"Going Native": colonial mimesis and transcultural histories in the Portuguese Empire
"Going Native": colonial mimesis and transcultural histories in the Portuguese Empire
This project aims to understand processes of colonial mimesis in the context of Portuguese colonialism, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will do so by examining the complexities entailed in the experiences of moving across cultures in colonial situation. This study will particularly explore how transcultural trajectories of ‘white men’ ‘going native’ articulate with the politics of imperial activity, the dynamics of indigenous societies, the production of knowledge, and the formation of new subjectivities. The focus of the project will be the adoption of indigenous cultural traits by Portuguese colonials in border zones of the empire in Africa and Asia, namely hinterland Angola and East Timor. Preliminary evidence suggests that trajectories of people ‘going native’ acquired social, political and cultural importance in different Portuguese colonies over the years. In African colonies, for instance, the term cafrealizado was commonly used to refer to those who had adopted the indigenous manners. In Timor, the Portuguese were used to an entanglement with the indigenous rites such that some officers could be linked by barlake (indigenous marriage contracts) to Timorese ruling classes. These events and categories therefore suggest the significance of colonial mimesis in different zones of the empire, which requires comparative investigation.
Estatuto:
Proponent entity
Financed:
No
Entidades:
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Fundação Oriente
Keywords:
colonial mimesis, Portuguese colonialism - 19th-20th century, hybridity, cultural exchange
This project aims to understand processes of colonial mimesis in the context of Portuguese colonialism, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will do so by examining the complexities entailed in the experiences of moving across cultures in colonial situation. This study will particularly explore how transcultural trajectories of ‘white men’ ‘going native’ articulate with the politics of imperial activity, the dynamics of indigenous societies, the production of knowledge, and the formation of new subjectivities. The focus of the project will be the adoption of indigenous cultural traits by Portuguese colonials in border zones of the empire in Africa and Asia, namely hinterland Angola and East Timor. Preliminary evidence suggests that trajectories of people ‘going native’ acquired social, political and cultural importance in different Portuguese colonies over the years. In African colonies, for instance, the term cafrealizado was commonly used to refer to those who had adopted the indigenous manners. In Timor, the Portuguese were used to an entanglement with the indigenous rites such that some officers could be linked by barlake (indigenous marriage contracts) to Timorese ruling classes. These events and categories therefore suggest the significance of colonial mimesis in different zones of the empire, which requires comparative investigation.
Objectivos:
The project aims to offer a characterization and analysis of transcultural trajectories of European subjects in the late Portuguese empire, from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. The findings arising from the project will provide a sound historical and anthropological basis for approaching current post-colonial issues on transcultural mobilities within and across lusophone countries, as well as for exploring wider comparisons between the Portuguese imperial legacy and other European imperial experiences. Main expected outputs include a book monograph and/or an edited volume; articles to be preferentially submitted to international journals; one major international workshop. Outreach activities might include an exhibition, to be held at the close of the project. Close relationship with postgraduate teaching at ICS will be sought through seminars and reading groups. Networks with other scholars and institutions working on this topic are also expected to be established.
Observações:
<p>New project - in the exploratory phasis.</p>
State of the art:
<p>This project intends to offer new insights on current debates on colonialism, mimesis, hybridity and cultural interactions in anthropology, history, cultural theory and imperial and postcolonial studies. The notion of ‘mimesis' applied in relation to indigenous imitations of European cultural traits in colonial context, and the notion of ‘hybridity' used with regards to varied forms of transit and syncretism between European and indigenous cultures have been in the foreground of this debate. The study of mimesis has been the object of a series of important and influential studies in anthropology and postcolonial theory, most notably Michael Taussig's Mimesis and Alterity (1993) and Homi Bhabha's "Of Mimicry and Man" (1994). Taussig's work has called attention to how the mimicry by the colonizer of a projected image of the indigenous as ‘primitive' and ‘barbarian' played a critical role in the economy of colonial terror (1993: 63-66; see also his Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man, 1991). However, the wider, and varied, significance of mimetic processes for the colonizing efforts of the different projects and agents of colonialism (missionaries, military, settlers, etc.); for the constitution of the social across the colonial divide; or for the formation of knowledge in colonial context have not been adequately addressed by the current literature. In particular, the problem of colonial mimicry - taken widely as the adoption or imitation of indigenous traits by colonial agents, in the course of colonial activities - has not been studied in the context of imperial history and postcolonial studies. In the wake of Bhabha's work, mimicry in colonial settings has been dominantly approached as an indigenous gesture that counters or disrupts colonial power from within colonial discourse. The colonizers' effective practices of mimesis, therefore, have not been analysed as a topic on its own right and beyond the framework of literary analysis. By approaching practices of colonial mimesis as productive phenomena of colonialism, the proposed project aims to offer a new perspective from which to reassess the debate on cultural interactions in colonial context.<br /><br />The current view of colonialism and mimesis has been developed within a particular hybridity framework that also needs to be reassessed. The study of colonialism as catalyser of varied cultural mixtures and hybridisms that might undermine the claims of colonial power has attracted the attention of scholars. Young's Colonial Desire (1995) and Brah and Coombes, eds., Hybridity and Its Discontents (2000), offer examples of the state of this debate, as well as of the emergent dissatisfaction with the concept of hybridity and its literary connotations. There has thus been a growing interest in the colonial histories of hybrid subjects [and also of hybrid objects, e.g., Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects (1991)]. Yet, the conceptual issues of hybridity and mimicry have not been examined as the object of an approach to people in transit from European to indigenous cultures. By exploring the specificities of Portuguese colonization, the project intends to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into this wider international and interdisciplinary debate.</p>
Parceria:
Unintegrated
GoNative
Coordenador ICS
Referência externa
PROJ42/2009
Start Date:
01/10/2008
End Date:
01/09/2013
Duração:
59 meses
On Hold
