Naming and Otherness: the Names of Difference in Angola (1926-1961)

• Grant number: 13/13112-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2013
• End date: August 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Paula Montero
• Grantee: Iracema Hilário Dulley
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/20326-0 - Naming practices in the central highlands of Angola (1926-1961), BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Forms of nomination have been part and parcel of the process in which colonial populations were classified and made other. Thus, this project intends to consider how otherness was named and described during Portuguese colonialism in Angola while the law of indigenato was in force (1926-1961). It shall focus on the construction of colonial terms such as indígenas ("natives") and assimilados ("assimilated"), on the one hand, and on Umbundu forms of nomination of the self and of others found in colonial records, such as ocindele ("white"), ocimbundu ("black") and ocimbali (something in-between the two previous categories), on the other hand. In focusing on the imbrication between these forms of nomination, in which colonial understanding of the other is articulated to the way in which the same and the other were expressed in Umbundu, my main purpose is to understand the relationship between the production and iteration of naming categories and the assignment of a social place to those designated by such names. I also intend to outline some of the possibilities in terms of habitus encompassed by the categories above based on a study of some trajectories of subjects designated by them.