Conference Highlights: “Africa in Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa”

“Africa in Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa,” an international research conference hosted by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, brought together Lusophone scholars and writers representing 12 universities worldwide. Organized by Kellogg Faculty Fellow Isabel Ferreira Gould (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Notre Dame) and Pedro Schacht Pereira (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago), the conference was held on April 18 and 19, 2008 on the University of Notre Dame campus.

Each of the conference’s six sessions included five panelists: a chair serving as timekeeper and moderator; two speakers presenting their research; and two discussants offering critical yet collegial responses to the speakers’ papers. Following the discussants’ responses, the floor was opened to questions and comments from the audience, which included faculty and students from several departments at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, and Michigan State University. Between sessions, conference participants and attendees had the opportunity to continue discussions informally during receptions and refreshment breaks, including those organized by Notre Dame’s Portuguese and Brazil clubs. Particularly appreciated was the magnificent “Luso-Brazilian Coffee Session” organized by Sandra Teixeira (Assistant Professional Specialist in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, University of Notre Dame).

In their opening remarks, Notre Dame faculty members Greg Sterling (Executive Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters, and Professor of Theology) and Scott Mainwaring (Director [on leave] of the Kellogg Institute and Eugene P. and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science) related conference goals to the missions of both the University and the Kellogg Institute, citing the school’s promotion of study abroad programs, dedication to development of programs in Portuguese and Africana studies, and participation in initiatives such as the Millennium Development Initiative (now institutionalized as the Ford Program within the Kellogg Institute).

Following Sterling’s and Mainwaring’s comments, Session I speakers Phillip Rothwell (Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University) and Luís Madureira (Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Wisconsin-Madison) presented papers challenging the characterization of Portugal as “Prospero” to the African colonies’ “Caliban.” Using Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s essay “Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Inter-identity” (2002) as a point of departure, both Rothwell and Madureira compared the Portuguese and British imperial models. Rothwell recast the two empires in psychoanalytic terms; Madureira described how Portugal, a nation sometimes perceived as a “semi-colony” of Britain, has been portrayed as a degenerate or “Calibanized” Prospero.

In Session II, speakers Omar Ribeiro Thomaz (Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil) and Sheila Pereira Khan (University of Manchester; CES, Universidade de Coimbra; CICS, Universidade do Minho, Portugal) addressed Mozambique’s transition to independence from Portugal (beginning in 1975) and its effects on African Mozambicans. Ribeiro Thomaz discussed the oral histories of African Mozambicans sent to punitive reeducation camps as part of former Mozambican President Samora Machel’s “Operation Production.” Pereira Khan focused on assimilados, in this case African Mozambicans who had left Mozambique for Portugal following the 1975 independence; she described the assimilados’ feelings of displacement and exile, characterizing their situation as “identity-in-limbo.”

Session III speakers Kesha Fikes (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago) and Paulo Filipe Monteiro (Departamento de Ciências da Comunicação, Faculdade de Ciências Socias e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal) discussed reflections of post-colonialism in Portuguese culture. Fikes described a shift in official Portuguese policy toward race and racism, documenting the state’s increasing attempts to address discrimination; using the politically incorrect pejorative preto or “black” as an example, she linked heightened awareness of word choice among the Portuguese to the government’s acknowledgement of its responsibility to fight racism. Monteiro provided an overview of Portuguese cinema’s treatment of the imperial project in Africa, citing both pro- and anti-imperialist films. His many examples notwithstanding, Monteiro noted the relative scarcity of African images in Portuguese film; furthermore, he pointed out Portuguese cinema’s tendency to focus on the collateral effects of colonial wars.

Presentations by acclaimed Lusophone authors Ondjaki and Helder Macedo highlighted the conference’s first day. A filmmaker as well as a prolific writer of short fiction, Ondjaki treated attendees to a screening of his 2006 documentary Oxalá cresçam pitangas (Hope the Pitanga Cherries Grow), codirected with Kiluanje Liberdade. The footage, filmed exclusively in the Angolan capital of Luanda, features interviews with rappers, cab drivers, a former nun working as a school teacher, and a sociologist; this cross-section of Luandan society reflects the city’s—and nation’s—diversity. Although Ondjaki’s documentary treats problems including poverty, overpopulation, and crime, his subjects readily express their pride in, and love for, Luanda.

