The third man argument

The third man argument We asked an albino guy if he could tell any jokes about the Portuguese, he laughed and said, a Portuguese man arrived here in Maputo, couldn’t believe his eyes, and asked a smart and friendly looking native what they called motherfuckers in Mozambique. But sir, we don’t call them, they come from Lisbon of their own accord. And there we were, two motherfuckers in Maputo, 38 years after independence and 20 years after the civil war, the old drunk woman shouting, her eyes irradiating blood and misery, give me a mulatto, give me a mulatto or money, motherfucker.

24.04.2013 | by João Maria Gusmao + Pedro Paiva

On how to build an immigrant

On how to build an immigrant When an "illegal" manage to reach Ceuta, he has to go to the police station. There, he is recorded as having no papers, and it’s left to local authorities to decide what to do with him: it can vary between deportation and receiving a provisional document, which allows the individual to move into the European territory (without, however, having documents allowing him to sign an employment contract). At the door of the police stations, Civil Guard elements often prevent the immigrants to submit to the authorities, handing them to Moroccan militaries.

14.04.2013 | by Ana Bigotte Vieira and Hugo Maia

Can non-Europeans think? What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'?

Can non-Europeans think? What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'? The question is rather something else: What about other thinkers who operate outside this European philosophical pedigree, whether they practice their thinking in the European languages they have colonially inherited or else in their own mother tongues - in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, thinkers that have actually earned the dignity of a name, and perhaps even the pedigree of a "public intellectual" not too dissimilar to Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault that in this piece on Al Jazeera are offered as predecessors of Zizek?

17.01.2013 | by Hamid Dabashi

Mozambique: another victim of the resource curse?

Mozambique: another victim of the resource curse? The "resource curse" is a term used to characterize the risks faced by poor countries where natural resources that are object of international greed are discovered. The promise of abundance arising from the enormous commercial value of resources and from the investments required to achieve it is so convincing that it starts to influence the pattern of economic, social, political, and cultural development.

06.12.2012 | by Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Colonialism did not end in the Middle East!

Colonialism did not end in the Middle East! Thus, far from being characteristic of colonial continuities before former European colonies - or what the Peruvian Anibal Quijano (1992) dubbed coloniality of power and knowledge, we are witnessing an Israeli colonialism that, contrary to what is preached is not based on defense and state security before the neighbors and "enemies" in Arabic or enlargement of its territory, but the regional dominance of a natural resource more precious than oil and that can feed the emergence of new colonial regimes in XXI Century: Water.

20.11.2012 | by Odair Bartolomeu Varela

BODY in review . New project

BODY in review . New project Thinking about the body is a strategic requirement, a way to discuss the normative processes of exclusion, naturalization and production, setting new ways to be in the world, new affections, to expand the horizon of the reasoning about the body. The idea is to insist less in the identity politics nor the identity pretensions (and its deceiver subversion) and more on precariousness and the way it deals with difference as well as the way the maps of power are exploited.

06.11.2012 | by Buala

Fragments of a new history - Zanele Muholi

Fragments of a new history - Zanele Muholi The African continent for a long time was totally overlooked in the annals of the history of photography. Indeed, Africa only appeared timidly on the international horizon or rather to arouse certain interest in the West around the early 1990s. Among other important events of the time that contributed towards this growing interest figures the African Photography Biennial in Mali, also known as the African Encounters of Photography. It was precisely that framework that gave rise to this collection that wishes to concentrate on the gaze of some of the women participating in the biennial. Our collection has two main objectives: firstly, to forestage African photography on the global scenario, in other words, to make it part of the whole and not merely consider it as part of the rest; and, secondly, to act out the will to endow African women photographers more visibility. This collection aims to break down the barriers of this double invisibility by looking at the narrative constructs of these women and thus multiplying the existing ways of seeing in an attempt to broaden and enhance our own perspectives.

24.09.2012 | by Masasam

The creole as a strategy of development

The creole as a strategy of development The creole, as a language, arose from the communication needs of colonized societies with the colonizer regime, being the language of national unity in many countries. Considering their own mother tongues as little useful, colonized societies recurred to the linguistic knowledge of the imposed model to build a simpler form of vehicular language, which we nowadays call creole.

23.08.2012 | by Catarina Laranjeiro and Jorge Filipe

From Africa to Buenos Aires – At the Forefront of a New Migratory Nexus?

From Africa to Buenos Aires – At the Forefront of a New Migratory Nexus? It’s Friday afternoon at the Al-Ahmad mosque in lower Buenos Aires. Despite gathering here with their multicultural brethren for prayer service, the small group of African men walking out the door is part of an inchoate community that has become a bit of a talking point in this vast and diverse metropolis.

08.06.2012 | by P.J. Marcellino

Right After the Comma

Right After the Comma You will find here the account of a series of journeys which I began in August 2010. You will also find in the text and drawings of Right After the Comma other earlier and later journeys which are not restricted by it and which will orbit and “de-temporalise” its central course.

