Abstract

CAN, Nazir Ahmed. Indian and (in) Mozambique: notes on the other. Diacrítica [online]. 2013, vol.27, n.3, pp.93-120. ISSN 0807-8967.

Highlighting contexts, imaginaries and tensions that characterize the Indian Ocean region, this essay addresses the representations of the Indian within the Mozambican literature and, more precisely, in the literary work of João Paulo Borges Coelho. Analysing the character of Valgy, the mad Indian [monhé] merchant of the novel Crónica da Rua 513.2 (Coelho, 2006), the aim is to emphasize the different faces and phases of the other, and the character’s multiple markers of otherness. The discussion of this character and its affective geography - which sometimes overlaps with national history and at times with the myth of history - will prove that Valgy re-establishes the ambiguous margin between the coordinates of the space / time existence, releasing the poetic virtual sense of the Indian Ocean, and thus sketching the specific complexity of history in a common geography.

Keywords : Mozambican Literature; Indian; Otherness / Alterity; João Paulo Borges Coelho; Indian Ocean.

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