From porno-tropics to women's emancipation: body and territory in Caderno de memórias coloniais, by Isabela Figueiredo

Abstract

This paper proposes a literary analysis of Isabela Figueiredo's auto fictional work Caderno de memórias coloniais (2010) through the perspective of the body's representation in colonial imaginaries. The study focuses mainly on the ban of eroticism in women's lives which clearly appears in the first - person narrator's discourse which distinguishes negatively between the bodies of white women colonizers and black women colonized. As they are similarly oppressed, women who inhabit both of the unfathomable sides of colonization's historical scissions and of the later emancipated Mozambique/Maputo may be understood as examples of reverberations from McClintock's term porno-tropics, as well as of the ambiguities from Portugal's colonization processes. As references there are contributions from hooks (2018), Lorde (2020), McClintock (2010), Santos (2007; 2010), amongst other authors.