Cultural Cartographies of the Indian: Poetry and Ecocriticism in Ana Mafalda Leite and Sangare Okapi

• Grant number: 24/00786-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: July 01, 2024
• End date: May 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal Investigator: Elena Brugioni
• Grantee: Tarik Mateus Adão da Costa de Almeida
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Beginning with the cultural matrix of the Indian Ocean as an "aesthetic and conceptual device" (BRUGIONI, 2021) for the study of African Literatures, the aim is to approach the interpretation of this ocean as an "ecocritical object" (FALCONI, 2022), in cultural, conceptual, and methodological terms. The main objective is to conduct a critical and comparative analysis of the poetry of Ana Mafalda Leite and Sangare Okapi, exploring how the poetics of these authors reveal dimensions of "coastal forms" (SAMUELSON, 2019) through "amphibious" aesthetics, especially manifested through "visual poetry" (MANJATE,2017). This approach seeks to highlight ecocritical forms in the interpretation of the "self" and the "worlds" of the Indian Ocean. The works selected for analysis are "Passaporte do Coração" (2002) and "Outras fronteiras: fragmentos de narrativas" (2017) by Ana Mafalda Leite, as well as "Mesmos barcos ou poemas de revisitação do corpo" (2017) by Sangare Okapi. Both authors are noted for echoing the voices of the Mozambican poetic tradition in aesthetic dialogues involving rewrites and intertextualities. The research aims to show that the ecocritical and ecological character of the world of the Indian Ocean was already a formal component present in the previous generation of Mozambican poetry of Indian inclination. Now, these dimensions are revisited in the light of memory and history, especially in the representation of the Island of Mozambique and the coastal, port, and coastal spaces of the Mozambican Indian Ocean. In this dimension, the Indian Ocean is viewed as a material agent of intersections between humans and non-humans (HOFMEYER, 2019), based on Mozambican poetry.