The manor, the sky and the nation: continuities and ruptures in the literatures of former Portuguese colonized countries

Abstract

Postcolonial studies emphasize the need of reflecting on how countries which suffered colonization still promote the maintenance of imperial power structures when they do not strongly criticize their social organizations. Thus in most of these countries it is necessary to think about the resistance of thoughts and ideologies that do not effectively promote the existence of a society away from old colonial habits. In Brazil, for example, the almost nonexistent postcolonial debate makes room to affirmations that Portuguese colonialism was mild in comparison to others. It happens that such ideas establish a network of causalities which, interpreted in different ways over time, cause Brazil to despise economic, political and social understandings about its cultural constitution. The postcolonial debate should be promoted not only to deconstruct this myth of cordial colonization, but also to understand how this deception relates to the attempt not to think about why some groups are on the margins of the nation. Our proposal here is to think about this issue and relate it to the reading of two contemporary short stories: “Entrada no céu” by Mozambican Mia Couto and “Solar dos Príncipes” by Brazilian Marcelino Freire. In these texts of two countries that have passed through the Portuguese colonization, social dynamics very similar to colonial and postcolonial environments are staged. We wrote this comparative study because the tales explain each other when studied side by side.

Keywords

• Mia Couto
• Marcelino Freire
• pós-colonialismo.