Pro lusofonia

A pergunta a ser enfrentada, portanto, é não só a favor de que se cria a

lusofonia, mas também contra o quê ela se coloca (Martins 2011: np).

The critical suggestions contra lusofonia above stress the need to carry out national ethnographies on the reconfigurations of the colonial experiences in former colonial metropoles (Almeida 2000: 232-3), taking into consideration the histories of slavery, racism and colonization from the standpoint of those who endured its effects (Madureira

2006: 11)163_{. By investigating into the practices labeled as lusofonia, research should}

consider not only of what is said in speech content or other performance means, but also what this content tries not to say - what it seeks to erase (Martins 2006: 90, Cabecinhas 2014).

Those who defend the need to conceptually fortify lusofonia, stress the necessity to reevaluate the notion’s historic hibridization processes (Klimt and Lubkeman 2002, Madureira 2006, Lança 2010). This implies, Holton mentions, viewing the cultural identities in the lusophone space as mutually constituting and plural, challenging nationalist or ethnically absolutist approaches to theorizing modernity (2006: 11-12). The so-called lusophone community is thus understood as various interrelated diasporas in the lusophone world, and should be described as a hybrid construction-in-the-making. The Portuguese language itself has incorporated external influences over time, and has equally contributed to criolo variants (Galito 2012: 4, citing Seabra 1998; Pardue 2012). Pina-Cabral (2010: 6) argues that lusophone links may be more visible in language and expressive culture, but culinary, as well as legal and commercial spheres also feature these connections, which consolidate through their degree of occurrence. He argues that Portuguese colonialism created an outward expansion of linkages that became dependent on a dialectic of return164_{, thus gradually creating a world of common}

references:

É preciso reconhecer que, para o bem e para o mal, a experiência colonial criou um mundo de referências comuns a muitas pessoas. O que devemos fazer é trabalhar nesta afirmação fundamental e tentar identificar as relações intrincadas entre o poder e a emancipação e a violência e o prazer em que esta comunhão forçada se tornou numa comunhão vivida (Almeida 2008: np).

Pina-Cabral approaches lusofonia, which he defines as lusotopia165_{, as a}

“potential creation of complicity” in an “open network of interconnections” (2010: 6). As such, the notion is instantiated inter-subjectively and reflexively by people that have

163 _{Madureira insists “that it is this question - and emphatically not the putative hybridity, subalternity,} inefficiency, and indeed incompetence of the Portuguese colonizer - that ought to figure at the center of Lusophone postcolonialism” (2006: 141).

164 _{“Para pôr a questão na sua forma mais crua: foram ou não os ‘descobrimentos’ portugueses que} abriram a lusotopia? Poderemos, pois, falar de lusotopia sem presumir o movimento unidirecional que esse processo histórico implica? [Importa] compreender que a lusotopia não foi instituída no Brasil no momento em que Pedro Álvares Cabral lá chegou, mas sim no momento em que [a] carta escrita pelo seu piloto, Pedro Vaz de Caminha, chegou às mãos de D. Manuel em Lisboa” (Pina-Cabral 2010: 15). 165 _{Lusotopia is the network formed by the continued identities that find their origin in the Portuguese} expansion of the sixteenth century, but acquired a proper complexity and dynamics immediately afterwards (Pina-Cabral 2010: 15).

similar modes of identification. In line with this, Martins (2006: 2337) contends that the assertion of a transnational and transcontinental lusophone geo-cultural community largely transcends the language issue, as it both mobilizes civil society and recognizes demographic, cultural and economic imbalances (Martins 2006: 90-1, 2015: 7). He shows that, while lusotropicalism used the common denominator of language as homeland, lusofonia takes this culturalist and regionalist bias out and instead constitutes a plural and fragmented space and memory166_{. Martins thus favors viewing lusofonia as}

a ‘culturofonia’: a plural space in which cultural production links itself to multiple symbolic imaginaries (2006: 2337). Similarly, Macedo uses the image of “mosaico mágico” to prescribe how lusofonia ethically fosters respect for cultural differences (2013: 216). She argues that this interpenetration (rather than meeting) of cultures allows for deconstructing misconceptions on the one hand, and for discovering ourselves, on the other. While Macedo acknowledges that a community of lusophone cultures necessarily resulted from Portugal’s colonial policies and practices, she also contends that the current presence of such a community is an unequivocal proof of the gradual disappearance of hegemonic processes (ibid.). In other words, the fact that the political notion of lusofonia acknowledged the existence of affective ties across Portuguese-speaking countries, further stimulated the imagined and affective community that was already present (Maciel 2010, Barros 2011).

In sum, for these positive critics, lusofonia is also considered an open multi- dimensional, and global system, constituting a potential dialogue platform for participatory cultural citizenship and democratic civil society. It is urgent to develop a debate in Portugal on contemporary lusophone cultural expressions in the specificity of their contexts, as well as on the development of postcolonial identities and their potential role for Portuguese society (Dias 2006: 59-60, Vanspauwen 2012). Existing categories of analysis should be reviewed by underlining complementarity, flexibility and permeability (Dias 3006: 54). As a credited transnational player, CPLP – which has been critiqued as “extremely limited in achieving its goals”, given the constant change of political regimes, its actions and interests of the states that comprise it (Campos and Baptista 2014: 648-9) – has to promote initiatives aimed at the valorization of cultural identity in the lusophone space, using these initiatives for civic and intellectual

166_{“Por essa razão, dar sentido à Lusofonia é entendê-la como inextricavelmente portuguesa, brasileira,} angolana, moçambicana, guineense, cabo-verdiana, são-tomense, timorense, galega, assim como de todas as diásporas destes povos” (Martins 2015: 9).

education as well as for the promotion of intercultural dialogue (Pereira 2011: 411). Civil commitment is essential to strengthen entrepreneurship between economic, political, cultural and social areas of Portuguese-speaking countries and to increase

lusofonia’s vitality for the future (ibid.: 410, Maciel 2010: 182). This thesis aims at

developing this specific field of studies.