its appearance on GVO – interestingly enough, even before I started volunteering for GVO, I had made a comment on that blog (although only to get back a cold shoulder from its author, which I totally failed to understand at the time) and had at some stage linked it on my blog; however I don’t remember ever seeing there before a comment by OC or his friends, or the blog in question figuring in their blogrolls, or vice-versa.

However, the most disturbing of it all for me was that, as if I were carelessly poking a cobra with a very short stick, the supposed potential beneficiary of my voluntary time, effort and attention in that particular instance, in a fit of irrational hatred that I can only understand as the result of the most explosive mixture of ignorance, bad manners, inferiority and subaltern complexes and inversed racism, sided with OC against me, thus effectively behaving like a “turkey voting for Christmas”. This surely caught the attention of someone, somewhere, at GVO, who found in my attackers “the courage of their convictions”! The result?*

Still had any doubts that crime (in this case, opportunism, racism, bullying, intrigue, slander, defamation and libel) actually does pay? So, who is this “suppa duppa dude”, who, clearly as a reward for acting as a deranged sniper bent on forcing me out of my work with GVO and ultimately drive me offline, for allegedly “having fled my country of origin”, all of a sudden started to appear on GVO (I don’t recall his blog ever being mentioned there before) as the “undisputed champion” of blogging about Angola, while continuing undeterred with his vicious, venomous attacks, open or veiled, against me in association with his allies?

For all I know, he is a “professional journalist” (or at least he displays his Portuguese Journalists’ Union card number on his blog profile) who, together with other two bloggers who form among themselves an “exclusive and closed mutual appreciation society” of sorts, works for the mainstream online media outlet “Noticias Lusofonas”, based in Portugal. So, how likely is it that whatever issues he blogs about might not be reported by mainstream media? He is based in an interior locality of Portugal, Vila Nova de Gaia, not even in the capital, Lisboa, or any of the other major cities in the country, such as Porto, Setubal, Faro or Coimbra, where he could have some exposure to and direct contact with the African communities whose majority is based in those centres. So, how reliable can his blog be to reflect the voices of those citizens and of their families in Africa to the global world?

I also happen to know that OC is part of a group of former Portuguese settlers (colonos) who, in 1974, joined UNITA, because its president, Jonas Savimbi, backed by apartheid South Africa, presented himself to them as “the real and only safeguard of white interests in Angola”, while allegedly saying the exact opposite in his speeches in his mother tongue, Umbundu, which most of the white population couldn’t understand (yes, so much for the ‘lusofonia’…). However, he was not among the few whites who stayed in the country after independence in 1975, either fighting Savimbi’s battles on the ground, or on the other side enduring the effects of the long fratricide war, directly or indirectly, as my family and I did, together with the vast majority of Angolans. He fled the country.

Exactly, with or without thinking, he fled Angola in 1975 and never went back! Along the last 30 years, most of Savimbi’s white supporters, inside or outside the country, abandoned his ranks and some are now amongst his main detractors, having become stern defenders of the idea (right or wrong, that’s not what I’m discussing here) that if white interests were ever safeguarded in Angola by any political force, it was by the ruling party, MPLA, and that only they themselves could have done better. However, through his writings, it becomes apparent that he might go back only when “they themselves are in a position of power to do it, because they do it better!” In the meantime, and unlike even some of the most deeply-rooted UNITA militants, he continues to this day to refer to Savimbi as “My President”! So, that’s OC for you.

Most of his and his closest allies’ blog posts about African issues reflect the mentality of those around the world who attribute all African problems exclusively to the “innate incapability” of Africans – to whom he often refers indiscriminately as “monkeys who keep falling from trees because they have to take off one of their shoes in order to be able to count to 12…” – and pretend to pass themselves as “the voices of the voiceless” with an unmistakable, if hidden, ideological agenda: that of advancing, by hook, by crook, or by fluke, the cause of “recolonisation”. His blogging about Angola is all mainly based on reports by the mainstream media in Angola or Portugal and, as a result of that, his opinions are at best secondary and derivative and at worst little more than fabrications of a “fertile imagination”.

He seldom, if ever, reveals “his sources” on the ground, either for the texts or the pictures, (in fact, at least once he used one of my exclusive pictures but, unlike his closest friend, didn't acknowledge it), he publishes about Angola, most of which are not real illustrations of the “facts” and locations he purports to talk about, but selectively chosen to depict the worst possible images of Africa, all invariably reminiscent of the great draught and famine in the Ethiopia of the ‘80s, widely published by the western mainstream media and continually disseminated throughout certain sectors in the blogosphere as the “trademark” image of all countries in Africa, all the time. So, is “citizen’s media” according to GVO based on facts lived and observed in loco, or on second or third-hand, recycled opinion, and clichés produced at a long and safe geographical, cultural and temporal distance?

