Transnational Intimacies: Coloniality and the Environments of Travel Writing in Portugal and Angola, c. 1900-1930

Volume 44 Issue 1

Author(s): Pedro Lopes de Almeida

Recommended Citation:

Lopes de Almeida, Pedro (2019) “Transnational Intimacies: Coloniality and the Environments of Travel Writing in Portugal and Angola, c. 1900-1930,” Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies: Vol. 44 : Iss. 1 , Article 7.

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Abstract:

Starting with a critical and sensorial engagement with “Histomap,” a visual comparative timescale for various political spaces around the globe, this paper discusses travel writing in Angola and Portugal in the early 20th century, foregrounding ideas of scale, entanglements, and intimacy. In order to tackle the conceptual challenges posed by objects such as the Histomap or travelogues, I propose recentering the notions of coloniality, modernity, and periphery, as they are elaborated by Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and Boaventura Sousa Santos. I then proceed to the analysis of a selected corpus of primary documents, keeping as my focal point the spaces of intimacy, after a revision of the definitions of critical intimacies by Elizabeth Povenelli and Lisa Lowe. While wide-distribution travel guides serve as a frame of reference to introduce my approach to this archive, the bulk of this paper deals with the travelogues A Fossicker in Angola (London, 1933), by Malcolm Burr, and A Portuguese Somersault (London, 1936), by Jan and Cora Gordon. My reading highlights how scenes of transnational entanglements predicated on notions of intimacy shape the space, exchanges, and relationalities in Portugal and Angola around this period. I suggest that these texts formulate specific ways in which subalternity becomes imaginable through imperial and transcolonial models of space and time.

Tags: Angola, Coloniality, Portugal, Travel Writing