Paper short abstract:

The “orientalized oriental” considers that the culture of its origins is a mirror of the West. It thus provokes in its own community or society a destabilizing ideological division with social, political and economic consequences. What interests me in this paper is to look at some authors from the so-called "Indo-Portuguese" literature and question not only the purpose of the representation that orientalizes "the Self", but also the nature itself of that orientalism.

Paper long abstract:

The "orientalized oriental" considers that the culture of its origins is a mirror of the West. It thus provokes in its own community or society a destabilizing ideological division with social, political and economic consequences. This means that orientalism (in the Said's term) should not be seen as merely a process that is imposed on the Orient from the outside but also from within. What interests me in this paper is to look at some authors from the so-called "Indo-Portuguese" literature and question not only the purpose of the representation that orientalizes "the Self", but also the nature itself of that orientalism. This is given the fact that in Goa the frequent narrative of liberal secularism through orientalist practice gives way to discursive strategies that are shaped by the civilizational aspects of the former colonizer's religion, not to mention the Christocentric character of Portuguese expansion which has been insistently acclaimed by the defenders of Lusotropicalism, first coined by the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Native writers such as Francisco Luís Gomes (1829-1869), Francisco João da Costa (1864-1961), José da Silva Coelho (1889-1944), Mariano Gracias (1871-1931), Floriano Barreto (1877-1905) and Paulino Dias (1874-1919) reflect in their work a wide range of images constructed by a colonialism of a Catholic nuance regarding the social and cultural traditions of Hinduism: they seem, at first light, to deconstruct western knowledge but end up legimitizing the subalternizing European experience.

Paper short abstract:

In my presentation I shall analyze the concept of Orientalism in Portuguese 16th century expansion chronicles. I will pay a specific focus on the way the Other is represented in Fernão Lopes de Castanheda's, João de Barros' and Gaspar Correia's texts on India .

Paper long abstract:

Fernão Lopes de Castanheda's, João de Barros' and Gaspar Correia's Expansion chronicles were written in the first half of the 16th century. These chronicles depict the Portuguese presence in Asia, namely in India, in order to show how powerful this emergent empire was. One of its main vectors is the description of the contacts with the new spaces under Portuguese rule. As I will try show these descriptions devote specific attention to the representation of the Other. My main focus will be thus on "Portuguese imperial gaze" in the first half of the 16th century and on the way it helped to build the notion of Orientalism.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to propose a broad reading, through literature, of the phenomenon of Portugyese nineteenth and twentyeth century Orientalism in the way that it is displaced from the Asian Empire, meaning that it develops as kind of discourse that uses the Orient as a symbolical center, but not as a economical and political one.

Paper long abstract:

All the recent critical investigations on Portuguese Orientalism (Hespanha, Laborinho, Perez, Jackson) raise as crucial issue its connection with the peculiar history of Portugal's Empire as to explain the shaping of Portuguese Orientalism as a phenomenon diverse from other European Orientalisms. This paper aims to propose a broad reading, through literature, of the phenomenon of nineteenth and twentyeth century Orientalism in the way that it is displaced from the Asian Empire, meaning that it develops as kind of discourse that uses the Orient as a symbolical center, but not as a economical and political one. I shall argue therefore in the three following ways: First, Portuguese Orientalism develops in the interval between the XVIIIth Century demise of an Empire based on the East and the menaced survival of Empire elsewhere; second, the aesthetic adaptation orientalist authors make of other European orientalisms shows another kind of cleavage between the heritage of sixteenth and seventeenth century cultural materials created in relation to the East and modern European literary aesthetics; finally, the contemporary and post-imperial preservation of orientalist tropes shows that Portuguese Orientalism outlived itself, because it works concomitantly with the still active ideological need for a cultural or spiritual Portuguese Empire. I shall be working mostly with poetry, drawing examples from Fernando Pessoa, Wenceslau de Moraes and António Manuel Couto Viana.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we will analyse and reassess the role the 'East' has played in the ideological reconfigurations of Empire constructed by the Estado Novo. The phantoms and fantasies of the colonial rhetoric of the Portuguese empire will be theoretically framed in this presentation, according to the groundbreaking works by Eduardo Lourenço and Margarida Calafate Ribeiro. Being the 'East' a foundational point of articulation in Portuguese colonial discourse, we will address Salazar's speeches on the liberation/annexation of Goa, in 1961, which materialize a culmination of a long ideological and mystifying tradition. As a counterpoint, we will also analyse the representation of the place of Goa in the Portuguese empire through the voices of two Goan authors, one of them, Ferreira Martins, supportive of colonial discourses, while the other, the famous activist Menezes Bragança confronted and exposed colonial discourses seeing through its self-legitimizing propaganda.

Paper short abstract:

Colonial, Post Colonial are political terms. In Multi Cultural context Past merges in Present to make Future. Sanskrit Studies, officially began in 1877.Vasconcelos Abreu was Founder-Professor,succeeded by Dalgado, Saldanha, who taught Marathi and Konkani also. Now these studies, struggle hard to continue to enrich Future .

Paper long abstract:

Term Orientalism is often used by Occidental scholars. Indology, is a part of Orientalism, here it is in the center. Colonial and post colonial are words of political demarcation. Here trust is on intellectual and secular studies. Vasconcelos Abreu belongs to famous Geração de 70, during his days in University of Coimbra he was attracted to the Indological subjects like Ramayan, Mahabharat, Manu Smruti, Bhagvad Gita; etc.This induced him to study literature and Sanskrit the ancient language of India. With dedication he became first Sanskritologist of Portugal. He persuaded the Government to begin the class of Sanskrit studies in Curso Superior de Letras in 1877.

