Combined and uneven comparisons: rethinking the fields of african and postcolonial literary studies within the debate on world-literature

• Grant number: 20/07836-0
• Support type: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: April 01, 2021 - March 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal researcher: Elena Brugioni
• Grantee: Elena Brugioni
• Home Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Assoc. researchers: Alfredo Cesar Barbosa de Melo ; Fernanda Bianca Gonçalves Gallo ; Gabriela Beduschi Zanfelice ; Marta Maria Banasiak

Abstract

The project is a research proposal situated in the fields of African literary studies and postcolonial literary theory, to be addressed as two fields characterized by a significant proximity and in growing affirmation within Brazilian and global academic and critical contexts. Proposing a mapping of critical paradigms produced within the field of postcolonial studies, with particular focus on the recent developments that characterize the debate on world-literature, the Project analyses a corpus of established contemporary African writers, with the aim to consolidate a new theoretical category that corresponds to the notion of (semi-)peripheral African novel. The main hypothesis is to tackle this new theoretical category as a paradigmatic literary form in order to set the basis of a new theoretical approach and also for the establishment of a possibly original field of study identified as Comparative African Literatures. (AU)