“Archipelagic Currents in the Global Novel: 24 Hours with Gaspar by Sabda Armandio” in Journal of World Literature 8, no. 3
Aug 2023
Crime fiction, a frequently translated and highly translatable literary genre, has generated perspectives on the global and the local in ways that shape cartographies of world literature. The Indonesian novel 24 Hours with Gaspar by Sabda Armandio is a case study for how specific texts within the genre can serve as points of departure for theorizing cultural geography in an imaginative mode. Analyzing Gaspar through three spatial optics, this paper considers the novel’s global influences, the elements that fall into relief as local in translation, and – by attending to patterns of movement and contact that complicate place-based perspectives – the archipelagic qualities of the text. By imagining this alternative conception of literary space, Armandio’s novel recasts the contemporary global novel as the product of contact, mobility, and linguistic and material flows rather than sites of static national or regional identity.“Plausible Intimacies: Transpacific Entanglements in Lima Barreto’s “O homem que sabia javanês”” in Comparative Literature 75, no. 1
Mar 2023
This essay analyzes representations of Asia in the satirical 1911 short story “O homem que sabia javanês” (“The Man Who Knew Javanese”) by Brazilian author Lima Barreto. Like much of Barreto’s work, the short story critiques the deterministic categories of scientific racism popular in elite circles during the First Brazilian Republic. However, this essay asserts that the references to Java in the story are not arbitrary means through which to carry out that critique. Instead, drawing on Lisa Lowe’s concept of residual intimacies and Bruno Carvalho’s engagement of cartografia letrada (lettered cartography), it argues that Barreto crafts a fiction of plausible contact between Brazil and Java, revealing transpacific spatial and racial entanglements that categories of canonized knowledge at the turn of the twentieth century failed to manage and control. Barreto imagines Java on the streets of Rio, revealing the tangible closeness of two experiences categorized as different and distant. The essay considers how the plausible yet fictional intimacies in this literary counternarrative conceptually reorient readers toward both the Pacific and the Atlantic.“Ricardo Lísias: 'Não precisa acreditar no que digo. E nem acho que deva'” by Ingrid Brioso Rieumont, Lara Norgaard, Márcia de Castro Borges in Fórum de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea 10, no. 19
Jun 2018
A collaborative interview with Ricardo Lísias, with discussion of the 2016 parliamentary coup against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, freedom of artistic expression, and auto-fiction. The abstract, in Portuguese, is as follows: "Nesta entrevista, realizada em 2016 na Universidade de Princeton, Ricardo Lísias comenta a turbulência que atingiu o Brasil e sua própria obra. Com a sinceridade que o caracteriza, critica desde o uso de argumentos supostamente democráticos para apoiar o golpe contra Dilma Rousseff até o cerceamento da liberdade de criação artística. Acrescente-se que o fato de se encontrar numa instituição universitária tampouco o impede de manifestar desacordo em relação ao tratamento que certos especialistas dispensam às narrativas rotuladas de autoficção."