Now, before I proceed to attempt to find answers to the questions I have been posing, let me say that I am not fighting my causes, whatever they may be, through this. I’ve been fighting my causes, some worthy, others less so, throughout my life by a variety of legitimate means, and achieving whatever goals I might have set to myself in the blogosphere is not dependent on the ‘good will’ of anyone – certainly not anyone at GVO. So, you might ask why am I then making such a fuss about all this, particularly having said at the time that I would rather not elaborate on the reasons for my decision to end my collaboration with GVO? Isn’t this going to generate even more gratuitous publicity and “popular support” for the villains in this story? Shouldn’t I know better, for my blog and my own’s sake, than “messing with the big guys”?

My answer is very simple: because, my dear friends, this is my blog! This is the space where I’m supposed to freely talk about the things that affect me, my life, my family and friends in Africa and the society(ies), real or virtual, geographically close or distant, that I happen to live in, whenever I feel it necessary and appropriate to do so, without fear of persecution, backlash, personal vendettas or any other kind of retaliation.

Ultimately, I believe that it is my right and my duty to interrogate, and hopefully unveil, some of the processes through which certain “powers that be” actually “come to be” to begin with… before some of us start issuing “calls for recolonisation”! Otherwise, what would the blogosphere be for, or is all about, after all?

And, actually, things have reached a point where I have nothing to lose…

*N.B.: To be accurate, in all 6 instances where my blog appears on GVO links during the period under analysis, it was not on the initiative of the Portuguese-language editorial team. So, they shouldn't be included in this graph because, for all intents and purposes, this blog was excluded from their reporting in the last six months.

DISCURSOS POST-COLONIAIS: O VERSO & O REVERSO*

Uma nova geração de escritores tem emergido na narrativa contemporânea com um discurso que procura descolonizar as mágoas, as angústias, e dores que a geração anterior trouxe de África e de Timor. Será necessário, na nossa opinião, pensar e reflectir nestas novas trajectórias de vida e identidades, com um olhar completo. Este acto de olhar, é o projecto de escritores que procuram fazer uma leitura diferente da caminhada histórica, cultural e subjectiva do nosso passado colonial, de um modo criativo, lúcido, e equilibrado. É a língua das águas subterrâneas que enriquecem este mal-estar pós-colonial, por vezes, pejado de sentimentos de perda e de exílio. Acolher e escutar estes novos olhares, estas novas visões em interacção com África e Timor, permite-nos dirigir e mesurar o diálogo que
propomos, neste encontro, para além da mágoa.

(Apresentacao de um Coloquio entitulado “Para Além da Mágoa: Novos Diálogos Pós-Coloniais”, realizado recentemente na Casa Fernando Pessoa em Lisboa)

Agora sobre a língua, mana ela só “nos une” como dizem por aí quando nós damos uma de “calcinhas” e “pseudo-elites” pra dizer que tá tudo “nacional e portuguesmente mbora bom”, que o colonialismo foi “a melhor coisa que nos aconteceu”, que no Brasil “não tem nem nunca teve racismo”, que “a escravatura até teve o seu lado positivo”, que “somos todos portugueses do Minho a Timor” e por aí adiante. Mas se você não usa a língua pra dizer essas cueza e começa só a perguntar “mas afinal lusofonia é ideologia ou cultura?”, então aí os racistas pretos e brancos e seus respectivos lacaios viram já salalé e “ninguém que te arresponde e já não há rrespeto!”, pergunta só no man Murras! É só ódio e “gritaria” e você aí é melhor memo então começar a zuelar chinês, senão os kaínga da lusofonia cheios de “conceito com preconceito” vão memo te zungular e te bufocar que nem o chefe de posto Poeira, como cantou o man Bonga Kuenda, te esfregar gindungo no olho e te queimar pornográficamente na fogueira da inquisição juntamente com os teus escritos lusófonos e se não te matam memo de morte morrida e matada, então te fazem virar “local voice offline”!
Zukulo o meso mana!

(Extracto de comentario a este ‘post’)

*OU O CONTEXTO AINDA SEM TEXTO...

Uma nova geração de escritores tem emergido na narrativa contemporânea com um discurso que procura descolonizar as mágoas, as angústias, e dores que a geração anterior trouxe de África e de Timor. Será necessário, na nossa opinião, pensar e reflectir nestas novas trajectórias de vida e identidades, com um olhar completo. Este acto de olhar, é o projecto de escritores que procuram fazer uma leitura diferente da caminhada histórica, cultural e subjectiva do nosso passado colonial, de um modo criativo, lúcido, e equilibrado. É a língua das águas subterrâneas que enriquecem este mal-estar pós-colonial, por vezes, pejado de sentimentos de perda e de exílio. Acolher e escutar estes novos olhares, estas novas visões em interacção com África e Timor, permite-nos dirigir e mesurar o diálogo que
propomos, neste encontro, para além da mágoa.

