Aesthetic and historical contextualizations in Mulheres de Cinzas of Mia Couto

Abstract

In this study I present a snippet of the novel Mulheres de Cinzas, by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto presenting his narration mode capable of constructing characters with identities in constant displacements. This brings to light reflections on the emergence of hybridity in moments of historical transformation such as occurs in the narrative. The identity aspects of the characters lead to reflection on the process of subject's construction, in which the relationship he establishes with society and with its identity, even in the search for its definition, is mediated by culture. Placing each subject in a position where it is already inserted by the bond of birth or identification, it also places them between two worlds without knowing what their location is or what their identities are at that border. Because the displacements go beyond the geographical, the deterritorialized subjectivity concept is in the work as a displacement of the self, of the individual who migrates to another country and who needs to assume the lifestyle of that people. This, however, happens to a certain extent, since this subject does not accept this oneness that the culture of the other imposes on him and seeks to compose himself as a singular subject in a movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization.