Paper short abstract:

The “orientalized oriental” considers that the culture of its origins is a mirror of the West. It thus provokes in its own community or society a destabilizing ideological division with social, political and economic consequences. What interests me in this paper is to look at some authors from the so-called "Indo-Portuguese" literature and question not only the purpose of the representation that orientalizes "the Self", but also the nature itself of that orientalism.

Paper long abstract:

The "orientalized oriental" considers that the culture of its origins is a mirror of the West. It thus provokes in its own community or society a destabilizing ideological division with social, political and economic consequences. This means that orientalism (in the Said's term) should not be seen as merely a process that is imposed on the Orient from the outside but also from within. What interests me in this paper is to look at some authors from the so-called "Indo-Portuguese" literature and question not only the purpose of the representation that orientalizes "the Self", but also the nature itself of that orientalism. This is given the fact that in Goa the frequent narrative of liberal secularism through orientalist practice gives way to discursive strategies that are shaped by the civilizational aspects of the former colonizer's religion, not to mention the Christocentric character of Portuguese expansion which has been insistently acclaimed by the defenders of Lusotropicalism, first coined by the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Native writers such as Francisco Luís Gomes (1829-1869), Francisco João da Costa (1864-1961), José da Silva Coelho (1889-1944), Mariano Gracias (1871-1931), Floriano Barreto (1877-1905) and Paulino Dias (1874-1919) reflect in their work a wide range of images constructed by a colonialism of a Catholic nuance regarding the social and cultural traditions of Hinduism: they seem, at first light, to deconstruct western knowledge but end up legimitizing the subalternizing European experience.