(Apresentacao de um Coloquio entitulado “Para Além da Mágoa: Novos Diálogos Pós-Coloniais”, realizado recentemente na Casa Fernando Pessoa em Lisboa)

Agora sobre a língua, mana ela só “nos une” como dizem por aí quando nós damos uma de “calcinhas” e “pseudo-elites” pra dizer que tá tudo “nacional e portuguesmente mbora bom”, que o colonialismo foi “a melhor coisa que nos aconteceu”, que no Brasil “não tem nem nunca teve racismo”, que “a escravatura até teve o seu lado positivo”, que “somos todos portugueses do Minho a Timor” e por aí adiante. Mas se você não usa a língua pra dizer essas cueza e começa só a perguntar “mas afinal lusofonia é ideologia ou cultura?”, então aí os racistas pretos e brancos e seus respectivos lacaios viram já salalé e “ninguém que te arresponde e já não há rrespeto!”, pergunta só no man Murras! É só ódio e “gritaria” e você aí é melhor memo então começar a zuelar chinês, senão os kaínga da lusofonia cheios de “conceito com preconceito” vão memo te zungular e te bufocar que nem o chefe de posto Poeira, como cantou o man Bonga Kuenda, te esfregar gindungo no olho e te queimar pornográficamente na fogueira da inquisição juntamente com os teus escritos lusófonos e se não te matam memo de morte morrida e matada, então te fazem virar “local voice offline”!
Zukulo o meso mana!

(Extracto de comentario a este ‘post’)

*OU O CONTEXTO AINDA SEM TEXTO...

2007 PUBLICATIONS ON "LUSOPHONE AFRICA"

SELECTED TITLES

Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) da Univ. do Porto
(Coord.), Trabalho Forçado Africano – Articulações com
o poder político. Porto: Campo das Letras 2007

Chissico, Hermínio Paulino. O Racismo: Na sua Perspectiva Sociológica e
Psicológica - Como o Mesmo se Manifesta a Nível Global e em Moçambique.
Maputo: 2007

Fermino, António José - ANGOLA EVOCAÇÕES (Vida
do angolano e suas relações. com os europeus nos
longínquos anos de 1950-70 ). Lisbon: Europress,
2006, 171 p. ilustr. ISBN 978-989-20-0737-3

Francisco, Miguel. Nuvem Negra. O drama de 27 de Maio
de 1977. 199 pp. Lisbon: Clássica Editora 2007.

Ganhão, Carlos. Dembos: A Floresta do Medo: Angola - 1969 a 1971 [Romance].
Lisboa: Terramar [Tudo Ficção], 2007

Marcos, Daniel de Silva Costa. Salazar e de Gaulle: A França e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa (1958-1968). Lisboa: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros [Biblioteca Diplomática, Série D], 2007

M’Bokolo, Elikia. ÁFRICA NEGRA. História e
Civilizações do Século XIX aos nossos dias. Tome II.
Lisbon: Edições Colibri 2007.

Mondlane, Janet Rae. O Eco da Tua Voz: Cartas Editadas de Eduardo
Mondlane. Volume I (1920-1950). Maputo : IU, 2007

Oliveira, Pedro Aires. Os Despojos da Aliança: A Grã-Bretanha e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa, 1845-1976. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2007

Ribeiro, Margarida Calafate. África Feminino: As Mulheres Portuguesas e a Guerra Colonial. Porto: Afrontamento [Textos 55], 2007

[COMPREHENSIVE LIST]

SELECTED TITLES

Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) da Univ. do Porto
(Coord.), Trabalho Forçado Africano – Articulações com
o poder político. Porto: Campo das Letras 2007

Chissico, Hermínio Paulino. O Racismo: Na sua Perspectiva Sociológica e
Psicológica - Como o Mesmo se Manifesta a Nível Global e em Moçambique.
Maputo: 2007

Fermino, António José - ANGOLA EVOCAÇÕES (Vida
do angolano e suas relações. com os europeus nos
longínquos anos de 1950-70 ). Lisbon: Europress,
2006, 171 p. ilustr. ISBN 978-989-20-0737-3

Francisco, Miguel. Nuvem Negra. O drama de 27 de Maio
de 1977. 199 pp. Lisbon: Clássica Editora 2007.

Ganhão, Carlos. Dembos: A Floresta do Medo: Angola - 1969 a 1971 [Romance].
Lisboa: Terramar [Tudo Ficção], 2007

Marcos, Daniel de Silva Costa. Salazar e de Gaulle: A França e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa (1958-1968). Lisboa: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros [Biblioteca Diplomática, Série D], 2007

M’Bokolo, Elikia. ÁFRICA NEGRA. História e
Civilizações do Século XIX aos nossos dias. Tome II.
Lisbon: Edições Colibri 2007.

Mondlane, Janet Rae. O Eco da Tua Voz: Cartas Editadas de Eduardo
Mondlane. Volume I (1920-1950). Maputo : IU, 2007

Oliveira, Pedro Aires. Os Despojos da Aliança: A Grã-Bretanha e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa, 1845-1976. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2007

Ribeiro, Margarida Calafate. África Feminino: As Mulheres Portuguesas e a Guerra Colonial. Porto: Afrontamento [Textos 55], 2007

[COMPREHENSIVE LIST]

AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM FESTIVAL IN NEW YORK

The program for the 15th Annual African Diaspora Film Festival, which will take place in New York on November 23-December 9, 2007, has a special "Portugal and Africa Program," which includes old and new films about Lusophone African topics. The program lists many other interesting films, including some from Brazil.


