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"Encontrará o amor outra maneira senão esta: aquele que utiliza ou é utilizado. Aquele que devora ou é devorado; se finge devorado e por sua vez devora." (NCP, pp. 33)

Take this book and make it home

But what does it mean to take this book and make it home? What are the political consequences of claiming it as origin? If Novas Cartas brings with it the idea of “home”, and if home is that which is inherently different from an elsewhere, then the implicit connection between the book and one’s feminist identity ultimately reinforces the state of being tied to a specific location. In this case, the location is Lisbon, Portugal. I'm Portuguese, but I'm not from Lisbon. Lisbon is beautiful, with its famous light and charming eléctricos. People like Eugène Green make ravishing shots of the place, but Lisbon clearly isn't crossed by my hometown's ribeira. (Apparently that ribeira is stamped on my face, since old ladies in college dinners tend to ask condescendingly, so were is your village, my darling, once I tell them I'm from Portugal.) It gets more and more complicated, because I'm not from my hometown either. (I used to be, now I am and I'm not from there). Even if I were entirely from there, what a curious place to root my feminism. And yet, that ribeira stares at my feminism, day and night. Vem sentar-te comigo, ribeira, à beira do meu feminismo. Fiquemos assim, as duas, bucólicas e pensativas, a murar este ismo que um dia chegou de Lisboa. Underneath my goal to make the web of “clausuras” around the book implode lies a hidden desire to centralise, to find an origin, a specific geopolitical, temporal point, a stable, unchanging frame of reference pinning feminism down to a particular national ground (or local ribeira). My perception of the “book-as-root” ultimately signals an anxiety in relation to its status as “book-en-route”, in transit in and out of Portugal, into the world.

Allegra writes like a girl

I just read an article in The Guardian that made me think of a paper I gave back in 2009. The paper addressed the way in which two women writers coming from both sides of the Lusophone postcolonial divide coexist within Lusophone literary studies, and it was one of the most provocative I ever wrote, eliciting some strong post-conference responses (which I took as evidence that I was indeed asking the right questions).

The women were Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane and Portuguese writer Lidia Jorge. I was interested in approaching them comparatively, for although they are among the most successful women writers in the field, I sense that they are not popular in the same way. I drew on published reviews of both authors work which conclude that, as women writers, Chiziane and Jorge apparently lack the touch of Midas that will transform their books into literary gold. From this I inferred that gender concerns in women's writing continue to be viewed with suspicion, which leads to certain books being dismissed as if in need of "poda" in terms that, rather interestingly, cut across the postcolonial divide.

I’m still not sure if this is simply the way in which all writers, male and female, are read before they reach canonical status. More research would be needed here. But I think it’s got something to do with what particular books are about, and not simply with how they are written (the view suggested in the Guardian article). What they're about, together with where they come from and who writes them, influences how they're valued.

More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing -- Amartya Sen

"The numbers of “missing women” in relation to the numbers that could be expected if men and women received similar care in health, medicine, and nutrition, are remarkably large. A great many more than a hundred million women are simply not there because women are neglected compared with men. If this situation is to be corrected by political action and public policy, the reasons why there are so many “missing” women must first be better understood. We confront here what is clearly one of the more momentous, and neglected, problems facing the world today." (20 December 1990)

a great read by Amartya Sen, 1998 Nobel Prize winner

On pre-loved books

A most precious gift awaited me in the office this morning. Inside the envelope was the first Italian edition of Novas Cartas Portuguesas (Milano, Rizzole Editore, 1977, translated by Marina Valente, preface by Armanda Guidicci).

The dim yellow copertina morbida misspells “Velhoda Costa”, and exhibits the following sentence in red:

“I movimenti femministi d’Europa e d’America si sono riconosciuti in questo libro proibito sulla ‘clausura’ della donna”

I find the choice of "riconosciuti" interesting. I can't help myself and sniff at the use of donna in the singular. I feel fortunate as open it and read, for the first time, Prima Lettera I.

