Categories of designation in umbundu in the diaries of Silva Porto

• Grant number: 19/13913-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): May 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Iracema Hilário Dulley
• Grantee: Amanda Gomes Regino
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 17/06642-5 - Processes of subject constitution in African contexts: differentiation, iteration, intersectionality, AP.JP

Abstract

This research project has as objective to analyze the diaries of Antonio Francisco Ferreira da Silva Porto (Porto, 1817 - Cuito, 1890), explorer and merchant born in Porto who lived in the Central Plateau of Angola between 1838 and 1890. Their reports will be analyzed, written in his residence in Bie and during trips in the interior of Angola, aiming to understand how the umbundu terms present in these sources point to the social positionalities linked to the caravan trade that marked the Planalto during the second half of the nineteenth century and to the structure sociopolitics of the humble speakers of umbundu in the Central Plateau. The thirteen handwritten notebooks of Silva Porto are very important sources about the region of the plateau in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which information on the daily life of the region is presented, as well as on sociocultural, linguistic and political aspects. During the execution of the project special attention will be given to the iteration of designation categories in umbundu. From an analysis of the designators mobilized by Silva Porto, the research will investigate the relationship between the forms of interpellation used in the Central Plateau during the second half of the nineteenth century and the allocation of social places to the subjects they designate.