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Islands, Theory and the Postcolonial Environment: Reading the Work of Khal Torabully
- Portuguese Studies
- Modern Humanities Research Association
- Volume 37, Number 2, 2021
- pp. 165-177
- 10.1353/port.2021.0019
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
Considering the scholarship developed within the research projects NILUS (FCT, Ref. PTDC/CPCELT/4868/2014) and Indian Ocean Aesthetic (FAPESP grant 2016/26098–5), both in the field of Indian Ocean Studies, this article aims to address the concepts of island and insularity as strategic frameworks for (re)thinking discourses on identity within a postcolonial critical and theoretical perspective. Based on the theorization proposed by Mauritian poet Khal Torabully, namely the concepts of coolitude and identité corail (Carter & Torabully, 2002), the article presents an overview of the relationship between those two concepts and the better-known notions of négritude and créolité. The discussion presented aims to trace out new critical pathways with a view to reframing postcolonial critical discourses on identity and hybridity within the specific cultural and material context of oceanic studies, and of what has come to be defined as the postcolonial environment.