Paper short abstract:

I have adapted Culture Analysis Model by Geertz (2008) to this proposal. By adapting and adopting this model, I analyzed Tambarare story, written by Adelino Timóteo and the Legend Malidza of Carneiro Gonçalves, to show how different cultural representations can be apprehended on ethnographic literary texts.

Paper long abstract:

Writing about African culture in colonial languages creates a deficit on understanding performative dimensions.

To prove that, I will interpret some cultural events in the Tambarare story, written by Adelino Timóteo and in the Legend Malidza of Carneiro Gonçalves. My objective is to show how some cultural dimensions can be captured on the ethnographic literary texts and how some can be used if the text approaches a culture, using that cultures' language.

To achieve that, I have adapted Culture Analysis Model by Geertz (2008). It is used to analyses culture o real context. By adapting and adopting this model, I analyzed the above mentioned texts, to show how different cultural representations can be apprehended on literary writings.

To gauge conclusions I interviewed eleven research subjects from each of the cultures represented in the texts, namely ndau and sena, who confirmed that there is verisimilitude between the represented cultures and the real ones. However, some reader's imagination in each of the texts cannot be completed from the point of view of the apprehension of the performative questions, if the text approaches a culture by using different language. This leads me to recommend that get that and understand literary ethnographic texts it is necessary to use an literary and cultural model, for instances the one I will be using in this research. A part of that, this study can contribute on understanding of the necessity of stimulate the writing in African languages and the register of the African memory.