_Cape Verde, My Love_ (2007, NY premiere), fiction - A film that takes a critical look at the lives of women in Cape Verde. Ana Ramos Lisboa, the director, will also participate on panels on Dec. 7 and 8..

_Escape from Luanda_ (2007, US premiere), documentary - profiles three students at the Music School in Luanda, culminating with their end of year concert.

_Nelio's Story_ (1997), fiction - the story of an orphan boy whose magical powers make him the leader of homeless boys in Maputo, based on Henning Mankell story.

_A River / Um Rio_ (2005, US premiere), fiction - based on a Mia Couto novel, about members of an extended family who gather to bury their patriarch, each person representing different aspects of recent Mozambican history.

_Tatana_ (2005), short fiction (12 minutes) - a grandmother appears after her death to help her grandson accept fate and death.

_Skin / Pele_ (2005, US premiere), fiction - set in 1970s Lisbon, about a mixed race young woman sorting out her identity.

For further information about venues and dates, as well as longer summaries of the film stories, see http://www.nyadff.org/.

(By Kathleen Sheldon - H-Net)

The program for the 15th Annual African Diaspora Film Festival, which will take place in New York on November 23-December 9, 2007, has a special "Portugal and Africa Program," which includes old and new films about Lusophone African topics. The program lists many other interesting films, including some from Brazil.


_Cape Verde, My Love_ (2007, NY premiere), fiction - A film that takes a critical look at the lives of women in Cape Verde. Ana Ramos Lisboa, the director, will also participate on panels on Dec. 7 and 8..

_Escape from Luanda_ (2007, US premiere), documentary - profiles three students at the Music School in Luanda, culminating with their end of year concert.

_Nelio's Story_ (1997), fiction - the story of an orphan boy whose magical powers make him the leader of homeless boys in Maputo, based on Henning Mankell story.

_A River / Um Rio_ (2005, US premiere), fiction - based on a Mia Couto novel, about members of an extended family who gather to bury their patriarch, each person representing different aspects of recent Mozambican history.

_Tatana_ (2005), short fiction (12 minutes) - a grandmother appears after her death to help her grandson accept fate and death.

_Skin / Pele_ (2005, US premiere), fiction - set in 1970s Lisbon, about a mixed race young woman sorting out her identity.

For further information about venues and dates, as well as longer summaries of the film stories, see http://www.nyadff.org/.

(By Kathleen Sheldon - H-Net)

ETNOGRAFIA DE KURRAL, OU BESTIALIDADE KULTURRAL

"Ruy Morais e Castro e Jô comentam vida sexual de parte das mulheres angolanas"

Acabo de receber esta mensagem atraves de uma rede internacional de academicos especialistas em Africa:

"The video comes from one of the most famous Brazilian TV show (aired on June 18, 2007). One would expect rigid quality control of the invitees. Regretably, not in this case. What we see is the promotion of a book written by a Portuguese telling his "ethnographic reporting" of Angolan women - a reporting ridden with racist comments, lack of cultural sensitivity and even deep misunderstanding of the social phenomena in question. Nonetheless, it is treated as if the poor Portuguese man's book is a great contribution to anthropology of Angolan rural society. It is amazing that this sort of cultural distortion is still given privileged attention in the media."

Confesso que teria preferido nao o 'publicitar' aqui, mas pela relacao que essa questao tem com algumas das discussoes em que me tenho visto frequentemente envolvida numa certa "lusosfera", pareceu-me oportuno faze-lo. Evidentemente, o indignado autor do comentario acima nao sabe ate' que ponto, apesar das gargalhadas de fundo durante o show, este tipo de "etnografia" e' levado a serio, e ate' premiado (!), por alguns sectores no mundo lusofono...

O tipo de "cultural sensitivity" a que ele se refere e' tao familiar a alguns dos ditos "especialistas" nas varias culturas Africanas das ex-colonias Portuguesas, como as bestiais "interpretacoes etnograficas" da sexualidade das mulheres Angolanas apresentadas no dito show... trata-se apenas da "sabia" conviccao de que as Mulheres assim retratadas pelos seus "peritos olhares" lhes disseram, atraves de um qualquer "protocolo", que "a minha cultura e' a tua cultura", portanto "e porque ate' sabes mais sobre ela do que eu propria, vai mostra-la, explica-la, 'intelectualiza-la' aos olhos do mundo, porque eu nao sou capaz de o fazer, nao tenho voz, nao sou sujeito da minha propria cultura, sou um mero objecto... teu objecto"!