07.05.2012 | by Mattia Denisse

On Nomadism

On Nomadism Nomads can be understood in different contexts, as in an anthropological sense, nomads as a new concept in philosophy and nomads as a real and metaphorical concept for new artistic praxis both in real and metaphorical senses. The real sense refers to art among nomadic people, while the metaphorical usage pertains to the use of nomadism in new artistic and theatrical creations.

20.12.2011 | by Knut OveArntzen

Feminism and Africa: Impact and Limits of the Metaphysics of Gender

Feminism and Africa: Impact and Limits of the Metaphysics of Gender For the most part, prevailing definitions of gender in African studies have come from disciplines located within the Western body of knowledge. Scholars are often unaware how much these definitions are steeped in the mores and norms of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the social conventions of European and European American cultures.

01.11.2011 | by Nkiru Nzegwu

Angolan origin

Angolan origin My concern is not to say who is and who is not Angolan. In Angola, as in any modern society, being Angolan is defined by the nationality law. Portugal began to nationalize all the native of colonies during the colonial war. Denationalizing them was among the first political acts of the government resulted from the 25th of April.

09.10.2011 | by António Tomás

“Terceira Metade” (“Third Half”): Between honey and poison: the dangers of the sweet charm of Portuguese language

“Terceira Metade” (“Third Half”): Between honey and poison: the dangers of the sweet charm of Portuguese language I set lusosphere as a debate far from any substance, a virtual focus that, referring to Portuguese language, develops its own dynamics in different national contexts. Far from being in front of a consensual thought, lusosphere hovers on situations of tension that put in contact these different contexts with each other.

17.09.2011 | by Omar Thomaz Ribeiro

York University research published: study on new migratory paradigm in Cape Verde and in Africa

York University research published: study on new migratory paradigm in Cape Verde and in Africa Pedro F. Marcelino has released a study on the new migratory paradigm emerging in post-9/11 Cape Verde. The study reflects a socio-economic context in which out-migration to traditional overseas destinations is no longer the only migratory phenomenon in the islands. The country has seen a steep increase in part- and full-time resident Europeans, as well as Chinese and continental African migrants. The research proposes that anti-terrorist measures and immigration control policies in both the USA and the EU after 9/11 have altered the migratory map of West Africa, whilst failing to curb people’s aspirations to depart and seek a better life.

16.09.2011 | by P.J. Marcellino

Sorcery Trials, Cultural Relativism and Local Hegemonies

Sorcery Trials, Cultural Relativism and Local Hegemonies Stating that sorcery exists in Mozambique is a mere declaration of an obvious and recurring fact. People may use it in order to obtain active results or to protect oneself from undesirable events, in the pursuance of legitimate or illegitimate, beneficial or malevolent goals. The effectiveness of this practice is, nonetheless, an issue that tends to divide readers between outspoken scepticism, attitudes of plausible doubt, complex speeches about its symbolic efficacy, and a somewhat apprehensive fear or agreement.

15.09.2011 | by Paulo Granjo

Who fears lusosphere?

Who fears lusosphere? It is undeniable that in Lisbon there is a natural approximation of Portuguese-speaking people, not Portuguese of nationality, even when they do not share the same race and culture. National differences reduce face to the discrimination which all are submitted to. And it makes full sense to think about this reduction as a need for resistance to discrimination, because the metropole turns homogeneous all the ex-colonized, grouping them in the categories of “nigger”, “black”, “immigrant”.

03.09.2011 | by António Tomás

Lusosphere, identity and diversity in the network society

Lusosphere, identity and diversity in the network society Lusosphere has been traditionally intended on the basis of progressively reducing dimensions: the geographic one, that unite the eight countries of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (Portuguese: Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, CPLP); the political one, that is confined to Portuguese speaking communities spread all over the world; and finally, the historical and cultural one, related to the Portuguese inheritance in different parts of the earth during the maritime expansion and the colonial empire.

03.08.2011 | by Lurdes Macedo

The moral economy of witchcraft: an essay in comparative history - III

The moral economy of witchcraft: an essay in comparative history - III Although most of the moral economy theorists discussed so far are critics of historical capitalism, few of them are Marxists. Indeed, whether stressing market rationalism or communal norms, they refuse (often explicitly) to discuss peasant society in class terms (see especially Magagna, forthcoming). Marxist analyses of the peasantry, along with "peasant studies" in general may indeed be out of fashion (Roseberry 1989); nonetheless it is Marxists who continue to search for the cultural components of Third World responses to capitalism-- including witchcraft beliefs. The results may be problematic, but they nonetheless point to paths of inquiry not opened by the individualist and functionalist approaches of other moral economy theories.

11.07.2011 | by Ralph A. Austen

The moral economy of witchcraft: an essay in comparative history - II

The moral economy of witchcraft: an essay in comparative history  - II The central trope of the various efforts to define moral economy has been an opposition between, on the one hand, the maximizing individual and ever-expanding market of classical political economy, and on the other a community governed by norms of collective survival and believing in a zero-sum universe: i.e. a world where all profit is gained at someone else's loss. The communal/zero-sum side of this equation is broadly consistent with African beliefs identifying capitalism and witchcraft as the dangerous appropriation of limited reproductive resources by selfish individuals.

21.06.2011 | by Ralph A. Austen