Publications

Disputed Meanings of Women's Liberation: Social Tensions and Symbolic Struggles During Angolan Independence

During the armed struggle, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) supported women's liberation and appointed women to several political, logistical, and military positions. Meanwhile, in colonial society, changes in economic activities, access to formal education, and urban sociability resulted in a more significant female presence in public spaces. After independence, women's liberation rose to prominence in a context of internal conflict and economic disruption. The new government promoted the “New Man” and a host of associated social personae, all of which were defined by a set of moral qualities individuals were expected to comply with if they wanted to qualify as legitimate actors in the making of independent Angola. Women ought to engage in “National Reconstruction” by joining the Organization of Angolan Women (OMA), which focused on literacy and hygienist campaigns aimed at fighting “obscurantism”. However, many urban women had their own agendas, which called for changes in gender roles in both public and domestic realms. This paper seeks to highlight the shifting gender patterns in Luanda and rural guerrilla zones during the late colonial period, and then analyze how, after independence, different groups of women conceived their place in the building of the new nation, and how the State tried to “domesticate” the possibilities of women's activism as such, in symbolic as well as practical ways.

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Campanha Nacional de Alfabetização e a construção do Estado em Angola, 1975-1980

Este artigo busca examinar os processos de organização e a implementação da Campanha Nacional de Alfabetização promovida em Angola no período imediatamente posterior à independência, tomando-a como uma janela para investigar os dilemas e conflitos que marcaram o nascimento da nova nação e a consolidação do Estado, especialmente no espaço urbano, num contexto de legitimidade contestada e de proliferação de diferentes agendas políticas e interpretações sobre o significado da independência. Utilizando principalmente a cobertura da imprensa escrita e publicações oficiais, este artigo analisa a influência cubana na concepção organizacional e pedagógica da campanha, a fragilidade operacional do Estado em constituição, a atuação política autônoma dos estudantes das cidades – e os esforços do governo para enquadrar seu entusiasmo revolucionário – e a utilização da campanha como uma alavanca para a construção de um sistema universal de educação básica em Angola.

Baqueiro Figueiredo, Fábio. (2022). A Campanha Nacional de Alfabetização e a construção do Estado em Angola, 1975-1980. Revista de História. 181. 1-34. 10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2022.183713

El océano como cronotopo de la modernidade en la novela contemporánea.

En este trabajo se analiza la presencia del océano en dos novelas africanas, una escrita en portugués y la otra en español: Kalunga (2018), del angoleño Manuel Rui, y El metro (2007), de Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, de Guinea Ecuatorial. A una discusión teórica sobre el océano en la literatura y la cultura de áfrica y América Latina le sigue un examen de sus referencias en esas novelas, en el contexto de los desplazamientos poblacionales históricos y actuales, y de la temática de la esclavitud, a partir de la tesis sobre el cronotopo de Michael Bakhtin.

Kalunga y El metro pertenecen a universos diferentes, separados por tradiciones lingüísticas y culturales, y por experiencias poscoloniales propias de cada uno de los textos que, no obstante, se superponen en el modo de representación del océano. En Kalunga, estas referencias se ubican en la experiencia histórica y su relación con la esclavitud en el pasado.

Nascimento dos Santos, Daiana. El océano como cronotopo de la modernidade en la novela contemporánea. In: Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger; Koichi Hagimoto (eds.). Geografías caleidoscópicas: América Latina y sus imaginarios intercontinentales. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2022, pp. 57-71.

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Palabras, sentidos y papilas gustativas en ‘Seios e ventres’ de Kanguimbu Ananaz

En este artículo se realiza un análisis del poemario Seios e ventres (2020), para indagar en cómo esta obra representa literariamente los modos de irrupción del patriarcado en el contexto de la literatura de Angola. Se considera que la obra utiliza un conjunto de estrategias estéticas, literarias y culturales para explorar las complejidades de la identidad femenina que sobresalen en el poscolonialismo, así como a la necesidad de repolitizar y reposicionar a las mujeres dentro de este contexto. Como aparato teórico serán considerados aportes importantes de los estudios  literarios, poscoloniales y sobre oralidad  para leer críticamente la obra poética que nos convoca.

Santos, D. N. , Péndola, P. Palabras, sentidos y papilas gustativas en ‘Seios e ventres’ de Kanguimbu Ananaz. Margens: Revista Interdisciplinar (UFPA), v. 15, n. 25, 93-104.