[Click na imagem para aceder ao video]

"Ruy Morais e Castro e Jô comentam vida sexual de parte das mulheres angolanas"

Acabo de receber esta mensagem atraves de uma rede internacional de academicos especialistas em Africa:

"The video comes from one of the most famous Brazilian TV show (aired on June 18, 2007). One would expect rigid quality control of the invitees. Regretably, not in this case. What we see is the promotion of a book written by a Portuguese telling his "ethnographic reporting" of Angolan women - a reporting ridden with racist comments, lack of cultural sensitivity and even deep misunderstanding of the social phenomena in question. Nonetheless, it is treated as if the poor Portuguese man's book is a great contribution to anthropology of Angolan rural society. It is amazing that this sort of cultural distortion is still given privileged attention in the media."

Confesso que teria preferido nao o 'publicitar' aqui, mas pela relacao que essa questao tem com algumas das discussoes em que me tenho visto frequentemente envolvida numa certa "lusosfera", pareceu-me oportuno faze-lo. Evidentemente, o indignado autor do comentario acima nao sabe ate' que ponto, apesar das gargalhadas de fundo durante o show, este tipo de "etnografia" e' levado a serio, e ate' premiado (!), por alguns sectores no mundo lusofono...

O tipo de "cultural sensitivity" a que ele se refere e' tao familiar a alguns dos ditos "especialistas" nas varias culturas Africanas das ex-colonias Portuguesas, como as bestiais "interpretacoes etnograficas" da sexualidade das mulheres Angolanas apresentadas no dito show... trata-se apenas da "sabia" conviccao de que as Mulheres assim retratadas pelos seus "peritos olhares" lhes disseram, atraves de um qualquer "protocolo", que "a minha cultura e' a tua cultura", portanto "e porque ate' sabes mais sobre ela do que eu propria, vai mostra-la, explica-la, 'intelectualiza-la' aos olhos do mundo, porque eu nao sou capaz de o fazer, nao tenho voz, nao sou sujeito da minha propria cultura, sou um mero objecto... teu objecto"!

[Click na imagem para aceder ao video]

LUSOFONIA: CULTURA OU IDEOLOGIA?*

Quando aceitei o convite para dissertar sobre o tema definido previamente para este seminário, o qual se referia à Lusofonia, sabia de antemão que estava num terreno polémico e nada consensual, sobretudo aqui em Moçambique. Por isso, gostaria de pedir que vejam a minha intervenção numa perspectiva de discussão académica sobre um conceito que ainda não consolidou os seus contornos.
Normalmente, quando se utiliza a expressão "Países Lusófonos" a referência imediata são os países africanos que têm o português como língua oficial e que por circunstâncias históricas foram colónias de Portugal, tendo ascendido à independência na década de 70 do Século XX. E por extensão, já mais tarde, Timor-Leste. Normalmente é senso comum que o Brasil e os brasileiros não são incluídos neste conjunto, muito menos Portugal.
Ora, se no plano empírico as coisas assim se passam, é porque, do ponto de vista desse senso comum, algo se cristalizou a partir de um jogo de aproximações semânticas que nos remetem à teoria de conjuntos. Quando em 1988, Itamar Franco se reuniu com os seus homólogos em São Luís do Maranhão, o encontro não se designou Lusófono, mas sim dos Países de Língua Portuguesa. Assim, também as bases para a constituição de uma comunidade constituída por esses Países também não adoptou o nome de Comunidade Lusófona, mas sim Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, CPLP. Este é o primeiro ponto que coloco à reflexão e discussão.
Por que razão é que do ponto de vista oficial, na diplomacia e na cooperação multilateral, jamais o termo lusófono foi adoptado?

(...)

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, esteve recentemente em Moçambique, no âmbito de cooperação académica entre as universidades portuguesas e moçambicanas.
Ele escandalizou meio mundo ao, pela primeira vez, assumir a postura muitas vezes pronunciada em surdina de que havia que resgatar o lado bom do colonialismo, fazendo justiça àqueles que, embora servidores do sistema, conseguiram dar-lhe um rosto humano. E chocou, porquê? Na justa medida de que para nós, é um dado adquirido de que o colonialismo é sempre mau para quem o sofreu e é sempre bom para quem dele beneficiou. Esta mistura de águas publicamente assumida num País que foi colónia até há pouco mais de trinta anos vem demonstrar que muitas contas estão ainda por fazer para nos entendermos no mundo dos conceitos.
Para isso é que servem as discussões. Levanto esta questão do pronunciamento de Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa para remetê-la à problemática do mito do império que habita o imaginário cultural e ideológico dos portugueses desde o Século XVI.
(...)

