SHORT NARRATIONS IN A LETTER FRAME: CASES OF GENRE HYBRIDITY IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE IN PORTUGUESE

Abstract

Questions of definition and genre seem to be crucial elements in a great majority of studies that deal with short story theory.1 Other essential issues for debate include short stories' experimental and borderline functions within field of literature and/or their social environment.2 Also central to this point seems to be subject of orality, which is often considered a predecessor to both traditional and modern short stories, closely linked to their actual development and change. This essay takes these ideas one step further and argues that in certain literary contexts letters may operate as they were short stories, understood in Vitor Manuel de Aguiar e Suva's terms as a brief narration mainly characterized by a high concentration of time and space.4 Examples have been found in work of three postcolonial authors from African Portuguese-speaking countries who opt for conventional format of letter to recount marginal experiences in an experimental way that is close to orality. These literary writings in letter form are short story Rosita ate morrer (1971) by Mozambican writer Luis Bernardo Honwana; poem Carta de um contratado (1961) by Antonio Jacinto, from Angola; and a letter within novel Chiquinho (1947) by Baltasar Lopes, from Cape Verde. I will show that, irrespective of genre these letters adopt (narrative, lyric, etc.), they share a number of formal and functional conditions which in all cases analyzed affect reader in same way short story does. My argument supports Perm's claim that the short story has genres of its own invention,5 as well as theories of other critics who see no strong boundaries between short story and other presumably different genres, such as prose poem, lyric,6 essay,7 and letter.8Postcolonial literature in Portuguese bears many of characteristics that according to Mary Louise Pratt favor production of short stories as an experimental form of narration.9 As was generally case with literatures produced in former colonies, postcolonial literature in Portuguese was one of subversive artistic responses practiced and developed in hybrid societies of evolving nations during process of decolonization, when authors determinedly used their powerful inherited oral tradition as intellectual weaponry in combination with their acquired written literary practice of Portuguese and Western influence. Hybridity is an important factor in postcolonial literatures, as it results from capacity of emergent cultures to integrate social, political, cultural, ideological, and even idiosyncratic features from two communities that are in contact. The discourse these societies produce thus reflects existing tension between autochthonous and dominant cultures and need to overcome it. Pratt talks of these dual realities as zones and sees in them the space of colonial encounters, space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict.10Bhabha interprets hybrid reality of postcolonial nations as a more autonomous third space where new sites are always being opened up. He notes that these sites are independent of national and colonial cultures even they draw from them, and says that if you keep referring those sites to old principles, then you are not able to participate in them fully and productively and creatively.11 The emphasis Bhabha places on creativity and newness as characteristic of postcolonial hybrid cultures coincides with Pratt's remarks on fact that in some parts of world the short story [is] being used to introduce regions or groups into an established national literature, or into an emerging national literature in process of decolonization. …