3 - Toward a Multicultural Ethics and Decolonial Meta-Identity in the Work of Fernando Sylvan

Summary

In recent decades, the study of Lusophone literatures has offered numerous new theoretical perspectives and problematizations of issues pertinent to postcolonial theory and the interrogation of colonial forms of power, both local and global. One geopolitical realm of postcolonial Lusophone literary production that has been relatively under-studied is that of East Timor. Indeed, the particularities of East Timorese history have yielded a rich, if not fragmented, body of literature and cultural reflection that highlights and draws upon the repercussions of territorial occupation (Portuguese and Indonesian) on a multiethnic population. The different projects of cultural invention have sought to explore, question, and push the edges of an East Timorese nation-sign in the historical and intersecting aftermaths of European colonialism, postcolonial, or re-colonial genocide, humanitarian displacement, and neocolonialism in the period of late capitalism.

One of the greatest contributors to such an intervention was this chapter's subject, Fernando Sylvan. Born Abílio Leopoldo Motta-Ferreira in 1917 in Dili, the capital of then Portuguese Timor, he moved to Lisbon as a child, then Cascais to the west of the Portuguese capital, where he lived until his death in 1993. He presided over the Sociedade de Língua Portuguesa [Portuguese Language Society] and received significant acclaim for his poetry in the 1970s. His poetic œuvre focused, to a certain extent, on themes such as love, deemed universal by the heteronormative male gaze at the gates of the Eurocentric literary canon. Much more significant were his poetic explorations of his Timorese roots from exile, Timorese experiences of resistance against the excesses of European and Indonesian occupation, and the place of East Timor vis-à-vis imperial historicization and global forms of power.

Imperial Inscriptions of Colony and Bodies

Portuguese colonial presence on the island of Timor was consolidated in 1702 with the establishment of Lifau as the capital and the location of the colonial government seat. Portuguese mercantile presence dates back to the early sixteenth century with outposts scattered throughout Southeast Asia. This presence was not sustained, of course, without significant resistance from different Timorese ethnic groups and kingdoms, and faced Dutch military incursions as the Dutch East India company sought to expand its own colonial presence in what is today Indonesia. Following raids by the Topasses, the Portuguese colonial administration moved its headquarters to Dili in 1769, the present-day capital of East Timor, a nation-state of 1.2 million inhabitants on the eastern half of the island.