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Working Paper: Assessing African Regional Integration Potential: A Data Envelopment Analysis

This project proposes a quantitative approach to estimate untapped regional integration potential across the African Continent. We first construct an empirical production possibility frontier for regional integration outcomes based on two composite indices capturing respectively enabling factors and achieved levels of regional integration outcomes across various domains. As the composite index of achieved regional integration, we use the African Regional Integration Index (ARII) which aggregates information from various empirical indicators covering five dimensions of regional integration: trade integration, productive integration, macroeconomic integration, infrastructural integration, and movement of people. We then use data envelopment analysis to rate the performance of subregions in terms of integration relative to their estimated potential. The obtained efficiency scores allow us to quantify and compare the empirical magnitudes of untapped integration potential across countries and subregions. From a policy perspective, the proposed approach can be used to assess achievements in targeting subregions with certain needs and in identifying appropriate policy interventions that aimed at fostering higher integration in each subregion.

Disease and Discrimination in Goa: COVID-19 in the Afterlife of AIDS

“Disease and Discrimination in Goa: COVID-19 in the Afterlife of AIDS,” Society and Culture in South Asia, “Social” Distancing, COVID-19, and South Asian Experiences [Special issue], 7.1 (January 2021), pp. 119-125

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From Jazz to Hip hop, Afro-South Asian Music Collaborations Reflect Imagined

From Jazz to Hip hop, Afro-South Asian Music Collaborations Reflect Imagined, more Liberatory Worlds: A Conversation with Elliott Powell, author of ‘Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music”

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Running Naked and Unmasked in Goa: Pleasure in the Pandemic

In November 2020, Indian celebrity Milind Soman posted a picture of himself on social media, which showed him running naked on a beach. He was charged with obscenity. This article considers the time and place of Soman’s act over the alleged impropriety. The photograph was taken on a beach in Goa, the tropical setting serving as a pleasure periphery to India which annexed the region in 1961. Accordingly, a longer history of states of undress in Indian advertising, filmmaking, and tourism are considered here to apprehend how Goa has been posited in the Indian imagination as a destination for wanton self-gratification while local realities are undermined. The article thus interrogates what it means for Goa, whose economy is overly dependent on tourism, to serve as a vacation spot during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when, in 2020, it had among the highest number of virus-related deaths in the country (Dias, 2020, par. 4). Using the metaphor of the celebrity who has no qualms about running naked and unmasked in Goa, this article enquires into what such events leave unrevealed in the economic requirement that some locales function as holiday destinations, even in the midst of a pandemic.

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Doenças e desvios na independência angolana: higienismo, liamba, kaporroto e kazukuta

Chapter “Doenças e desvios na independência angolana: higienismo, liamba, kaporroto e kazukuta” » Disease and Deviation in Angolan Independence: Higyenism, Liamba, Kaporroto, and Kazukuta « 

This chapter is the transcription of a lecture and the following debate within the cluster-related Fábrica de Ideias Doctoral School, 2020 edition.

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Emancipação feminina em questão: tensões e disputas simbólicas na independência angolana

Durante a luta armada (1961-1974), o Movimento Popular para a Libertação de Angola (MPLA) pautou a emancipação feminina e buscou enquadrar as mulheres em diversas posições políticas, logísticas e militares. Por outro lado, durante a última fase do colonialismo, mudanças nas atividades econômicas, no acesso à escolarização formal e na sociabilidade urbana resultaram em maior presença feminina nos espaços públicos e maior possibilidade de transgredir aqui e ali os papéis de gênero hegemônicos. Com a independência, a emancipação feminina ganhou destaque frente à possibilidade de se promoverem mudanças radicais na estrutura social e ao quadro de conflito interno e desarticulação da produção econômica. Para o novo governo, era crucial enquadrar as mulheres nas tarefas da “reconstrução nacional”. Para muitas mulheres, tratava-se de afirmar o interesse em participar na construção da nova ordem independente, bem como de articular expectativas sociais e questionar certos papeis de gênero. Este artigo examina as disputas simbólicas sobre a emancipação feminina no pós-independência, buscando identificar as tensões que marcaram a busca por igualdade de gênero em Angola.

Figueiredo, FB. (2021). AbeÁfrica: Revista da Associação Brasileira de Estudos Africanos 6 (6), 45-80.

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Autobiographik in Afrika - Literaturgeschichte und Gattungsvielfalt.

Diese Monographie vermittelt gattungstheoretisches und literaturhistorisches Überblickswissen zur Autobiographik in Subsaharaafrika, die als ein weitverzweigtes Feld selbstreferenzieller literarischer Diskursformen verstanden wird. Eurozentristische Prämissen widerlegend, die von einem enggefassten Autobiographiebegriff ausgehen, wird die Vielfalt des Genrespektrums eines autobiographischen Kontinuums in Afrika seit der vorkolonialen Epoche über die Kolonialzeit und äußerst produktive postkoloniale Epoche bis hin zur post-postkolonialen Gegenwart aufgezeigt und an exemplarischen close readings verdeutlicht.

