Environmental crisis, world-literature and the Indian Ocean paradigm in João Paulo Borges Coelho

Abstract

This project is situated in the fields of Indian Ocean Studies, World-Literature and Environmental Humanities and aims at building a comparative analysis between the works Índicos Indícios (2005a; 2005b) and Ponta Gea (2017) by Mozambican author João Paulo Borges Coelho. Facing the Indian Ocean as an alternative critical paradigm (Hofmeyr, 2007, 2012; Brugioni, 2015) and as a transnational approach which are emblematic of the Mozambican context, we intend to investigate (i) the ways in which the literary works dialogue with and register questions surrounding the environmental crisis caused by global capitalism; and (ii) the ways in which the Indian Ocean can be considered a comparative critical paradigm for the study of Borges Coelho's literary project. The objective is to analyze the ways in which the works, which pose the Indian Ocean as a central element to their narratives, can provide theoretical and methodological tools for rethinking some of the critical paradigms and models of analysis consolidated across literary studies today, providing a renewed gaze at Mozambican literature and inserting it in a transnational theoretical and critical framework.