(DOWNLOAD) "Introduction to Politics and Identity in Lusophone Literature and Film (Essay)" by CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Introduction to Politics and Identity in Lusophone Literature and Film (Essay)
- Author : CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 71 KB
Description
The articles brought together in the thematic collection Politics and Identity in Lusophone Literature and Film in 11.3 (2009) of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture reflect upon issues of identity--both in terms of a national or regional community and of transnational groups defined by gender or race--in the work of Portuguese and Brazilian writers and filmmakers from the late nineteenth to the second half of the twentieth century. Notwithstanding the disparities in their discussions of the topic, all articles question the existence of monolithic, fixed identities. They stress the fluidity of the concept and underline its contingencies as a construct that is defined by a community in a specific time and space, often in response to particular social and political circumstances. The articles also highlight the different stylistic strategies employed by writers or filmmakers in their various approaches to the subject. In order to contextualize the more specialized analyses that follow, I describe briefly and schematically the setting of discourses on identity in the recent history of Portugal and Brazil. Debates about national identity have shaped the Portuguese and Brazilian intellectual arena in the last two centuries. In Portugal, the idea of nationhood has been associated with the colonial project from the fifteenth century onwards. The decline of the country's overseas empire that culminated in the independence of Brazil in 1822 led the Portuguese ruling class to focus its colonizing efforts on Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, Portugal's presence in the southern part of the African continent and, more specifically, the country's project of uniting the territories of what is now Angola and Mozambique into a single region, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific under Portuguese sovereignty clashed with British economic interests and prompted Great Britain to deliver an ultimatum to the Lisbon government in 1890, thus forcing Portuguese military forces to retreat from the region. Portugal's compliance with British demands was perceived by Portuguese intellectuals as a national humiliation and has arguably been responsible for the fall of the Portuguese monarchy and the beginning of the First Republic in 1910. The Portuguese colonies in Africa were later a cornerstone of the Estado Novo (New State), a totalitarian regime led by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who ruled over Portugal for nearly forty years. The protracted colonial war fought by the Portuguese against the various independence movements in these colonies from 1961 onwards drained the country's economy and was one the factors contributing to the 1974 revolution that introduced democracy in the country.
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