Configurations of modernity in Terra sonâmbula, by Mia Couto

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the configurations of modernity in the novel Terra sonâmbula (2007), by Mia Couto. By modernity we understand a set of processes that group attitudes linked to the historical, political and social context of countries as colonizers and colonized, with the Mozambican reality reconstituted, aesthetically, by Mia Couto being in evidence. In this case, we perceive the manifestation of colonialities instituted by the control of narratives, as well as attempts to interrupt the arranged circle. To reach the theoretical substance of the study, we resorted to the readings of Octavio Paz (1984), Michel Foucault (1987), Walter Benjamin (1989; 1936), Anthony Giddens (1991), Anatol Rosenfeld (1996) and Susan Sontag (2008). With Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2023), we will expand the conceptual debate to modernity/coloniality and decoloniality – a necessary concept for understanding coloniality in territories subjugated by Western processes of exploration and control. Terra somânbula presents the trajectory of characters marked by the issues of the period of war experienced in Mozambique, of which we highlight the Mozambican War of Independence (1964 – 1974) and the Mozambican Civil War (1977 – 1992). Being able to perceive modernity from a double angle, both as a theme and as a structural feature: the intersecting narratives of the narrators, the wars of liberation, the suffering of Mozambicans, the overlapping of different forms of discursive constitution (such as the introduction of notebooks Kindzu) and resistance to coloniality are results obtained through the reflections developed here.