Moral conflicts of recognition of colonialism in O mandarim, by Eça de Queiroz
Abstract
The work analyzes the short story O mandarim, by Eça de Queiroz, as a marker of the ambivalence, at the end of the 19th century, between the world order of imperialism and the guidelines of an expanded imagination of human universality. Eça de Queiroz starts from an old philosophical question, under the title ‘the mandarin's dilemma’, which proposes that distance in time and space is proportionally inverse to human indifference towards suffering and pain. Starting from cultural studies and social history, the article proposes a more detailed reading of the work, not only as a reflection of an economic and social process, but also as a constructor of a form of awareness through fictionality. This aspect is also discussed by the authors Lynn Hunt, historian, and Martha Nussbaum, philosopher, both dedicated to the problem of the emotional effects of 17th and 18th century novels for the institution of human morality in what concerns the notion of modern equality. Under this theme, the concepts of sympathy or empathy emerge, which, even though already consolidated in social psychology, are still fragile in the scope of social and literary studies. By bringing them to the analysis of O mandarim, we show that Eça's apparently simple work can be problematized in symbolic social proportions, which move from the narrative placed in individual terms to considerations about expanded places and formations, such as the relationship between West and East. At the same time as it proposes questions of a more generic nature, the text also highlights the identity condition of Portugal at the time of Eça's writing, suggesting a more complex plot as the backdrop to the fiction of O mandarim.
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