A versão moderna do mito do quinto império é ensaiada através das teorias Lusotropicalistas sistematizadas por Gilberto Freyre, que, do meu ponto de vista, são bem mais antigas, as quais aparecem em alguns pronunciamentos, principalmente nos debates sobre a questão ultramarina, no Século XIX, um pouco por consequência da independência do Brasil.
O Lusotropicalismo não é somente uma teoria sociológica. Quanto a mim, uma tentativa de dar rosto científico a um pressuposto ideológico. Por isso os estrategas do Estado Novo acolheram com muito entusiasmo o discurso lusotropicalista. Constituída a primeira machadada na herança sonhada, criada e deixada por Dom João II. Quero lembrar aqui, que pouco tempo antes e não por mera coincidência, Gilberto Freyre fora hóspede convidado de Salazar, naqueles territórios, foi buscar mais subsídios para consubstanciar as suas teorias lusotropicalistas, ido de Cabo Verde. Nessa mesma década, a de 60 do Século XX, os movimentos nacionalistas de Angola, Guiné Bissau e Moçambique iniciavam a Luta Armada de Libertação, designada inicialmente por Salazar de campanhas de África contra o terrorismo, baptizada depois de campanhas contra o comunismo, por Marcelo Caetano, e Guerra colonial, após o 25 de Abril. Até meados de 70 do Século XX e no limiar das independentes das colónias africanas, jamais alguém utilizou o conceito lusófono ou lusofonia para se referir ao que quer que fosse.
Esta é a segunda questão que ponho à discussão. Por que razão é que só depois das independências emerge de uma forma evidente este conceito?

(...)

A década de 60 do Século passado é conhecida por década de África. A maior parte das colónias africanas da Grã-Bretanha e França tornaram-se estados independentes na primeira metade dessa década. Os interesses políticos e sobretudo económicos fizeram com que as ex-potências coloniais desenhassem uma estratégia de continuidade com outra roupagem. Quer isto dizer que, ao colonialismo clássico se seguia o panorama neocolonial. E uma das configurações que esse novo modelo tomou foi o de comunidade linguística. Assim nasceram as comunidades francófonas e anglófona. Contudo, um olhar mais atento há de provar-nos que a língua como factor de formação das comunidades em apreço não passava de um pretexto. A França, por exemplo, manteve a sua presença ostensivamente, indo da moeda até a presença militar, através da Legião Francesa, com o único fito de salvaguardar os seus interesses. A francofonia e anglofonia é sobretudo um produto neo-colonial. Esta é a terceira questão que ponho à discussão, será por aproximação à designação destas duas comunidades que se foi buscar o termo lusofonia? Se assim foi, terá havido o cuidado de se reflectir sobre as diferenças dos factores? As expressões não valem por si. Valem sobretudo pelo alcance que têm e pela solidez dos factores que lhes deram origem. Assim, se quisermos ver legitimado o conceito que a expressão Lusofonia contém, devemos ir a fundo na busca dos seus referenciais. Se assim não acontecer, reduziremos o seu alcance a um mero exercício de retórica política, banalizando-se o seu significado.

(...)

Uma das grandes discussões que ainda divide os integrantes das estruturas do Instituto Internacional de Língua Portuguesa, com sede em Cabo Verde, reside precisamente no facto de os representantes portugueses com a neutralidade cúmplice dos brasileiros considerarem que aquela instituição deve velar essencialmente os interesses e defesa da língua portuguesa, denominador comum dos países nele representados. Os africanos procuram lembrar aos seus parceiros que o panorama linguístico dos três países africanos continentais e Timor-Leste é de diversidade linguística. E se o Instituto é uma instituição que emana da CPLP, não faz sentido que essa realidade seja derrogada daquela estância para uma outra com o mesmo fim. Se a língua portuguesa é o sedimento do edifício lusófono, então esse edifício terá muitas rachas em que se infiltrará a realidade linguística desses quatro países e porque não também os crioulos de Cabo Verde e São Tomé e Príncipe. Os impasses tem praticamente paralisado o IILP que não consegue encontrar saídas e os poucos projectos alternativos não avançam por falta de vigor.

(...)

A quarta questão que ponho à discussão é, sendo os países africanos, na sua generalidade, incluindo os de língua oficial portuguesa, de origem colonial, mas com uma realidade sócio-cultural bipolar, pela natureza da adversidade etno-linguística, com que legitimidade os poderemos designar de lusófonos? Se formos pela via da língua ou pela via da cultura, teremos vastos segmentos que ficarão subtraídos desse desiderato, extraindo disso a natureza parcial que o conceito referencia. Se formos pelas razões de aproximação com as outras duas comunidades, teremos panorama falacioso, pois felizmente para nós, Portugal não construiu nenhum plano nem esboçou qualquer estratégia do tipo neocolonial para continuar nas ex-colónias.

(...)

A falta de consenso resulta do défice epistemológico que por consequência não cobre as zonas cinzentas que os espíritos inquietos querem ver esclarecidos. A terminar, apenas uma constatação que exige reflexão. A África do Sul e Portugal festejaram Bartolomeu Dias, as Américas do Norte, Centro e Sul e Espanha festejaram Cristóvão Colombo, o Brasil e Portugal festejaram Pedro Álvares Cabral, por que razão Moçambique e Índia não festejaram com Portugal Vasco da Gama, símbolo maior da saga portuguesa no que toca à epopeia da Expansão Marítima?Faço parte dos que têm o espírito inquieto sobre esta questão.Lusofonia: Cultura ou Ideologia?

(...)

