WReC — Warwick Research CollectiveDesenvolvimento combinado e desigual: por uma nova teoria da literatura-mundial by Gabriela Beduschi Zanfelice

Abstract

Reviews 265 of the book, Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues analyses the appropriation and deconstruction of the intertexts of the ethnographic classics of Henri Junod and Theodor Koch-Grunberg in the process of (re)construction of the new national identities in Terra Somnambula [Sleepwalking Land] and Mario de Andrade’s Brazilian modernist classic Macunaíma. This essay seems to bridge the gap with the final essay, where Fernanda Vilar observes the process of (re) construction of memory through the contestation of European written sources in the trilogy about the Emperor of Gaza, Ngungunyane. Celina Martins, in her analysis of A Varanda do Frangipani [Under the Frangipani], unveils the problematics of rhizomatic identities focusing on the non-human element, the frangipani tree. Finally, Irene Marques addresses issues of female resistance and patriarchy, both in traditional African societies and among the colonizing element, in the novel Mulheres de Cinza [Women of Ashes]. It seems to me that there is a rather problematic contradiction in the text. Throughout the reading I had a feeling that the literary text was treated as a historical document, ignoring the fact that the black female voices are constructed by the white male writer. What is surprising is that Marques even quotes Tom Stennett when he points to this fact, but then dismisses it as an unfair attack on the writer without, in my opinion, problematizing the issue enough. In any case, aside from the few problematic aspects in some of the essays I pointed out above, I have no doubt that the book fulfills the promise made by its editor in the introduction. It is a publication that truly introduces a fresh look at Mia Couto’s literary production. It is also significant that it is a publication in English, something that not only signals the growing interest in the author’s work outside the ‘Lusophony’, but also proves the comparative capacity of his work and its worldwide versatility. Finally, it can be concluded that The Worlds of Mia Couto is an indispensable reference for Couto studies in the third decade of the twenty-first century. WReC — Warwick Research Collective, Desenvolvimento combinado e desigual: por uma nova teoria da literatura-mundial, trans. by Gabriela Beduschi Zanfelice (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2020). 344 pages. Print. Reviewed by Emanuelle Santos (University of Birmingham) The Brazilian translation of the 2015 book by Warwick Research Collective (WReC) into Portuguese marks a certain volta pra casa of a way of thinking literature in a rather Tieta-esque fashion: seasoned on the flavours and ways of the cosmopolitan British academia and holding a certain altivez, an all too common undertone of the type of theory produced in the comparative literature — especially at the cores of the world-system. This translation opens to the Portuguese-speaking world an outstanding incursion on the territory of theoretical enquiry in comparative literary studies whose central premises depart from experiences of our own. The WReC’s conceptualization of worldliterature as the literature that registers the single but radically uneven capitalist Reviews 266 world-system in its form and content, relies on the alignment, or superposition, of two fundamental critical paradigms whose theorization is intrinsically linked to the Portuguese-speaking world: Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, informed by the author’s extensive work on the liberation struggles in Portuguese-speaking Africa together with Aquino de Bragança; and Roberto Schwarz’s articulation of literary form as conteúdo sócio-histórico decantado stemming from the critic’s thinking on Brazilian literature, especially through the work of Machado de Assis. The result is a necessarily dense book whose dialectical relationship between form and content does not betray its critical hypothesis, thus posing a great translation challenge that Gabriela Beduschi Zanfelice has carried out with responsibility and competence. One of the characteristics of the work is the carving of a new terminology needed in order to fulfil the title’s promise of a ‘nova teoria da literatura-mundial’, putting the strategic and careful use of language at the centre of the argument. The hyphen in the WReC’s rendition of world-literature turns it into a concept that is radically different from the popular unhyphenated rendition of world literature; similarly, the...