Researcher:
Iracema Dulley
Funding:
Contract within the scope of the Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus (CEEC/IND), 5th Edition, financed by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
Ref. 2022.04991.CEECIND/CP1756/CT0005
Abstract:
Drawing on sixteen years of fieldwork and archival research on Angola, this project aims to ethnographically investigate the relationship between naming practices and subject constitution in its sociocultural, historical, political, and discursive dimensions in a way that takes the historicity of both fixation and transformation into account. Spanning the long duration of the colonization and decolonization of Central Angola, it considers continuities and ruptures in the politics of subject constitution by taking into account how different forms of designating oneself and others in Portuguese and Umbundu, the vernacular spoken in this region, index different possibilities of action and experience in changing sociopolitical contexts: the period of the caravan trade in politically independent Umbundu-speaking polities (1846-1902), the establishment of Portuguese colonial rule following the military subjugation of Central Angola in the aftermath of the Bailundo War (1903-1961), the liberation struggle (1961-1975), the civil war (1975-2002), and finally the post-war period (2003-now).
Keywords: naming practices, historical anthropology, colonialism, post-colonialism, Angola.
Image: Vó Violeta, Iracema Dulley e Tia Nonjamba.