Introduction

Abstract

Portuguese Studies vol. 37 no. 2 (2021), 149–52© Modern Humanities Research Association 2021 Introduction Ana Mafalda Leite, Elena Brugioni and Jessica Falconi The present volume results from the scholarly work conducted by members of the research project NILUS — Narratives of the Indian Ocean in the Lusophone Space.1 The main purpose of the project consisted in establishing a theoretical and disciplinary connection between Lusophone Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies and the transdisciplinary field of Indian Ocean Studies. The project focused on the written and visual narratives hailing from, or related to, the territories formerly colonized by Portugal along the Indian Ocean, specifically Mozambique, Goa, and East Timor.2 This volume, therefore, constitutes an attempt to bridge a significant critical and disciplinary gap, motivated by an almost total lack of dialogue among the above-mentioned fields of study.3 This lack of dialogue becomes ever more apparent if we bear in mind the increasingly central role played by historical, anthropological, literary, and cultural studies of the Atlantic Ocean in addressing colonial and postcolonial cultural and identity-related outputs and relations from the territories that came out of Portuguese colonial rule. Consider, for instance, the influence of the notion of Brown Atlantic (Atlântico Pardo), developed by the anthropologist Miguel Vale de Almeida as a counterpoint to Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, or the use of the Portugal-Brazil-Angola triangulation in comparative and transnationaloriented literary and cultural studies.4 While developing this disciplinary and critical dialogue to understand how the Indian Ocean and the former Portuguese colonies interact, illuminating each other in colonial and post-colonial cultural and literary outputs, we have encountered several challenges. Mainly, such challenges stem from the need to give voice to the historical and cultural specificities of the spaces under consideration, conveyed and mediated by the featured narratives; and to integrate these narratives into wider categories, approaching them from angles 1 The NILUS project (PTDC/CPC-ELT/4868/2014) was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and coordinated by Ana Mafalda Leite at CEsA — Center for African and Development Studies of the Lisbon School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon. 2 Further details concerning the aims, methods and results of the Project can be found here: [accessed on 14 October 2021]. 3 In this respect, see the anthologies of theoretical texts published by project NILUS: Ana Mafalda Leite, Elena Brugioni and Jessica Falconi (eds), Estudos sobre o Oceano Índico: antologia de textos teóricos (excertos) (Lisbon: CESA-ISEG, 2020), eBook: ; and Ana Mafalda Leite, Elena Brugioni and Jessica Falconi (eds), Estudos sobre o Oceano Índico: antologia de textos teóricos (Lisbon: Colibri, 2019). 4 On this topic, see: Ana Mafalda Leite, Jessica Falconi and Elena Brugioni (eds), ‘Espaços transnacionais: narrativas do Oceano Índico’, Remate de males, 38.1 (2018), E-ISSN 2316–5758. Ana Mafalda Leite, Elena Brugioni & Jessica Falconi 150 that emphasize the undeniable presence of this ocean, as a reference and as a multifaceted archive — historical, cultural, material, and aesthetic. Thus, the NILUS project aimed not only at identifying and applying concepts and tools from the field of Indian Ocean Studies to the analysis of these narratives — which did prove productive — but also at investigating peculiar and minor declensions5 of those aspects thought to characterize the political, economic, and cultural system of the Indian Ocean, such as circulation, migration, diaspora, material culture, among others. So far, these declensions have remained largely unexplored by ‘Lusophone’ literary studies and by the literary strand of Indian Ocean Studies. In the latter context, the literary productions from the territories focused on by the NILUS project suffer from the inequalities of the global literary system, according to what Paulo de Medeiros, referring to postcolonial literatures in Portuguese, defines as ‘redoubled forms of invisibility’.6 Which perspectives and voices can be observed and deciphered through the lens of Indian Ocean Studies? How can this field of study, in connection with Lusophone regional and national contexts, offer critical and analytical possibilities that would otherwise remain untapped? These were some of the questions that project NILUS attempted to answer — albeit partially — and that this volume endeavours to present. We believe that the articles gathered in this...