Project Designation: Women´s Literature: Memories, Peripheries and Resistance in the Luso-African-Brazilian Atlantic (WomenLit)/ Literatura de Mulheres: Memórias, Periferias e Resistências no Atlântico Luso-Afro-Brasileiro
Funding Entity: FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Ref.ª PTDC/LLT-LES/0858/2021
Principal Researcher: Margarida Rendeiro
Co-responsible: Susan Oliveira
Researcher: Ana Raquel Fernandes
Research Unit: Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL)
Partners: Universidade Agostinho Neto – Faculdade de Letras (FLUAN); Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM); Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte – Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes (UFRN); Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC); Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo (FFLCH);Universidade de Coimbra Centro de Estudos Sociais (UC CES); Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Letras (ULISBOA FLUL); Universidade de Lisboa Centro de Estudos Anglisticos (ULICES).
Duration: 2022-01-01 to 2024-12-31
Funding: 247.459,65 €
Overall description:
The objective of this project is to analyse the poetical-literary configurations of resistance as shown in the literary and artistic work of female authors published in the Luso-African-Brazilian space during the 21st century. Resistance as a driving force for performance and the literary activity emerges as a consequence of the awareness of the worldwide inequalities, being them of gender, racial or economic, among others. As far as gender inequality is concerned, and though this issue has evolved positively from the 20th century, it is far from being mitigated. According to statistics published by the United Nations, for example, the numbers of women holding seats in national Parliaments vary from 13,73% (S. Tome and Príncipe) and 39,60% (Mozambique), and the numbers of the other Luso-African-Brazilian countries are within this range. Women’s participation in the workforce in these countries ranges between 28,8% (S. Tome and Príncipe) and 78,1% (Mozambique). The inclusion of Social Inclusion and Citizenship in thematic Research and Development Agendas outlined by the Foundation for Science and Technology that showcase its commitment to knowledge and science, as defined by the Ministers’ Council in 2016, also conveys inequality as a pressing issue. This project takes writing as resistance and gives visibility to literary and artistic works that react against the various forms of gender inequality. Discussing these works as reflexes of the prevailing gender inequality and, more specifically, the literary strategies used to represent forms of resistance is a way to contribute to the promotion of an improved social inclusion and citizenship. By taking the poetical and literary configurations of resistance in women’s writing as the centre of research, this project also discusses the influence of the post-memory of colonialism as a reflection of the memory of the gender inequality that persists in the wider Luso-African-Brazilian community as a multicultural space.
