Exoticism, Cultural Hybridity, and Subaltern Identity in Three Macanese Novels

Although the novels of Austin Coates, Henrique de Senna Fernandes, and Rodrigo Leal de Carvalho’s depict life in the former Portuguese colony of Macau, their individual perspectives reflect a contrast between literary colonialism and coloniality. A British public servant, Coates perceives Macanese reality through the competing biased eyes of an Englishman resenting Portuguese culture and administration in the colony; Leal de Carvalho, a Portuguese resident of Macau, romantically depicts the social nature of Portuguese colonialism; Senna Fernandes, a native Macanese educated in Portugal, orders his interpretation of the colony’s Eurasian inhabitants vis-à-vis its Chinese population. The aim of this article is to contrast the literary representation of three issues in Coates’s City of Broken Promises, Fernandes’s The Bewitching Braid, and Carvalho’s The Count and his Theree Wives: exoticism, cultural hybridity, and subaltern identity.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism in Science Fiction for Greek Children

In contemporary Greek history we do not encounter the historical and social phenomena of colonialism or postcolonialism with the exception of cases where nations conquered Greek islands; the Dodecanese Islands and the Eptanisa (Seven Islands) were conquered by the English and the Italians, and Cyprus was conquered by the British in the Middle Ages and in contemporary times. These historical situations have been transferred into certain historical Greek fictions in adult literature and in the literature of children and young adult. The focus of this essay is on investigating and depicting colonialist attitudes and post-colonialist situations in science fiction for Greek Children. Initially, we attempt a brief introduction to the literature of children and young adults and mainly science fiction for children in Greece, and following this we outline the aims of our research. Then we define the terms “colonialism,” “postcolonialism” and the new suggested terms “historical colonialism” and “literary colonialism” and refer to their relationship with science fiction. This is due to the fact that the setting of these narratives “is dictated” by a group of events that the writers themselves have either brought about or believe will take place in the future. Afterwards we point out the criteria that are used to distinguish between five types of colonization in the texts and we investigate at greater length the role that children and adolescents play in the texts, as they participate actively as liberators and saviors, as protectors for peace and the environment or as characters that take on the roles of adults. The children and young adults remain passive spectators of a peaceful colonization or do not participate in the action since the heroes in the story are insects. In this case, they are limited to the role of reader. Through the study of these texts, we detect similarities to similar situations, both in antiquity and at a later date, or during contemporary times where similar policies in certain countries have been regarded. Finally, we realize that after the inversion of colonialism and the liberation of the colonized planets, these planets are governed democratically, according to Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on politics.

Literary Colonialism: Books in the Third World

Most Third World people have limited access to the world body of knowledge, and even information about their own countries is often hard to come by. One reason is that the majority of publishing houses in the world are either located in the West or controlled by Westerners. In this essay, the author describes the difficulty of publishing in the Third World as part of a larger relationship of dependence of developing countries on industrialized nations. The author, who has done research in India and published a number of books in that country, concludes his discussion with suggestions for expanding Third World autonomy in the area of knowledge production.