History, literature and the indices of the Ocean: Force of signification in Borges Coelho’s ‘”A força do mar de Agosto”

Miranda, Rui

Abstract

The impact of João Paulo Borges Coelho’s ‘A força do mar de Agosto’ rests largely on its concurrent conceptualization of the Indian Ocean and on its instrumental use of the Indian Ocean as a literary device. In Borges Coelho’s short story, the sea is made into something other than a mere background for (neo)colonial – military, economic – endeavours or a simple metaphor at the service of historical and philosophical enterprises. The spatial reframing operated in the short story’s arresting premise – that of a sea which does not wet – sets off a process of writing and reading (in and of) the sea which illustrates as well as enacts literature’s potential to unsettle both conceptualizations of History and accepted historical records. The political critique of authoritarian practices and neoliberal diktats that unfolds in the text is inseparable from a wider textual and contextual (local and global) examination of sedimented historical, political and philosophical forms that literature may, perhaps should, force open.

Citation

Miranda, R. (2020). History, literature and the indices of the Ocean: Force of signification in Borges Coelho’s ‘”A força do mar de Agosto”. In A Companion to João Paulo Borges Coelho. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers

• Publication Date: Mar 20, 2020
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 21, 2021
• Publisher: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers
• Series Title: Reconfiguring Identitites in the Portuguese-Speaking World
• Book Title: A Companion to João Paulo Borges Coelho
• Chapter Number: 5
• ISBN: 9781787079861
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3655769
• Publisher URL: https://www.peterlang.com/view/9781787079885/html/ch14.xhtml
• Contract Date: Oct 18, 2019