Literatura enquanto lugar de memória e decolonização do imaginário : análise do romance "Terra sonâmbula", de Mia Couto

Abstract

This study intends to analyze the contributions of places of remembrance in literature, thought as decolonization of the imaginary, and how it influence the identity reconstruction of fictional characters. It also intends to show the means that take the characters along an identity crisis over the narrative in analysis of the novel Sleepwalking Land, by Mia Couto. This is a bibliographical research, in which we oppose the theoretical background (Achille Mbembe (2014), Aleida Assmann (2016), Aníbal Quijano (2015), Benedict Anderson (2008), Ecléa Bosi (1994), Joel Candau (2002), Gaston Bachelard (1974), Gilbert Durand (1989), Maurice Halbwachs (2006), Marc Augé (2003), Pierre Nora (1993), Stuart Hall (2006)) with the analysis of the novel Sleepwalking Land, by Mia Couto. The novel relates a trajectory defined by colonization and a civil war in the Mozambican scenario, that conquers its independence from Portugal in 1975, after ten years of war. However, the war went on until 1992. From the characters’ points of views, the remains of the suffering are expressed in Mozambican literary productions, which are constantly related to its culture, trying to value the testimony of subordinate subjects. The novel in discuss presents its characters in a transience condition caused by the war, in which their identities are fractured. Thereby, the analysis points to the influence of time and space in identity reconstruction and the contribution of places of remembrance to the identity resignation. It also works as a tool to decolonize the colonizer thinking through decolonial discourses that exalt the subordinate’s beliefs, habits and traditions. The research shows how colonization and the civil war influenced the formation of fractured subjects, as well as writing becomes the most efficient place of remembrance, and the relevance of preserving native discourses that went through all this oppression are necessary to identity rehabilitation of a nation.