Vasconcelos Abreu held the position of Professor till 1907, contributing with 14 important books and 11 articles, grammar, translations from Sanskrit literature. He was succeeded by S.R.Dalgado, an eminent polyglot, who was also given responsibility to teach Marathi and Konkani in Lisbon. His work on influence of Portuguese on Asiatic Languages is important. Mariano Saldanha succeeded him, who went to Santineketan, before coming to Portugal, to meet the Poet- Philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. His essay on «Poet of University, University of Poet» is educative and illuminating. After him, the institutional education of Indology effectively declined in Portugal. After 1961 appeared a generation which began to study Luso-Indo or Indo-Portuguese topic with academic perspectives. Some are mentioned below: Historian Teotónio de Sousa, Poet António Barahona, Anthropologist Rosa Maria Perez, Translator Olivinho Gomes and others. All these works shall be explained in full text of paper.

Paper short abstract:

The problematic of assimilation and hybridity is nuclear in the thought of Francisco João da Costa. To enlighten his thought it is useful to situate Jacob and Dulce in the ensemble of his texts at the newspaper O Ultramar, namely the Notas a lápis where he first published the novel.

Paper long abstract:

The problematic of assimilation and hybridity is nuclear in the thought of Francisco João da Costa. Influenced by the idea of genuinity in coeval Orientalist and nationalist discourses, the author makes a fin-de-siècle evaluation of the liberal native catholic elite's project regarding cultural and intellectual conversion as preliminary condition to any ambition to local emancipation. To enlighten his thought it is useful to situate Jacob and Dulce in the ensemble of his texts at the newspaper O Ultramar, namely the Notas a lápis where he first published the novel.

Paper short abstract:

By analyzing the writings of British men, but also a few women, that went to Goa between the 1870s and the 1920s I will try to explore the relationship between British colonialism and Portuguese colonialism in India, but also how orientalised discourses could be unsettled by this confrontation.

Paper long abstract:

By analyzing the writings of British men, but also a few women, that went to Goa between the 1870s and the 1920s I will try to explore the relationship between British colonialism and Portuguese colonialism in India, but also how orientalised discourses could be unsettled by this confrontation. The recognition of a wide array of manifestations of Europeaness intermingled with what was perceived as Indian, often puzzled the British gaze: they were prepared to see and accept what they identified as Indians, but they could not tolerate that those Indians were so similar to themselves, so European, too European.

For British travelers Goa was another India, a place colonized by others that, as many wrote, would better be colonized by them. The usual discourses contrasting the present decadence and the glorious past, came to prove, on the one side, that the British colonization of India could not so the same mistakes and, on the other side, that Goa would only be properly explored if it became one more territory of British India. Therefore, what was perceived as "Portuguese" was often subject to the same orientalised discourses as what was Indian. A case that will be explored is that of the catholic cult of St. Francis Xavier, often described with the same ethnographical gaze that was used to write on Hindu rituals and practices.

Paper short abstract:

This paper undertakes a panorama of authors that constitute what can be called “Portuguese Philosophical Orientalism”. The focus of this paper lies on the way that portuguese philosophical essayists regarded religious phenomena such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper undertakes a panorama of authors that constitute what can be called "Portuguese Philosophical Orientalism". The focus of this paper lies on the way that, in the colonial nineteenth-century Portugal, portuguese philosophical essayists regarded religious phenomena such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Their perceptions of such phenomena developed original conceptions in the context of Philosophy of Religion, connected with a reavaluation of Christianity and a philosophical reconsideration of the concept of Universality. Renouned scholars, for instance, such as Vasconcelos Abreu and Latino Coelho were responsible for comparative projects between Classical Greek Culture and Hinduism. Others, such as Teofilo Braga, were opening windows to the Orient through Positivism. Ouside of the Academia, there were also other authors, such as Silva Mendes, working with a more philological and etnographical perspective. We will also aproach the phenomenon of Neo-buddhist constructs, such as those of Antero de Quental or Oliveira martins.

Paper short abstract:

This paper, which is based on the recovery of lost communities of knowledge embedded in the heart of the political and social archives of the Portuguese empire in South Asia in the early modern period, aims at connecting the early-modern «Catholic Orientalism» with the «Portuguese Orientalism» of the 19th century.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, which is based on the recovery of lost communities of knowledge embedded in the heart of the political and social archives of the Portuguese empire in South Asia in the early modern period, aims at connecting the early-modern «Catholic Orientalism» with the «Portuguese Orientalism» of the 19th century.

Our quest for the lost «Catholic Orientalism» begins where the current historiography ends. In pursuing connections between knowledge, science, and empire, indelibly marked by colonial and discursive power relations, emblematically called Orientalism, we focus both on material and on lost, or forgotten archives. It is our claim that by resurrecting the invisible documents we can glimpse different landscapes and tell a different history: more nuanced, with other geographies and chronologies, with new actors, and with different conclusions.

Widening the scope of Orientalism to include earlier practices of knowledge closely linked to Catholicism is a way to make visible the roots and inspiration of 19th century Orientalisms (namely the Portuguese one).

However, "Catholic" orientalism was not a monolithic ideological and discursive formation. It was a composite entity with Iberian monarchies, Italian republics, the Papacy and finally France competing, at different times and with varying success, to control, to know, and to possess territory, trade and people in South Asia. By the end of the 18th century, even if for a short period, it was probably Rome, and neither London nor Paris, the richest European center for studying Sanskrit philology.