Following the screening, Helder Macedo, a poet, novelist, critic, and Emeritus Professor of Portuguese at King’s College, University of London, delivered the keynote address “Nation Versus Empire.” He was introduced by Joseph Buttigieg (Director, PhD in Literature Program, and William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English, University of Notre Dame), who reflected on Macedo’s achievements as an author, academic, and public intellectual. In a speech that considered more than 500 years of Portuguese empire, Macedo discussed the relationship between Portuguese imperial expansion and the impoverishment of the mother country. He explained that a “civilizing mission” had served on more than one occasion as a pretext for Portuguese imperial undertakings, yet was never their cause. Macedo ended his address by noting that, through the process of decolonization, Portugal became independent of its colonies, just as the colonies had become independent of Portugal.

Kristine Ibsen (Acting Chair, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Professor of Spanish, University of Notre Dame) opened Day Two’s proceedings, which began with papers on Lusophone novels presented by Leonor Simas-Almeida (Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University) and Nicholas Brown (Department of English, University of Illinois at Chicago). Simas-Almeida offered a study of Germano Almeida’s Eva as a national allegory for Cape Verde, focusing on the novel’s inversion of typical gender roles and the titular character’s resemblance to the Don Juan archetype. Taking a comparative approach, Brown applied Hegelian theory to his reading of two novels that turn on the end game of the Cold War: William Gaddis’s Carpenter’s Gothic and Pepetela’s A geração da utopia.

In Session V, Fernando Arenas (Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Minnesota) discussed the African presence in Lisbon. He described three separate waves of immigration from Africa to Portugal, movements that he attributed to economic factors (i.e. Portugal’s need for manpower during imperial expansion and colonial wars) and political realities such as the decolonization of former African territories. Arenas focused on the role of the media (music, television, and cinema) in reifying Lisbon’s transnational Portuguese-speaking community during the post-colonial era. Following Arenas’s talk, Paulo de Medeiros (Faculteit Geesteswetenschappen, Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands) presented on the usefulness of the literary treatment of race and violence, citing the fiction of Lusophone novelists Antonio Lobo Antunes and Lídia Jorge.

Session VI featured a presentation by Marissa J. Moorman (Department of History, Indiana University) on kuduro, an Angolan music/dance style later adopted—and adapted—in Portugal. Moorman’s talk focused on Angolan kudoro artist Dog Murras’s use of iconography and relationship with the MPLA, Angola’s ruling party; she also discussed the work of Portuguese/Angolan kuduro group Buraka Som Sistema. Following Moorman’s presentation, the aforementioned Angolan author/filmmaker Ondjaki offered a talk titled “Affective Territories of the Portuguese Language,” in which he contemplated the miscegenation of language, orality in literature, and the interplay of creative instinct and intellect. Onésimo T. Almeida (Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University), an author of short stories as well as a Lusophone scholar, participated in the panel as a respondent to Ondjaki’s paper, offering his reflections on language and writing.

The conference’s final event, an interview with Writer-in-Residence Helder Macedo, was conducted by Phillip Rothwell and chaired by Margaret Doody (The John and Barbara Glynn Family Professor of Literature, English Department, University of Notre Dame). Prompted by Rothwell, Macedo spoke to his writing on Africa, which the author associated with the time and space of his childhood. Likening fiction writing to “an exercise in madness,” Macedo described the detail-driven process by which he creates his characters; he also distinguished between his prose work and the autobiographical, cyclical nature of his writing of poetry. Remarking that “silence is essential for meaning,” however, Macedo pointed out an artistic principle fundamental to his work in both poetry and prose.

The conference was funded by the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (Portugal) and the Instituto Camões-Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros (Portugal), and at Notre Dame, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Office of Research/Graduate School, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Department of Africana Studies, and the Department of Film, Television and Theatre.

Report prepared by James Hussar, who received his PhD in Literature from the University of Notre Dame in May 2008.