“Poiché tutta la letteratura non è che una lunga lettera a un interlocutore invisibile, presente, possible o futura passione che liquidiamo, alimentiamo o cerchiamo. E già si è detto che non conta tanto l’oggetto, che è un semplice pretesto, quanto la passione; e io aggiungo che non conta tanto la passione, che e un semplice pretesto, quant oil suo esercizio. Non sarà, quindi, necessario chiederci se ciò che ci unisce è la comune passione di esercizi diversi o l’esercizio comune di passioni diverse. Ci limiteremo a chiederci qual è la forma del nostro esercizio, se è la nostalgia o la vendetta. Si, senza dubbio, la nostalgia è anche una forma di vendetta e la vendetta una forma di nostalgia: in entrambi I casi cerchiamo qualcosa che ci risparmi la ritirata o ci evite la distruzione. Ma non per questo la passione smette di essere la forza e l’esercizio ciò che le da senso. Con la sola nostalgia faremo una sorellanza e un convento, suor Mariana dale cinque lettere. Con la sola vendetta faremo un ottobre, un maggio, un nuovo mese con cui coprire il calendario. E di noi stesse, cosa faremo?
1.3.71

The gift surprised me when I most needed it. As I place it next to my own 1998 Dom Quixote Portuguese version partially destroyed by the handwriting of some disillusioned Amazon seller, I think that Derrida was right. Nothing is more difficult than to accept a gift.

Grazie tante.

São Lima and São Tomé on "Pública" 09.01.11

"Diria que a agenda deste Governo parece não incluir a aceitação, e muito menos o encorajamento, de espaços de debate, de confronto de ideias, de exercício do contraditório, de acareação de perspectivas sobre as grandes áreas da cidadania, de interpelação, sobretudo dos governantes, sobre as suas opções e decisões." (pp. 46-51)

on the beauty and civility of death

On the eve of the eve of a very canonical birth, i'd rather think about the gender of death.

"Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility."
(E. Dickinson)

---

"Wearing the new dress that she bought yesterday in a shop downtown, death goes to the concert. She is sitting alone in the box and, as she did during the rehearsal, she is looking at the cellist. Just before the lights went down, when the orchestra was waiting for the conductor to come, he noticed her. He wasn't the only musician to do so. Firstly because she was alone in the box, which, although not rare, wasn't that frequent an occurrence either. Secondly because she was pretty, possibly not the prettiest woman in the audience, but pretty in a very particular, indefinable way that couldn't be put into words, like a line of poetry whose ultimate meaning, if such a thing exists in a line of poetry, continuously escapes the translator."
(J. Saramago)

Who's afraid of Conceição Lima?

"For it still remains politically essential for feminists to defend women as women, in order to counteract patriarchal oppression that precisely despises women as women" (Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, pp. 13)

When political and ideological oppression starts depriving women like São Lima of their freedom, of their job, and of their voice, then it's time to recall the moments when you were told in restaurants that there's no more need for feminism today, that oppression does not exist, because all around women are writing/producing/thriving. Although it matters that this is happening in São Tomé, it doesn't really matter. It could be Pakistan, England or Austria, for all we know. It's happening, open your eyes and write about it (or write your name down here).

And as you write about it from your own position of comfort, you should trim the guilt and think instead about what little difference your writing about it may produce. A little but real difference to someone - to you? - will make it worthwhile.

So it's really not about the tag, my dear (but) silly feminist princess. The women writers you insist on bringing together in your uni-multi-Khalo-brow-phd thesis refuse, as you know so well, to be called feminists. Hélène Cixous thought feminists were bourgeois little women running after power in the patriarchal system. Even that mother of mothers, Simone de Beauvoir, started by calling herself a socialist (while a certain Same called her a Beaver in bed). And yet, the symbolic value of their work for women - for you - is extraordinary.

(Suddenly, the implicit tag starts burning inside)

the silly feminist princess

karingana ua karingana... there was a girl who wanted to know more about feminism, before deciding to tag herself as one. but the thin, delicate border between what she wanted to learn and what she was and perhaps would like to be(come) was systematically disregarded by those with whom she spoke about her desire to understand the concept. just wanting to know was enough to transform her into a bra-burning green f-frog, with semiaquatic hairy limbs for leaping. In a cutting edge 2010 snow-white British fairytale, she rebelled against the prince, Mr. DesireToKnow, (a Hungarian version of the French Chevalier) and decided to refuse the promise of his kiss. she remained a princess for ever and ever and never won a post-doc scholarship in her life, blaming it all on the crisis.

famously pessimistic

pessimistic nation indeed... everytime i call home, i'm offered a list of people who died during the week.