Susanne Gehrmann stellt Formen und Funktionen von u.a. Selbstpreis, slave narratives, Anthologien, Kindheitsautobiographien, politischen Memoiren, autobiographischen Essays, Zeugnistexten sowie seriellem autobiographischen und autofiktionalen Schreiben vor und evaluiert diese im Hinblick auf ihren historischen Entstehungs- und Referenzkontext, ihre je spezifische Ästhetik und Adressierung sowie den politischen und sozialen Impetus. Analysiert werden Texte von u.a. Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Ken Bugul, Manthia Diawara, Buchi Emecheta, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Antjie Krog, Camara Laye, V.Y. Mudimbe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka und Binyavanga Wainaina.

Susanne Gehrmann: Autobiographik in Afrika. Literaturgeschichte und Gattungsvielfalt. WVT, Trier, LuKA 14, 2021, 244 p.

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Crossings and Comparisons in African Literatures and Cultures

This book constructs a platform for the critical exploration of African literatures written in a variety of African and European languages and goes beyond the mainstream in African literary and cultural studies by engaging multiple hermeneutic approaches to narratives, performance, and visual arts.

Putting emphasis on comparing cultural productions in at least two linguistic expressions, the book foregrounds the analytical strategies employed by the contributors to delve into the epistemologies of African social, cultural and political life, as critical assessments of the novel, short stories, music, drama, film, poetry, social media, festivals, and academic institutions become paramount. The contributions underscore the necessity to respond to trends and transformations that African literary genres and media have seen across time and space with interest in how these changes have been enriched by the different languages of expression.

Going beyond regional and linguistic boxes, in which African literatures, music, and film have often been encapsulated, the chapters in this book present a critical assessment of the ideological, aesthetic, thematic, and linguistic models that illustrate similarities, but also differences, that can be made visible through comparative approaches, and which underscore the innovative potential to put African narratives, lyrics, and discourses conveyed in more than one language in conversation with one another.

Susanne Gehrmann. 2021. In Crossings and Comparisons in African Literatures and Cultures. WVT, ed. Chiangong, Pepetual Mforbe. Trier, LuKA.

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Varieties of Romance in Contemporary Popular Togolese Literature

This handbook brings together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to reflect on African popular cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries – in the sense of cultural productions, contexts, consumers, producers, platforms, and the material, affective and discursive resources they circulate – are influential in shaping African realities. Collectively, the chapters assembled in this handbook index the genres, methods, mediums, questions and encounters that preoccupy producers, consumers and scholars of African popular cultural forms across a range of geohistorical and temporal contexts.

Drawing on forms such as newspaper columns, televised English Premier League football, speculative arts, romance fiction, comedy, cinema, music and digital genres, the contributors explore the possibilities and ambiguities unleashed by the production, circulation, consumption, remediation and critique of these forms. Among the questions explored across these essays are the freedoms and constraints of popular genres; the forms of self-making, pleasure and harm that these imaginaries enable; the negotiations of multiple moral regimes in everyday life; and, inevitably, the fecund terrain of contradictions definitive of many popular forms, which variously enable and undermine world-making.

An authoritative scholarly resource on popular culture in Africa, this handbook is an essential read for students and scholars of African culture, society and media.

Varieties of Romance in Contemporary Popular Togolese Literature. 2021. In Grace Musila (Hg.): Routledge Handbook of Popular African Cultures. Routledge, London.

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With or Without the State: Moral Divergence and the Question of Trust in Security Assemblages in Burkina Faso

Since 2015, Burkina Faso has faced a rapid deterioration of national security, giving rise to new Security Force Assistance (SFA) programmes. This article investigates a ‘peacebuilding’ SFA project that assists in integrating state security forces, civil society, self-defence groups called Koglweogo, and the general population. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, which revealed social friction caused by the co-optation of the Koglweogo, the article examines the broad range of security practices and moralities within these ‘security assemblages’. Furthermore, by comparing how the different project participants try to make security work, the article challenges state-centred assumptions about vigilantism in Africa.

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Ausências, fragmentos e silêncios em Ponciá Vicência, de Conceição Evaristo e El libro de Emma, de Maria-Célie Agnant

Ferreira, Y. N., Santos, D. N., Ausências, fragmentos e silêncios em Ponciá Vicência, de Conceição Evaristo e El libro de Emma, de Maria-Célie Agnant. Revista Iberoamericana, University of Pittsburgh, n.276, 893-911

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