[Ler artigo completo AQUI]

*Por Lourenço do Rosário, Professor da Universidade Nova de Lisboa e Reitor do Instituto Superior Politécnico e Universitário (ISPU) de Maputo, Moçambique

N.B.: Para uma analise comparativa das questoes aqui levantadas conviria ler tambem ESTE e este OUTRO artigos.

Quando aceitei o convite para dissertar sobre o tema definido previamente para este seminário, o qual se referia à Lusofonia, sabia de antemão que estava num terreno polémico e nada consensual, sobretudo aqui em Moçambique. Por isso, gostaria de pedir que vejam a minha intervenção numa perspectiva de discussão académica sobre um conceito que ainda não consolidou os seus contornos.
Normalmente, quando se utiliza a expressão "Países Lusófonos" a referência imediata são os países africanos que têm o português como língua oficial e que por circunstâncias históricas foram colónias de Portugal, tendo ascendido à independência na década de 70 do Século XX. E por extensão, já mais tarde, Timor-Leste. Normalmente é senso comum que o Brasil e os brasileiros não são incluídos neste conjunto, muito menos Portugal.
Ora, se no plano empírico as coisas assim se passam, é porque, do ponto de vista desse senso comum, algo se cristalizou a partir de um jogo de aproximações semânticas que nos remetem à teoria de conjuntos. Quando em 1988, Itamar Franco se reuniu com os seus homólogos em São Luís do Maranhão, o encontro não se designou Lusófono, mas sim dos Países de Língua Portuguesa. Assim, também as bases para a constituição de uma comunidade constituída por esses Países também não adoptou o nome de Comunidade Lusófona, mas sim Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, CPLP. Este é o primeiro ponto que coloco à reflexão e discussão.
Por que razão é que do ponto de vista oficial, na diplomacia e na cooperação multilateral, jamais o termo lusófono foi adoptado?

(...)

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, esteve recentemente em Moçambique, no âmbito de cooperação académica entre as universidades portuguesas e moçambicanas.
Ele escandalizou meio mundo ao, pela primeira vez, assumir a postura muitas vezes pronunciada em surdina de que havia que resgatar o lado bom do colonialismo, fazendo justiça àqueles que, embora servidores do sistema, conseguiram dar-lhe um rosto humano. E chocou, porquê? Na justa medida de que para nós, é um dado adquirido de que o colonialismo é sempre mau para quem o sofreu e é sempre bom para quem dele beneficiou. Esta mistura de águas publicamente assumida num País que foi colónia até há pouco mais de trinta anos vem demonstrar que muitas contas estão ainda por fazer para nos entendermos no mundo dos conceitos.
Para isso é que servem as discussões. Levanto esta questão do pronunciamento de Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa para remetê-la à problemática do mito do império que habita o imaginário cultural e ideológico dos portugueses desde o Século XVI.
(...)

A versão moderna do mito do quinto império é ensaiada através das teorias Lusotropicalistas sistematizadas por Gilberto Freyre, que, do meu ponto de vista, são bem mais antigas, as quais aparecem em alguns pronunciamentos, principalmente nos debates sobre a questão ultramarina, no Século XIX, um pouco por consequência da independência do Brasil.
O Lusotropicalismo não é somente uma teoria sociológica. Quanto a mim, uma tentativa de dar rosto científico a um pressuposto ideológico. Por isso os estrategas do Estado Novo acolheram com muito entusiasmo o discurso lusotropicalista. Constituída a primeira machadada na herança sonhada, criada e deixada por Dom João II. Quero lembrar aqui, que pouco tempo antes e não por mera coincidência, Gilberto Freyre fora hóspede convidado de Salazar, naqueles territórios, foi buscar mais subsídios para consubstanciar as suas teorias lusotropicalistas, ido de Cabo Verde. Nessa mesma década, a de 60 do Século XX, os movimentos nacionalistas de Angola, Guiné Bissau e Moçambique iniciavam a Luta Armada de Libertação, designada inicialmente por Salazar de campanhas de África contra o terrorismo, baptizada depois de campanhas contra o comunismo, por Marcelo Caetano, e Guerra colonial, após o 25 de Abril. Até meados de 70 do Século XX e no limiar das independentes das colónias africanas, jamais alguém utilizou o conceito lusófono ou lusofonia para se referir ao que quer que fosse.
Esta é a segunda questão que ponho à discussão. Por que razão é que só depois das independências emerge de uma forma evidente este conceito?

(...)

