Mia Couto

Mourning and melancholia in The Mapper of Absences

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1983-4276.2021.1.39886

Keywords:

Mourning, Melancholia, Fantasy, Incorporation, Introjection

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine, in Diogo Santiago’s character – the fictitious author of The Mapper of Absences, the last novel by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto – the way his coming back to the places of his childood – in the city of Beira – mourning and melancholia play their part. The analysis will be followed by the eyes of Freud, Judith Butler, Maria Torok, Nicolas Abraham, Marie Claude Lambotte and Jacques Derrida. This reading draws its methodological justification from the fact that, in the novel: a) the fictious writer Diogo Santiago tells us that he is still to mourn his parents; b) his symptoms seem also to indicate that he suffers from deep melancholia. Benefiting from the fact that he was handed down, by Liana Campos – the granddaugther of the former PIDE inspector, Óscar Campos – the entire police archive of all his family, kept since before the first imprisonment of his father, the poet Adriano Santiago, in 1973, Diogo Santiago have, finally, the chance of mourning his parents through his writing of a novel with the same title: O Mapeador de Ausências.

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Author Biography

José Paulo Cruz Pereira, Universidade do Algarve (UAlg), Faro, Portugal.

Doutorado em Literatura Comparada pela Universidade do Algarve (UAlg), situada na cidade de Faro, em Portugal, onde exerce a docência das disciplinas de Literaturas Estrangeiras de Língua Portuguesa II e de Comunicação na Contemporaneidade. É, também, membro do Grupo 7 do CLEPUL – Centro de Literaturas e Culturas Lusófonas e Europeias da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, dedicado ao tema das “Metamorfoses da Herança Cultural”.

References

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Published

2021-08-18

How to Cite

Pereira, J. P. C. (2021). Mia Couto: Mourning and melancholia in The Mapper of Absences. Navegações, 14(1), e39886. https://doi.org/10.15448/1983-4276.2021.1.39886

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2021)

Section

Ensaios

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