(Des)Colonizar-se a si mesmo:

memória e identidades em Venenos de Deus, remédios do Diabo, de Mia Couto

Abstract

The Mozambican writer Mia Couto stands out as a representative of Portuguese-speaking African literature identified as “post-colonial”, which emerged after the emancipation of countries once colonized by Portugal and who, in the affirmation of their identity (even using the language of the colonizer), assumes a discourse of dissent or revision of the cultural domination suffered for centuries. However, Couto's fiction transcends affiliation to a trend of the time, seeking universality. We will analyze in the novel Venenos de Deus, Remédios do Diabo (2008) how the notion of identity (personal, social, historical) is articulated to that of collective memory in the experience of the main characters. The problems of “decolonization” without horizons are experienced by Bartolomeu Sozinho, the sick old man, longing for colonial times. He cultivates the memory of a supposed time of glory evoked in the idealization of his activity as a sailor on the ship Infante dom Henrique. The difficulties of the present lead him to legitimize the colonizer's discourse. In the opposite direction, the stay of the Portuguese doctor Sidónio in Mozambique, in the frustrated search for love, results in his rich involvement with the African country, and points to the search for the possible construction of an identity from the confrontation with the different.