A década de 60 do Século passado é conhecida por década de África. A maior parte das colónias africanas da Grã-Bretanha e França tornaram-se estados independentes na primeira metade dessa década. Os interesses políticos e sobretudo económicos fizeram com que as ex-potências coloniais desenhassem uma estratégia de continuidade com outra roupagem. Quer isto dizer que, ao colonialismo clássico se seguia o panorama neocolonial. E uma das configurações que esse novo modelo tomou foi o de comunidade linguística. Assim nasceram as comunidades francófonas e anglófona. Contudo, um olhar mais atento há de provar-nos que a língua como factor de formação das comunidades em apreço não passava de um pretexto. A França, por exemplo, manteve a sua presença ostensivamente, indo da moeda até a presença militar, através da Legião Francesa, com o único fito de salvaguardar os seus interesses. A francofonia e anglofonia é sobretudo um produto neo-colonial. Esta é a terceira questão que ponho à discussão, será por aproximação à designação destas duas comunidades que se foi buscar o termo lusofonia? Se assim foi, terá havido o cuidado de se reflectir sobre as diferenças dos factores? As expressões não valem por si. Valem sobretudo pelo alcance que têm e pela solidez dos factores que lhes deram origem. Assim, se quisermos ver legitimado o conceito que a expressão Lusofonia contém, devemos ir a fundo na busca dos seus referenciais. Se assim não acontecer, reduziremos o seu alcance a um mero exercício de retórica política, banalizando-se o seu significado.

(...)

Uma das grandes discussões que ainda divide os integrantes das estruturas do Instituto Internacional de Língua Portuguesa, com sede em Cabo Verde, reside precisamente no facto de os representantes portugueses com a neutralidade cúmplice dos brasileiros considerarem que aquela instituição deve velar essencialmente os interesses e defesa da língua portuguesa, denominador comum dos países nele representados. Os africanos procuram lembrar aos seus parceiros que o panorama linguístico dos três países africanos continentais e Timor-Leste é de diversidade linguística. E se o Instituto é uma instituição que emana da CPLP, não faz sentido que essa realidade seja derrogada daquela estância para uma outra com o mesmo fim. Se a língua portuguesa é o sedimento do edifício lusófono, então esse edifício terá muitas rachas em que se infiltrará a realidade linguística desses quatro países e porque não também os crioulos de Cabo Verde e São Tomé e Príncipe. Os impasses tem praticamente paralisado o IILP que não consegue encontrar saídas e os poucos projectos alternativos não avançam por falta de vigor.

(...)

A quarta questão que ponho à discussão é, sendo os países africanos, na sua generalidade, incluindo os de língua oficial portuguesa, de origem colonial, mas com uma realidade sócio-cultural bipolar, pela natureza da adversidade etno-linguística, com que legitimidade os poderemos designar de lusófonos? Se formos pela via da língua ou pela via da cultura, teremos vastos segmentos que ficarão subtraídos desse desiderato, extraindo disso a natureza parcial que o conceito referencia. Se formos pelas razões de aproximação com as outras duas comunidades, teremos panorama falacioso, pois felizmente para nós, Portugal não construiu nenhum plano nem esboçou qualquer estratégia do tipo neocolonial para continuar nas ex-colónias.

(...)

A falta de consenso resulta do défice epistemológico que por consequência não cobre as zonas cinzentas que os espíritos inquietos querem ver esclarecidos. A terminar, apenas uma constatação que exige reflexão. A África do Sul e Portugal festejaram Bartolomeu Dias, as Américas do Norte, Centro e Sul e Espanha festejaram Cristóvão Colombo, o Brasil e Portugal festejaram Pedro Álvares Cabral, por que razão Moçambique e Índia não festejaram com Portugal Vasco da Gama, símbolo maior da saga portuguesa no que toca à epopeia da Expansão Marítima?Faço parte dos que têm o espírito inquieto sobre esta questão.Lusofonia: Cultura ou Ideologia?

(...)

[Ler artigo completo AQUI]

*Por Lourenço do Rosário, Professor da Universidade Nova de Lisboa e Reitor do Instituto Superior Politécnico e Universitário (ISPU) de Maputo, Moçambique

N.B.: Para uma analise comparativa das questoes aqui levantadas conviria ler tambem ESTE e este OUTRO artigos.

TERMINANDO A MINHA COLABORACAO COM O GVO...

... Pelo menos no que respeita a "lusosfera Africana".
Essa foi a decisao a que cheguei depois de profunda ponderacao nas ultimas semanas. Elaborar aqui sobre as razoes talvez ate' fosse um exercicio util e saudavel - so' que eu tambem tinha pensado que aquela "tarefa ingrata" em que me envolvi voluntariamente ha' 3 meses atras o seria - mas, para poupar razoes direi apenas isto: desculpem-me, mas tenho mais que fazer.
Mantenho, no entanto, a minha disponibilidade para colaborar com o GVO em quaisquer outros projectos que nao envolvam o mundo lusofono.

... Pelo menos no que respeita a "lusosfera Africana".
Essa foi a decisao a que cheguei depois de profunda ponderacao nas ultimas semanas. Elaborar aqui sobre as razoes talvez ate' fosse um exercicio util e saudavel - so' que eu tambem tinha pensado que aquela "tarefa ingrata" em que me envolvi voluntariamente ha' 3 meses atras o seria - mas, para poupar razoes direi apenas isto: desculpem-me, mas tenho mais que fazer.
Mantenho, no entanto, a minha disponibilidade para colaborar com o GVO em quaisquer outros projectos que nao envolvam o mundo lusofono.