<b>When the others are ourselves: the place of post-colonial criticism in the Brazilian university</b> - DOI: 10.4025/actascihumansoc.v29i2.725

Abstract

The examination of identity issues, in their respective forms of cultural representation, becomes productive in the light of Post-Colonial Studies – an interdisciplinary academic area of increasing relevance today, and of special interest for comparative literature and theory. A critical counter-discourse vis-à-vis hegemonic interpretative trends and models, Post-Colonialism re-reads the cultural production ideologically committed to the colonial apparatus in its various aspects and facades, and investigates, above all, alternative voices and deviant ways derived from the populations subjugated in the imperialistic process of European colonization. The present article emphasizes the importance of Post-Colonial Studies in the Brazilian university as it undertakes a contrastive analysis of British colonialism and the Portuguese (the latter, historically subaltern in relation to the former). Contemporary post-colonial reflection of different sources is here problematized, together with inherent questions of ambiguity and hybridity, alterity and otherness, representation and identity.